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A Train in Winter is a non-fiction book written by Caroline Moorehead, and published in 2011. The purpose of this essay is to analyze an excerpt of the book that condenses one horrid year spent by French political prisoners in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. This analysis will identify the authors unique style, the tone she uses, and the mood evoked in the reader. It will identify the setting and its integral role in the story. It will also address the chronological structure which helps the author build her idiosyncratic style. This text will ultimately seek to identify the theme of A Train in Winter, in order to grasp the underlying purpose of the text. In World War II, France was dealt a heavy blow by the German forces. It was defeated in 1940, and subsequently occupied by the Nazi army. France then became a puppet state known as Vichy France. It was divided into the northern Occupied Zone and the southern Liberated Zone. These distinctions soon vanished in 1942, and all of Vichy France was occupied by the German forces. The French were heavily oppressed by the Germans. They were constantly subjected to raids and arbitrary arrests. They were placed under curfews, and their flag and national anthem, La Marseillaise, were banned. Conditions were exacerbated by the Germans procuring edible produce, leaving the local population starving. These circumstances engendered a subversive resistance movement in France, known collectively as the French Resistance. The French women in the story were part of this resistance; they were arrested by the French Police and transported to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1943. A Train in Winter was published nearly 65 years after the end of the WWII. A large proportion of the literate population is cognizant of the atrocities of WWII, the fascist Nazi party, and the Holocaust. However, Mooreheads story provides a very unique perspective of WWII. The reader views the Prisoners lives through the collective eyes of the Frenchwomen arrested for being part of the French Resistance. The purpose of A Train in Winter is to inform a literate, relatively mature, audience of the brutality that these women faced in the Auschwitz concentration camp. By using an exceptionally unique, descriptive style, the author is able to both educate and shock her audience by providing sickening details. By listing the ways prisoners were dying, from typhus, pneumonia, dysentery dog bites and beatings and gangrenous frostbite not being able to eat or sleep, or from being gassed , the author informs readers of the multitudinous ways prisoners were killed, and thus keeps them glued to the story in order to learn of the fate of the Frenchwomen. A Train in Winter is written in the third person narrative, in which the narrator is omniscient. This helps the author convey a cornucopia of information to the readers. She is not restricted to any one characters life, and is free to follow any of the prisoners. She is able to enter the minds
Dhruv Yadav- 20131220 Section D; BA LLB