Prose Passage Based Question on "Tyres" by Adam Thorpe

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Prose Passage based question on “Tyres” by Adam Thorpe: Comment closely on ways the following passage presents the experience of living in wartime Throughout this essay, I will be commenting on narrative features, on the literary sources and on the context of a passage based on “Tyres”. Thorpe emphasizes the contrast between the ordinariness and usualness such as working on cars, changing tyres, a developing relationship, compared to extraordinariness such as the WWII and German occupation in order to create a small distressing story of war. To begin with, the narrative portrays the tension of German-occupied France during the WWII, where relationships were worried and stressed. Little could be openly communicated and suspicion was widespread. The brutality and harshness of war suddenly interfered in the middle of the story with the killing of the suspected members of the French Resistance movement, the Maquis. The inhabitants were forced to see the corpses, before the hanging of the leader from the town bridge. Then, it gradually took place the developing love affair between the young man learning to maintain vehicles in his father’s garage and the girl who remembers her past each day. The young man’s narration, in first person, leads the reader gradually to his final act of involvement with the resistance against the Germans and its effects. Furthermore, the motif “Tyres” has a symbolic meaning and is personified. It is connected to the narrator’s father business and it is an excuse to be at the side of the war. “Tyres” expresses the ways in which a war story may affect personal relationships. The passage takes place near the ending. It is the turning point of the climate in the story and the highest moment of tension as there is no way back. The crucial event in this extract is the moment in which the boy saves Cécile’s life at some point. The girl was riding

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