Plot
The majority of the story is told through flashbacks, as Helmuth Hübener, charged with treason, waits in a Berlin prison for his execution. Starting with his memories as a young boy, Helmuth recounts his childhood growing up in Nazi Germany with his mother, grandparents, two brothers, his best friends Rudi and Karl and his future stepfather Hugo Nazi soldier.
As a young boy, Helmuth plans to become a soldier and fight for Germany but that changes when he grows up, and Helmuth stands out as a very intelligent young man. He becomes very opinionated about the Nazi government when he sees his Jewish classmate's father mercilessly murdered by the SA. He begins to secretly listen to forbidden enemy radio broadcasts, and enlists the help of two of his closest friends in distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. Helmuth and his brothers fight very hard to keep their family together while they argue with Hugo about Germany's laws, rules, and restrictions on all people of Germany and the rights of the Jewish people in Germany. Later, a fellow apprentice of Helmuth's turns him in to the Gestapo, and he is jailed and is killed on October 27, 1942 in the guillotine.
Read more about this topic: The Boy Who Dared
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)