Lit Essay Unseen Prose Franklin Wwii

1) Franklin was an optimist. Even in the dire situation he was in, he still believed that everyone had a chance of surviving. At first, when he despaired, when he ‘was silent for a few moments’, when ‘he rejected quite calmly at first, the thought of getting home’, he thought he would die. However, he surveyed his situation and realized that ‘they had plenty of height and he was not afraid’. He knew he still had a chance of surviving if he tried. Even in an airplane with broken propellers and falling out of the sky, he found the strength and courage to keep calm and keep him and his crew alive. The chances were slim, the journey would be tough, but Franklin did not give up. He saw a glimmer of hope in the dark sky of despair and knew that was his way out. He was so certain of their survival that he gave the crew instructions on what they had to do once they got off the broken and falling right towards the ground airplane of theirs. He was optimistic about them getting out in one piece and even surviving landing in German occupied territory. When O’Conner said that the French were all crooks, Franklin confidently said that they’re ‘going to find that out’. That meant he was not only confident of getting out of the falling plane safely, but will manage to get past the French and German territory. Franklin was practical. He knew that when the plane went down, the only thing preventing him from dying was he. If he wanted to save him and his crew, he had to take the chances he got and save them all. He knew the lives of those on the airplane were in his hands, so he plainly laid it to them that they were ‘going to land within the next five or ten minutes’. He knew that the airscrew was broken and that landing properly were their only chance of survival. Nothing else could be done, it was their only hope. Franklin could not afford to panic or give up, for if he did, then their deaths were certain. Thus, he was practical in his decisions and gave the crew instructions for when they landed. Franklin was smart and knew that the tone and the way he spoke of their almost certain demise could lead the crew to not following his orders. Thus he ‘went on slowly and calmly telling them what to do’. He had to make sure no one panicked and that they would carry out his orders and survive. He ‘did not once seem desperate’, to try to use body language to show the crew that they were in good hands and that they were going to live. Franklin gave them hope and confidence, something every soldier needs in a time of war and bloodshed.

2) The writer made the men’s predicament vivid and exciting by using good diction. As the plane was getting closer and closer to the ground, the writer used ‘clear patterns of gold and shadow and white straight intersections of road’ to describe the road and how the sun was setting. He emphasizes on the vivid colors portrayed on the road to not only show how close the plane was to the ground, but also the time and day. Just by describing the road so sharply and how the landscape change and ‘became real and alive with fields and roads and houses’, the distance between the falling plane and the ground can be judged. The men were falling, straight to the ground, and they are falling faster and faster, the ground beneath them nearer and nearer, and their deaths closer and closer. The writer uses diction to describe the distance between them and the ground because once they reach the ground, they might die. The quick change of landscape also made the plane seem to be moving very fast that one moment the city, the next a farm. The writer used the thoughts of the characters to make their predicament more vivid and exciting. Thoughts like “and we won’t make it” makes the character all the more realistic and lets the reader understand how he thinks and the way a character felt at that time. It makes the reader feel like part of the scene, feel the despair that came from the men on the plane. ‘cause beyond this control should affect and change his life with violence and perhaps catastrophe’ showed what the men were thinking and maybe how they would react. The thoughts and feelings of the men made the passage more personalize as it makes the reader not just look but feel what the characters are feeling, the nervousness, fear, anxiety. It is more lifelike and realistic to input the thoughts into the passage.