”The Great Escape” by Paul Brickhill

1.This story is about a prison camp in Sagan, Germany. In this prison camp, there are over 700 prisoners from World War 2. These prisoners are all anxious to get free from the devastating camp, so they try to create 3 tunnels to get out of the camp. Tom, Harry, and Dick. These are the names of the tunnels. The German solders or ferrets find out about Harry, and Harry is the one they were originally planning to escape from. When this happens, the prisoners try to complete Tom. And they succeed on digging it, it approximately took them a year to escape from one of these tunnels. When they finish Tom, they soon realize that they are too near the fence and that they will most likely be caught, so they decide to do it cause, they would be found out by the time they try to extend the tunnel. 76 men escaped and 50 were murdered alter on in the novel. 11 made it home and the other five were secretly murdered.

2.The setting of this story takes place in Germany during World War 2, 1942. The camp Sagan is located in Sagan, Germany. The tunnels were moderated and ran by the “X-Organization.” There were different groups made up to make the tunnels. The main leader of this idea was Roger Bushell. He was a British officer of the RAF in Great Briton.

3.Conflicts that were used in this novel was man vs man cause there was a war going on and the men had to fight there way to freedom when they were captured. Also man vs nature was used when the hard-arsers (Men who had to walk to friendly territory) had to go through the wilderness and fight the cold and injuries they endured. And last but not least the men had to make tough decisions of where to go and how they were going to escape.

4.Roger Bushell was a British Officer in the RAF of Great Briton, he was a early 40’s man who was captured a year before the escape. This man organized most of the escape, and he was a fair sized man with dark brown hair and white skin. He had dark eyes and he was a well respected member of the military. He died later on in the story when he was captured and executed by Hitler’s orders. This man was a brilliant minded person who had tunnelled out of prison camps before. He respected his men and everyone knew who he was in the camp. Roger wanted to escape really bad like all the others.

5.The point of view in this story is a 3rd person POV. (point of view) So the author told the story and not the characters. This was a true story and happened in 1942-1945 during World War 2. The author included some of the characters thoughts but not all of them.

6. The theme of this novel is it teaches us how war treats its victims. It also teaches us how people tried to escape from camps and how to make fake passes plus ID so they will not be caught by German patrols. It relates to us by fighting the wilderness and ourselves. This book just tells us how the Great Escape happened and who was involved and devoted to making it happen.

7.The point the climax occurs in the story is when the remaining prisoners at Sagan find out who died and who made it home safely. The murders who killed the escapees were sentenced to death or long-term sentences. The story sort of has 2 climaxes because when the Allies won the war they had to track down and interrogate the executors to find out who did the man slaughter.

8.Examples of Irony and Symbolism in this story are when they used different symbols for different meanings especially when they were tunnelling, they had to have different codes and stuff to warn the diggers if German patrols were coming. This story irony is used when some of the prisoners exadurate about how long it will take to make these tunnels and how hard it will be to make them.

9.If I could change one thing in this novel it would be the part when the German Gestapo interrogated the prisoners, I would change this because it was really hard to understand what was going on.

10.My thoughts about this great novel is that I really liked this book and where it was a true story, it made the whole thing more realistic and
unbearable to stop reading it. I feel that some parts were not described well as in when the author started talking about Sagan after the escape where they made a new tunnel called George and the author had to detail or descriptions.