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Below are three worksheets containing all the information you need about the 3 main characters. You will need to memorise this information and pass all of the quizzes before you move on to extracts and essays!

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Catholicism is a domination of Christianity. Both Francis and Nicole are practicing Catholics, having been brought up in Catholic homes and sent to Catholic schools where their teachers are nuns. This has a significant affect on the novel.

Firstly, the Catholic Church's attitude is that taking ones life is a mortal sin. Francis' action in this novel would have to been sin as sinful and an embarrassment to his family.

The subject of guilt is also crucial in this novel. Guilt is often associated with the Catholic faith with many Catholic people claiming to feel extreme levels of guilt with regards to their actions and their need for penance. Perhaps, Cormier is suggesting that Francis's catholism is the root of his guilt throughout the novel.

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As a quiet toddler in 1967 suburban Denver, I didn't mind an hour in church once a week. It was mostly a chance to wear my special clothes-I remember the particular excitement, one Easter Sunday, of being buckled into a pair of white patent-leather Mary Janes-then roll around seatbeltless in the back of the family station wagon, a white Ford Country Squire with blue vinyl upholstery.

Those oblivious years slowly gave way to a more big-girl awareness of how things worked in the Catholic world: nuns wore black sacks and sat over there; priests wore colorful robes and got to be in charge of everyone; girls wore lace veils for their first communion; only boys could be altar boys and help with mass. And everybody had to sing.

Singing meant opening your mouth and letting other people hear your voice go up and down while you praised God. That seemingly innocent activity unearthed what would turn out to be my two biggest phobias that stuck around well into adulthood: making my voice heard, and telling anyone how I felt.

And that is when I learned to lip-sync.

But there was a different stressor in church that, by the time I was twelve or so, became impossible to avoid: the moment when our fusty old priest asked the congregation to exchange a "sign of peace" with those around them. The standard procedure consisted of a few simple words accompanied by a warm handshake. Once the fringe-and-tambourine Folk Mass Era of the Peace Hug came upon us, however, it was possible to find yourself in an embrace with a stranger. I was too old to hide my face in my mother's sleeve, and if I found a sudden need to tie my shoe, people would politely wait for me to finish. I could not get around the requirement to grasp the hands of strangers right and left, raise my gaze to about tooth-level, and mumble, "Peace be with you."

I get it: it's a part of adulthood, learning how to look another human being in the eye and say hello. What's the big deal? Well, here's the thing. Even now, as a fifty-year-old woman, I might need months of regular contact with someone before I feel comfortable enough to say a modest "How are you?" and actually mean it, much less say something so personal and heartfelt as peace be with you, accompanied by a clammy handshake or, God forbid, a cuddle. It hinges, for me, on feeling seen by the other person, and not being treated like I'm a piece of furniture they're politely stepping around on their way to the door. In the case of handshakes, the best ones happen when each of us puts something of who we are into them and we get a moment of friendly recognition in return.

I think I just described how dogs get to know each other at the park.

I learned to fake it pretty well, as most introverts do. It's easier when you know what's coming, and church services are nothing if not predictable: there's plenty of time to breathe into a paper bag and visualize keeping your palms dry. But for me-a lip-syncing pre-teen introvert-church was a place I was beginning to dread. On top of the forced singing and intimacy, it took me away from reading books or bouncing a ball against the side of our house. Instead of working to develop the same inner fortitude I would later use to smile and slowly close the door on people selling magazine subscriptions, I began looking for any excuse (stomach aches were at the top of the list) to skip church altogether.

My mom was more deeply introverted than I was, just not quite as desperate to stay home and play soccer with herself. She could navigate most social situations by standing behind my garrulous father and falling asleep with her eyes open. So when I started begging not to go to church, she didn't seem to get why I was being such a wuss, nor did she have the skills to discuss what made the budding feminist inside me uncomfortable about our religion or help me get past the painful social aspects of it. My father, on the other hand, didn't get what my problem was in the first place, and I couldn't explain it to him while he was standing over me, yelling, "What's the problem?" His ultimate answer to my behavior-which he could have perceived as either a lack of faith or sheer laziness on my part-was to bear down even harder and sign me up for confirmation classes.

The seven sacraments of the Catholic church, if you're not up on these things, are baptism, communion, confession, confirmation, holy matrimony, ordination (if you're becoming a priest), and last rites. The confirmation ceremony confirms you as a full, committed member of the church. It's kind of a big deal.

My church had two confirmation classes for kids my age. The early class was full of teens eager to go straight to church after school: outgoing, well-adjusted future church-members who enjoyed making flash cards of the mortal sins. And then there was my class, the class that didn't want to go to church until after they'd watched an episode of Gilligan's Island, drank a Mountain Dew, and ate a bag of Doritos.

After six weeks of class, on the day before the confirmation ceremony, we all met in the church for dress rehearsal and confession. This was going to be my first confession, and I had no idea what to say. I went over to the cookie table, grabbed a stale pecan sandie, and took a seat in the last row of pews. Kids were lined up along a wall, waiting to go into the confession . . . cabinet? chamber? and speak anonymously to the priest. But to tell him what? Confession seemed like it was for big things, like murder, and more murder, or at the very least the things I imagined the kids in my class seemed ready to admit: cheating on tests and smoking shoplifted Kools behind 7-11. I hadn't done any of that! What was I going to say that wouldn't make some fresh-faced young Jesuit priest snicker into his cassock-that I didn't always put my full effort into my homework? Or worse: what if everyone could hear through the plywood confessional screen that once I had sexual thoughts about a cooked bratwurst wrapped in tinfoil? The idea of telling anything remotely personal to a strange man in a dark box was incomprehensible. But what was the alternative: to lie? Lying to a priest would have turned me into a smoking pile of ash right then and there! My parents would have had to bury me inside a Dustbuster.

I slid a little further down the pew, closer to the door. I was pretty sure I'd stuck around long enough to pretend that I'd already confessed-no one seemed to be keeping track; I hadn't given my name to anyone with a clipboard; and no one in my class seemed to care. So I scooted all the way down the last row until I was right across from the door to the parking lot. Then I slipped on my coat, walked out into the cold, wet spring afternoon, unlocked my bike, and pedaled home through the slush.

If you are Catholic, you might join my brother in being upset that I did not suck it up and confess and that I went through the confirmation ceremony the next day holding that lie in my throat. I'm sorry. I should have said something. I should have confessed my bratwurst sins as I stood in front of everyone in church, my father behind me blocking the exit while the priest declared me an adult ( an adult whose behavior was setting her on a path straight to hell). But I didn't.

Once I was officially confirmed, we stopped going to church every week-my father said the pews hurt his back, but my guess is that he felt that he and my mom had done their duty. And yet, despite my lack of interest in conforming to his faith, I was curious about what faith itself was trying to explain. He showed me that he knew me better than I thought he did when he bought me two books the following summer, one about astrology and one about dream archetypes and symbols. As we occasionally talked about our dreams and what they might mean, we drew closer in a new way, and I began to develop a mystical bent. Then, for my sixteenth birthday, he gave me a pack of tarot cards. I don't know what inspired him; a serious Catholic wouldn't dream of buying his child such an implement of heresy. Maybe it was his way of acknowledging my independence and encouraging me to keep looking beyond the boundaries of the faith we'd both inherited. After he died, I found a few books about Zen Buddhism on his shelves, so I guess he kept looking too.

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As a quiet toddler in 1967 suburban Denver, I didn't mind an hour in church once a week. It was mostly a chance to wear my special clothes-I remember the particular excitement, one Easter Sunday, of being buckled into a pair of white patent-leather Mary Janes-then roll around seatbeltless in the back of the family station wagon, a white Ford Country Squire with blue vinyl upholstery.

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Catholic guilt is a distinctly Irish affliction that this IMAGE writer believes we need to rid ourselves of - because the time of fear has passed
I told my mother recently that I would prefer to be a Protestant than a Catholic. Unsurprisingly, she was not impressed - her name is Mary and she is holier than her namesake, Our Lady herself.

She scolded me for my lack of attendance at mass, and told me "you'll have to go to mass one of these Sundays, Edaein, because everyone is asking for you." I apologised for forgetting, in my Catholic guilt, that mass is actually a social occasion and not a ritual to worship our Lord.

Sunday Mass

Like many Irish people, mass, the church and faith were an intrinsic part of my childhood.

There was nothing I despised more than Sunday mass. I never knew what a Sunday sleep-in felt like. It was a holy miracle when we would go to the Saturday night equivalent. And this was saved only for special occasions and when they shipped me off to my aunt's for the weekend.

My house, even more ironically, is a stone's throw away from my local church. My kitchen window is in direct view of it. Not a day went by in my childhood without the six o'clock bell tolling with the Angelus calling, and if it didn't - well, there was obviously something wrong with the tape recorder.
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I was the quintessential Catholic child. I made my Communion and Confirmation with vigour. I was an alter child and rang the bell with such passion that my Sundays became a continuous Broadway performance. Oh Holy Night was the party piece I liked to pull out of the bag at Christmas.

As I got older and brattier, my Sundays quickly started being spent in bed. And soon, none of my friends went to mass anymore at all.

The Catholic guilt

Our generation has seen so much about the wrongdoings of the church that we find religion, and all it entails, difficult to reconcile.

But what follows is an affliction called Catholic guilt, eating your insides whenever you see holy beads and hear a recitation of the Rosary.

As a Catholic, it follows you through the most mundane daily tasks. Wandering through the supermarket and picking up your favourite bottle of cabernet sauvignon makes you wonder if you should ring a priest to bless it first.

It's going to mass only for Easter, Christmas, weddings, and funerals. You know it's bad, but pulling yourself to a Saturday vigil is hard when someone hands you an impromptu Baby Guinness. You know in your heart and soul that Jesus is somewhere tutting you but you still can't bring yourself to stand below the pulpit.

It's eating meat on Good Friday and immediately feeling the need to go to confession.

It's enjoying a humanist wedding ceremony and immediately feeling the need to go to confession.

And it's thinking that a Catholic funeral is the only acceptable type when you attend a humanist one, and still immediately feeling the need to go to confession.

Always there

The most difficult aspect of Catholic guilt is that no matter whether you believe in it all or not - it's always there. You always feel like you should be praying to something or saying sorry for something you did.

In times of trouble or hardship, the instinct of many of us is to pray - but to what we don't know. Then you feel guilty for that, because what Catholic prays to God when they don't even go to mass? The situation we find ourselves in can't be won.

When I do frequent mass now, I forget why I'm there. I forget the reason we gathered in such a place. I only see neighbours and friends who have seen me grow up. The hardest part of my Catholic guilt is that underneath all the horror and awfulness we have seen from the church, there are good-hearted communities like mine who have shouldered much more than the guilt I harbour.
Related: The story of a community's spirit and a GAA club called St Senans
Birth, death, happiness and sadness were all witnessed and experienced under one roof.

I've seen those who were teenagers when I was a toddler, now with their own families. Their kids with the same facial expressions I made; one that says all they want is to be is somewhere else.

While some are no longer there now.

Each of those Sundays spent at mass were flashes in time. Without knowing, we aged a little more, looked a little different; changed. But I still come back and feel at home. I'm comforted by the past and the familiarity of it, even though I might not believe anymore.

I feel guilty and uncomfortable for that, too.

New-wave guilt

As Catholics, lapsed or not, guilt plays a major part in our genetic make-up. If you're Irish and are, or once were, Catholic, there is a double whammy. We live on the edge right next to a generation who were taught to feel guilty about most day-to-day activities - and these people were our parents.

Though we might not be as obedient and fearful as they were, we still feel remorseful for each time we pass a grotto or use the Lord's name in vain. And each time the Angelus plays before the RTÉ Six One News, muscles tremble and it's hard not to look dramatically out into the distance as the bells toll, like the actors on screen.

When you do get a twitch to proclaim an Our Father, there is a pang of new wave guilt for everything else and a feeling that you shouldn't be doing it at all.

Faith is faith, and being respectful of someone's beliefs is important, whatever they are. However, there is no need for the guilt - it's time we released the shackles. Because even though the guilt might tell you differently, the Holy Spirit is not going to pop out of a back alley to berate you with 20 Hail Mary's and the fear of God because you forgot to bless yourself.

That time has passed.
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It's 2020 and I'm still struggling to get over my Catholic guilt | IMAGE.ie

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Catholic guilt is a distinctly Irish affliction that this IMAGE writer believes we need to rid ourselves of - because the time of fear has passed I told my mother recently that I would prefer to be a Protestant than a Catholic.

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What is the Church's teaching regarding suicide? I always thought that suicide was a mortal sin, so how is it that a person can be buried in the Church?

Before addressing the act of suicide, we must first remember that God is the giver of all life. Each of us has been made in God's image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) with both a body and a soul. Therefore, life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death, and no one can justify the intentional taking of an innocent human life.

For Christians, this teaching takes on even greater depth because our Lord entered this world and our own human condition. Our Lord knew the joy and pain, success and failure, pleasure and suffering, happiness and sorrow that come in this life; yet, He also showed us how to live this life in the love of God and trusting in His will. Moreover, Jesus suffered, died, and rose to free us from sin and give us the promise of everlasting life. Through our baptism, we share a new life in the Lord. St. Paul reminds us, "You have been purchased, and at a price. So glorify God in your body" (I Corinthians 6:20).

Therefore, we must be mindful that the preservation of our life - body and soul - is not something discretionary but obligatory. We must preserve and nourish both our physical and spiritual life. The Catechism asserts, "Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of" (#2280).

With this foundation in mind, we can see why suicide has traditionally be considered a gravely wrong moral action, i.e. a mortal sin. Our Holy Father affirmed this position in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (#66). (Please note that suicide is distinguished from the sacrifice of one's life for God or another, as in the cases of martyrdom, or of offering one's life or risking it to save another person.)

The intentional taking of one's own life is wrong for several reasons: First, in the most basic sense, each human being naturally seeks to his preserve life. To take our own life defies our natural instinct to live.

Second, suicide violates a genuine love for oneself and one's neighbor - family, friends, neighbors, and even acquaintances. Other people need us and depend upon us in ways we may not even know. When I as a priest have had to comfort the family of a suicide victim, I hope that the person somehow realizes how much he really was loved and needed. I also feel sad that this poor troubled person faced something so seemingly unbearable, insurmountable, or agonizing that he chose to withdraw from the love of God and others, and kill himself.

Finally, suicide defies the love we owe God. Sure, we all face the tough times, hardships, and sufferings. However, we are called to place ourselves in the hands of God who will never abandon us, but see us safely through this life. The words of the "Our Father" - "thy will be done" - must be real for us. To commit suicide is to reject His "lordship" in our life.

Therefore, objectively, suicide is a mortal sin. (Moreover, to help someone commit suicide is also a mortal sin.) Here though we must remember that for a sin to be mortal and cost someone salvation, the objective action (in this case the taking of one's own life) must be grave or serious matter; the person must have an informed intellect (know that this is wrong); and the person must give full consent of the will (intend to commit this action). In the case of suicide, a person may not have given full consent of the will. Fear, force, ignorance, habit, passion, and psychological problems can impede the exercise of the will so that a person may not be fully responsible or even responsible at all for an action. Here again the Catechism states, "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide" (#2282). This qualification does not make suicide a right action in any circumstance; however, it does make us realize that the person may not be totally culpable for the action because of various circumstances or personal conditions.

Only God can read the depths of our soul. Only He knows how much we love Him and how responsible we are for our actions. We leave the judgment then to Him alone. The Catechism offers words of great hope: "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to Him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives" (#2283). Therefore, we do offer the Mass for the repose of the soul of a suicide victim, invoking God's tender love and mercy, and His healing grace for the grieving loved ones.

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What is the Church's teaching regarding suicide? I always thought that suicide was a mortal sin, so how is it that a person can be buried in the Church? Before addressing the act of suicide, we must first remember that God is the giver of all life.

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Though context is not explicitly marked on this text in the exam it is still essential to your overall understanding of the novel. This section will give you and overview of what the war would have been like for Francis and Larry compared to image of war that was presented to the American people at the time. Catholicism also plays an integral role in the novel. You will find some resources below that help to explain some of the the influence that faith had on Francis and Nicole. If you are interested in learning more about what the war was really like for American Soldiers, 'The Pacific' is an excellent TV series, currently on Netflix, that will show you real horror of war.

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Throughout the novel you will see a conflict between the glamorised image of war the American government attempted to create and the characters' more realistic and devastating experiences of war. This conflict underpins the central question of the novel: what is a hero?

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03: The Pacific: Guadalcanal - "We've got movement" (720p HD)

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EARLY WORLD WAR II AMERICAN PROPAGANDA NEWSREEL "AMERICA'S CALL TO ARMS" 25112

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These links will give you an excellent overview of the novel. You must have read the book before you start any of the exam preparation. The audiobook is an excellent alternative to reading but it can never be as good as the real thing. Get a copy. Read it thoroughly. And if you want the top grades, read it more than once.