A town like alice summary. A Town Like Alice Summary 2022-11-04
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A Town Like Alice is a novel written by Nevil Shute and first published in 1950. The story follows the experiences of Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman who is captured by the Japanese during World War II and forced to march with a group of other women through the jungle of Malaya. Along the way, Jean forms a close bond with a group of Australian soldiers who are also being held as prisoners of war, and together they face numerous challenges and hardships as they try to survive in a hostile environment.
One of the main themes of A Town Like Alice is the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Jean is a determined and resourceful young woman who refuses to give up, even when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges. She is driven by a strong desire to survive and to help those around her, and she uses her intelligence and resourcefulness to overcome the many obstacles that stand in her way.
Another key theme of the novel is the importance of community and cooperation. Throughout the story, Jean and the other prisoners rely on each other for support and assistance, and they work together to find food, shelter, and other necessities. The strong bonds that form between the prisoners help them to endure their trials and emerge from them with a sense of hope and determination.
A Town Like Alice is a poignant and powerful tale of survival, friendship, and the human spirit. It is a reminder of the resilience and strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and it serves as a testament to the enduring power of hope and the human capacity to endure and overcome even the most difficult of circumstances.
A Town Like Alice (TV Mini Series 1981)
After the war, she goes to Australia to see the town he was from and hopefully reunite with the soldier. An uncle's inheritance saves her from this. She and her brother Donald work in Malaya before. In post-World War II London, Jean Paget, a secretary in a leather goods factory, is informed by The second part of the story flashes back to Jean's experiences during the war, when she was working in Jean meets an Australian soldier, Sergeant Joe Harman, also a prisoner, who is driving a lorry for the Japanese and they strike up a friendship. Nice story and love story set in Hong Kong in the 1950s — very evocative of Hong Kong and explores the theme of colonialism — but …. Having worked with a firm in Britain that produced crocodile-leather luxury goods, she gets the idea of founding a local workshop to make shoes from the skins of crocodiles hunted in the outback. Paget and her companions, who are forced to watch, trudge on in horror and shock.
See eNotes Ad-Free Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. In the book this is found amongst the Malayan women that has to work on the fields, look after the kids and sleep on the floor. Great review and well done for pointing out what was progressive for the 1950s. She alone returns to England, where she lives the boring life of a secretary in a small leather factory. Retrieved 14 July 2013. This forms the third part of the book.
Thinking back, she recalls the Australian man who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war. He also dispatches an experienced supervisor to help with set-up and training, and Strachan releases the funds. The differences between cultures can be something that maybe some of the persons would like to change if they got the possibilities but it has never occurred to them to do so because they are used to the way it is. Learning from the well diggers that Harman amazingly survives, Paget goes to Australia to find him. It was filmed on location in England, Malaysia and western New South Wales. The second is the date of publication online or last modification online. This section contains 666 words approx.
I grew up in Malaysia so its like part of a narrative history. Her trustee informs her that her uncle said in his will she was not to use the money until a certain age, which was still several years away. I believe The Pied Piper which tells the story of an elderly English gentleman who leads a group of children to safety during the German invasion of France during WW2 demonstrates this unassuming heroism that ordinary people show in such situations. Another Neville Shute story set in Australia against the background of the Snowy Mountain scheme a great post-war engineering feat ,The Far Country, was also brought to the small screen in an interesting miniseries starring Michael York and Sigrid Thornton, so those of you who enjoyed the book might like to seek it out. Conscience forces Strachan to inform Paget of the situation by airmail, and she remains in Australia, waiting. From the steamy jungles of Malaya to the dusty and desolate outback of Australia.
He is beaten, crucified, and left to die by the Japanese soldiers. Jean and Joe name their second son Noel and ask Strachan to be his godfather. Harman oversteps however and the cruel Japanese camp commander has him nailed to a tree. While in Malaysia, Jean met an Australian soldier, Joe Harmon, and they fell in love, or at least in serious flirt. There appears to be something in Alice for everyone, and there are almost as many explanations of the work as there are commentators.
It is a semiofficial report more like a personal diary written by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to the King of Spain regarding the Narváez expedition. Joe and Jean are touching and sweet and sexy together and very funny. Alice Howland is a 50 year old professor at Harvard university, and one could say that she lives a very prestigious life; she is one of the top rated professors at Harvard, she has 3 wonderful kids and a loving husband, and she is pretty well off financially. Retrieved 3 February 2019. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. Jean never forgot the brave Australian who helped her and the others but she isn't prepared for the news she receives when she returns to the Malayan village. One of them, Joe Harman, barters stolen gasoline to obtain the drugs and soap the pitiful women need, and then steals some prized chickens belonging to the sadistic Japanese commander.
He quickly falls in love with her. As Jean tells him her story, Noel is shocked at the hardships she faced. When the Japanese commander dies, the women and children beg to be allowed to stay in the village, and they spend the rest of the war there. A few years later, an aged Strachan visits Willstown to see the results of Jean's efforts. He travels to London to find her, using money won in the While staying in Willstown, awaiting Joe's return, Jean learns that most young girls have to leave the town to find work in the bigger cities.
The men are sent off to labor camps, but they have no plan on what to do with the women and children of the British. You can also Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. He bought a little farm in Victoria, and over time decided to make it his permanent home. After she is diagnosed, Alice is heartbroken because she slowly starts to loose the things she worked very hard for. Only 15 of the 32 women and children with whom Paget starts out survive. This book involves characters who are white mostly English and Australian , Malaysian, Japanese, and Aboriginal.
. Cite this page as follows: "A Town Like Alice - Summary" Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical Edition Ed. Racism and all the other isms in older books is a marker of how things have changed. Like she understands that communities need women for the bachelors to form families with so the community can grow. A lot of aid agencies today are still having problems with this basic concept.
I believe he does this on purpose, to show that heroes come from the most mundane backgrounds and settings. An example from the book is the Australians, whose culture is rather close to the English, but there are few Englishmen who would have liked the loneliness in the big country Australia, and even fewer Australians, I think , would feel comfortable in the crowded England. In retribution, Harman is crucified, flogged, and left for dead. With the help of Joe and of Noel Strachan, who releases money from her inheritance, she starts the workshop, followed by a string of other businesses; an ice-cream parlour, a public swimming pool and shops. The rest of the novel tells how they marry and how she is able to help the lonely little outback town by building a factory to employ the locals.
