Under a War-Torn Sky

Although the narrative continues to closely follow Henry’s progress, it is the members of the French Resistance who take center stage in these chapters, demonstrating Courage and Resilience in the Face of Fear. In a sense, Henry is now more passive than active. He goes along with what Madame Gaulloise initiates and realizes that she is a woman he can learn from. He also comes to appreciate the risks she takes in being a part of the Resistance. She tells him that that in order to evade detection, she plays “a high-society coquette to disarm [her] enemy and to keep [her]self a mystery” (91).

The other members of the Resistance, many of them anonymous, form an unbroken chain that enables Henry to keep moving undetected toward his goal of returning to England. The chain includes men, women, and even children like Pierre. Arranging everything while remaining undetected, they risk their lives to help Henry and other downed Allied airmen. All Henry has to do is keep his nerve in uncertain or frightening situations, play along, and get his part right, although of course he must still exercise his judgment about whom he may trust. On one occasion in Grenoble, Henry has a fleeting worry about whether he may trust his two Resistance guides, and trust becomes a recurring issue going forward.

As the weeks and months go by, Henry continues to come to a deeper understanding of what war involves, which means nurturing the courage to face the dangers and ugliness as well as the heroism. It is not just about “beating the Luftwaffe, knocking them and their guns out of the sky” (51). In Grenoble, he sees the stone angel monument to the soldiers from the town who died in World War I. He notices in the names inscribed on the monument that five of the dead had the same last name, listed one after the other. He realizes that they represent an entire male generation of a family that was wiped out in the war. “Such waste” (104) he thinks, and remembers that Madame Gaulloise told him that more than a million French soldiers died in the trenches in World War I. As Henry’s sensitivity continues to grow and he becomes aware that Pierre’s father may have been killed during an American bombing raid, for the first time he “questioned the strategy of dropping bombs on a country they were trying to liberate” (118). Henry realizes that victory comes at a high cost, requiring courage not just from servicemen like him, but courage and sacrifice from brave civilians as well.

These chapters also reveal more of Henry’s character and how it is developing. The dangerous situation he is in not only tests his resilience, courage, and determination, but also his awareness of The Importance of Kindness and Human Connection. In one incident in Chapter 11, as he observes the old man on the farm—who turns out to be Pierre’s grandfather—he experiences some uncharacteristically ruthless and violent thoughts. He wonders whether he should attack the man and knock him out in case he is a collaborator, or at least scare him. Then Henry sharply reproaches himself for having had such thoughts, regaining his moral bearings: The old man “deserves to go about his business without being bullied” (114). Henry’s commitment to maintaining his humanity and treating others well, even when under extreme stress, reflects his continuing commitment to connection and empathy.

In more tranquil situations, Henry shows his eagerness for knowledge, reflecting The Experience of Coming-of-Age. On numerous occasions he reveals his desire to improve his high-school French. On the train to Montreux, for example, he is not content merely to hold the Rousseau novel he has been told to display, but tries to read it as well, although he is disappointed that “each page remained a jig-saw puzzle with only half of its pieces in place” (82). When he stays at Madame Gaulloise’s mansion, he tries to read a Jules Verne novel in French. Later, he makes a deal with young Pierre, that they will each teach the other their native languages, and Henry makes much progress.

Henry also learns greatly from Madame Gaulloise herself. She opens up a new world of arts and culture for him, such as when he listens to her play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on the piano. He studies the paintings in the house and Madame teaches him about the French Impressionists, whom he had never heard of before. He also discovers in the library a copy of the poems of William Wordsworth, and some of the lines make a deep impression on him. All in all, Henry is “hungry to learn new things, realizing how much he missed school, how much he thrived on someone treating him with respect and fueling his mind” (101). Henry’s commitment to self-improvement even when on the run thus speaks to his growing intellectual as well as emotional maturity, allowing him to discover new things along the way.

Henry often remembers his home and family. As he drives with Madame Gaulloise to Geneva, the sight of large magnolia trees in blossom triggers a mini-flashback to an incident when he had cut magnolia blossoms at home and presented them to his appreciative mother. When Henry sees Pierre and his mother embrace, it takes him back to when his mother hugged him and swung him round and round while he clutched a bunch of goldenrod he had found for her in the back pasture. These memories are not always so sweet, however—sometimes they are painful. When Henry is mucking out the pig stall with Pierre, he suddenly remembers his abusive father telling him to hurry up with a similar task and then grabbing the buckets himself and calling his son a “weakling.” While these memories help remind Henry of who he is and where he came from, his growing maturity and courage show that he is becoming less reliant on clinging to what feels safe and familiar, becoming his own, adult person.