The passage is an extract taken from a book written in the 1940’s. During this passing, two orphaned children – Andre and Jacob – are waiting to be taken to a concentration camp. During this passage, tension in conveyed through the setting, lighting, actions, character conflict and the reaction of the characters. The author has also cleverly conveyed the tension through the suspense and anxiety felt by the reader.
The passage is set in a dark and dingy barrack, foreshadowing that something ‘evil’ was going to occur in the near future. In the first line of the extract itself, the author writes, “Andre was lying on the floor when a Jewish orderly came with the postcards on which the deportees might write a final message”; the reader is hit with a massive amount of vividly expressed suspense. Usually a ‘final message’ signifies death and as the reader is able to connect these two ideas, the suspense is created. The reader is left to wonder why these people are deportees and why must they write their final message. The author also writes,” pencils that had survived the barracks search” which implies that these ‘deportees’ were brought to the barracks against their will. This further builds upon the suspense, leaving the reader to wonder why these people were forced into the
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The author only tells us that the deportees are temporarily residing in a barrack. The floor of the barrack is covered in straw and dung, on which lay Andre’s cheek. This makes the barrack sound a little eerie. Around the barrack was a courtyard which was wired off. This gives the reader a mental picture of a prison. Andre and Jacobs innocent behaviour is juxtaposed to their surrounding (the wired off courtyard) and it build tension in the passage by leaving the reader to wonder what children were doing in a barrack turned