the bridge over the river kwai pierre boulle

Pitted against Colonel Saito, the warden of the Japanese POW camp, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. Eventually, Nicholson's stubbornness forces Saito to relent.Ĭonstruction of the bridge serves as a symbol of the preservation of professionalism and personal integrity to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Because of Nicholson's unwillingness to back down, he and his officers are placed in the 'ovens'-small, iron boxes sitting in the heat of day. Saito reiterates his demand and Nicholson remains adamant in his refusal to submit his officers to manual labour. In response to this, Nicholson informs Saito that, under the Hague Conventions (18), officers cannot be required to do hard work. However, Saito also demands that all men, including officers, will do manual labour. Saito announces that the prisoners will be required to work on construction of a bridge over the River Kwai so that the railroad connection between Bangkok and Rangoon can be completed. Colonel Nicholson marches his men into Prisoner of War Camp 16, commanded by Colonel Saito. The story describes the mistreatment of prisoners in the POW camp and how they tried to sabotage the construction of the bridge. This was an incorrect assumption the bridge actually crossed the Mae Klong river. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. The bridge described in the book didn't actually cross the River Kwai. The novel won France's Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1952.

The novel deals with the plight of World War II British prisoners of war forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to build a bridge for the 'Death Railway', so named because of the large number of prisoners and conscripts who died during its construction. The story is fictional but uses the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–43, as its historical setting, and is partly based on Pierre Boulle's own life experience working in Malaysia rubber plantations and later working for allied forces in Singapore and Indochina during World War II. The Bridge over the River Kwai (French: Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai) is a novel by the French novelist Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954.

The bridge over the river kwai pierre boulle