I read the book. I thought I’d make a few notes about some of the events in the novel, the
significance of which may be overlooked by the average 16-year old.
I’m not a teacher; I
haven’t studied this book, so my interpretations may not be right. However, I have the advantage of age and know
lots of random stuff relevant to this book. I’m sure I’ve missed other
significant points.
I have assumed that you’ve read the book; be warned that
these notes contain spoilers that will tell you how it ends. The page numbers
alongside each quotation refer to the Longman edition of the book I have used.
You may find some unexplained quotes; these are ones for which I will write an
accompanying note if/when I get around to it. This is a work in progress, I’m not sure that
I will finish it, but I hope the notes that I have made prove useful.
CHAPTER 1;
P1 Frenchtown in Monument. Frenchtown is an
enclave of people of French descent. Most of the characters’ names are of
French origin (Cassavant, Lasalle, LaFontaine, Richelieu, Marie La Croix, Touraine,
etc.. They would probably be the
children or grand-children of French-speaking French-Canadian immigrants. Cormier’s name, is also French.
Leominster has an area called ‘French
Hill’, where French-Canadian immigrants had settled, a park/common called
Monument Square, a Spruce Street (Ch 14) and a Mechanic Street (Ch 3)..
Frenchtown is a thinly disguised version of Leominster. It’s
possible that the characters and events in the novel are similarly based on
real-life.
P1 ‘That’s the way he
pronounced it; arse.’
An American would
usually say ‘ass’. Dr Abram’s use of the British pronunciation is not explained, most probably he had served in hospitals in England
during the war treating the casualties from the US Army Air Force and ( after
D-Day) US Army ground troops.
P2 Red Sox cap. A Boston Red Sox ( US baseball team) baseball cap. Boston is the nearest large town to Frenchtown/Leominster, about 40 miles away.
P3 Three decker; triple decker house with 3 floors.
The French Hill area in Leominster ( and the fictitious Frenchtown) has blocks of triple decker houses. It is a distinctive type of 19th and early-20th century housing that is common in Massachussets. A family would be housed on each floor. There is a balcony (piazza) at the front of each floor which provides an outdoor area and also shades the windows in summer.
The term "three-decker" originally referred to a man-of-war sailing ship with three gun decks. The three-decker houses originated in the ports of New England, on the east coat of the USA and would have originally housed sailors and dock workers living near the ports.
The term "three-decker" originally referred to a man-of-war sailing ship with three gun decks. The three-decker houses originated in the ports of New England, on the east coat of the USA and would have originally housed sailors and dock workers living near the ports.
P4 Damaged by the grenade The injuries Cassavant describes would be unlikely to result from a hand grenade, although it’s not impossible Grenades usually contain a small amount of high explosive and cause injury by the fragmentation of the metal casing. Anyone suffering such facial injuries would probably also have been blinded.
Major General John Frost (commander of 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment in WW2 ) in his autobiography described a withdrawal through German lines from a position in North Africa at night, leading an injured man whose face was held on with a field dressing, having had it virtually severed by a shell fragment during an artillery bombardment.
Artillery and mortar shells contain much more explosive than hand grenades and the shrapnel fragments generally have more energy.
P6 Later, I light a candle in St. Jude’s
church....
A votive
candle, “To "light a candle for someone" indicates one's intention to
say a prayer for another person, and the candle symbolizes that prayer. A
donation box intended to defray candle costs generally accompanies votive
candles.”
He does not light the candle because it is dark in the church; this was an idea I found expressed on the internet, although that would be a reasonable assumption, if you didn’t happen to know much about Catholicism.
He does not light the candle because it is dark in the church; this was an idea I found expressed on the internet, although that would be a reasonable assumption, if you didn’t happen to know much about Catholicism.
P6 St Jude’s Church.
The local parish church in Frenchtown. .
St Jude is the patron
saint of hopeless causes, 'The Saint for
the Hopeless and the Despaired', There is no St. Jude's church in the real French Hill. Cormier could have chosen a name from amongst hundreds of saints and picked St. Jude; he would have known of the association.
P6 The smell of burning
wax and the fragrance of old incense, the odours of forgiveness, fill the
church. I remember the days.....
Smells have
the power to bring to mind emotional memories associated with those smells. The
smells in the church bring back memories of Cassavant's childhood.The powerful memories evoked by an odour are the subject of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Lichtenberg.
Smells are
surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
That whisper, " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
Riding in, in the rain.
To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
That whisper, " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
Riding in, in the rain.
P6 ........the days I served as
an altar boy for Father Balthazar and the Latin responses I had trouble
memorizing.
The Roman Catholic mass was said in Latin
until 1967. A Catholic priest is usually
addressed as ‘Father’.
Frenchtown is Catholic; this is important.
P6 ... Rub Room of the
Monument Comb Shop Leominster/
Frenchtown was the centre of an industry manufacturing combs and was nicknamed
‘Comb City’. Combs had formerly been manufactured by sawing slots in strips of animal
horn or, later, celluloid. They are now made cheaply from injection moulded
plastics. The Rub Room was a workshop
where the final polishing processes were carried out using abrasive polishing
wheels.
You
opened the door of the rub room at the comb shop and a blast like purgatory
struck your face. The workers sat on stools, huddled like gnomes over the
whirling wheels, holding the combs against the wheels to smooth away the rough
spots. The room roared with the sound of machinery while the foul smell of the
mud soiled the air. The mud was a mixture of ashes and water in which the
wheels splashed so they would not overheat at the point of contact with the
combs. Because the rub room was located in the cellar of the shop where there
were no windows, the workers toiled in the naked glare of ceiling lights that
intensified everything in the room: the noise, the smells, the heat, the
cursing of the men. On the coldest day of the year, the temperature in the Rub
Room was oppressive: in the summer, unbearable.
Robert
Cormier ‘Fade’
P6 Nicole Renard; another French name.
Renard means fox. In American, WW2-era slang, fox meant a sexually attractive woman.
P7 “Great strides have been made in cosmetic surgery, Francis. One of the few benefits of the war.”
The USA had entered WW2 2¼ years after the UK. During that time, the UK had become a centre of expertise in innovative plastic surgery usually used in treating facial burns.
See the Guinea Pig Club (patients of Archibald McIndoe) or ‘The Last Enemy’ by Richard Hilary (a Spitfire pilot severely burned during the Battle of Britain in 1940). Dr Abrams would probably have acquired his knowledge of cosmetic surgery and English pronunciations in English hospitals.
P8 Silver Star A US medal awarded for gallantry in action, the third highest US military decoration.
Chapter 2
P10 St Thérèse of
Lisieux; Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin (1873 to 1897) a French
nun and catholic saint.
St Therese lived only 50 years before this story is set and so,
unlike most saints, there are photographs of her. Francis Cassavant is
familiar with these images.
St Therese would have been especially venerated amongst the
Frenchtown Catholics because she was French.
St Therese at 13 years of age, about
the same age as both Nicole Renard and Francis Cassavant when they
first meet.
|
P10 St Jude's parochial school.....
Parochial is an adjective which means 'relating to a Church parish.'
St. Jude's school is adjacent to St. Jude's church and is managed by the parish.
Some of the teachers are nuns who live in the adjacent convent. Their teachers' salaries are paid by the state and are paid to the convent.
P11. .....on the third floor of our
house In the UK the street level of a building is called the ground floor. In the USA the street level is called the first floor; so the “third floor” is what a UK reader would call the ‘second floor’, or the top floor of a triple decker house.
P12 ....players from the shops i.e., workshops, factories
P12. ....the men drinking beer they had brewed
in big crocks. The sale and
production of alcoholic drinks was illegal in the USA between 1920 and 1933. Home
brewing became popular during the prohibition
and continued afterwards. This incident occurs in about 1938, after prohibition
has ended. The
Frenchtown residents are poor, working people and home brewed beer is cheaper than bottled beer or buying beer in a bar.
P13 ...how selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees had
brought a curse upon the team.
George Herman “Babe” Ruth
(1895 to 1948), the most famous baseball player of all time.
Babe Ruth’s contract
had been sold by the owner of the Boston Red Sox to their rivals, the New York
Yankees, in 1919. The reasons for the sale aren’t known, it is believed that
the Red Sox owner needed money for another business venture. Babe Ruth’s sale so
outraged Red Sox fans that Cassavant’s father is still regularly
complaining about it some twenty years
later.
Imagine the outrage
if Manchester United had sold David Beckham to Liverpool in the early years of
his professional career.Chapter 3 A CONVERSATION WITH NORMAN ROCHELEAU IN FRANCE
P18 ‘.....he told me about the family’s sudden
departure from Frenchtown. More than that; ‘All kinds of rumors about her, Francis.
She began to stay at home, didn’t come out of the house except for the
five-thirty morning mass, the nuns’ mass, that nobody else in their right mind
ever goes to. She was like ...’ he gestured with the cigarette, trying to find
the right word.’......A hermit. Then she was gone. Her and her family. Left
Frenchtown without telling anybody. ‘
- All kinds of rumors about her, Francis. People in Frenchtown were gossiping about Nicole Renard and her family’s sudden disappearance.
- She was like ...’ he gestured with the cigarette, trying to find the right word.’......A hermit. Then she was gone. Her and her family. Left Frenchtown without telling anybody. ‘Nicole Renard’s unusual behaviour ( acting like a hermit) is not explained here, nor is the sudden disappearance of her family from the town.
Frenchtown is a small catholic village within Monument,
everyone knows everyone else, everyone knows the priest, the teachers and the
doctor.
Nicole Renard’s unusual behaviour ( acting like a hermit) is not explained here, nor is the sudden disappearance of her family from the town.
Norman Rocheleau has no direct knowledge of why Nicole
Renard’s family left Frenchtown; everything he has heard is hearsay, gossip. He does not say what the “all kinds of rumours” were, it
would be distressing for Francis to hear those stories.
Nicole Renard’s unusual behaviour ( acting like a hermit) is not explained here, nor is the sudden disappearance of her family from the town.
One possible explanation is that, if Nicole Renard had been raped by Larry
LaSalle, then she may have become pregnant. This is never mentioned, but It
must have been one of the possibilities considered by Francis Cassavant. It is an 'elephant in the room', throughout the book.
Nicole’s behavior,
and the sudden disappearance of her family may have been the result of her
being pregnant because she, and her family, were devout Catholics.
The doctrine of the Catholic Church is that a human life
begins at the instant of conception and that a termination of a pregnancy, an
abortion, is a homicide, even if the conception is the result of a rape. It is
the teaching of the Church that the unborn baby is a victim of the rape, as
much as the mother, and its life should be protected.
You may disagree with this view, but the important point
here is that Nicole is a devout Catholic, as are her parents, the priests, the nuns, her doctor and anyone else in Frenchtown to whom she may turn for help. They share this belief. If Nicole Renard was pregnant, she would not
get an abortion.
It would have been a great disgrace for the family if an unmarried daughter had become pregnant; it is still in many cultures. The Catholic Church would often arrange accommodation for
unmarried mothers, where they could have the baby away from their home towns,
and then arrange to have the baby adopted or fostered.
What might have happened
(it is never explicitly stated) is that Nicole had become pregnant and had avoided meeting people in
case they should notice. If her parents had supported her, then, when it became
impossible to conceal Nicole’s pregnancy, the entire family would have left Frenchtown,
without telling anyone the reasons, and moved to an area where they were not
known. Nicole would be accepted as a single mother, without the associated social
stigma, if she were to pass as the widow of a serviceman. Her parents may have
raised the child, whilst she completed her secondary education (see Chapter 15),
rather than have it adopted.
The evidence against
this is in Chapter 16, when Francis finally meets Nicole again; she
does not mention a child and Francis does not ask. She also says that she never told her parents about the rape. It is possible that she did not have a
child, but this does not adequately explain the sudden departure of her family from Frenchtown. The alternative explanation is that she has a child but she does not want Francis to know that.
Nicole had not made a complaint to the police that Larry
LaSalle had raped her because she thinks it unlikely that she would be
believed. Larry LaSalle is the local hero. A criminal case against LaSalle
would have resulted in a trial, with all the details in the local papers.
If she had become pregnant, then it would have been her word
against LaSalle’s that he was the father. DNA had not yet been discovered.
P22 GIs in my platoon
A GI is a member of the US Army
or the US Army Air Force. The initials originally referred to all Government
Issue equipment and has come to mean US service personnel.
A platoon is a small
infantry unit, usually of about 32 men, commanded by a 2nd
Lieutenant assisted by a platoon sergeant. A platoon is usually organised into
4 sections, or squads, each of 8 men. The entire platoon would be deployed as a
unit and is small enough that all the men would soon know one another.
P23 Two
German soldiers in white uniforms.
The German soldiers had
white coveralls and helmet covers that were worn when there was snow on the
ground. The Germans had previous experience of winter warfare from fighting in the USSR.
The US Army did not
have any similar equipment; the GIs' green uniforms made them conspicuous targets against
snow.
CHAPTER 4
P26 Land mine
P26 Furlough (pronounced fur-low) Leave of absence granted to a serviceman. The word has been rarely used in the UK since WW1.
P27 St. Jude’s club
P27 Don’t
Sit Under the Apple Tree A
popular song during WW2, the most famous version being the recording by Glenn
Miller and the Andrews Sisters.
P28 Big Boy, who weighed about three hundred
pounds before entering the service...
21 ½ stones or 136 kilograms.
The average man’s
weight would have been less than 200 pounds. Big Boy had been overweight before
he joined the armed forces.
P28 ...piece work at the shop... A method of employment in which the
worker is paid for each piece of work produced or each work process performed.
The worker does not have a guaranteed weekly wage and may have no income if the
employer has no work for him.
Piece work was widely used in the garment industry, with a
fixed rate paid for each component piece (sleeve, cuff, collar, back, etc.,) of
a garment manufactured and another
amount paid to another worker for each complete garment assembled.
P28 GI Bill
The Servicemen's
Readjustment Act of 1944 ‘known informally as the G.I. Bill, was a law
that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly
referred to as G.I.s). Benefits included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans
to start a business, cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend
college, high school or vocational education, as well as one year of
unemployment compensation.’
P29 I’ll be with you in
Apple Blossom Time
CHAPTER 5
P31 ...municipal programme
P31 ...quick gulps from hidden bottles...
Drinking
alcohol in a public place is illegal in most parts of the USA. It is a common practice to conceal opened
bottles of alcohol inside the brown paper bags that are available from liquor
or grocery stores, so that the bottle cannot easily be seen by police
officers.
P32 Marx Brothers movies
P32 empty lots
P34 yardman
P34 Autumn Leaves.....
dying cowboy
P35 ...born in
Frenchtown...
P36 ...didn’t remind me
of St. Therese
P37 ...who died on a beach on Iwo Jima in the South Pacific....
CHAPTER 6
 |
| St. Cecilia's Church, Leominster |
P38 St. Jude’s Church at the corner of Third and Mechanic...
St. Cecila’s Church stands on the corner of Third Street and Mechanic Street in Leominster. The town probably now looks very different to how it looked after WW2, when it was an industrial town.
P38 ..whether the mystery of what has happened to Nicole is hidden within those walls...
St. Cecila’s Church stands on the corner of Third Street and Mechanic Street in Leominster. The town probably now looks very different to how it looked after WW2, when it was an industrial town.
P38 ..whether the mystery of what has happened to Nicole is hidden within those walls...
Francis suspects that Nicole might have entered a convent to
become a nun.
See also Chapter 15.
See also Chapter 15.
P38 The talk now is of the new Chevvies and
Fords coming from the Detroit factories ....
Chevrolet is a trade
name used by General Motors in the USA; Chevrolet cars are nicknamed
Chevvies. General Motors also trade
under the brand names of Vauxhall Motors (UK), Opel (Europe), Holden
(Australia) and Daewoo.
Chevrolet and Ford were the major US motor manufacturers; both are based in Detroit, Michigan. Detrot was the centre of the US motor industry
and was nicknamed Motor City or Motown.
Manufacturing
industries in the USA had been massively expanded to supply war materials. At
the end of the war, production efforts had been changed from war materials to consumer goods. There was a
post-war
economic boom, which, for the blue-collar working people, meant that jobs were plentiful and wages were
high. This was almost the exact opposite of the economic conditions before the
war, during the years of the Great Depression. Many manual workers were able to afford a new
family car.
Since the 1970s,
motor manufacturing in Detroit has greatly declined, due to the 1973 Oil Crisis,
competition from European and Asian manufacturers, multi-national manufacturers relocating
factories to countries with lower labour costs and the automation of many
manufacturing processes. The population of the city has decreased by 60% and
Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of the big cities in the USA. The
City of Detroit was declared bankrupt in 2013 and large areas of the city are a
post-industrial wasteland, with many
abandoned houses and factories.
P38 Arthur and Armand and Joe are always
there, fixtures in the club until they become cops or firemen....
P41 ...but only the Silver Star is for
heroism. For gallantry.
CHAPTER 7 TABLE
TENNIS AND THE TOURNAMENT
P43 Happy Days are Here Again
P43 ‘You have a natural
athletic gait.’ He spelled out the word. ‘G-a-i-t.’
P47 Dancing in the Dark.
P 54 7 December 1941
Sunday 7th December 1941 marked the beginning of the USA’s involvement
in World War 2. On that day, the Japanese Imperial Navy made a surprise
attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawai. The Japanese had hoped to
destroy the United State’s Pacific Fleet, which was at anchor in the harbour.
The attack used bombers, torpedo bombers and escorting fighter aircraft which
were launched from 6 aircraft carriers. Five midget submarines were also used, these
being launched from conventional submarines 12 miles from Pearl Harbor.
Four US battleships were sunk, 188 aircraft were destroyed and 2,403 Americans were killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
There had been no prior declaration of war by the Japanese;
Japanese diplomats were still engaged in talks with the USA. Public opinion in
the USA was outraged at the Japanese duplicity.
The attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of a Japanese offensive
throughout the Pacific. The Japanese began an invasion of the Philippine
Islands on 8th December. At that time, the Philippines were occupied by the
United States, although independence had been planned for 1943. The US armed forces had numerous bases and airstrips in the Philippines.
On 8th
December 1941, within eight hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the
Japanese began attacks on the British colonies in Hong Kong and Malaya, again
without any prior declaration of war against
the British. Great Britain and the USA declared war against Japan on 8th
December.
Germany and Italy
had made an alliance with Japan in 1940, the Tripartite Pact, which committed
the three nations to provide “one another with all political, economic and
military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at
present not involved in the European War”.
Although they were not obliged by the wording of the
agreement to declare war on the USA, (since the United States had not attacked
Japan) Germany and Italy declared war on the USA on 11th December
1941.
Until 7th
December, the USA had been neutral and there had been strong opposition to US involvement in the war in Europe. Within 4 days,
the USA had become involved in the wars in both the European and Pacific
theatres and there was overwhelming public support for the war.
Four US battleships were sunk, 188 aircraft were destroyed and 2,403 Americans were killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
CHAPTER 8 FRANCIS
FINDS ARTHUR RIVIERE DRUNK
P55... his lips turned
downwards like the mask of Tragedy high above the stage at the Plymouth.
Masks were used in ancient Greek dramas as an aid to portraying the emotions the actors
were expressing. The pair of Comedy and Tragedy masks are a common plaster decoration
in theatres and the image is often used as a decorative motif in scripts or any literature
associated with the theatre.
CHAPTER 10
P64 London had always
been linked in my mind with foggy days and evenings...
London suffered frequent winter smogs (smoke and fog) until 1962.
Most domestic heating was by a coal fire in each room and the smoke emitted by
thousands of fires could linger in the city for weeks in still, cold weather conditions. Smogs do not occur now due to Clean Air Acts (legislation allowing only the use of
smokeless fuels in cities), the widespread use of gas-fired central heating and, since the 1970s, the use of natural gas from the North Sea .
P65 Eisenhower jacket
A US issued military jacket, the ‘Wool Field jacket M-1944’
also known as the Ike jacket, named after
General Dwight (Ike) D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower jacket was a short
jacket with a belted waist introduced by General Eisenhower, the commander of
the Allied Forces in Europe. Eisenhower intended that the jacket could be worn as both a parade uniform and in combat, so reducing the number of different
uniforms required for the huge armies recruited by the USA during the war. The design was
loosely based on the British battledress blouson.
CHAPTER 13 FRANCIS OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION AND DISCOVERS LASALLE’S ADDRESS
P83 They are talking in French.... Mrs
Belander and her neighbour, Mrs Agneaux are probably first generation French
Canadian immigrants whose first language is French.
P84 ‘The green house, cheap paint, bought
discount, fading already.....’
Building timber is cheap (compared with the EEC) in North America and Canada, due to the vast areas of forests.The cheapest method of constructing small
buildings was to use a timber frame with timber weather-board cladding on the
outside.
The three-decker houses in Frenchtown are of timber
construction. The external weatherboarding needs to be repainted regularly.
Comparable artisans’ terraced housing, built during the same period in the UK, were built of brick, with a slate or tile roof, since this was the
cheapest construction method in the UK.
Mrs Agneaux has noticed trivial details of her neighbours’
lives, knows when the house was painted and criticises the work in gossiping
with Mrs Belander.
Very little goes
unnoticed or escapes the gossips in Frenchtown.
COVER ILLUSTRATION
The cover illustration isn’t a part of Cormier’s novel, so
this won’t be mentioned in an examination; this is just another couple of bits of random information.
The medal in the illustration is the Purple Heart, a medal
awarded to US service personnel who are killed or wounded on active service.
500,000 Purple Hearts
were made in anticipation of the casualties that would result from the planned
invasion of Japan in 1945, an event that was avoided by the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender. That stock of Purple Hearts is
still being used.
The flag is a folded US Stars &Stripes. In the USA a
military veteran is entitled tom a military funeral; the flag on the coffin is
folded in this manner by the bearer party and handed to the Next of Kin. The
flag is usually kept folded, as a memento of a lost family member.
Few of the fatalities
in WW2 were repatriated, since they did not then have jet aircraft. The book is about the lives and deaths of
returned, wounded veterans.
The uniform seems to
be a Vietnam-era (early 1960s) camouflage uniform. SFAIK the only camouflage
uniforms used in WW2 were those issued to the German army (the Wehrmacht), the Waffen SS and the Denison smock
issued to British & Commonwealth airborne forces. The photographer probably
didn’t know or care much about WW2 uniforms.
