Storm In June Characters

On June 14, 1940 the Germans occupied Paris through Hitler’s blitzkrieg invasion and the city had fallen to the enemy; life in Paris would not be the same. German advances continued southward not only driving out the French army and government but also millions of Parisian refugees. In the novella, Storm in June, Irene Nemirozsky effectively depicts the life and mindsets of Parisians under German occupation through characters, events, and writing style throughout the book. Nemirovsky used realistic and pragmatic characters to display the kind of people leaving Paris, mostly well-off, such as: the Pericands, a wealthy family seeking refuge in Nimes, Gabriel Corte, a famous writer fleeing with his mistress, and Maurice and Jeanne Michaud, employees …show more content…
It is here we see the best and worst of human nature; her depiction of these characters were not meant to show the heroes or sympathetic Parisians of the war, but rather the ones who were just like anyone else and who all had the same goal to leave the city. One of the first families introduced to the story were the Pericands, a wealthy family consisting of elder Monsieur Pericand, Charlotte Pericand, the mother of the family, and her three children. They plan to journey out of Paris and are more concerned with making sure they get all of their “precious” belongings that they end up leaving behind elder Monsieur Pericand in a nursing home. This family has one of the most frustrating plots of the story due to their focus being only on themselves and their ignorance of the brutality of the war. Another character who has the same mindset, is Gabriel Corte. Another wealthy and self-absorbed character, Corte is oblivious to the actual events of the war and is more focused on his own personal issues. “He hated the war; it threatened much more than his lifestyle or peace of mind. It continually destroyed the world of the imagination, the only world where he felt happy. It was like a shrill, brutal trumpet shattering the fragile crystal walls he'd taken such pains to build in order to shut out the rest of the world.” The only characters who really represented the salt-of-the-earth and who the …show more content…
Nemirovsky touches on the trepidation and panic of the war while including hints of humor and satire to expose and criticize peoples’ behaviors during the German invasion. Nemirovsky wrote this novella as the events were actually taking place; this explains why all the mini-plots of the novel are so naturalistic. She writes the novel in such detail, stopping to describe the smallest account in order to capture the mood of the war as a whole. “Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence.” The humor mostly nods to the difference in social class struggle and issues while also showing a light-hearted attitude throughout the harshness of the war. For example, there was a chapter in the novel written completely through the eyes of the Pericand’s cat. Another interesting characteristic of Nemirovsky’s writing style is that the book does not contain a central plot but rather a window into characters’ lives. She does not chronicle the novel according to the war, giving depictions of battle, but instead focuses on the characters and their view of the events that take

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