Torture Exposed In Henri Alleg's The Question

The Question by Henri Alleg is a first person narrative about his one-month experience of being tortured by the French government during the Algerian War. With a set up of secondary sources in the foreword, introduction, preface, afterword, and with the story itself being a primary source the reader gets a satisfying feel for what it was like for Henri Alleg. He discusses a typical day an imprisoner had to go through as well as his own personal encounters with torture. Throughout the book Alleg goes into great detail of the methods French soldiers used on him. The main purpose of this book is reveal and educate people on the horror that is torture from a first person experience. This is why The Question was banned by the French government after two weeks of its release from the popularity the public gave it.

Henri Alleg was a French …show more content…
This time he would have to deal with being roasted. French soldiers laid Alleg down wetted his ankles then tied them tightly. Then turned him upside down with only his fingers touching the ground then started to light flames along his body. The French soldiers laughing and enjoying themselves while seeing Alleg in deep pain. Alleg just trying to focus on his beliefs while receiving terrible pain all over his body. Once the French soldiers saw that Alleg was not breaking and keeping his silence they started to beat him themselves (Alleg 50-51).

Henri Alleg wanted readers to see how violence is bad and to show the truth behind it. Another person who was very passionate about non-violence was Gandhi. Gandhi as we learned in class argues for equality and is a pacifist. Gandhi like Alleg was arrest for his beliefs and wrote writings expressing his outlook on non-violence and torture. Both Gandhi and Alleg showed the public that torture is not something the government should be doing. Torture is dehumanizing and makes people seems like