Imagination
It was not a secret that the author's father fought in Normandy. He had “stormed the beach” there. That was all she knew. When Zadie was a child at that time, “the mildewed war” came to her “piecemeal, through the usual sources,” and very “rarely” directly from her father. Harvey never spoke about it “as a personal reality,” but “only as one of many fictional details” that there “woven into fabrics” of Zadie’s childhood. The girl knew that “Jane Eyre was sent to the red room,” “Lucy Pevensie met Mr. Tumnus,” and her father, Harvey Smith, “stormed the beach at Normandy.” It simply didn’t feel real. Later, when Zadie was in her twenties, Normandy still stayed “as fictional” “as Narnia.” This imagery evokes a feeling of surprise. She finally realizes what that simple phrase meant when she visited Normandy herself.
History
Though Zadie’s father took part in World War II and even stormed the beach at Normandy, the whole story was more like a fiction to her than his reality. One day she visited that beach herself. Luckily, there was a good connoisseur of invasion of Normandy. The woman showed Zadie Juno Beach, “the cliffs in which snipers crouched,” “the maze of hedgerows that proved so lethal.” At last, they visited the “American cemetery.” “Thousands upon thousands of squat white crosses,” “punctuated by star of David,” line up in rows “on the manicured grass.” “You can’t see the end of it.” This imagery evokes a feeling of deep sorrow.
Father’s story
It was Harvey’s turn to tell his story. He kept silence for many years, simply because no one asked him to share his knowledge about the horrors of that battle. The old man still remembered “young dead Germans” everywhere. They looked just like British soldiers and – for the very first time – Harvey had thought that “they could have been us.” It was “gruesome.” Even though the battle had only begun, their major, Major Elphinstone, “had died the minute he hit the beach.” So everyone was pretty aware of the fact that it could be his last moment. This imagery evokes a feeling of fear, for those soldiers were just young boys, who couldn’t even imagine what was waiting for them.
