With the Christmas season in full swing we are being bombarded with nostalgic images of log fires, steam trains and flickering candles. This is nothing new of course, in fact nostalgia definitely isn't what it used to be, but there is one particularly egregious example that caught my eye this year. It is an advert for some breakfast cereal and involves three blonde haired Midwych cuckoos who conspire to leave a bowl of breakfast cereal for a particularly creepy looking Father Christmas. The whole advert has a distinctly dated feel to it, to the extent that my daughter asked me if this was some advert from my childhood that they were rerunning.
Which got me to pondering why exactly Christmas is seen so much as a time for looking back into the past. Not that it can be that exclusively of course, since most of what the advertisers are trying to flog us in terms of presents to buy is distinguished by its newness: nostalgia would not seem appropriate when advertising a 50 inch 3D HD television for instance. But nostalgia, warm muted colours and an evocation of lost childhood still remain the predominant themes of advertising in this season.
Much of this is of course down to the dominance of US culture, with its emphasis on sentimentality and small-town family values. It's a Wonderful Life (which I love, by the way) exemplifies this perfectly, but so does the annual Coca Cola campaign. It all goes back to A visit from St Nicholas ("'twas the night before Christmas") written in 1823, even more than our own A Christmas Carol from 1843. The essence of the poem is an evocation of the magic of childhood and this has survived as probably the central element of the modern era Christmas, and is no doubt responsible for much of the sense of nostalgia.
However that is clearly not the only source of our association of Christmas with the past. Father Christmas (the English equivalent of the originally Dutch Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus) has long been depicted as an old man, and much of the symbolism of modern Christmas harks back to ancient times. The holly and ivy (as the carol reminds us) are plants whose symbolic power is rooted in the past. Indeed they hugely predate their appropriation for the Christmas story and evoke a long-lost pagan past.
In fact, on the subject of carols, Christmas is interesting as one of the few occasions that we still universally associate with seasonal songs. And whilst many of these songs are Victorian in origin (still quite a long time ago) many are far older, and almost all use very antiquated language. When else but at Christmas would most people use words like "hark" and "lo" and "ye" or syntax like "let nothing you dismay"?
And in fact the specifically English association of Christmas with times past goes a long way back- to the puritan era. The personification of Christmas became Father Christmas (and an old man) during the puritan clampdown on such festivities, and evoked the good old rip-roaring, drunken Christmases people remembered when they were young. As I said at the start, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
There's more to it than that too. Christianity has always been adept at highjacking pagan symbolism and Christmas is of course a reworking of winter solstice celebrations such as the Scandinavian Yule, and even of the Roman Saturnalia. The feasting, the emphasis on firelight and the bringing of the greenwood into the house all remain as central to our conception of Christmas and all hark back to long gone former times.
However, interesting as all this is, for me it doesn't get to the essence of why we associate Christmas with the past. The winter solstice (particularly in Northern regions where the day-length effect is most marked) has always been associate with looking both backwards into the old year and forward into the new. The Roman God Janus (from whom January is named) was famously double-faced to symbolise this. He was the God of (amongst other things) gateways and thresholds and the winter solstice has always been seen as a threshold between the past and the future, marking the final death of the old year's sun and the promised rebirth of the new.
However this is a massive concept and most societies appear to have separated out or extended the celebrations of death and rebirth symbolised by the season. Saturnalia, for instance, occupied the "left-over" days following the 12 30-day months of the Roman calendar and Yule was apparently traditionally three nights long.
In modern times we have the week from Christmas to New Year, and it does seem to me that, for all its central image of a birth, Christmas has taken on much of the looking back and New Year the looking forward elements of the winter solstice rituals. Perhaps the clearest way to see this is in a comparison of the symbolism of the two celebrations: where Christmas Day has log fires and candles, New Year has fireworks; where Christmas Day has hand-knitted jumpers and cosy slippers New Year has party dresses and impractically high-heeled shoes; where Christmas Day has slumping in front of the Queen's Speech New Year has partying into the small hours and first-footing; whilst New Year is universally "Happy", Christmas is often "Merry", a much more antiquated sounding word. Even the songs are different. Yes, we do sing Auld Lang Syne at New Year, but we bellow along to Prince's 1999 as well. No "Hark the herald angels" at New Year. And fundamentally New Year's Eve is an adult occasion, contrasting with the child-centred nature of Christmas.
So there you go. Like Janus we look both forwards and backwards over the Christmas/New Year season, and in my opinion that is just as it should be. A society develops the rituals and celebrations it needs to deal with the fundamental themes of life, like death and rebirth, like the inevitable progression from the past into the future. And if the price is having to endure a few saccharine-heavy nostalgia-laden adverts at this time, then does that really matter?
Merry Christmas, I say, and a happy New Year.
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Saturday, 2 November 2013
What makes British public schools so special?
It appears to have been accepted almost as a truism that public (independent) schools in the UK provide a better quality of education than their State equivalents. So prevalent has this idea become that the only issues for debate appear to be how fair or otherwise it is that only those who can afford to pay have access to this superior education and how the State sector can learn from the brilliance of the Great British public schools. And on the face of it this would appear to be a reasonable truism. Independent schools on average outperform the State sector in most areas, particularly achievement at A level and progression to Russel Group universities.
A little digging weakens the conclusion somewhat: this OECD report for instance recognises that once socio-economic factors are taken into account independent schools in the UK actually underperform as compared to the State sector in their PISA reading test, and this report (amongst others) shows that a higher proportion of students from State comprehensives than those from independent schools achieve the highest classes of degree at Cambridge.
Still, this is just nitpicking, isn't it? Independent schools still predominate at the top of almost all school league tables. My question is, why? Let me say first that I cannot pretend to be an expert in independent schools. I attended one for two years as a child (a reasonably prestigious one, whose head went on to be head of Eton) and have dutifully watched the slew of documentaries about private education that have been gracing our TV screens recently, but that's about it. However what I can say is that I have found it very hard to identify anything that marks out the quality of education in independent schools as being in any way superior to that which I witnessed as a teacher, senior leader and Head in a variety of inner and outer London comprehensives.
Teaching has developed enormously in the State sector over recent decades and I can certainly remember no lesson from my own days in independent education that even approached the standard deemed acceptable in modern State schools. What I do remember is gowned masters handing out books, telling us boys to "work from page xx to page xx" and then settling down to a pile of marking, or perhaps the Times crossword.
That is not fair of course: That was then, and the past is a different country after all. Yet I have also never seen any evidence of good (let alone outstanding) teaching in contemporary independent schools. Of all the vast resource of excellent teaching materials on the internet I have never yet seen any that originated from an independent school. The various documentaries I have dipped into have shown next to nothing of the actual lessons in independent schools, but what there has been has not struck me as particularly inspiring or indeed challenging.
In a recent documentary about Radley school there was a snippet of a lesson with a form tutor who was also a maths teacher. He was presented as being maverick but both demanding and inspiring, so presumably this segment of a lesson was included as a demonstration of these qualities. In it the teacher barked out a series of random single-digit numbers and the boys (aged around 13, I would guess) had to add them, up. To be fair, this was probably not a lesson as such, but what we in the State sector would have called a "starter activity". Yet even so, it offered a level of challenge so low that, had I been observing the lesson, my hand would have been poised over the "inadequate" box on my lesson observation sheet. Adding of single-digit integers is a Primary level activity, and if this is how an inspiring and demanding teacher goes about his business at Radley then how the hell do so many of its students end up at Oxbridge?
Which is precisely the question.
There is of course that simple fact that independent schools are often better resourced. It is difficult and controversial to compare the cost of independent and State education, particularly since it is vastly more expensive to educate disadvantaged and troubled students with little or no parental support than the type of student who typically ends up in the independent sector. However in the end it doesn't matter hugely, because things like better facilities and even smaller class sizes are (at least once you exceed a floor figure of acceptable resourcing) rarely game-changers when it comes to rates of achievement. Indeed I remember seeing a LSC study on achievement at A level that showed that rates of achievement actually increased with class size, up to the mid-twenties: students in large classes did better on average than those in small classes. So nice as better facilities and smaller class sizes are for teachers they may not make as much difference as you might think to students.
The more swivel-eyed of Mr Gove's acolytes would have it that independent schools are inherently better because they are free from the dead hand of State control. Indeed Mr Gove himself managed to argue (in debate with Tristram Hunt) that in excluding unqualified teachers from Free schools Mr Hunt was trying to deny today's disadvantaged youth the privilege he gained from his own private education. This is mind-boggling stuff: how could one argue that unqualified, untrained teachers were likely to be better at teaching than trained and qualified ones? Who knows. The idea simply isn't worth wasting mental energy over. Personally though I shall be pressing for the freedom to appoint unqualified doctors to perform surgical procedures.
The other "dead hand" is around the National Curriculum. Having made the National Curriculum more prescriptive than it has ever been Mr Gove is arguing that high achievement can only come when schools are freed from its rigour. Honestly, you couldn't make it up.
Another, slightly less lunatic, argument is that independent schools do better than State schools because they recognise the true value of competitiveness, as opposed to the all-must-win-prizes attitude of State schools. Again, there is some superficial substance to this claim (though I have never witnessed anything close to the all-must-win-prizes parody in any State school I have actually worked at). Independent schools are pretty competitive places. Even I remember that, and the students interviewed in various documentaries seem acutely aware of it too.
However even this is not as stark a difference from the State sector as it first appears. The competitiveness within independent schools has a number of safety nets that render it in a sense less acute than its equivalent in the State sector. First, students appear constantly to be reminded that here they are already amongst the elite. This message comes to them loud and clear from their parents (who need to justify the large amounts of money they have shelled out), the schools (who need to ensure that said vast amounts of money continue to be shelled out) and wider society (which, as I have said, appears to have swallowed the notion quite unquestioningly). Therefore even the student who comes bottom of the class can console themselves with the (probably quite erroneous) idea that that still makes them better than all the State school oiks out there. Secondly, there are a large number of areas within which independent school students can compete successfully, so if they are rubbish at maths that is of little consequence if they are captain of the First Eleven.
Finally of course a little thought will make it apparent that it is manifestly not in an independent school's interest to have any student fail consistently in all available competitive areas, because if they did, then why would their parents continue to pay the fees? So if there is any sector where all must win prizes then logically it would be much more likely to be the independent sector.
Indeed, that I think points to the distinguishing feature of the independent sector, and the reason that its students generally achieve more highly than those from the State sector. One of the strongest impressions I have got from independent-school educated students is a powerful sense of high expectations combined with a perception of inalienable entitlement. You can hear it in the boys interviewed in the programmes about Harrow and Radley, I remember it from my own schoolmates (myself too probably, if the truth be told) and from independent-school educated people I have known since, and my daughter has seen it in college mates at Cambridge.
It's hardly surprising really. These are students who have either been born into privilege, with parents affluent enough and/or committed enough to ensuring their child's success to shell out large sums in school fees, or have won their golden ticket through a hugely competitive entrance exam. Once at school the message they receive from everywhere they look is about their membership of a much-vaunted elite. The message is in the architecture (often so reminiscent of seats of adult power like the Houses of Parliament); in the manicured lawns, boathouses and chapels; in the endless sequences of names carved into ancient oak panels; and in the heavy silver-plated trophies in the glass-covered cabinets. And if that were not enough the message comes through in any forum for discussion. Politicians say it, the papers say it, even TV documentaries now are in on the act.
So is it surprising that these students see themselves as future masters of the universe? Is it strange that they work harder, longer and with better focus than their peers in State schools, and in doing so more than compensate for any inadequacies in their teaching? Nothing succeeds like success, particularly in the teenage years, just as nothing leads to failure quite so surely as failure.
Of course there is a downside. An undiluted diet of this sort of sense of entitlement can lead to arrogance and a propensity to bully and condescend to those less fortunate (you need look no further than Number 10). Also, while a suppression of self-doubt can lead to early success it is not a recipe for true academic rigour. My daughter reports that independent-school educated students at Cambridge were often bamboozled and even affronted when their State educated peers produced more thoughtful, considered and essentially better work than them.
But in the main it does work. If you continue to tell someone that they are one of the chosen few, educated in a sector that is inherently superior to anything else, then they will in the end come to believe you, and they will succeed. Just as, if you continue to tell everyone else that they will never amount to anything because they were educated in a "bog-standard comprehensive" and "students from schools like these never make it to Oxbrdige" then all but the most brilliant, determined and committed will believe that too.
Which is the only reason I can find for students in the independent sector doing better than those from State schools.
So, to the second area for debate that I outlined at the start of this post: what can be taken from the independent sector to improve the State sector? Well, the answer I am afraid is absolutely nothing of any use whatever. Students at independent schools achieve highly because such schools are exclusive. And one thing you can say with some certainty about exclusiveness is that it cannot be inclusive. The only magic that students at independent schools have going for them (and it is a very powerful magic indeed) is that they are the elite.
And that is a message that, by definition, you cannot honestly give to everyone.
A little digging weakens the conclusion somewhat: this OECD report for instance recognises that once socio-economic factors are taken into account independent schools in the UK actually underperform as compared to the State sector in their PISA reading test, and this report (amongst others) shows that a higher proportion of students from State comprehensives than those from independent schools achieve the highest classes of degree at Cambridge.
Still, this is just nitpicking, isn't it? Independent schools still predominate at the top of almost all school league tables. My question is, why? Let me say first that I cannot pretend to be an expert in independent schools. I attended one for two years as a child (a reasonably prestigious one, whose head went on to be head of Eton) and have dutifully watched the slew of documentaries about private education that have been gracing our TV screens recently, but that's about it. However what I can say is that I have found it very hard to identify anything that marks out the quality of education in independent schools as being in any way superior to that which I witnessed as a teacher, senior leader and Head in a variety of inner and outer London comprehensives.
Teaching has developed enormously in the State sector over recent decades and I can certainly remember no lesson from my own days in independent education that even approached the standard deemed acceptable in modern State schools. What I do remember is gowned masters handing out books, telling us boys to "work from page xx to page xx" and then settling down to a pile of marking, or perhaps the Times crossword.
That is not fair of course: That was then, and the past is a different country after all. Yet I have also never seen any evidence of good (let alone outstanding) teaching in contemporary independent schools. Of all the vast resource of excellent teaching materials on the internet I have never yet seen any that originated from an independent school. The various documentaries I have dipped into have shown next to nothing of the actual lessons in independent schools, but what there has been has not struck me as particularly inspiring or indeed challenging.
In a recent documentary about Radley school there was a snippet of a lesson with a form tutor who was also a maths teacher. He was presented as being maverick but both demanding and inspiring, so presumably this segment of a lesson was included as a demonstration of these qualities. In it the teacher barked out a series of random single-digit numbers and the boys (aged around 13, I would guess) had to add them, up. To be fair, this was probably not a lesson as such, but what we in the State sector would have called a "starter activity". Yet even so, it offered a level of challenge so low that, had I been observing the lesson, my hand would have been poised over the "inadequate" box on my lesson observation sheet. Adding of single-digit integers is a Primary level activity, and if this is how an inspiring and demanding teacher goes about his business at Radley then how the hell do so many of its students end up at Oxbridge?
Which is precisely the question.
There is of course that simple fact that independent schools are often better resourced. It is difficult and controversial to compare the cost of independent and State education, particularly since it is vastly more expensive to educate disadvantaged and troubled students with little or no parental support than the type of student who typically ends up in the independent sector. However in the end it doesn't matter hugely, because things like better facilities and even smaller class sizes are (at least once you exceed a floor figure of acceptable resourcing) rarely game-changers when it comes to rates of achievement. Indeed I remember seeing a LSC study on achievement at A level that showed that rates of achievement actually increased with class size, up to the mid-twenties: students in large classes did better on average than those in small classes. So nice as better facilities and smaller class sizes are for teachers they may not make as much difference as you might think to students.
The more swivel-eyed of Mr Gove's acolytes would have it that independent schools are inherently better because they are free from the dead hand of State control. Indeed Mr Gove himself managed to argue (in debate with Tristram Hunt) that in excluding unqualified teachers from Free schools Mr Hunt was trying to deny today's disadvantaged youth the privilege he gained from his own private education. This is mind-boggling stuff: how could one argue that unqualified, untrained teachers were likely to be better at teaching than trained and qualified ones? Who knows. The idea simply isn't worth wasting mental energy over. Personally though I shall be pressing for the freedom to appoint unqualified doctors to perform surgical procedures.
The other "dead hand" is around the National Curriculum. Having made the National Curriculum more prescriptive than it has ever been Mr Gove is arguing that high achievement can only come when schools are freed from its rigour. Honestly, you couldn't make it up.
Another, slightly less lunatic, argument is that independent schools do better than State schools because they recognise the true value of competitiveness, as opposed to the all-must-win-prizes attitude of State schools. Again, there is some superficial substance to this claim (though I have never witnessed anything close to the all-must-win-prizes parody in any State school I have actually worked at). Independent schools are pretty competitive places. Even I remember that, and the students interviewed in various documentaries seem acutely aware of it too.
However even this is not as stark a difference from the State sector as it first appears. The competitiveness within independent schools has a number of safety nets that render it in a sense less acute than its equivalent in the State sector. First, students appear constantly to be reminded that here they are already amongst the elite. This message comes to them loud and clear from their parents (who need to justify the large amounts of money they have shelled out), the schools (who need to ensure that said vast amounts of money continue to be shelled out) and wider society (which, as I have said, appears to have swallowed the notion quite unquestioningly). Therefore even the student who comes bottom of the class can console themselves with the (probably quite erroneous) idea that that still makes them better than all the State school oiks out there. Secondly, there are a large number of areas within which independent school students can compete successfully, so if they are rubbish at maths that is of little consequence if they are captain of the First Eleven.
Finally of course a little thought will make it apparent that it is manifestly not in an independent school's interest to have any student fail consistently in all available competitive areas, because if they did, then why would their parents continue to pay the fees? So if there is any sector where all must win prizes then logically it would be much more likely to be the independent sector.
Indeed, that I think points to the distinguishing feature of the independent sector, and the reason that its students generally achieve more highly than those from the State sector. One of the strongest impressions I have got from independent-school educated students is a powerful sense of high expectations combined with a perception of inalienable entitlement. You can hear it in the boys interviewed in the programmes about Harrow and Radley, I remember it from my own schoolmates (myself too probably, if the truth be told) and from independent-school educated people I have known since, and my daughter has seen it in college mates at Cambridge.
It's hardly surprising really. These are students who have either been born into privilege, with parents affluent enough and/or committed enough to ensuring their child's success to shell out large sums in school fees, or have won their golden ticket through a hugely competitive entrance exam. Once at school the message they receive from everywhere they look is about their membership of a much-vaunted elite. The message is in the architecture (often so reminiscent of seats of adult power like the Houses of Parliament); in the manicured lawns, boathouses and chapels; in the endless sequences of names carved into ancient oak panels; and in the heavy silver-plated trophies in the glass-covered cabinets. And if that were not enough the message comes through in any forum for discussion. Politicians say it, the papers say it, even TV documentaries now are in on the act.
So is it surprising that these students see themselves as future masters of the universe? Is it strange that they work harder, longer and with better focus than their peers in State schools, and in doing so more than compensate for any inadequacies in their teaching? Nothing succeeds like success, particularly in the teenage years, just as nothing leads to failure quite so surely as failure.
Of course there is a downside. An undiluted diet of this sort of sense of entitlement can lead to arrogance and a propensity to bully and condescend to those less fortunate (you need look no further than Number 10). Also, while a suppression of self-doubt can lead to early success it is not a recipe for true academic rigour. My daughter reports that independent-school educated students at Cambridge were often bamboozled and even affronted when their State educated peers produced more thoughtful, considered and essentially better work than them.
But in the main it does work. If you continue to tell someone that they are one of the chosen few, educated in a sector that is inherently superior to anything else, then they will in the end come to believe you, and they will succeed. Just as, if you continue to tell everyone else that they will never amount to anything because they were educated in a "bog-standard comprehensive" and "students from schools like these never make it to Oxbrdige" then all but the most brilliant, determined and committed will believe that too.
Which is the only reason I can find for students in the independent sector doing better than those from State schools.
So, to the second area for debate that I outlined at the start of this post: what can be taken from the independent sector to improve the State sector? Well, the answer I am afraid is absolutely nothing of any use whatever. Students at independent schools achieve highly because such schools are exclusive. And one thing you can say with some certainty about exclusiveness is that it cannot be inclusive. The only magic that students at independent schools have going for them (and it is a very powerful magic indeed) is that they are the elite.
And that is a message that, by definition, you cannot honestly give to everyone.
Monday, 28 October 2013
The Fool in Shakespeare's tragedies
In preparation for this morning's (forecast) Great Storm I reread Act III scene ii of King Lear and was struck again by the strangeness of the Fool's role in the scene. It is the scene that starts with Lear's famous "Blow winds and crack your cheeks" speech and whilst the Fool in one sense plays his role as Lear's minder, he also interrupts the old King's rant with an apparently irrelevant little ditty about cod-pieces and lice:
"He that has a house to put his head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass."
Aside from the first and last lines this was presumably sung, and it is hard to imagine a more incongruous note for Shakespeare to strike whilst simultaneously evoking, through Lear's words alone, the power and majesty of the "oak-cleaving thunderbolts" and "all-shaking thunder" of the great tempest that threatens to overwhelm them. Later on in the scene, as Lear's thoughts turn to the various "undivulged crimes,/Unwhipp’d of justice" the Fool's digressions act more directly as a counterpoint to Lear's anger, but the issue of tone still remains: why does Shakespeare introduce elements of levity and humour at such moments of high drama?
Of course he has form in this. Think of the porter in Macbeth, immediately after the murder of Duncan, or of the gravediggers in Hamlet just after Ophelia's suicide. These are amongst the most difficult Shakespeare scenes for modern students to relate to, if for no other reason than that topical stand-up (which is effectively what these scenes are) generally does not date well, and we have to take the scholars' word for it that they would have been hilariously funny to a contemporary audience.
Yet even if we accept that the scenes were funny we are still left with the central question: why are they there? The Fool was obviously a big draw for Shakespeare's audiences and much has been written by many more learned than I about the Fool's sociological significance and historical context. I have nothing useful to add in that regard, but wanted to reflect a little purely on how the Fools' speeches work in the context of the great tragedies.
To some extent, the Fools provide a "way in" for contemporary audiences into the rarefied world of the kings depicted in the plays. The Fool is always the voice of the common people, and counterpoints the grandiosity of others. So when Lear reaches the apotheosis of his rage and strips off his clothes to stand naked in the storm, the Fool injects a note of common sense: " Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night to swim in," and when Lear is fulminating against the manifold iniquities of the world in the mad 'trial' of his (imaginary) daughters, the Fool repeatedly interjects with sayings like "He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath."
There is something deeper going on here too though. In some ways the Fools seem to provide Shakespeare with a means to step outside the world he has created for a time and reflect on the plays as constructs. This is done explicitly at the end of Twelfth Night of course, when Feste ends the play with a song, whose last verse is:
"A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day."
but (as so often) it is in Hamlet that Shakespeare pursues this idea to its conclusion. At a key point in a play that is concerned amongst other things with the nature of madness, this interchange occurs between Hamlet and the gravedigger:
"Gravedigger: Of all the days i’ the year, I came to ’t that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet: How long is that since?
Gravedigger: Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that; it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.
Hamlet: Ay, marry; why was he sent into England?
Gravedigger: Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, ’tis no great matter there,
Hamlet: Why?
Gravedigger: ’Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he."
What can this joke do but cause the (English) audience to reflect on the fact that they are watching a play?
Hamlet is of course full of this sort of thing (as I have argued in this post for instance) and it is a mark of the supreme confidence Shakespeare had in his ability that he chose to remind us of the 'fourth wall' so frequently, when tragedies are supposed to be dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief. However you don't even need specific lines to realise that this is part of what he was doing with the Fools in his tragedies. It seems pretty clear that the actor playing the Fool would have been a comic star in his own right and that the audience would have seen him as comedian first and character in the play a distant second. It is as if Bill Bailey or Eddie Izzard appeared in a serious drama and didn't play it straight, but launched into a stand-up routine. One can easily imagine the profound change in atmosphere whenever the Fool appeared on stage.
And that is the point. Why did Shakespeare want that change in atmosphere? Would it not utterly destroy the tension and drama he was otherwise trying to build up?
In Lear the situation is potentially even more puzzling as it has been suggested that the Fool and Cordelia were played by the same actor and that Lear's apparently incongruous concern for the Fool's fate ("and my poor fool is hanged") in the midst of grieving Cordelia's death by hanging points up this link. In a sense they play similar roles in undercutting Lear's pompous arrogance whilst simultaneously caring deeply for the "foolish fond old man" hidden beneath the bluster. Yet once again the issue is one of tone. Cordelia is a tragic and the Fool a comic figure, so why would Shakespeare choose (if indeed he did) to have them played by the same actor?
The key, I believe, is in the nature of human emotion. You see, whilst emotion is generally understood as something individual, personal and internalised it is also in a sense social, interpersonal and externalised. As well as hugely powerful effects on the individual who experiences them, strong emotions always have external and very public manifestations. Facial expressions are almost universally understood guides to emotional states (though those on the autistic spectrum for instance seem to find them hard to decode) and at the extremes emotions give rise to behaviours that seem designed to communicate them to others, providing strong visual and aural clues to make them socially understood. So at the extreme: sadness gives rise to tears and sobbing; amusement to smiling, then the full opening of the mouth, the doubling-up of the body and loud uncontrollable laughter; anger to redness in the face, the raising of the voice and roaring; and fear to the placing of the hands in front of the face, whimpering and finally screaming.
And all of these manifestations are to some degree infectious. When you are feeling prone to sadness there is nothing more likely to 'set your off' than the sound of someone else crying and anyone who has experienced the phenomenon of 'corpsing' knows how the same applies to audible laughter (just click here for the perfect example). It is as if these manifestations of emotion were specifically designed to spread the emotion: to transform it from an intra-persoanl to an inter-personal phenomenon.
And that, I believe, is the point and the reason for Shakespeare's introduction of Fools into moments of high drama. In his great tragedies he is dealing with strong but subtle and problematic emotions. King Lear is angry with his daughters but he is also regretful and bitter about his earlier misjudgments and beginning even to feel guilt about the high-handed way that Kings ignore the concerns of the poor. Macbeth is horrified by the blood on his hands and his guilt at his murder of Duncan, but also beginning to glimpse a more profound despair at the pointlessness of life and as for Hamlet- well I haven't got the time or space to list all of the contradictory emotions running through his head.
Shakespeare wants to involve individual members of his audience in these emotional journeys and does so extremely effectively. However he is also aware that audiences are a collective and that an important part of our experience of emotions can be social as well as individual. He wants to harness the collective power of those emotions to enhance each individual's emotional engagement. So how does he do this?
Well, one of the ways is through laughter. Assuming that the Fools' various speeches were hilariously funny at the time and so did give rise to actual audible laughter, then what better way to bind an audience together in a communal expression of emotion?
Of course you may well feel that this is hardly a new observation. Critics have long argued that the various Fools' interjections act as ways to ratchet up the tension through temporary release, much as do the various false alarms in any horror film.
What I am saying here though is, I believe, something slightly different. I think the main effect Shakespeare sought was the communal and social effect that audible laughter can bring about. He wants to bind the audience together so that they can to some extent act as an emotionally connected whole, capable of accessing some of the deeper and more troubling messages of the tragedy. In this process I believe the Fool becomes something of a conduit, and certainly in Lear it is he who first introduces the note of regretful Weltschmerz that becomes Lear's predominant emotion by the end. In the scene with which I started this post, the Fool caps Lears majestic railing against the storm with the quieter but in the end much more touching lines:
"He that has a little tiny wit,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day."
"He that has a house to put his head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass."
Aside from the first and last lines this was presumably sung, and it is hard to imagine a more incongruous note for Shakespeare to strike whilst simultaneously evoking, through Lear's words alone, the power and majesty of the "oak-cleaving thunderbolts" and "all-shaking thunder" of the great tempest that threatens to overwhelm them. Later on in the scene, as Lear's thoughts turn to the various "undivulged crimes,/Unwhipp’d of justice" the Fool's digressions act more directly as a counterpoint to Lear's anger, but the issue of tone still remains: why does Shakespeare introduce elements of levity and humour at such moments of high drama?
Of course he has form in this. Think of the porter in Macbeth, immediately after the murder of Duncan, or of the gravediggers in Hamlet just after Ophelia's suicide. These are amongst the most difficult Shakespeare scenes for modern students to relate to, if for no other reason than that topical stand-up (which is effectively what these scenes are) generally does not date well, and we have to take the scholars' word for it that they would have been hilariously funny to a contemporary audience.
Yet even if we accept that the scenes were funny we are still left with the central question: why are they there? The Fool was obviously a big draw for Shakespeare's audiences and much has been written by many more learned than I about the Fool's sociological significance and historical context. I have nothing useful to add in that regard, but wanted to reflect a little purely on how the Fools' speeches work in the context of the great tragedies.
To some extent, the Fools provide a "way in" for contemporary audiences into the rarefied world of the kings depicted in the plays. The Fool is always the voice of the common people, and counterpoints the grandiosity of others. So when Lear reaches the apotheosis of his rage and strips off his clothes to stand naked in the storm, the Fool injects a note of common sense: " Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night to swim in," and when Lear is fulminating against the manifold iniquities of the world in the mad 'trial' of his (imaginary) daughters, the Fool repeatedly interjects with sayings like "He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath."
There is something deeper going on here too though. In some ways the Fools seem to provide Shakespeare with a means to step outside the world he has created for a time and reflect on the plays as constructs. This is done explicitly at the end of Twelfth Night of course, when Feste ends the play with a song, whose last verse is:
"A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day."
but (as so often) it is in Hamlet that Shakespeare pursues this idea to its conclusion. At a key point in a play that is concerned amongst other things with the nature of madness, this interchange occurs between Hamlet and the gravedigger:
"Gravedigger: Of all the days i’ the year, I came to ’t that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet: How long is that since?
Gravedigger: Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that; it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.
Hamlet: Ay, marry; why was he sent into England?
Gravedigger: Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, ’tis no great matter there,
Hamlet: Why?
Gravedigger: ’Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he."
What can this joke do but cause the (English) audience to reflect on the fact that they are watching a play?
Hamlet is of course full of this sort of thing (as I have argued in this post for instance) and it is a mark of the supreme confidence Shakespeare had in his ability that he chose to remind us of the 'fourth wall' so frequently, when tragedies are supposed to be dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief. However you don't even need specific lines to realise that this is part of what he was doing with the Fools in his tragedies. It seems pretty clear that the actor playing the Fool would have been a comic star in his own right and that the audience would have seen him as comedian first and character in the play a distant second. It is as if Bill Bailey or Eddie Izzard appeared in a serious drama and didn't play it straight, but launched into a stand-up routine. One can easily imagine the profound change in atmosphere whenever the Fool appeared on stage.
And that is the point. Why did Shakespeare want that change in atmosphere? Would it not utterly destroy the tension and drama he was otherwise trying to build up?
In Lear the situation is potentially even more puzzling as it has been suggested that the Fool and Cordelia were played by the same actor and that Lear's apparently incongruous concern for the Fool's fate ("and my poor fool is hanged") in the midst of grieving Cordelia's death by hanging points up this link. In a sense they play similar roles in undercutting Lear's pompous arrogance whilst simultaneously caring deeply for the "foolish fond old man" hidden beneath the bluster. Yet once again the issue is one of tone. Cordelia is a tragic and the Fool a comic figure, so why would Shakespeare choose (if indeed he did) to have them played by the same actor?
The key, I believe, is in the nature of human emotion. You see, whilst emotion is generally understood as something individual, personal and internalised it is also in a sense social, interpersonal and externalised. As well as hugely powerful effects on the individual who experiences them, strong emotions always have external and very public manifestations. Facial expressions are almost universally understood guides to emotional states (though those on the autistic spectrum for instance seem to find them hard to decode) and at the extremes emotions give rise to behaviours that seem designed to communicate them to others, providing strong visual and aural clues to make them socially understood. So at the extreme: sadness gives rise to tears and sobbing; amusement to smiling, then the full opening of the mouth, the doubling-up of the body and loud uncontrollable laughter; anger to redness in the face, the raising of the voice and roaring; and fear to the placing of the hands in front of the face, whimpering and finally screaming.
And all of these manifestations are to some degree infectious. When you are feeling prone to sadness there is nothing more likely to 'set your off' than the sound of someone else crying and anyone who has experienced the phenomenon of 'corpsing' knows how the same applies to audible laughter (just click here for the perfect example). It is as if these manifestations of emotion were specifically designed to spread the emotion: to transform it from an intra-persoanl to an inter-personal phenomenon.
And that, I believe, is the point and the reason for Shakespeare's introduction of Fools into moments of high drama. In his great tragedies he is dealing with strong but subtle and problematic emotions. King Lear is angry with his daughters but he is also regretful and bitter about his earlier misjudgments and beginning even to feel guilt about the high-handed way that Kings ignore the concerns of the poor. Macbeth is horrified by the blood on his hands and his guilt at his murder of Duncan, but also beginning to glimpse a more profound despair at the pointlessness of life and as for Hamlet- well I haven't got the time or space to list all of the contradictory emotions running through his head.
Shakespeare wants to involve individual members of his audience in these emotional journeys and does so extremely effectively. However he is also aware that audiences are a collective and that an important part of our experience of emotions can be social as well as individual. He wants to harness the collective power of those emotions to enhance each individual's emotional engagement. So how does he do this?
Well, one of the ways is through laughter. Assuming that the Fools' various speeches were hilariously funny at the time and so did give rise to actual audible laughter, then what better way to bind an audience together in a communal expression of emotion?
Of course you may well feel that this is hardly a new observation. Critics have long argued that the various Fools' interjections act as ways to ratchet up the tension through temporary release, much as do the various false alarms in any horror film.
What I am saying here though is, I believe, something slightly different. I think the main effect Shakespeare sought was the communal and social effect that audible laughter can bring about. He wants to bind the audience together so that they can to some extent act as an emotionally connected whole, capable of accessing some of the deeper and more troubling messages of the tragedy. In this process I believe the Fool becomes something of a conduit, and certainly in Lear it is he who first introduces the note of regretful Weltschmerz that becomes Lear's predominant emotion by the end. In the scene with which I started this post, the Fool caps Lears majestic railing against the storm with the quieter but in the end much more touching lines:
"He that has a little tiny wit,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day."
Sunday, 20 October 2013
The role of the internet in polarising opinion
In a recent TV programme, Frost on Satire, the American satirist Bill Maher was interviewed and the interviewer mentioned his quotation about the US that, "This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists." Maher went on to say that communities are often polarised, giving the average American "no reason to leave his echo chamber." The focus of the programme was of course on satire, and Maher was followed by Ian Hislop, who argued (much as I have in a previous post) that the main function of satire is not to change opinion but to validate and harden it. However Maher's comment got me thinking about a wider point about the internet in general.
I'm not sure that anyone predicted it in advance, but what the internet has done almost more than anything else is to provide a platform for vast numbers of people across the world to air their opinions in public. Any news article, any video, indeed almost anything on the internet is now followed by reams of comments, tallies of Facebook likes and Google +1s and streams of Twitter posts. All this, of course, provides an unrivalled opportunity for lively debate and the democratisation of opinion-giving and is thus a GOOD THING (to quote Sellar and Yateman). However, note that I said opinion-giving and not opinion-forming, because like satire I think such stuff will always tend to validate and harden opinion rather than forming it.
You see, the distinguishing feature of such internet-based comment, when compared with almost every form of public comment that predated the internet, is shortness- both of the pieces themselves and of the time taken to write them. Twitter is limited in length of its nature of course, but comment pieces tend to be equally short, and if they are not then they are usually truncated, with a "see more" link that few people probably ever use. Also, such pieces tend to offer a single (often fairly extreme) point of view- hardly surprising since they are generally probably fired off in a fit of rage/enthusiasm/irritation/exasperation. It is rare for a comment to start "You make a number of good points, @fascisttroll, but I would like to pick you up on one detail..."
Indeed it would seem that what the internet has done is to refine the ability of the general public to produce and respond to oneliners. Twitter seems precisely designed to limit each tweet to a single pithily expressed point, and memes can combine text and imagery to produce oneliners that are shorter, more focussed and at least as funny as anything that predated their invention.
However there is a big difference between oneliners and debate. In fact since time immemorial oneliners have been used to end rather than to further debate. You may have heard of the wonderful putdown attributed to Andrew Lang, "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination," but do you have any idea of the subject of the debate in the context of which it was presumably used? Done well, oneliners are of course brilliant, and can demolish an idea in seconds. Who could argue for the more arcane features of traditional English grammar, such as never putting a preposition at the end of a sentence, after Winston Churchill's famous "this is the sort of criticism up with which I will not put"?
Oneliners are of course often used to attack a person's reputation, and where they appear to us justified (the comment about Nixon: "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears but by diligent hard work, he overcame them" is a personal favourite) they are brilliant. However they can be cruel too. Churchill was famous for his character assassinations, such as "he was a modest man with much to be modest about," and Mark Twain's comment "I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." is, when you think about it, downright nasty. Best of course is where two artists of the oneliner go head-to-head: when GBS wrote to Churchill "“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend... if you have one,” Churchill replied "Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”
All of which is slightly off-topic of course. And that is fundamentally my point. The internet-based fora for "debate" do not in fact encourage such digression. If anyone started reading this blog entry in the first place they will probably have clicked away by now. The form of communication fostered by such media as Twitter and comment strands is characterised by speed and immediacy. Pieces are produced swiftly to make a single point, and read as quickly, most of the audience having already framed their personal viewpoint and looking for comments either to agree with (handily, you can often click "like" to register your agreement) or fulminate against. This is new: previously the process by which any statement of opinion appeared in the public domain took time. Even newspaper editors had to write their pieces, have them sub-edited, review them, place them on the page and wait fro them to be printed and distributed. Simple members of the public could only "write in" and hope that their piece would appear in the next day's paper at the earliest.
All of which is fine of course, and the internet has indeed democratised the process of opinion-giving to an extent I would never have predicted. No longer do our opinions come solely from politicians interviewed on the evening news or editorials in newspapers.
However there is a form of debate that the internet does not appear as yet to have fomented, and I think that is a shame. This is the sort of debate where contributors take time to formulate subtle and complex statements of opinion and take time also to absorb, consider and reflect on the contributions of others. As a child I attended Quaker meetings with my family and the one "rule" that I remember is that, if someone has spoken, nobody may respond immediately. There has to be a time of silence between contributions for those present to reflect on what has been said. And of course such silence is not encouraged on the internet. Indeed the opposite is often the case. Should you ever have found yourself following a lively interchange of opinions on a comment thread you will know that if you do not respond IMMEDIATELY then the thread will have moved on by the time your response is posted and it will look completely irrelevant.
It may seem a non-sequitor, but there is a relevance here to poetry. There are poems, such as haikus for instance, that are as short as tweets. However even they they were not produced as quickly, and as a result can have a subtlety that tweets never approach, and promote contemplation rather than instant reaction:
"rain falls on the grass,
filling the ruts left by
the festival cart."
And only slightly longer poems can be constructed to engage the reader in a journey of thought which challenges their preconceptions and encourages deep and repeated reflection, often ending in a surprising place. Shakespeare's most famous sonnet begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and draws the reader in by purporting to be a poem about love. Yet by the end he has made the reflective reader think instead about how we form unattainable ideas about people we love, and about the nature and longevity of poetry itself. Show me a comment piece in an internet discussion that does anything similar. Of course, there may be several, but no-one would know, because no-one would have bothered to read to the end, let alone to reread and reflect on the whole piece.
I would like to end on a piece that combines poetry with comment on a political issue and shows the sort of comment that no-one would engage with if it appeared on the internet. And indeed feel free to click away now and scroll through the pages of comments that follow whatever news story is prominent right now.
The piece is Easter, 1916 by WB Yeats and is about the Easter Rising, which many have taken as the start point of the decades of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yeats was originally a supporter of the Republicans and had long been in love with Maude Gonne, the estranged wife of John MacBride. Countess Markievicz was a long-time friend, though he is not particularly nice about her at the start of the second stanza.
The point about the poem though is the way that it takes a hugely inflammatory topic (the justifiability of violence in pursuit of a cause) and rather than arguing a single point of view it reflects on a range of issues. Its conclusion, such as it is, is the prescient but hardly simplistic line "a terrible beauty is born."
One of the ways that Yeats "debates" the issues involved is through his use of imagery, particularly in the third stanza. Using the extraordinary power of connotations he causes us to reflect on the image of the stone in the stream. The stone is the vehicle of this image, the tenor being the notion of a band of single-minded revolutionaries living in the midst of a world of more nuanced opinions. The relationship between tenor and vehicle is not straightforward here though, and the grounds subtle and complex, so it is really not clear at the end where Yeats' sympathies lie.
All of which might sound, in today's internet-based world, like woolly, waffly pontification without focus and direction. Yet for me Easter 1916 gives more space and encouragement for thought on a range of issues from Irish Republicanism to jihadist terrorism than thousands of oneliner comment thread contributions. Read it yourself, and see if you agree:
Easter 1916
I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
W. B. Yeats
I'm not sure that anyone predicted it in advance, but what the internet has done almost more than anything else is to provide a platform for vast numbers of people across the world to air their opinions in public. Any news article, any video, indeed almost anything on the internet is now followed by reams of comments, tallies of Facebook likes and Google +1s and streams of Twitter posts. All this, of course, provides an unrivalled opportunity for lively debate and the democratisation of opinion-giving and is thus a GOOD THING (to quote Sellar and Yateman). However, note that I said opinion-giving and not opinion-forming, because like satire I think such stuff will always tend to validate and harden opinion rather than forming it.
You see, the distinguishing feature of such internet-based comment, when compared with almost every form of public comment that predated the internet, is shortness- both of the pieces themselves and of the time taken to write them. Twitter is limited in length of its nature of course, but comment pieces tend to be equally short, and if they are not then they are usually truncated, with a "see more" link that few people probably ever use. Also, such pieces tend to offer a single (often fairly extreme) point of view- hardly surprising since they are generally probably fired off in a fit of rage/enthusiasm/irritation/exasperation. It is rare for a comment to start "You make a number of good points, @fascisttroll, but I would like to pick you up on one detail..."
Indeed it would seem that what the internet has done is to refine the ability of the general public to produce and respond to oneliners. Twitter seems precisely designed to limit each tweet to a single pithily expressed point, and memes can combine text and imagery to produce oneliners that are shorter, more focussed and at least as funny as anything that predated their invention.
However there is a big difference between oneliners and debate. In fact since time immemorial oneliners have been used to end rather than to further debate. You may have heard of the wonderful putdown attributed to Andrew Lang, "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination," but do you have any idea of the subject of the debate in the context of which it was presumably used? Done well, oneliners are of course brilliant, and can demolish an idea in seconds. Who could argue for the more arcane features of traditional English grammar, such as never putting a preposition at the end of a sentence, after Winston Churchill's famous "this is the sort of criticism up with which I will not put"?
Oneliners are of course often used to attack a person's reputation, and where they appear to us justified (the comment about Nixon: "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears but by diligent hard work, he overcame them" is a personal favourite) they are brilliant. However they can be cruel too. Churchill was famous for his character assassinations, such as "he was a modest man with much to be modest about," and Mark Twain's comment "I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." is, when you think about it, downright nasty. Best of course is where two artists of the oneliner go head-to-head: when GBS wrote to Churchill "“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend... if you have one,” Churchill replied "Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”
All of which is slightly off-topic of course. And that is fundamentally my point. The internet-based fora for "debate" do not in fact encourage such digression. If anyone started reading this blog entry in the first place they will probably have clicked away by now. The form of communication fostered by such media as Twitter and comment strands is characterised by speed and immediacy. Pieces are produced swiftly to make a single point, and read as quickly, most of the audience having already framed their personal viewpoint and looking for comments either to agree with (handily, you can often click "like" to register your agreement) or fulminate against. This is new: previously the process by which any statement of opinion appeared in the public domain took time. Even newspaper editors had to write their pieces, have them sub-edited, review them, place them on the page and wait fro them to be printed and distributed. Simple members of the public could only "write in" and hope that their piece would appear in the next day's paper at the earliest.
All of which is fine of course, and the internet has indeed democratised the process of opinion-giving to an extent I would never have predicted. No longer do our opinions come solely from politicians interviewed on the evening news or editorials in newspapers.
However there is a form of debate that the internet does not appear as yet to have fomented, and I think that is a shame. This is the sort of debate where contributors take time to formulate subtle and complex statements of opinion and take time also to absorb, consider and reflect on the contributions of others. As a child I attended Quaker meetings with my family and the one "rule" that I remember is that, if someone has spoken, nobody may respond immediately. There has to be a time of silence between contributions for those present to reflect on what has been said. And of course such silence is not encouraged on the internet. Indeed the opposite is often the case. Should you ever have found yourself following a lively interchange of opinions on a comment thread you will know that if you do not respond IMMEDIATELY then the thread will have moved on by the time your response is posted and it will look completely irrelevant.
It may seem a non-sequitor, but there is a relevance here to poetry. There are poems, such as haikus for instance, that are as short as tweets. However even they they were not produced as quickly, and as a result can have a subtlety that tweets never approach, and promote contemplation rather than instant reaction:
"rain falls on the grass,
filling the ruts left by
the festival cart."
And only slightly longer poems can be constructed to engage the reader in a journey of thought which challenges their preconceptions and encourages deep and repeated reflection, often ending in a surprising place. Shakespeare's most famous sonnet begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and draws the reader in by purporting to be a poem about love. Yet by the end he has made the reflective reader think instead about how we form unattainable ideas about people we love, and about the nature and longevity of poetry itself. Show me a comment piece in an internet discussion that does anything similar. Of course, there may be several, but no-one would know, because no-one would have bothered to read to the end, let alone to reread and reflect on the whole piece.
I would like to end on a piece that combines poetry with comment on a political issue and shows the sort of comment that no-one would engage with if it appeared on the internet. And indeed feel free to click away now and scroll through the pages of comments that follow whatever news story is prominent right now.
The piece is Easter, 1916 by WB Yeats and is about the Easter Rising, which many have taken as the start point of the decades of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yeats was originally a supporter of the Republicans and had long been in love with Maude Gonne, the estranged wife of John MacBride. Countess Markievicz was a long-time friend, though he is not particularly nice about her at the start of the second stanza.
The point about the poem though is the way that it takes a hugely inflammatory topic (the justifiability of violence in pursuit of a cause) and rather than arguing a single point of view it reflects on a range of issues. Its conclusion, such as it is, is the prescient but hardly simplistic line "a terrible beauty is born."
One of the ways that Yeats "debates" the issues involved is through his use of imagery, particularly in the third stanza. Using the extraordinary power of connotations he causes us to reflect on the image of the stone in the stream. The stone is the vehicle of this image, the tenor being the notion of a band of single-minded revolutionaries living in the midst of a world of more nuanced opinions. The relationship between tenor and vehicle is not straightforward here though, and the grounds subtle and complex, so it is really not clear at the end where Yeats' sympathies lie.
All of which might sound, in today's internet-based world, like woolly, waffly pontification without focus and direction. Yet for me Easter 1916 gives more space and encouragement for thought on a range of issues from Irish Republicanism to jihadist terrorism than thousands of oneliner comment thread contributions. Read it yourself, and see if you agree:
Easter 1916
I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
W. B. Yeats
Friday, 4 October 2013
The best form of (neo-conservative) government is attack
The above was a phrase I came up with in a previous post, but it got me thinking. I watched some of the lovely David Cameron's speech to the Tory party conference, which took place at the same time as the Tea Party Republicans were engaged in the hamstringing of effective government in the USA. What I witnessed from both was a pugnaciousness that seems actually to underlie much of the attitude of today's neo-cons whether in opposition or in government.
The central message of the neo-cons appears to be that government of any sort is essentially destructive and counter-productive: the dead hand of the State weighing down the burgeoning energy of private sector enterprise. Markets still hold the solutions to all problems (including those that markets have created) and state control is the embodiment of all that is contemptible and wrong.
This is, incidentally, perhaps why the neo-cons enjoy electoral success: politicians are bad, inept, out of touch; government is (or appears from the outside to be) done by politicians; government is bad, inept, out of touch. QED. Vote for the ones who want to tear down government.
And tear down government is clearly what the Tories in the UK are setting out to do. In education Michael Gove has systematically set out to denigrate every element of the State education system, presenting his solution in the form of Free Schools, which are free from almost every aspect of government by any State body. This even applies to the provision of school places. What used to be seen as the central responsibility of the branches of government concerned with educating the nation's youth has now been removed from that control and "freed up" for provision by the private sector. Local government has no say whatever in the location of any new Free School, and virtually none over the provision of new places in Academies, but they have no finance to build schools themselves.
In Health, the current government seems almost to relish the constant flood of negative news stories about the NHS (hardly surprising, since they have been the origin of many of them). Their narrative, it is beginning to appear, is that the NHS is too big, too unwieldy, too uncaring, and essentially too governed to carry out its role effectively. The answer, it is becoming abundantly clear, is to develop health provision where the private sector and the profit motive are the guiding principles, rather than the pernicious and stultifying dead hand of government.
And of course as regards the economy this is the very central narrative. The financial problems the UK (and the rest of the world, presumably) are currently suffering are down to government spending. The solution: less government. Then we'll all be happy. This appears to sweep under the carpet the indisputable fact that the majority of the world's current economic woes were caused by the precipitous and virtually ungoverned rise in the size, power and recklessness of private sector entities like banks, hedge funds and derivative dealerships. It was precisely the lack of government oversight of the scale of the gambles in which such institutions were engaged that enabled the bubble to inflate so massively and then burst so cataclysmically.
There are huge advantages to this sort of narrative if you happen to be in government though. Time was that if something appalling happened in an area of public life (like the crisis in A&E care; like the decline in GCSE performance in schools or the looming school place crises; like the prolonged inability of the economy to show any sort of recovery) the minister involved would have to take responsibility, or at least endure long periods of anguished squirming. I used to feel sorry for such ministers sometimes, because clearly the problems they were facing had been long in the making, but them's the breaks: if you're the one in charge at the time, you take the responsibility when things go tits up.
Or so it used to be. Nowadays, government ministers seem to relish bad news almost more than their opposition shadows. They glory in it- trumpet it to the right wing tabloids. Because each piece of bad news is further proof that GOVERNMENT ISN'T WORKING and needs to have its monopolistic power (and funding) reduced. The role of those in government, in the UK at least, really seems to have developed into one of attacking rather than defending the areas for which they are responsible. And the populace, fed up with politicians of all parties and keen to see them brought down a peg or two, seem quite content to go along with it.
It is interesting, of course, to ponder a little on how this notion could come about. I believe that partly at least it is down to our use of the word "government" itself. There is an urban myth being peddled on facebook and elsewhere apparently that the etymology of the word reveals that it means "control the mind" (from Latin "gubernare"=to control and "mens, mentis"= mind). This is utter bollocks of course (the -ment suffix has nothing to do with the word for mind) but it reveals a strand of opinion of what government is and what governments do.
In fact, the word comes originally from the Ancient Greek κυβερνάω, meaning to steer or pilot a ship. Of course "steering" and "control" have similar meanings, but as ever it is the connotations that make the difference. "Control" (particularly as in "State control") implies a diminution of freedom and of the capacity of individuals to function effectively. "Steering," (as in "steering a steady course" or "steering through a difficult passage") implies almost the opposite. It is about enabling individuals to function effectively and happily, free from the dangers they might encounter were the vessel they were in unsteered.
But if governments begin to set their face against the process of government: to renounce their duty as helmsmen of the ship of State, then what?
The central message of the neo-cons appears to be that government of any sort is essentially destructive and counter-productive: the dead hand of the State weighing down the burgeoning energy of private sector enterprise. Markets still hold the solutions to all problems (including those that markets have created) and state control is the embodiment of all that is contemptible and wrong.
This is, incidentally, perhaps why the neo-cons enjoy electoral success: politicians are bad, inept, out of touch; government is (or appears from the outside to be) done by politicians; government is bad, inept, out of touch. QED. Vote for the ones who want to tear down government.
And tear down government is clearly what the Tories in the UK are setting out to do. In education Michael Gove has systematically set out to denigrate every element of the State education system, presenting his solution in the form of Free Schools, which are free from almost every aspect of government by any State body. This even applies to the provision of school places. What used to be seen as the central responsibility of the branches of government concerned with educating the nation's youth has now been removed from that control and "freed up" for provision by the private sector. Local government has no say whatever in the location of any new Free School, and virtually none over the provision of new places in Academies, but they have no finance to build schools themselves.
In Health, the current government seems almost to relish the constant flood of negative news stories about the NHS (hardly surprising, since they have been the origin of many of them). Their narrative, it is beginning to appear, is that the NHS is too big, too unwieldy, too uncaring, and essentially too governed to carry out its role effectively. The answer, it is becoming abundantly clear, is to develop health provision where the private sector and the profit motive are the guiding principles, rather than the pernicious and stultifying dead hand of government.
And of course as regards the economy this is the very central narrative. The financial problems the UK (and the rest of the world, presumably) are currently suffering are down to government spending. The solution: less government. Then we'll all be happy. This appears to sweep under the carpet the indisputable fact that the majority of the world's current economic woes were caused by the precipitous and virtually ungoverned rise in the size, power and recklessness of private sector entities like banks, hedge funds and derivative dealerships. It was precisely the lack of government oversight of the scale of the gambles in which such institutions were engaged that enabled the bubble to inflate so massively and then burst so cataclysmically.
There are huge advantages to this sort of narrative if you happen to be in government though. Time was that if something appalling happened in an area of public life (like the crisis in A&E care; like the decline in GCSE performance in schools or the looming school place crises; like the prolonged inability of the economy to show any sort of recovery) the minister involved would have to take responsibility, or at least endure long periods of anguished squirming. I used to feel sorry for such ministers sometimes, because clearly the problems they were facing had been long in the making, but them's the breaks: if you're the one in charge at the time, you take the responsibility when things go tits up.
Or so it used to be. Nowadays, government ministers seem to relish bad news almost more than their opposition shadows. They glory in it- trumpet it to the right wing tabloids. Because each piece of bad news is further proof that GOVERNMENT ISN'T WORKING and needs to have its monopolistic power (and funding) reduced. The role of those in government, in the UK at least, really seems to have developed into one of attacking rather than defending the areas for which they are responsible. And the populace, fed up with politicians of all parties and keen to see them brought down a peg or two, seem quite content to go along with it.
It is interesting, of course, to ponder a little on how this notion could come about. I believe that partly at least it is down to our use of the word "government" itself. There is an urban myth being peddled on facebook and elsewhere apparently that the etymology of the word reveals that it means "control the mind" (from Latin "gubernare"=to control and "mens, mentis"= mind). This is utter bollocks of course (the -ment suffix has nothing to do with the word for mind) but it reveals a strand of opinion of what government is and what governments do.
In fact, the word comes originally from the Ancient Greek κυβερνάω, meaning to steer or pilot a ship. Of course "steering" and "control" have similar meanings, but as ever it is the connotations that make the difference. "Control" (particularly as in "State control") implies a diminution of freedom and of the capacity of individuals to function effectively. "Steering," (as in "steering a steady course" or "steering through a difficult passage") implies almost the opposite. It is about enabling individuals to function effectively and happily, free from the dangers they might encounter were the vessel they were in unsteered.
But if governments begin to set their face against the process of government: to renounce their duty as helmsmen of the ship of State, then what?
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Radicalisation and the fifth column that threatens to destroy the USA from within
We have heard a lot about radicalisation (according to Wikipedia "a process by which an individual or group comes to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo") over recent weeks, particularly given the tabloids' strange, misogynist fixation with the "White Widow". Radicalisation is usually discussed in terms of muslims listening to "hate preachers" or accessing "terrorist material" on the internet. Radicalisation within the USA is not something that I have seen much discussion of, but I can reveal that in fact it is something that has been going on for decades, with vast amounts of money spent in a huge media campaign that has radicalised significant numbers of US citizens to a terrifying degree.
This radicalisation has not been without its consequences. It has led to countless suicide gun attacks, pernicious campaigns to undermine the rule of law, and most recently to determined efforts to destroy America's economic system and to reverse decisions made through the proper democratic process.
So who is behind this process of radicalisation? Hollywood commercial cinema, that's who. Virtually since its inception Hollywood commercial cinema has presented an image of American masculinity that has inexorably led to large numbers of Americans adopting "increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo."
Absurd, you say? With American commercial cinema about the most patriotically gung-ho of any media organisation in the world? Well, just look dispassionately at the evidence.
One of the dominant narratives of Hollywood blockbusters since the early days has been that of a lone hero fighting to uphold his individual version of "truth, justice and the American way" and/or protect his friends and/or family from the legion of dangers that threaten to overwhelm them. Whether he be the lone, white-Stetsoned cowboy in a lawless Western town, the maverick cop in a corrupt and inept police force, even the heroic rogue soldier who disobeys orders in pursuit of the greater good the underlying story is the same: truth, justice and the American way (in the movies at least) are protected by an individual's decisive actions, often in contravention of the stultifying, or even actively maleficent dead hand of the State.
The rule of Law in Hollywood blockbusters is almost always something to be distrusted, and even actively opposed. Lawyers are almost universally crooked, devious and obstructive. They use their legal casuistry to frustrate the true hero in his pursuit of true justice, which almost never derives from the courtroom or the legislative chamber. Large scale collective action of any sort is profoundly distrusted, symbolised in films such as Star Wars by the vast, faceless drone armies, or dismissed as irrelevant, as soft liberal hippies wave banners while the true hero takes on the bad guys through direct and bloody action.
The irony of course is how immensely far removed this image of Amercanism is from the actual lives of most Americans. Despite this powerful image of individual freedom and independence from State control, Americans appear to be as placid and easily manipulated as any citizenry on Earth. There has been no tradition of mass protest in most people's lifetime, high proportions of the populace are happy (proud, even) to display that symbol of the state, the US flag, and American children even salute that flag daily in a ceremony that, if it took place in North Korea, would be seen as state brainwashing on an unimaginable scale.
So here we have a paradox: a dominant media narrative pushing a radical (and frequently extremely violent) form of individual freedom in the context of a society that has accepted state control to an unprecedented degree. And these things cannot peacefully coexist. The essence of the Harry Callaghan/John McLane/Hans Solo character is that he decides which laws to obey and which to ignore. He distrusts anyone in a position of authority, and reserves the right to take violent and bloody action against anyone he deems to be frustrating his desire to implement his vision of "truth, justice and the American way." So whilst he may salute the flag, he does not believe in any of the institutions established in the name of that flag. So just how different is such a character from the many rogue gunmen who have taken arms (as they see it) against the faceless hordes who have sought to frustrate and deny them at every turn? What is there, in truth to separate a Hollywood blockbuster thriller hero from a high-school shooter?
The thing that Hollywood heros most particularly do not believe in is government. Government (in the movies) is fundamentally corrupt, out of touch, faceless and irrelevant to the real lives and concerns of the citizenry. What matters that it is democratically elected? Politicians are all on the take, and the sole aim of government seems (in the movies) to be to frustrate the right-thinking hero in his individualistic fight for freedom and justice (and the American way, indeed.)
And so, following this narrative, what does one do if the democratically elected government seeks to implement a law (Obama's healthcare reform) which has effectively been democratically endorsed through the presidential elections, but with which you do not personally agree? Well, it seems there is only one course open to the right-thinking all-American hero (like Ted Cruz) radicalised by decades of Hollywood brainwashing. Having attempted to paralyse the functions of government by talking non-stop for 21 hours, you then seek to bring the nation economically to its knees by denying its access to continuing funding.
If this sort of anti-democratic destructiveness was happening in any other country anguished media analysts would be looking for explanations for the extraordinary radicalisation of a portion of the nation's populace that has led to the election of, and apparent continued support for, people like Ted Cruz. Where did this radicalisation originate, they would be asking. Who is to blame? But this is America, and as I say, we have our explanation already.
Hollywood.
This radicalisation has not been without its consequences. It has led to countless suicide gun attacks, pernicious campaigns to undermine the rule of law, and most recently to determined efforts to destroy America's economic system and to reverse decisions made through the proper democratic process.
So who is behind this process of radicalisation? Hollywood commercial cinema, that's who. Virtually since its inception Hollywood commercial cinema has presented an image of American masculinity that has inexorably led to large numbers of Americans adopting "increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo."
Absurd, you say? With American commercial cinema about the most patriotically gung-ho of any media organisation in the world? Well, just look dispassionately at the evidence.
One of the dominant narratives of Hollywood blockbusters since the early days has been that of a lone hero fighting to uphold his individual version of "truth, justice and the American way" and/or protect his friends and/or family from the legion of dangers that threaten to overwhelm them. Whether he be the lone, white-Stetsoned cowboy in a lawless Western town, the maverick cop in a corrupt and inept police force, even the heroic rogue soldier who disobeys orders in pursuit of the greater good the underlying story is the same: truth, justice and the American way (in the movies at least) are protected by an individual's decisive actions, often in contravention of the stultifying, or even actively maleficent dead hand of the State.
The rule of Law in Hollywood blockbusters is almost always something to be distrusted, and even actively opposed. Lawyers are almost universally crooked, devious and obstructive. They use their legal casuistry to frustrate the true hero in his pursuit of true justice, which almost never derives from the courtroom or the legislative chamber. Large scale collective action of any sort is profoundly distrusted, symbolised in films such as Star Wars by the vast, faceless drone armies, or dismissed as irrelevant, as soft liberal hippies wave banners while the true hero takes on the bad guys through direct and bloody action.
The irony of course is how immensely far removed this image of Amercanism is from the actual lives of most Americans. Despite this powerful image of individual freedom and independence from State control, Americans appear to be as placid and easily manipulated as any citizenry on Earth. There has been no tradition of mass protest in most people's lifetime, high proportions of the populace are happy (proud, even) to display that symbol of the state, the US flag, and American children even salute that flag daily in a ceremony that, if it took place in North Korea, would be seen as state brainwashing on an unimaginable scale.
So here we have a paradox: a dominant media narrative pushing a radical (and frequently extremely violent) form of individual freedom in the context of a society that has accepted state control to an unprecedented degree. And these things cannot peacefully coexist. The essence of the Harry Callaghan/John McLane/Hans Solo character is that he decides which laws to obey and which to ignore. He distrusts anyone in a position of authority, and reserves the right to take violent and bloody action against anyone he deems to be frustrating his desire to implement his vision of "truth, justice and the American way." So whilst he may salute the flag, he does not believe in any of the institutions established in the name of that flag. So just how different is such a character from the many rogue gunmen who have taken arms (as they see it) against the faceless hordes who have sought to frustrate and deny them at every turn? What is there, in truth to separate a Hollywood blockbuster thriller hero from a high-school shooter?
The thing that Hollywood heros most particularly do not believe in is government. Government (in the movies) is fundamentally corrupt, out of touch, faceless and irrelevant to the real lives and concerns of the citizenry. What matters that it is democratically elected? Politicians are all on the take, and the sole aim of government seems (in the movies) to be to frustrate the right-thinking hero in his individualistic fight for freedom and justice (and the American way, indeed.)
And so, following this narrative, what does one do if the democratically elected government seeks to implement a law (Obama's healthcare reform) which has effectively been democratically endorsed through the presidential elections, but with which you do not personally agree? Well, it seems there is only one course open to the right-thinking all-American hero (like Ted Cruz) radicalised by decades of Hollywood brainwashing. Having attempted to paralyse the functions of government by talking non-stop for 21 hours, you then seek to bring the nation economically to its knees by denying its access to continuing funding.
If this sort of anti-democratic destructiveness was happening in any other country anguished media analysts would be looking for explanations for the extraordinary radicalisation of a portion of the nation's populace that has led to the election of, and apparent continued support for, people like Ted Cruz. Where did this radicalisation originate, they would be asking. Who is to blame? But this is America, and as I say, we have our explanation already.
Hollywood.
Sunday, 29 September 2013
What my favourite poets have to say about death
I am not a great reader of poetry, but there are poets I have studied and taught, and written about in this blog (here for instance) who seem able to use language to reveal profound truths about the world. So it is perhaps natural, as I have struggled to come to terms with the death of my wife, that I should consider what my three favourites, John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Wilfred Owen, have to say about death. They are my favourites on the basis of their unmatched skill in tapping the richness of the connotations of words, whether through imagery or through alliteration, assonance, rhyme and rhythm, but as I frequently used to explain to students it is impossible to separate style and content and in fact all three explore profound concepts about the nature of existence.
So what of death? Of the three, Owen was no doubt most closely acquainted with the realities of death, but it is remarkable in a sense how little he has to say on the topic. His subject, as he explains in the Preface to his poems is "War, and the Pity of War. The poetry is in the Pity." He is much concerned with the dead, writing with elegiac sadness in Anthem for Doomed Youth for instance of the countless thousands who "die as cattle" and with the process of dying, focusing with brutal clarity in poems such as the Sentry or Dulce et Decorum Est on its painful realities.
However it seems that death itself is too vast a concept for someone as thoughtful and perceptive as Owen to attempt to define or even evoke. When he does tackle the subject he seems always to tail off into questions and inconclusiveness and even unfinished sentences. In Asleep, after wondering what has happened to the soldier in death he concludes, "Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!" and the questioning at the end of Futility is profounder still: "O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/To break earth's sleep at all?"
In Strange Meeting Owen does tackle the subject head-on with a dreamlike evocation of a conversation in some strange pre-Christian vision of hell with a soldier whom he has killed. Yet here too he comes to no conclusions and ends on an unfinished line: "let us sleep now...". Perhaps Owen was more concerned with the horrors of life than the unknowable mysteries of death. In Spring Offensive, having described the many ways in which soldiers die, his thoughts in the end are with "The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,/ ... And crawling slowly back, have by degrees /Regained cool peaceful air in wonder"- namely the survivors- and again he ends with a question: "Why speak they not of comrades that went under?" Here, in asking the question he is perhaps answering it too: what in the end is there to say about death?
Owen ends Exposure with a description of the burial party retrieving the frozen corpses from no-mans-land. Here the half-rhyme of "eyes" and "ice", and the forcing together of the incongruous connotations of those two words combine with the rhythmic uncertainty of the short last line to leave a powerful statement of the inability of Owen to answer his own question:
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens."
As a devout Catholic, Gerard Manley Hopkins would be expected to have more answers on the subject of death than Wilfred Owen who, despite having initially wanted to become a priest does appear to have lost his faith over the course of the War. In most of Hopkins' poems though, death is not a subject he chooses to tackle. In his great poems like God's Grandeur and Hurrahing in Harvest he is so caught up in the magnificence and beauty of the world around him that death is far from his thoughts. However he had darker times too. In his Sonnets of Desolation Hopkins goes perhaps further than anything else I have read in exploring the darkness of despair and fear. His outcry in No worst, there is none is terrifying to anyone who recognises the experience he describes:
"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there."
On the face of it, though, his subject in these sonnets is the fear not of death but of loss of faith. Indeed he ends "No worst, there is none" with what he calls "a comfort serves in a whirlwind," namely that: "All life death does end and each day dies with sleep." Yet I cannot believe that those lines should be taken entirely at face value. Though he claims to see death as a "comfort" I challenge anyone to feel comforted by that last line. And to pursue his cliff image further, when clinging to the face of a precipitous cliff it is death one fears, not loss of faith. It is perhaps impertinent to psychoanalyse Hopkins but it seems to me that, despite what he might overtly say, his crisis of faith in the Sonnets of Desolation was brought about by his inability to find any comfort in the idea of death.
So what of Keats? Like Owen, Keats was acquainted with death He had nursed his mother and his brother Tom through the lingering "white death" of tuberculosis, only to succumb to the disease himself. However like Hopkins, much of his poetry appears inspired by excitement and joy. Some of this, as with Hopkins, is joy in the beauty of nature but Keats also experiences something like exhilaration in the experience of literature itself. He states that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," and nowhere is this clearer than in On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, where he describes the experience of coming across a new translation:
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
and for much of his writing Keats loses himself in magnificent explorations of ancient myths and the creation of worlds of the imagination.
Of course the knowledge of death is always there, and there is a wistfulness in much of Keats' greatest poetry, whether in the mention of the "Gathering swallows [that] twitter in the skies" at the end of Ode to Autumn or the beautifully evocative description of Madeleine's candle in Eve of St Agnes: "Out went the taper as she hurried in;/Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died." Sometimes the idea of death is closer to the surface. Ode on a Grecian Urn, from which the "Beauty is truth" quotation comes, is ostensibly a poem celebrating the eternal constancy of great art, but there is an acute awareness of human mortality too, in lines such as "a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,/A burning forehead, and a parching tongue," and though the poem concludes (of the urn) that "When old age shall this generation waste,/Thou shalt remain," Keats seems at least as concerned with the death of those of us who see the object now as with the object's own eternal life. As a work of art it is described as "Cold Pastoral," and Keats says of the town pictured on on its reverse "thy streets for evermore/Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell/Why thou art desolate, can e'er return."
There are some poems though in which Keats explicitly addresses the idea of death and his feelings about it. The best known of these is perhaps Ode to a Nightingale, which is full of references to death. He remembers Tom's deaths in the line "Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies" and in describing the flowers amongst which he lies consciously evokes their funereal significance: "I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,/Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,/But, in embalmed darkness...". He even admits that he has "been half in love with easeful Death." Yet there is a real ambivalence here too. The eponymous nightingale "was not born for death," and in the end the echo of the funeral service returns but its "plaintive anthem fades/ Past the near meadows, over the still stream,/Up the hill-side," losing itself in the returning awareness of the reality and beauty of the poet's actual surroundings. Keats ends the poem with a sense of questioning that echoes Owen: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?"
Another Keats poem, Ode on Melancholy is not so much about death itself as about his feelings on the subject, and for me it is one of his most remarkable. The first stanza, even more than the beginning of Nightingale, contemplates suicide and has many of the same references to the dark glamours of the idea. However the stanza begins "No, no," and Keats emphatically rejects suicide as an option, but for a fascinating reason. The problem, he feels, is that "shade to shade will come too drowsily,/And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul," and it is precisely that "wakeful anguish" that the poem goes on to celebrate. He describes melancholy in as graphic and moving a way as I have ever come across, rooting it in a series of profoundly physical experiences:
"But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;"
and concludes that Melancholy (whom he personifies as a mythical goddess) is in the end inseparably close to Beauty, Joy, Pleasure and even Delight. He counsels sufferers to embrace Melancholy in the fullness of its physical force with a truly sensual image, saying of Melancholy's shrine that it is "seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue/ Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine."
So Owen, it seems, holds off any conclusive statement about death because the topic is too overwhelmingly rooted in the horror of the life he saw around him. Hopkins was perhaps too frightened, not so much of death itself as of the fact that he feared death, despite his faith. Keats saw death in everything around him and sought to come to an accommodation with it, relishing even the overwhelming physicality of melancholy.
So what of Shakespeare (well, you didn't think I'd write a blog entry like this without mentioning Shakespeare, did you)? Shakespeare certainly does not shy away from the topic, with large numbers of onstage deaths in many of his plays (10 in King Lear alone, plus the blinding of Gloucester). There are also a number of great speeches about death, so surely it ought to be possible to sum up Shakespeare's feelings on the subject.
Well, no. For a start, many of those great speeches turn out not actually to be about death. Macbeth's great "Tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy is more about the futility of life than about death. It is prompted by Macbeth hearing about the death of his wife, but all he has to say on that subject is, "She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word." Antony's famous "Friends, Romans, countrymen," speech in Julius Caesar, for all its powerful evocation of Caesar's death, is in essence a piece of demagogic rabble-rousing and nothing to do with death at all.
So what of Mark Anthony's dying speech then? On the face of it this is a much more straightforward peroration on the nature of death:
"The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman,—a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going;
I can no more."
but on closer examination the speech is much more about Anthony's anxieties about how he will be remembered. This is the character, after all, who a few scenes previously had confessed that "I am Anthony, yet cannot hold this visible shape," and at the moment of his death he makes a last desperate attempt to reassert his sense of who he is.
King Lear, despite the nihilistic greatness of the line "Never, never, never, never, never." faces death by attempting to deny its existence. He dies holding Cordelia in his arms, and though his daughter is clearly dead he asks for her collar to be loosened. His last words are " Do you see this? Look on her! look! her lips! /Look there, look there!" and as Macbeth faces his own certain death it is the question of bravery in battle that seems to concern him more than anything else: "Lay on, Macduff,/And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"
As in so many areas, it is Hamlet that has the most interesting things to say about death. In fact it would seem reasonable to suggest that his famous "To be or not to be" speech can be taken as Shakespeare's definitive pronouncement about death. The speech is full of grandly resonant statements about "The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/No traveller returns," contrasting "The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to" with the "sleep" and the "quietus" that is death, though wondering also "what dreams may come" in that "sleep of death."
The speech is a great one, needless to say, and summarises a lot of how we cogitate over the nature of death. However it should not be forgotten that this speech comes near the start of the play, and part of the brilliance of Shakespeare is that his characters always grow and develop, so nothing from the start of any play should be seen as a character's (let alone the author's) definitive statement on the subject. At the start of the play, Hamlet is quite distanced from death. There is no suggestion that he has ever witnessed it himself, and though he is moved by his father's death it seems that it is the rather outré and Gothic descriptions from his father's ghost that get through to him. He is a student, and clearly given to grand philosophical statements. Almost his first speech is to emphasise just how much more authentic and important his grief is than anyone else's:
"Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."
To misquote Hamlet himself, "the gentleman doth protest too much methinks ."
Over the course of the play though, Hamlet is forced to confront death, whether of those he has killed, of his fiancee Ophelia, of his mother or of himself. So one can presume that by the end of the play so thoughtful and eloquent a character must surely have something significant to say about death: something more profound and meaningful even than his "To be, or not to be" speech. There is a strong sense also that Shakespeare used Hamlet to voice ideas and thoughts that were in essence his own, so by the end of the play maybe we can hear what Shakespeare actually had to say about death.
So what are Hamlet's last words? How does he (and through him Shakespeare) sum up humankind's attitude to death? Well, we have to wait until (in an echo of Antony) he has ensured that Horatio will protect his reputation once he has gone. We also have to wait until he has, rather bizarrely, pronounced Fortinbras as his successor, but finally comes Hamlet's great statement:
"The rest is silence."
So what of death? Of the three, Owen was no doubt most closely acquainted with the realities of death, but it is remarkable in a sense how little he has to say on the topic. His subject, as he explains in the Preface to his poems is "War, and the Pity of War. The poetry is in the Pity." He is much concerned with the dead, writing with elegiac sadness in Anthem for Doomed Youth for instance of the countless thousands who "die as cattle" and with the process of dying, focusing with brutal clarity in poems such as the Sentry or Dulce et Decorum Est on its painful realities.
However it seems that death itself is too vast a concept for someone as thoughtful and perceptive as Owen to attempt to define or even evoke. When he does tackle the subject he seems always to tail off into questions and inconclusiveness and even unfinished sentences. In Asleep, after wondering what has happened to the soldier in death he concludes, "Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!" and the questioning at the end of Futility is profounder still: "O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/To break earth's sleep at all?"
In Strange Meeting Owen does tackle the subject head-on with a dreamlike evocation of a conversation in some strange pre-Christian vision of hell with a soldier whom he has killed. Yet here too he comes to no conclusions and ends on an unfinished line: "let us sleep now...". Perhaps Owen was more concerned with the horrors of life than the unknowable mysteries of death. In Spring Offensive, having described the many ways in which soldiers die, his thoughts in the end are with "The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,/ ... And crawling slowly back, have by degrees /Regained cool peaceful air in wonder"- namely the survivors- and again he ends with a question: "Why speak they not of comrades that went under?" Here, in asking the question he is perhaps answering it too: what in the end is there to say about death?
Owen ends Exposure with a description of the burial party retrieving the frozen corpses from no-mans-land. Here the half-rhyme of "eyes" and "ice", and the forcing together of the incongruous connotations of those two words combine with the rhythmic uncertainty of the short last line to leave a powerful statement of the inability of Owen to answer his own question:
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens."
As a devout Catholic, Gerard Manley Hopkins would be expected to have more answers on the subject of death than Wilfred Owen who, despite having initially wanted to become a priest does appear to have lost his faith over the course of the War. In most of Hopkins' poems though, death is not a subject he chooses to tackle. In his great poems like God's Grandeur and Hurrahing in Harvest he is so caught up in the magnificence and beauty of the world around him that death is far from his thoughts. However he had darker times too. In his Sonnets of Desolation Hopkins goes perhaps further than anything else I have read in exploring the darkness of despair and fear. His outcry in No worst, there is none is terrifying to anyone who recognises the experience he describes:
"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there."
On the face of it, though, his subject in these sonnets is the fear not of death but of loss of faith. Indeed he ends "No worst, there is none" with what he calls "a comfort serves in a whirlwind," namely that: "All life death does end and each day dies with sleep." Yet I cannot believe that those lines should be taken entirely at face value. Though he claims to see death as a "comfort" I challenge anyone to feel comforted by that last line. And to pursue his cliff image further, when clinging to the face of a precipitous cliff it is death one fears, not loss of faith. It is perhaps impertinent to psychoanalyse Hopkins but it seems to me that, despite what he might overtly say, his crisis of faith in the Sonnets of Desolation was brought about by his inability to find any comfort in the idea of death.
So what of Keats? Like Owen, Keats was acquainted with death He had nursed his mother and his brother Tom through the lingering "white death" of tuberculosis, only to succumb to the disease himself. However like Hopkins, much of his poetry appears inspired by excitement and joy. Some of this, as with Hopkins, is joy in the beauty of nature but Keats also experiences something like exhilaration in the experience of literature itself. He states that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," and nowhere is this clearer than in On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, where he describes the experience of coming across a new translation:
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
and for much of his writing Keats loses himself in magnificent explorations of ancient myths and the creation of worlds of the imagination.
Of course the knowledge of death is always there, and there is a wistfulness in much of Keats' greatest poetry, whether in the mention of the "Gathering swallows [that] twitter in the skies" at the end of Ode to Autumn or the beautifully evocative description of Madeleine's candle in Eve of St Agnes: "Out went the taper as she hurried in;/Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died." Sometimes the idea of death is closer to the surface. Ode on a Grecian Urn, from which the "Beauty is truth" quotation comes, is ostensibly a poem celebrating the eternal constancy of great art, but there is an acute awareness of human mortality too, in lines such as "a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,/A burning forehead, and a parching tongue," and though the poem concludes (of the urn) that "When old age shall this generation waste,/Thou shalt remain," Keats seems at least as concerned with the death of those of us who see the object now as with the object's own eternal life. As a work of art it is described as "Cold Pastoral," and Keats says of the town pictured on on its reverse "thy streets for evermore/Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell/Why thou art desolate, can e'er return."
There are some poems though in which Keats explicitly addresses the idea of death and his feelings about it. The best known of these is perhaps Ode to a Nightingale, which is full of references to death. He remembers Tom's deaths in the line "Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies" and in describing the flowers amongst which he lies consciously evokes their funereal significance: "I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,/Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,/But, in embalmed darkness...". He even admits that he has "been half in love with easeful Death." Yet there is a real ambivalence here too. The eponymous nightingale "was not born for death," and in the end the echo of the funeral service returns but its "plaintive anthem fades/ Past the near meadows, over the still stream,/Up the hill-side," losing itself in the returning awareness of the reality and beauty of the poet's actual surroundings. Keats ends the poem with a sense of questioning that echoes Owen: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?"
Another Keats poem, Ode on Melancholy is not so much about death itself as about his feelings on the subject, and for me it is one of his most remarkable. The first stanza, even more than the beginning of Nightingale, contemplates suicide and has many of the same references to the dark glamours of the idea. However the stanza begins "No, no," and Keats emphatically rejects suicide as an option, but for a fascinating reason. The problem, he feels, is that "shade to shade will come too drowsily,/And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul," and it is precisely that "wakeful anguish" that the poem goes on to celebrate. He describes melancholy in as graphic and moving a way as I have ever come across, rooting it in a series of profoundly physical experiences:
"But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;"
and concludes that Melancholy (whom he personifies as a mythical goddess) is in the end inseparably close to Beauty, Joy, Pleasure and even Delight. He counsels sufferers to embrace Melancholy in the fullness of its physical force with a truly sensual image, saying of Melancholy's shrine that it is "seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue/ Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine."
So Owen, it seems, holds off any conclusive statement about death because the topic is too overwhelmingly rooted in the horror of the life he saw around him. Hopkins was perhaps too frightened, not so much of death itself as of the fact that he feared death, despite his faith. Keats saw death in everything around him and sought to come to an accommodation with it, relishing even the overwhelming physicality of melancholy.
So what of Shakespeare (well, you didn't think I'd write a blog entry like this without mentioning Shakespeare, did you)? Shakespeare certainly does not shy away from the topic, with large numbers of onstage deaths in many of his plays (10 in King Lear alone, plus the blinding of Gloucester). There are also a number of great speeches about death, so surely it ought to be possible to sum up Shakespeare's feelings on the subject.
Well, no. For a start, many of those great speeches turn out not actually to be about death. Macbeth's great "Tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy is more about the futility of life than about death. It is prompted by Macbeth hearing about the death of his wife, but all he has to say on that subject is, "She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word." Antony's famous "Friends, Romans, countrymen," speech in Julius Caesar, for all its powerful evocation of Caesar's death, is in essence a piece of demagogic rabble-rousing and nothing to do with death at all.
So what of Mark Anthony's dying speech then? On the face of it this is a much more straightforward peroration on the nature of death:
"The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman,—a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going;
I can no more."
but on closer examination the speech is much more about Anthony's anxieties about how he will be remembered. This is the character, after all, who a few scenes previously had confessed that "I am Anthony, yet cannot hold this visible shape," and at the moment of his death he makes a last desperate attempt to reassert his sense of who he is.
King Lear, despite the nihilistic greatness of the line "Never, never, never, never, never." faces death by attempting to deny its existence. He dies holding Cordelia in his arms, and though his daughter is clearly dead he asks for her collar to be loosened. His last words are " Do you see this? Look on her! look! her lips! /Look there, look there!" and as Macbeth faces his own certain death it is the question of bravery in battle that seems to concern him more than anything else: "Lay on, Macduff,/And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"
As in so many areas, it is Hamlet that has the most interesting things to say about death. In fact it would seem reasonable to suggest that his famous "To be or not to be" speech can be taken as Shakespeare's definitive pronouncement about death. The speech is full of grandly resonant statements about "The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/No traveller returns," contrasting "The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to" with the "sleep" and the "quietus" that is death, though wondering also "what dreams may come" in that "sleep of death."
The speech is a great one, needless to say, and summarises a lot of how we cogitate over the nature of death. However it should not be forgotten that this speech comes near the start of the play, and part of the brilliance of Shakespeare is that his characters always grow and develop, so nothing from the start of any play should be seen as a character's (let alone the author's) definitive statement on the subject. At the start of the play, Hamlet is quite distanced from death. There is no suggestion that he has ever witnessed it himself, and though he is moved by his father's death it seems that it is the rather outré and Gothic descriptions from his father's ghost that get through to him. He is a student, and clearly given to grand philosophical statements. Almost his first speech is to emphasise just how much more authentic and important his grief is than anyone else's:
"Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."
To misquote Hamlet himself, "the gentleman doth protest too much methinks ."
Over the course of the play though, Hamlet is forced to confront death, whether of those he has killed, of his fiancee Ophelia, of his mother or of himself. So one can presume that by the end of the play so thoughtful and eloquent a character must surely have something significant to say about death: something more profound and meaningful even than his "To be, or not to be" speech. There is a strong sense also that Shakespeare used Hamlet to voice ideas and thoughts that were in essence his own, so by the end of the play maybe we can hear what Shakespeare actually had to say about death.
So what are Hamlet's last words? How does he (and through him Shakespeare) sum up humankind's attitude to death? Well, we have to wait until (in an echo of Antony) he has ensured that Horatio will protect his reputation once he has gone. We also have to wait until he has, rather bizarrely, pronounced Fortinbras as his successor, but finally comes Hamlet's great statement:
"The rest is silence."
Sunday, 15 September 2013
This scepter'd isle
It has been a funny few weeks for Britain's international reputation. We have had Vladimir Putin calling Britain "a little island no-one listens to," Jose Manuel Barroso wondering aloud if "UKIP ... will be the first force in British elections" and the UN special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik saying (of the effect of the withdrawal of the spare room subsidy) "I was very shocked to hear how people really feel abused in their human rights by this decision." As if that wasn't enough, following Grant Schapps' extraordinarily petulant response to Ms Rolnik's report she listed all of the other countries (Croatia, Algeria, Maldives, Argentina, United States, Israel, Rwanda, Palestine, Kazakhstan and Indonesia) with which she is working on housing before stating that in none of these did she experience the same level of hostility and aggressiveness from the government.
So why the chorus of international voices attacking and belittling the UK, and does it matter? Well, to answer the first question, the government is clearly of the view that these attacks are demonstrable evidence that Johnny Foreigner simply doesn't know what he (or still worse, in the case of "that Brazilian woman", she) is talking about.
Which attitude of course reveals the other reason. You see the inner circle of the Tory government has developed its own new and unique approach to government that appears thus far to work domestically but does not go down too well overseas. By "inner circle" I mean the small group of Eton/Bullingdon Cameroninas (with little Mikey Gove trying to outdo everyone else in a desperate attempt to be included) who have taken high-handed arrogant bullying to previously unseen heights.
Their approach to government is simple:
So why the chorus of international voices attacking and belittling the UK, and does it matter? Well, to answer the first question, the government is clearly of the view that these attacks are demonstrable evidence that Johnny Foreigner simply doesn't know what he (or still worse, in the case of "that Brazilian woman", she) is talking about.
Which attitude of course reveals the other reason. You see the inner circle of the Tory government has developed its own new and unique approach to government that appears thus far to work domestically but does not go down too well overseas. By "inner circle" I mean the small group of Eton/Bullingdon Cameroninas (with little Mikey Gove trying to outdo everyone else in a desperate attempt to be included) who have taken high-handed arrogant bullying to previously unseen heights.
Their approach to government is simple:
- First, come up with an idea. This should on no account derive from academic research of any kind but should have been dreamt up in a claret-fuelled evening at the Club (10 Downing Street).
- Second, announce its implementation. There is no need to worry at this stage about any of the tedious details of how (or indeed why) it is to be implemented. It is your idea, and so therefore by definition good.
- Third, in the event of any criticism of the idea (especially from academics, human rights campaigners, foreigners or Liberal Democrats) resort to vicious ad hominem attacks to question said weirdos' right to criticise ANYTHING.
- Fourth, have a quick word with the tabloids to ensure that they continue such attacks ad nauseam for several days.
- Fifth, make fun of Ed Milliband.
The fifth stage is not strictly essential, but is enjoyable.
It's about attack not just being the best form of defence, but the best form of government too. The favoured tools in this approach are of course the despicable (but conveniently deniable) Twitter accounts like @ToryEducation and @ToryTreasury, but the approach is pretty widespread across all platforms. Try Googling "Gove attacks" and you will see what I mean. I gave up looking after the first five pages of results. The folder that the Prime Minister takes to the dispatch box for PMQs used traditionally to contain pages of facts and statistics to be used to defend the government's record: nowadays it seems to consist solely of oneliners about Ed Milliband.
Now, as I said, this approach seems unaccountably to be working so far domestically. Like the school bullies the Cameronians are, no-one seems keen to stand up to them. But as with school bullies in the real world, once they leave the school gates they begin to look frankly pathetic. Dismissing a UN special rapporteur as "that Brazilian woman" (or "loony Brazilian leftie", as one Tory MP put it), lecturing the international community about their failure to act on Syria or telling any academic who criticises their policies that they are "misguided" (or worse) is not likely to impress the international community. It's not that I think I will ever agree with Vladimir Putin on anything of substance, but he probably put into words what a lot of people in the international community are beginning to think: Britain is becoming a small island that no-one listens to.
And so to the second part of the question: does it matter?
Not a jot, is what I think. It's high time that Britain suffered some international humiliation and learned an appropriate level of international humility. This country has long boasted of "punching above its weight" diplomatically speaking and of "having a place at the top table." The trouble is that punching above your weight is a sure means of getting badly hurt, and the top table is never the most relaxing or pleasant place to sit at a formal dinner. It was punching above our weight militarily and clinging to our place at the top table that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. It was attempting the same in the financial world that made us the epicentre of the financial crises of the last decade. So if the childishly arrogant, schoolyard bully behaviour of the Cameronians loses us that place and forces us into an appropriately lower weight division, then three cheers from me.
Shakespeare was a great writer and coined phrases that resonate down the centuries, but he cannot be held responsible for misreadings of his work. The fabled quotation from Richard II from which this post takes its title lingers deep down in many people's consciousness and has I think been one of the sources for the abiding belief that that place at the top table is ours by right:
"This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."
But as so often with Shakespeare, people take the speech out of context, and even forget that this is one of Shakespeare's characters speaking, rather than Shakespeare himself. The flavour of the speech in context is both nostalgic and bitter. John of Gaunt is close to death, and is bemoaning the disappearance of a Britain that was great at some time in the past. He goes on to say that the country "Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,/Like to a tenement or pelting farm."
So even back then, half a millennium ago, Shakespeare was commenting on the way we try to hark back to a Great Britain of the past. So maybe finally it is time to give it up. Let's stop pretending. The Cameronians are doing their best to make Britain the laughing stock of the world and good luck to them. The wine might not be as good when you leave the top table but the company is better.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
The language of war
One of the abiding mysteries of the ongoing Syrian chemical weapons issue is why it is that the US and UK governments apparently got so exercised over the deaths of a few hundred victims of an apparent chemical gas attack in Damascus that Cameron and Obama were prepared to risk (and in Cameron's case suffer) political humiliation by threatening military intervention. What made those few hundred deaths so different from the estimated 100,000 that preceded them?
I cannot pretend to have an answer to that question but it is interesting to look at the issue at the level of language (it is what this blog is supposed to be about after all). The most obvious phenomenon of course is the use of extreme language to describe the attacks: "horror", "moral obscenity", "outrage" etc. but that sort of thing is hardly surprising, and much of this language was used post hoc in an attempt to whip up international outrage to justify intervention.
What I think is more interesting is the language that we have all quite naturally come to use to differentiate chemical or biological weapons from the nice friendly high explosive kind. The former are, for instance, described as "weapons of mass destruction," despite the fact that their main attraction to unscrupulous dictators is that they actually cause very little destruction indeed, simply removing the inconvenient people from a landscape that is otherwise left untouched. Explosive weapons, by contrast, are universally defined as "conventional," and therefore presumably uncontentious and socially acceptable, if perhaps a tad passé for the really hip military commander.
What is more, while the use of chemical weapons is usually described as "indiscriminate", the use of conventional weapons (particularly when carried by the maybe-not-that-conventional-really drones) is generally "clinical," "focussed," or even "surgical." This carries through to the nouns used. The use of chemical weapons is almost invariably described as an "attack", whilst the use of explosives (when carried by drones, cruise missiles or laser-targeted bombs) is usually a "strike."
On the face of it, these two words look similar, but in fact the difference between them is profound. As I have argued in a number of earlier posts about poetry (here or here for instance) it is the connotations of words that give them their power and the connotations of "attack" and "strike" are quite different. "Attack" has a fairly straightforward set of connotations in both its verb and its noun form. An attack can be violent, unprovoked, vicious, frenzied or bitter. However you look at it, the word has connotations of an animalistic loss of control and the suspension of careful judgment and even of morality.
"Strike" is much more nuanced. For a start, its verb form is now seen as archaic and is rarely used to mean anything close to "attack" (when did you last strike someone?) Oddly, it does seem to have survived in the almost unconnected sense of "striking a pose." In its noun form it has a slightly wider range of meanings than "attack", with some straying well away from the sense of violence. One could argue that a labour strike is almost the antithesis of violence as it involves the suspension of physical activity.
It is also interesting to look at what adjectives can pair with the noun form of "strike." A strike can be preemptive and decisive, as well as the previously mentioned attributes, "clinical," "surgical" and "focussed." What is clear is that the attributes of "strike" and "attack" cannot be interchanged easily. An attack cannot be clinical any more than a strike can be frenzied, or even vicious. The word "strike," it seems, carries with it connotations of careful, analytical precision that are a world away from the connotations of the word "attack."
So there you go. Chemical weapons evoke "horror" and "moral outrage" because their use involves an "attack." Explosive weapons on the other hand are "conventional" and therefore by implication morally acceptable, and their use takes the form not of an "attack" but of a much more rational and carefully thought through "strike."
I am sure that was of enormous comfort to the untold thousands killed by explosive weapons, not just in Syria but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Yemen and wherever else.
I cannot pretend to have an answer to that question but it is interesting to look at the issue at the level of language (it is what this blog is supposed to be about after all). The most obvious phenomenon of course is the use of extreme language to describe the attacks: "horror", "moral obscenity", "outrage" etc. but that sort of thing is hardly surprising, and much of this language was used post hoc in an attempt to whip up international outrage to justify intervention.
What I think is more interesting is the language that we have all quite naturally come to use to differentiate chemical or biological weapons from the nice friendly high explosive kind. The former are, for instance, described as "weapons of mass destruction," despite the fact that their main attraction to unscrupulous dictators is that they actually cause very little destruction indeed, simply removing the inconvenient people from a landscape that is otherwise left untouched. Explosive weapons, by contrast, are universally defined as "conventional," and therefore presumably uncontentious and socially acceptable, if perhaps a tad passé for the really hip military commander.
What is more, while the use of chemical weapons is usually described as "indiscriminate", the use of conventional weapons (particularly when carried by the maybe-not-that-conventional-really drones) is generally "clinical," "focussed," or even "surgical." This carries through to the nouns used. The use of chemical weapons is almost invariably described as an "attack", whilst the use of explosives (when carried by drones, cruise missiles or laser-targeted bombs) is usually a "strike."
On the face of it, these two words look similar, but in fact the difference between them is profound. As I have argued in a number of earlier posts about poetry (here or here for instance) it is the connotations of words that give them their power and the connotations of "attack" and "strike" are quite different. "Attack" has a fairly straightforward set of connotations in both its verb and its noun form. An attack can be violent, unprovoked, vicious, frenzied or bitter. However you look at it, the word has connotations of an animalistic loss of control and the suspension of careful judgment and even of morality.
"Strike" is much more nuanced. For a start, its verb form is now seen as archaic and is rarely used to mean anything close to "attack" (when did you last strike someone?) Oddly, it does seem to have survived in the almost unconnected sense of "striking a pose." In its noun form it has a slightly wider range of meanings than "attack", with some straying well away from the sense of violence. One could argue that a labour strike is almost the antithesis of violence as it involves the suspension of physical activity.
It is also interesting to look at what adjectives can pair with the noun form of "strike." A strike can be preemptive and decisive, as well as the previously mentioned attributes, "clinical," "surgical" and "focussed." What is clear is that the attributes of "strike" and "attack" cannot be interchanged easily. An attack cannot be clinical any more than a strike can be frenzied, or even vicious. The word "strike," it seems, carries with it connotations of careful, analytical precision that are a world away from the connotations of the word "attack."
So there you go. Chemical weapons evoke "horror" and "moral outrage" because their use involves an "attack." Explosive weapons on the other hand are "conventional" and therefore by implication morally acceptable, and their use takes the form not of an "attack" but of a much more rational and carefully thought through "strike."
I am sure that was of enormous comfort to the untold thousands killed by explosive weapons, not just in Syria but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Yemen and wherever else.
Sunday, 8 September 2013
The mystery of the Tory party's continuing (relative) lack of unpopularity.
It is a truism (but no less true for that) that the mainstream UK political parties are now so indistinguishable ideologically that all that sets them apart is a certain flavour, mostly derived from historical associations, and the perception of their level of (in)competence. This phenomenon of ideological convergence has been blamed on a lack of political nerve and/or commitment to any sort of vision but it could as easily (and more charitably) be considered as an outcome of the workings of democracy in the modern age. Politicians (one could argue) have evolved from patrician leaders of the common herd to representatives of the broadly-held views of the populace they serve. Which may or may not be a bad thing- given that any Prime Minister is highly unlikely to share precisely my (or your) set of beliefs and principles, is it better that he or she drives through their own firmly held vision, even in the face of public disquiet, or that they shift and turn with every new opinion poll or focus group, catering to the lowest common denominator of public opinion? In other words, which is worse: a Thatcher or a Cameron?
However, interesting as that question is, it is not the central point of this entry. Let us take as a given the truism with which I started this post. Surely then, the current coalition government (and in particular the Tory party) should be at the very rock bottom of public opinion and Labour should be riding high, electorally speaking, faute de mieux, if for no other reason. Because if what sets political parties apart is a perception of their level of competence then surely, SURELY, public perception of the current government should be as low as it is possible to get. Or lower.
Forget for a moment any opinions on the morality, fairness or consistency of their policies and just look at the degree of competence with which they have been and are being delivered. And look away, because it is not an edifying sight. Pick any area of government you want really:
Well you see, to imagine that that is how the general public is thinking at present would be to misunderstand one of the strange quirks of the way anger works. You see, a person's anger is always at its bitterest, most self-righteous and longest lasting when they know, deep down, that they are in the wrong. We have all seen it in people we know, I am sure. The more honest of us will have recognised it in ourselves. And we certainly know that, as Jane Austen put it, "Angry people are not always wise."
So how is this relevant to public attitudes towards the Labour party? Well it seems to me that almost everything the public is angriest with Labour has its roots in the opinions, attitudes and desires of that same public. Iraq? Yes, there were some who spoke out against the war at the time, but there were plenty others who harked back to the 'glory' of that other recent bloody adventure, the Falklands. And then watched the 'shock and awe' of the missile strikes on their brand new flatscreen TVs as if this was a level in Call of Duty they hadn't reached yet. The economy? So, how many of the general public fulminated against the cheap and readily-available credit, the stratospheric rises in the value of their houses and the general perception that the UK was leading the world in financial wizardry? Even immigration- people may have grumbled and bitched about all the 'foreigners' but how many complained about the economic boom fuelled by the rock-bottom wages and high skill levels of those same 'foreigners.' And how many refused to employ highly qualified, careful and polite Polish builders for half the cost (cash in hand) of their surly UK equivalents?
So, we reaped the benefit of Labour policies and enjoyed the good times while they lasted. And it's not just the Tories who wouldn't have done it any differently. The general public wouldn't have WANTED it any different. The Bank of England and Government are supposed to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going, but can you imagine what would have happened if the Labour government had tried?
So really, when the general public turned in anger on Labour that anger was fuelled by the fact of their own culpbability in everything that Labour got wrong. And, as a I said, that is the sort of anger that is the hardest to let go of and that leads to the most irrational behaviour.
Like failing to turn on the Tories and blame them for their own incompetence, for instance.
However, interesting as that question is, it is not the central point of this entry. Let us take as a given the truism with which I started this post. Surely then, the current coalition government (and in particular the Tory party) should be at the very rock bottom of public opinion and Labour should be riding high, electorally speaking, faute de mieux, if for no other reason. Because if what sets political parties apart is a perception of their level of competence then surely, SURELY, public perception of the current government should be as low as it is possible to get. Or lower.
Forget for a moment any opinions on the morality, fairness or consistency of their policies and just look at the degree of competence with which they have been and are being delivered. And look away, because it is not an edifying sight. Pick any area of government you want really:
- The economy? Well, there's the omnishambles budget; the recession that was deeper and longer and the recovery slower and weaker than any in history; the constant downward revisions of projected growth; the utter failure to meet targets for reducing the deficit. Shall I go on?
- Education? Don't get me started about the fiascos around curriculum and exams. Over breakfast Gove chucks out a mad policy idea, saying it'll be implemented by Christmas and by teatime he has withdrawn it. No, look instead at the core responsibility of a Secretary of State for Education: ensuring adequate numbers of school places. No need to look at the reason (the wrongheaded, ideological commitment to untried, disruptive and wasteful Free Schools), the fact is that Gove has failed massively in this core area of competence.
- Health? Again, forget any opinions on the ideological rightness or otherwise of the government's 'reforms' and look at competence. Even getting rid of the shambolically incompetent and out-of-touch Lansley hasn't improved that: after the disaster of the 111 implementation Jeremy Hunt now seems happy to announce that A and E departments will be unable to cope this winter.
- Welfare? Ian Duncan Smith. Universal Credit. Need I say more?
- Foreign policy (e.g. Syria)? How could anyone describe as anything but mind-bogglingly incompetent David Cameron's actions over the Syria vote? Having allegedly needled Obama for weeks to put his foot down over Syria, Cameron then decides to 'make a stand' over chemical weapons just as weapons inspectors are about to start their inspection. He recalls parliament with no clear explanation as to why suddenly everything has to be done in such a rush, and duly loses a key vote that makes the UK a laughing-stock, then proceeds to lecture other countries on the need for them to take action.
- Even immigration for God's sake! The area over which the Tories have obsessed for decades and, one would imagine, the area they care most about getting right. Except that, despite implementing a number of policies and tactics in the face of opposition from big business, education institutions and civil rights campaigners, they seem to have had little effect on rates of immigration, and don't even seem to have a clear idea of what those rates are.
So there you go. Surely no government in the history of bad governments could have cocked up so thoroughly and so consistently in such a diverse range of areas. So why do the Tories not appear to be facing electoral humiliation on a scale undreamt of in modern times (the Lib-Dems probably are, but that's another story)? The only possible answer I can come up with is to do with the nature of anger.
Anger is a powerful and paradoxical emotion. It is inextricably linked with its (apparent) near-opposite emotion, fear. The two have almost identical physical manifestations, caused by adrenaline, which is commonly known (in recognition of this fact) as the fight-or-flight hormone. Perhaps even more that fear though, anger can overwhelm the person experiencing it, suspending normal judgment and morality with its 'rush of blood to the head.' In fiction this phenomenon has often been explored, most neatly and simply perhaps in the Incredible Hulk, but we will all have seen it in real life too. Interestingly even the suspension of normal judgment seems to have a physical manifestation: as a head teacher I could always tell when anger had overwhelmed a student because their eyes seemed to glaze over. It was as if their normal perception had been suspended. Even the way they tended to described it showed that- the commonest of course being the sense of having 'lost it.'
So what has this got to do with the fact that the popularity of the Tories does not seem to have nosedived despite their serial incompetence? Well, for their vote to collapse the public would have to place their trust elsewhere and that is where the problem arises. Lib-Dems? Don't be silly. UKIP? Come on, we're talking serious candidates for government here. So why not Labour?
Well, that's the point. You see it seems that the public are still angry with Labour, even after all these years. They are angry with Labour over Iraq, immigration and the economy it seems. Whether they (the general public) believe that the Tories would have been less warmongering (or less keen to impress the Yanks) over Iraq, less willing to bow to pressure from businesses to allow cheap labour to flood into the country, or more willing to rein in the casino banks and the unsustainable credit bubble that led to the economic crash is neither here nor there. It was Labour in power when all these things happened, so it is Labour we are angry with, it seems.
But that was all years ago, wasn't it? Isn't it time to forgive and forget? Yes, Ed Milliband looks like something from Aardman animations and Labour periodically tries to outdo even the Tories in illiberal and populist policies, but surely they can't be any worse that the shower we've got at the moment, can they?
So how is this relevant to public attitudes towards the Labour party? Well it seems to me that almost everything the public is angriest with Labour has its roots in the opinions, attitudes and desires of that same public. Iraq? Yes, there were some who spoke out against the war at the time, but there were plenty others who harked back to the 'glory' of that other recent bloody adventure, the Falklands. And then watched the 'shock and awe' of the missile strikes on their brand new flatscreen TVs as if this was a level in Call of Duty they hadn't reached yet. The economy? So, how many of the general public fulminated against the cheap and readily-available credit, the stratospheric rises in the value of their houses and the general perception that the UK was leading the world in financial wizardry? Even immigration- people may have grumbled and bitched about all the 'foreigners' but how many complained about the economic boom fuelled by the rock-bottom wages and high skill levels of those same 'foreigners.' And how many refused to employ highly qualified, careful and polite Polish builders for half the cost (cash in hand) of their surly UK equivalents?
So, we reaped the benefit of Labour policies and enjoyed the good times while they lasted. And it's not just the Tories who wouldn't have done it any differently. The general public wouldn't have WANTED it any different. The Bank of England and Government are supposed to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going, but can you imagine what would have happened if the Labour government had tried?
So really, when the general public turned in anger on Labour that anger was fuelled by the fact of their own culpbability in everything that Labour got wrong. And, as a I said, that is the sort of anger that is the hardest to let go of and that leads to the most irrational behaviour.
Like failing to turn on the Tories and blame them for their own incompetence, for instance.
Monday, 3 June 2013
Michael Gove- Lord of the gnats
So, according to Michael Gove, William Golding's Lord of the Flies is “considered appropriate for primary children in the best schools,” and schools that get students to study it for GCSE are "pitching expectations so low it is no surprise that reform-minded teachers want change." Leaving aside for now the fact that this is just the latest salvo in his campaign to denigrate the vast majority of schools for which he is responsible let us examine the specifics of the charge.
The first point to make is that if they really are getting students to study Lord of the Flies at Primary level then I really worry about Mr Gove's "best schools." To reduce such a powerful and contemporarily relevant classic of modern literature to a primary school reader would demonstrate a singular lack of understanding, either of the text itself or of the nature of children, because there is simply no way that primary age children could relate to the deeper central messages of the book.
Certainly they could understand it. Like a lot of great literature Lord of the Flies is written with a beautiful simplicity of syntax and vocabulary. No doubt primary age students (particularly those in boarding schools) could relate to its theme of bullying, and perhaps too to the notion of an apparent idyll slowly descending into a dark and terrifying hell. Maybe they would recognise (or be told about) the religious symbolism, with Simon an allegory for the crucified Christ. Maybe too they would see the parody of Coral Island (though I hope to God they wouldn't have had the original forced on them), but I would imagine the teachers in some of the "best" schools would skim over the bitter attack on public-school arrogance that lies at the heart of that parody.
However even if they did notice all these aspects, without in doing so having the book die for them as a story, I think it virtually impossible that primary-age students would understand or could relate to Lord of the Flies' fundamental message. Because it is a text with genuine relevance to our times, and one that such as Mr Gove really should read more closely.
In essence, Lord of the Flies is about the dreadful, corrosive effect of fear on the fundamentals of decent society. Because in the novel, as in Western society since September 2001, it is the fear of the Beast rather than the Beast itself that leads to the breakdown of the central co-operative values of society. As in today's real world that fear leads to increased militarisation (with Jack's hunters transforming themselves into an army), to the destruction of long-treasured values of intellectual debate and free speech (symbolised in the novel by Piggy's glasses and the conch) and to the demonisation of outsiders (Simon is killed because he is not recognised as "one of them" and Ralph and Piggy once ostracised are hunted down like animals). It even leads to today's gruesome fascination with beheading as the ultimate symbol of brutality ("They've sharpened a stick at both ends.")
The horror that sparked all this off- the decaying corpse of the airman- is real, but it was never really the threat to the boys' safety and happiness on the island that they let it become. It was their fear of it, and of the unknown, that led to the terrible spiral of violence, fear and more violence. It was their fear that brutalised them and drowned out all voices of reason and moderation. It was their fear that turned routine prejudice (against Piggy, the grammar-school oik) into murderous hatred and threatened in the end to destroy them all.
The end of the novel, when the British Navy arrives on the island, is generally read as implying that the naval officer simply does not understand the hell into which these boys have descended, demonstrating a lack of imagination comparable with that of the esteemed Mr Gove ("'Fun and games,' said the officer"). That is indeed the dominant reading of the end, but I think there is another way of looking at it too. What marks the naval officer at the end out from the boys is not that he is adult, or that he is in the Navy. What matters is that he has not been caught up in the dark madness the boys' fear created on the island. In his eyes the heinous monsters become again the troupe of frightened, grubby little children that in reality they were all along.
For me, what the book is saying (and how the hell primary-age students are supposed to relate to this God alone knows) is that we need more people like the naval officer in the world. We need people who will step back from the fear and the bombast and the warmongering rhetoric and see things as they really are.
Fanatic terrorists prepared to carry out appalling acts of brutality are (as they have always been) few in number and lacking any sort of widespread support. Being made aware of their activities is as shocking as encountering the decaying, fly-covered corpse of an airman suspended in a tree. Fanatic terrorists (of whatever motivation- these have changed often over the years) are our contemporary world's Beasts. But it is not until we allow our own fundamental values to be corroded by fear of the Beast that it can really harm us. When we destroy the conch and smash Piggy's glasses, when we paint our faces and chant "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!", when we (not they) "sharpen a stick at both ends," then we have lost. And when, as at the end of the novel, we weep "for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy," we need more people who, like the officer, "was moved and a little embarrassed He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance."
What we don't need is more people like Michael Gove, who think Lord of the Flies is nothing more than an adventure story for primary kids.
The first point to make is that if they really are getting students to study Lord of the Flies at Primary level then I really worry about Mr Gove's "best schools." To reduce such a powerful and contemporarily relevant classic of modern literature to a primary school reader would demonstrate a singular lack of understanding, either of the text itself or of the nature of children, because there is simply no way that primary age children could relate to the deeper central messages of the book.
Certainly they could understand it. Like a lot of great literature Lord of the Flies is written with a beautiful simplicity of syntax and vocabulary. No doubt primary age students (particularly those in boarding schools) could relate to its theme of bullying, and perhaps too to the notion of an apparent idyll slowly descending into a dark and terrifying hell. Maybe they would recognise (or be told about) the religious symbolism, with Simon an allegory for the crucified Christ. Maybe too they would see the parody of Coral Island (though I hope to God they wouldn't have had the original forced on them), but I would imagine the teachers in some of the "best" schools would skim over the bitter attack on public-school arrogance that lies at the heart of that parody.
However even if they did notice all these aspects, without in doing so having the book die for them as a story, I think it virtually impossible that primary-age students would understand or could relate to Lord of the Flies' fundamental message. Because it is a text with genuine relevance to our times, and one that such as Mr Gove really should read more closely.
In essence, Lord of the Flies is about the dreadful, corrosive effect of fear on the fundamentals of decent society. Because in the novel, as in Western society since September 2001, it is the fear of the Beast rather than the Beast itself that leads to the breakdown of the central co-operative values of society. As in today's real world that fear leads to increased militarisation (with Jack's hunters transforming themselves into an army), to the destruction of long-treasured values of intellectual debate and free speech (symbolised in the novel by Piggy's glasses and the conch) and to the demonisation of outsiders (Simon is killed because he is not recognised as "one of them" and Ralph and Piggy once ostracised are hunted down like animals). It even leads to today's gruesome fascination with beheading as the ultimate symbol of brutality ("They've sharpened a stick at both ends.")
The horror that sparked all this off- the decaying corpse of the airman- is real, but it was never really the threat to the boys' safety and happiness on the island that they let it become. It was their fear of it, and of the unknown, that led to the terrible spiral of violence, fear and more violence. It was their fear that brutalised them and drowned out all voices of reason and moderation. It was their fear that turned routine prejudice (against Piggy, the grammar-school oik) into murderous hatred and threatened in the end to destroy them all.
The end of the novel, when the British Navy arrives on the island, is generally read as implying that the naval officer simply does not understand the hell into which these boys have descended, demonstrating a lack of imagination comparable with that of the esteemed Mr Gove ("'Fun and games,' said the officer"). That is indeed the dominant reading of the end, but I think there is another way of looking at it too. What marks the naval officer at the end out from the boys is not that he is adult, or that he is in the Navy. What matters is that he has not been caught up in the dark madness the boys' fear created on the island. In his eyes the heinous monsters become again the troupe of frightened, grubby little children that in reality they were all along.
For me, what the book is saying (and how the hell primary-age students are supposed to relate to this God alone knows) is that we need more people like the naval officer in the world. We need people who will step back from the fear and the bombast and the warmongering rhetoric and see things as they really are.
Fanatic terrorists prepared to carry out appalling acts of brutality are (as they have always been) few in number and lacking any sort of widespread support. Being made aware of their activities is as shocking as encountering the decaying, fly-covered corpse of an airman suspended in a tree. Fanatic terrorists (of whatever motivation- these have changed often over the years) are our contemporary world's Beasts. But it is not until we allow our own fundamental values to be corroded by fear of the Beast that it can really harm us. When we destroy the conch and smash Piggy's glasses, when we paint our faces and chant "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!", when we (not they) "sharpen a stick at both ends," then we have lost. And when, as at the end of the novel, we weep "for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy," we need more people who, like the officer, "was moved and a little embarrassed He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance."
What we don't need is more people like Michael Gove, who think Lord of the Flies is nothing more than an adventure story for primary kids.
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