Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… prisoner of war. A sailor in the U.S. Navy, Shears was captured by the Japanese and detained in Camp 16, in Burma. Most of his fellow prisoners have long since died from disease, exhaustion, or despair, but Shears has endured and survived the hardships. One of the longest-tenured prisoners at the camp, he plots his escape; soon the time will be right.
Personality… whimsical, even-keeled, and resourceful. Shears has maintained sufficiently high morale as a POW by keeping the mood light and finding humor in the backbreaking labor he is forced to withstand day in and day out. He is also knows how to maximize what little capital he scrapes together, as when he parlays a cigarette lighter he pinched off a corpse into a stay on the coveted sick list. It all may sound like small potatoes, but hey – he’s not dead yet.
Get to Know him in...
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The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
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French story about the construction of a bridge by British prisoners of war in the Siamese jungle and what comes of it.
