Duck And Cover Analysis

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The interplay between the personal and political is able to provide an insight into the ways of thinking in the Cold War era. This is explored in John Le Carre’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”, John F. Kennedy’s speech “Ich bin ein Berliner” (1963) and Anthony Rizzo’s film “Duck and Cover” (1951). Each of the respective authors are able to explore the roles of the personal and the political through the use of language and film techniques in their compositions. Anthony Rizzo’s film “Duck and Cover” is a social guidance film created in the 1950s to inform children of how to protect themselves in the event of an atomic bomb. It is able to explore the role of the personal and the political in After the Bomb as it demonstrates the ways of…show more content…
Le Carre’s novel is able to demonstrate the interplay of the personal and political through the use of setting and characters in his novel. This interaction between the personal and political is highlighted through the Berlin Wall. The wall is described by Le Carre as, “ [an] ugly, dirty thing … lit by a cheap yellow light, like the backdrop for a concentration camp”. The image he presents shows the clear segregation between the cultures of East and West Berlin and also the political division. This disconnection between the two is highlighted through the use of a simile, which brings in the context of World War Two to highlight the abandonment of hope and the differences in ideologies symbolized by the Berin Wall. However, Le Carre is able to use the character of Control to reflect that the two sides aren’t very different, evidenced in “you’ve got to compare method with method and ideal with ideal … our methods have become much the same”. The use of a reasoning tone is used to indicate that although each side presents themselves to be completely different to the other, they are very much similar. Le Carre is able to use the Berlin Wall in his novel to illustrate the political division between the two societies and the hopelessness of the people living in the Cold War

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