Darkness Be My friend Title: Darkness Be My Friend Author: John Marsden Publisher: Pan Macmillan Publishers Publishing Date: 1996 Setting: This book is set in fairly modern times about 1990. I know this because the teenagers speak the same way my friends and I do and dress just like people do now. I also know this because of the way they describe the country town they live in. It sounds just like the average country town in our time. I think it is set is in a country town in Australia away from the cities.
I think this because of the way the place “Hell” is described and the way the teenagers talk like Aussies. It also says that it is Australia. When they are in New Zealand Iain asks if they will go back to Australia to help them. I think it is very important where it is set because if it were set in America or another place it would be a lot harder to be invaded.
For one reason America and other places have massive armies compared to Australia and could defend their country. Another reason is that there is a much bigger population in America and other places and they would need hundreds more soldiers to patrol areas. Another reason I think it is very important where it is set is that if it was set in another country the place “Hell” would be described differently because Australia is the only place I know that has such amazing land features and such amazing landscapes. If it was described differently the whole book wouldnt make you feel the way you do when you read it and you wouldnt get the eerie feeling you get when they are in “Hell”.
Plot: Darkness, Be My Friend is the fourth book in John Marsdens series consisting of Tomorrow, When the War Began, The Dead of the Night and The Third Day, The Frost, in which seven teenagers are in the middle of a violent war. Ellie, Fi, Kevin, Lee, Homer, Robyn and Corrie go camping to a remote part of their district. They find their way into a remote valley surrounded by dangerous cliffs and difficult terrain, where they are completely safe and cut off from the rest of the world. When the teenagers return to their homes, they find that all the families in the district have been abducted and locked into the show grounds by armed soldiers who are taking over Australia. After finding this, they perform many dangerous activities around the district to hold back the enemys progress.
These including blowing up a bridge on a major convoy route and attacking an important bay used for shipping supplies. In this book the teenagers set out from New Zealand to help a small group of New Zealand soldiers attack the new airbase that has been built in the teenagers home town. The New Zealand soldiers disappear without a trace and the teenagers have to attack the airbase themselves.. The teenagers decide to look for the soldiers but end up getting trapped on an open paddock with a few trees. The only thing they could do is climb up the trees and wait till night. Once it was dark they got the horses in the paddock and rode them in pitch dark and at full gallop away from where they were.
They ended up at the school and stayed there for a few days. When they left the school the tried to attack the air base by putting sugar in the petrol supply which was planned to make the planes crash while the were flying. Unfortunately It was a huge disaster because they couldnt get the lids of the petrol trucks to put the sugar in. Main Characters: Fi: Fi is beautiful, intelligent, kind to her friends and she is perfect in every way. She is light and graceful, has beautiful skin and looks like she hasnt done any hard physical work in her whole life. Fi is the kindest person but she is quick to tell Ellie when she is being annoying or stupid.
Fi has been in this story from the first novel “Tomorrow when the war began”. She is now Ellies best friend since Robyn died. Kevin: The impression I got about Kevin is that he can be a real pain because he is a chicken and he is always scared but generally he is out of peoples way because he likes to be alone. Kevin has a really wide mouth, huge hands like spades and he thinks he is really good but he has a lot going for him because he is intelligent. Lee: I think that all the other boys respect Lee because he is strong and is good at everything he tries especially music. He has dark skin, a crew cut and brown eyes.
He is Ellies boy friend and they are really close to each other. He is really kind and caring and he would be a great friend to have. Homer: Homer is a loud mouth who is crazy and likes destroying everything but when he is in the company of girls such as Fi he is really quiet and always puts himself down. He doesnt care about what people think about him except Fi because he likes her.
He likes hunting, music and swimming. He is always in trouble. Ellie: Ellie is a very popular and everyone enjoys her company. The only bad thing about her is that she expresses her feelings about people very freely on paper and she can hold grudges on people, which annoy everyone. She is loud and bigger than the rest of the girls but everyone respects her. She is brave, courageous smart and the unofficial leader of the group.
Theme: I think that this book is as much about adventure and survival as it is about emotions, friendships and relationships. The main theme of this book is war. If it werent the whole book would be more like a”days of our lives book with no action. It would just be full of relationships, friendships and emotions which. Style: Throughout the book, John Marsden keeps a mix of adventure, excitement and personal experience. He looks deep into the mind of Ellie and how she feels.
He writes this well and in a style that I would imagine Ellie would use. The book is written as the diary of Ellie the unofficial leader of the group. She speaks about her thoughts, her relationships with the other members of the group and of her emotions about what she did during the war. “I was determined I wasnt going to get angry, so I ignored that. I didnt blame him in a way.
If only I could have understood what was going on in my own mind.. but I found that difficult at the best of times.” Page 261 “It was nothing to do with Lee. I still liked him a lot. Id got over those feelings Id had ages ago, the negative feelings towards him. So it wasnt that.
I thought that maybe it had something to do with the boy in New Zealand, whose name I realized with a shock Id forgotten. It would come back to me, no doubt about that, but for the moment I couldnt think of it at all. And I thought it was probably a lot to do with the dead man whose house we had sneaked into – not that it was his house anyway – but the fact that we were living in a dead mans house. And, of course the fact that Id killed him. I didnt know his name either. Weird: two guys whom figured prominently in my life, and they were both nameless to Me.” page 262 I found this novel very easy to get involved in because of the basic words and because of the exciting things happening to people my own age, which start from the very beginning of the book.
In this novel there is very little humor that makes the novel serious and scary but it has lots of action to keep you on the edge of your seat. Opinion: I really enjoyed this book because it was scary, exciting, action packed and easy to read. This is the best series of books I have read and this book in the series is probably the best one so far. I definitely recommend this book to any reader and I hope they enjoy it as much as I have.
