Guibert Alan's War Summary

Alan’s War, by Emmanuel Guibert, follows the story of Alan Cope and his experiences during World War Two. While the story was written by Guibert, the story is told in the first person from Alan’s perspective, as seen in the first line of the story “I remember the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed,” as well as the rest of the book. However, along with it being Alan’s story, it also the story of the average soldier during World War Two. In the next paragraphs, I will outline how this is both Alan’s story and the average soldier’s story.
To begin, let’s start with the title. As we all known, or at least should know, the title of the book is called Alan’s War The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope. Now obviously, if the title mentions Alan twice, it would be safe to to say that the book is about Alan. Yet I would like to draw attention to “G.I.” which stands for government issue. According to history.com, “Some servicemen used [G.I.] as a sarcastic reference symbolizing their belief that …show more content…
Now you may be thinking to yourself “Alan had his own experiences during the war, how could they possibly be representing what other people were going through?” While it is true that Alan had his own experiences, he never vocalizes his opinions and feelings about anything he went through. This allows for Alan’s story to resonate with others who would have done the same thing as Alan, or at least something similar to what Alan did. An example of this could be seen when Alan was still in training. More specifically when he was being shot at. He says “we had village combat practice. Sharpshooters hid around corners and shot at us, with real bullets, just missing. We could see the bullet holes in the walls right next to where we were standing, and we learned to take things very seriously.” This lack of personal commentary also allows for the most vague telling of the story, which in turn, allows it to leave room for other people’s