Education and loneliness in British Literature

Résumé du document

Education is as a general rule considered as a chance to the extent that it is often symbolized as a treasure. People are still struggling get their children educated in the developing countries. Tony Harrisson points out in "Two Book End? (The School of Eloquence) that education can be the cause of terrible loneliness. The feeling of loneliness is differently but is also very well expressed in "Childhood?, by Richard Aldington.

Extraits

[...] He compares thus all the couples and self styled friends he has met in society to slugs. Society is not only full of dirty people, but also it means taking part to shallow debates: come and waste their time and ours” (verse writes Larkin very sharply. And chatting with a woman is not being captivated by her charm as you would read in medieval poetry, but “catch the drivel of some bitch”. Philip Larkin does not hesitate to use dirty words to depict women in society, maybe with a slight hint of misogyny. [...]

[...] But instead of having fun and meeting people, she feels absolutely out of the party, alone on her chair, as if she was not in the room. “Nobody cares whether I am alive or dead.”(v.4). She would suddenly prefer being “struck by lightning and killed suddenly crossing a field/ As if somebody cared” (v.2). This girl cannot bear the total indifference of people to her. It is more painful than to be shot dead. The very old sentence “Homo homini lupus” (Plaute) finds here one more illustration. [...]

[...] It is interesting to analyse the black vision of society of two different poets. You can feel lonely in an overcrowded place, and it is without any doubt the worse, according to Stevie Smith. Virtue should be social. But it is not always! “Poor Soul, Poor Girl” is an excellent illustration of how far it can be tough to live in society. Stevie Smith shows that people can behave as animals when they do not pay attention to those who are around them. [...]

[...] Let us now analyse this view. It is clear that some society events are boring, and that some people do not have the nature to appreciate that sort of gathering where people discuss about things that can seem empty. But on the other hand, it is in society that people find actual friends who will help them when necessary in a moving way. Philip Larkin rejects more the emptiness of social events than the company of people in absolute terms. [...]

[...] It is then as if both were died. That deepens his feeling of loneliness. The feeling of loneliness is differently but also very well expressed in “Childhood”, by Richard Aldington. This time, it is not his education that the main character of the poem is struggling against, but the “bitter dullness of gods” which makes the child consider his childhood as “wretchedness” (v.1). Although the poet does not mention once the word “loneliness”, I feel that the young boy of the poem is suffering because of the loss of his mother, which causes this loneliness and this feeling of nothingness that is well expressed in the repetition of three nouns referring to the child's pain: bitterness. [...]