Devoir d'anglais

« That day, he had met God First, we can notice the progression of the religious domain, in opposition to the magical one.

One might think that this represents the victory of christianism against paganism.

The very beginning of the story (“Once upon a time” l.1) introduces a fairy tale, a magical world. Then, the vanity in the place is “displayed” (l.5), as if it had his own will.

In comparison, in this first part of the text, there are only four words related to religion: “Gee” (l.2), “vanity” (l.4), “Damn” (l.7), “Satan” (l.8).

Besides, they are not very sententious or positive terms.

As John's personality is evolving, the lexical field related to religion becomes more and more important: in the second part we can see nine words, and thirteen in the last part of the revelation. Therefore, the progression of religion in John's spirit is not only in his actions but also in the language used to describe them.

Throughout the text, words evolve from simple vulgar vocabulary to evocation and finally recognition, as John's faith grows inside him. This shows that the narrator's voice and John's voice are intimately linked.

This is obvious throughout the text.

Very quickly (l.2), the direct speech is introduced with a very oral style (“Gee!”) which makes the text vivid and participates to a beginning of confusion between the narrative voice and the character's one.

The doubt as for the limits of each voice is then introduced (“He did not know”): who is asking? And a few lines later, the transition from two distinct points of view to two mixed points of view is completed, thanks to the introduction of the free indirect speech which blurs the limits.

It is marked by the disappearance of the quotation marks, in addition to an oral language and an onomatopoeia.

The free indirect speech returns later (l.19-24).

Finally, the parallelism between “Because he was alone in that place.” (l.24) and “Surely the Lord is in this place” (l.32) highlights the fact that there is after all only one voice.

If the narrator had a very distinct voice, he would have said immediately that the main character was not alone. This religious evolution comes with an evolution in John's personality.

A lesson of humility reveals itself through the structure of the text under study.

We can see that in the first part, everything is centered around John - until the crash.

The first part actually begins with “a man”, whereas the second one is introduced by “every passenger” and the third one starts with “the rest of the world”.

The last sentence reunites “he” and “God”, and supposedly he and the rest of the world (with the presence of the army).

It seems therefore that the divine revelation also means that he has quit misanthropy.

Then he truly becomes a hero (l.19-24), fighting the devil's trap, enduring an ordeal, having strength and hope...

etc.

And when he does become a hero, he asks for help, which stands for a lesson of humility.

The structure also shows the time evolution: the first part begins with “once upon a time”, the second one with “about ten hours after every passenger had been killed” and the third one with “three years went by”: the text goes from a very vague temporal anchorage to a more specific one.

So maybe it mimetically represents the character's growing awareness of the world. ❀ III.

The ambiguity of the writing This character's evolution is one of the main points of this text.

The writing which organizes it is another one. In this text, words are given a significant importance.

They are seen as actors since the very beginning: “the vanity displayed by the conversations of his neighbours” (l.5).

In this segment, the passive structure, in addition to the real subject being “the conversations” reveals that vanity is displayed by language, which reduces very much the importance of the neighbours as actors – as it would normally be expected to be. Therefore, we can suppose that the author deals with language with a huge attention. One of the major themes he employs is a contrasted writing.

We can see it in the whole text. Here are some of the most significant examples: the return to quotation marks, neutral cold formal voice just after John's diatribe (l.10) produces a strong contrast, enhanced by the objectivity of the voice (marked by the expression “Ladies and gentlemen” and the “our ” which suddenly introduces an other person than “he”.) Right after that, the expression “neat crash” suprises the reader too.

The beginning of the second part plays with the atmosphere: the reader goes from fairy tale to horror, from “once upon a time” to “about ten hours after every 2. »