The Tenth Man

The Tenth Man

The Tenth man by Graham Greene In the story, the tenth man, we are taken back to the days of the second world war. It begins by the capture of some honest and other not so honest people and their imprisonment in a German prison. We learn a bit about each character that is held in the prison, but one man in particular, Joan-Louis Chavel, and his actions in the prison is the main subject of the story. While in the prison, the inmates have to make a hard choice. They have to choose which three of the thirty of them should be „sacreficed“, the German demand that those three will be shot at the break of dawn. In order to choose fairly they decide to draw marked shreds of paper from a shoe, the three who draw the marked papers will be the once „taking a bullet“, or so to speak, for the rest of the group. Mr. Chavel turns out to be one of those unlucky once but in his desperate attempt to get out of it he offers to give who ever takes his place, all his earthly belongings. Only one man accepted his offer, Mr. Janvier or Michael as his true name was. He said to Chavel that he wanted to die a rich man, but the main reason for what he did was that he wanted to make sure that his Mother and sister would not have to worry about money and would live a happy life when he was gone. With Chavel willing to do everything to avoid sudden death and Janvier having nothing to loose, since he was sick and hadn´t too much longer too live, both man got they wanted out of this deal. But the real damage was to the people close to them, Janvier‘s mother and sister. Therese blamed Chavel for her brothers death and it provoced a hate so strong that it sabotaged Chavel‘s chance of ever getting to be with Therese.

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