Fran's war, book review

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English Analysis- Karlie Whitmore

Is it just, ‘Fran’s War’?

Sally Trench

This harrowing novel has been written to show the effects of reality, left with the legacy of shock and disbelief. Sally Trench wrote this mind-blowing book basing it on her own experiences of the anguish she saw children facing in their everyday lives, focusing merely on a war time situation. She specifically highlights on the torture and struggle these malnourished children abide. Although her book doesn’t say “we need your help”, you can tell that she is trying to promote aid and make the audience aware of how tough life is for those kids.

She aims to target an older teenage audience, purely by the explicit language used and the fact that the main character is a child. I feel the importance of this is due to the detailed emotional relationship the reader, being fairly young themselves can gain with the character. Also the way in which it has a simple structure helps to see its main target audience. There are both semantic and phonologic linguistic patterns used in the text I am studying. Sally Trench establishes personification in her text, to convey a sense of war, the conflict between two opposing sources that strive to be the best, and will do this at any cost. The whole involvement within this book is through common values and what people believe is right, and Sally Trench tackles differing opinions to make this novel satisfactory and appealing to all those with strong attitudes on this topic. The fact this book is written not by her own judgements but by the bare seeing truth many people wish to hear what war really is like and what victims have to face rather than relying on rumours.  This passage opens a whole new perspective towards war, the extreme graphical vocabulary leaves you feeling moved.  I quote ‘It causes anger grief and terror. It’s venom of bitterness bites into the very soul of man, to create this chaos and turmoil that you’re feeling now. It has drowned all the sunlight of love and good but I promise it won’t last forever.’ To explain and interpret this engaging passage I have studied the connotations and as a result, felt that this plays a very important part in the story. The abstract nouns ‘anger’, ‘grief’ and ‘terror’ have not been included just to show emotions, but these are all feelings most people have encountered. It therefore involves the reader by bringing them close to home, again, this relationship between Fran and the reader is being attained. ‘It’s venom of bitterness bites into the very soul of man’, this clause is designed to convey the meaning of war as though it is an animal that just doesn’t kill but tares lives apart and captures and disorientates the soul. ‘Venom’, is a concrete noun which gives the connotations of snakes, poison and pain, explaining to us as an audience that war is deadly. This contributes to the meaning of the text by frightening the audience. The abstract noun ‘bitterness’ portrays the feelings of cold and sour, telling us that war is more or less an un-pleasant experience that many resent. Within the text this abstract noun along with the other words mentioned is designed to keep the audience hooked and feel sympathetic. ‘Bites’ is a dynamic verb, in sense many would see it as a physical action, but in this case it means to take hold of, to overpower and manage. The abstract noun ‘soul’ creates connotations of pure and innocence, contrasting this abstract noun to the other parts of the clause. The phrase ‘drowned all the sunlight’, not only means life for those in war is sinister but it shows that all hope has disappeared and it creates the sense that nothing is ever going to be the same.  

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Alliteration is also used to employ sound affects within the text and it is used to link details to noun phrases. Sally Trench uses ‘sinking sensation’ and ‘flickering frantically’ which are both verb phrases. These phrases that use the repetition of initial sounds in neighbouring words are giving me the impression that Sally Trench is trying somehow to relate them to the age of the boy. Alliteration is commonly used in nursery rhymes and I think she wants you to glimpse deep inside the text, this is why such words like, ‘mamma’ are used frequently throughout the text to make ...

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