The Theme of Heroism

Introduction

This paper compares and contrasts the theme of heroism within the context of the two books The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer, M. A., Barrows, A., in a concise and comprehensive way. First lets review the concept of heroism within the context of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Shaffer, M. A., Barrows, A.

Discussion

Such a pity Mary Ann Shaffer is not around to enjoy her celebrity! Shaffer died in February of this year and thus missed her own miracle—best-sellerdom for a first book written by an already “mature” librarian, former bookseller, and unpublished, aspiring writer. The good news, however, is that her opus is engaging, ingenious and ahead of the publishing game.

Not only is the novel bound to be a favorite of book clubs, it is paradoxically devoted to an oddly-designated book club in Guernsey, that of the title, a group invented on the spot by farmers and fishermen there when they were caught drunk after curfew, by their Nazi occupiers during the World War II. Their winding tale develops as they successfully confound their German invaders and learn in the bargain how to amuse themselves by reading books (Shaffer and Barrows, pp. 67-89).

Its heroine is a successful journalist and Londoner, Juliet Ashton, exhausted and devastated by her times, who has been burned out and left homeless by the heavy bombing of the Blitz. Her newspaper columns under the title, “Izzy Biggerstaff Goes To War,” are newly-collected by her publisher as a book, which Juliet is now touring. And it is during these triumphant appearances that her ennui, her discontent with life, surfaces.

Shaffer, together with her niece, Annie Barrows (who joined her to help finish the book as Shaffer's health declined) open the novel with their heroine informing her publisher, Sidney Stark, of the situation. That letter commences what is to become their novel about the war years upon Guernsey Island and the brutality of their Nazi occupiers (Shaffer and Barrows, pp. 67-89).

There is a breathless quality to the pacing of Shaffer and Barrows' novel. It never drags: and although this might seem a quibble, what did occur to this reader—more than once while reading—was to demand—with Beaumont and Fletcher—that they “plot me no plots!”

Certainly, the author's account of Guernsey life under the Nazi yoke might have sufficed for the opus, with its horrific details about the deliberate starvation of young slave-laborers, Polish prisoners known as the “Todt workers,” to say nothing of their depiction of the deprivation of the islanders of their entire crops, year after year, to starve them as well. Or, consider the touchingly described scenes of the heroism these Guernsey islanders displayed in the face of such an enemy together with the brutal treatment they were given when arrested (Shaffer and Barrows, pp. 67-89).

In the life and times of one Elizabeth McKenna alone, they have managed to give us a heroic portrait of a remarkable figure whose her every action proves ...