Tuesday 5th April
Character Revision:
FRANCIES
• What do you remember about Francis from
the book?
• Think about how he interacts with other
characters;
• Think about what themes he is related to;
• What major events is he involved with?
QUOTE DIAGRAM – FRANCIS
Find as many quotes as you can relating to Francis and
analyse them as you go along.
AREAS OF FOCUS:
Appearance: 1-4
War: 26-29
Relationship with Larry: 50-63; 109-111
Relationship with Nicole: 15-17; 89-91; 118-126
Relationship with Arthur: 64-67
Feelings at the end of the book: 128-9
FEEDBACK
• Suicidal: consistent hints of his thoughts regarding his own death – ‘if I’m still around’ – he
attempts to jump from the steeple of St Jude’s: sin of despair in Catholicism is the worst to
commit as you are rejecting God’s gift of life – jumps onto a bomb, saving his whole
platoon (resulting in mixed feelings over his status as a hero); ambiguous ending with the
‘gun in the duffel bag’ – uncertainty whether he plans to kill himself – ‘I should do all of
those things’.
• He becomes table tennis champion of the Frenchtown Wreck Centre the day before Pearl
Harbour – ‘Larry LaSalle made us more than we were’ – Larry manipulates Francis to get
closer to Nicole, however he does empower Francis and gives him a moment of joy in his
life.
• Young love – Francis is besotted with Nicole – awkward comparisons with religious figures
showing his lack of sexual and romantic experience; Nicole feels betrayed by Francis and
leaves him;
• Larry is initially a father figure to Francis and a role model for him, genuinely seeming to
have affection for him even at the end of the text – he still comforts him at the end, spares
him the task of killing him by killing himself – ‘I have a gun too, Francis’ – could also be
seen as one final act of control.
What do you think about Francis and the way he
speaks and behaves at different points in
the text? [20]
You may wish to focus on:
- His time in the war;
- His relationship with Larry LaSalle
- His relationship with Nicole
CHARACTER QUESTION TYPES
For these types of questions, you should be
answering using a format called RAPPOPY.
For each of the sections from A-P, you
should be using PEAL paragraph structure.
POINT
EVIDENCE
ANALYSIS
LINK
ROLE
APPEARANCE
PAST
PRESENT
OTHERS’ VIEWS
PERSONALITY
YOUR OPINION
What do you think about Francis and the way
he speaks and behaves at different points in
the text? [20]
Plan
ROLE
APPEARANCE
PAST
PRESENT
OTHERS’ VIEWS
PERSONALITY
YOUR OPINION
PEAL for APPEARANCE PERSONALITY
KEY QUOTES
• “Poor boy.” (Mrs Belander, chapters 1 and 3)
• “You’re a good boy, Francis.” (Uncle Louis, chapter 5)
• “You deserve to be recognised, Francis… You’re a goddam hero.” (Arthur, chapter 6)
• “I feel like a spy in disguise as I walk the streets of Frenchtown, hidden behind the scarf and the bandage…” Pg
16
• I explode into wakefulness along with the booming artillery and I find myself gasping, instantly wide eyed, not
cold for once, in Mrs Belander’s tenement, the sweat warm on my flesh, but in a minute the sweat turns icy.”
Pg 24
• “I’m rotten at everything” (Chapter 7) “‘I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I’m no good at baseball.’ And I can’t even get
up the nerve to hold a normal conversation with Nicole Renard, I added silently. Avoiding his eyes, I was
suddenly angry at my self-pity. Snap out of it, I told myself.” Pg43
• “You’re a natural.” (Larry, Chapter 7)
• “I love to watch you play…” (Nicole, chapter 7)
• “For the first time in my life, a tide of confidence swept through me.” Chapter 7
• “I knew no doubt…” (Chapter 7)
• “The truth is that I don’t care whether I heal or not… Pg 65
• “I could not die that way. Soldiers were dying with honour on battlefields all over the world. Noble deaths. The
deaths of heroes. How could I die by leaping from a steeple?/ The next afternoon, I boarded the bus to Fort
Delta, in my pocket the birth certificate I had altered to change my life, and become a soldier in the United
States Army.” Pg 81
• “I went to war because I wanted to die… I was too much of a coward to kill myself. In the war, in battle, I
figured it would be easy to get killed… When I fell on that grenade, I wasn’t trying to save those GIs. I saw my
chance to end it all, in a second. But a freak accident happened. My face got blown off and I didn’t die…” Pg
89
• “When I study myself in the mirror, I don’t see me anymore but a stranger slowly taking shape”. (Chapter 10)
• “I had always wanted to be a hero, like Larry LaSalle and all the others, but had been a fake all along.” (Ch 14)
• “I was always too much of a coward to kill myself.” (Ch 14)
• “You would have fallen on that grenade, anyway. All your instincts would have made you sacrifice yourself for
your comrades.” (Larry, Ch 14)
• “Don’t be afraid to show your face, Francis. That face, what’s left of it, is a symbol of how brave you were…”
(Larry, chapter 14)
•
“You weren’t to blame for what happened.” (Nicole, chapter 16)