Genre
Autobiographic text
Setting and Context
Set in Algeria in the context of the Algerian War for independence.
Narrator and Point of View
First-person narrative
Tone and Mood
Solemn, heartbreaking, pessimistic, enthusiastic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Henri Alleg/Narrator is the protagonist of the story.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is when the narrator is arrested, detained and tortured by the Frenchmen and detained without any reason.
Climax
The climax is attained when Alleg survives all forms of torture to tell his story.
Foreshadowing
Alleg's visit to camps foreshadows his doomed life in prison. While visiting someone in the prison camps, Alleg was arrested and subjected to torture for most of his life.
Understatement
Alleg's torture in the prison camps is understated. Alleg went through the worst experience in his life. For instance, he was subjected to waterboarding and pentohol injection.
Allusions
The story alludes to the suffering the people of Algeria went through during the war for independence.
Imagery
The narrator's description of his suffering under the paratroopers in the book paints an image of what Algeria's forefathers went through while fighting for their independence.
Paradox
The main paradox is that despite the paratroopers realizing that they were not getting any information from Alleg, they continued to suffer without any gain.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The prison is personified when the author says that prison houses a quantity of human suffering.
