THE LONELINESS OF A LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER – ALAN SILLITOE (1928-2010)

 

 

      ‘The Loneliness of Long Distance Runner’ is a novella by Alan Sillitoe, who was one of the so called ‘angry young men’ of the 1950s.  It is the story of Smith, a poor Nottingham teenager from a dismal home in a working-class area, who has bleak cheerless prospects in life and few interest beyond petty crime.  When he is caught by the police for robbing a bakery, Smith is sentenced to be confined in Ruxton towers in Essex, a Borstal (prison school) for delinquent youths. There the boy turns to long distance running as a method of both emotional and physical escape from his situation.

          There are no real characters in the story, but Smith tells us in three parts about a number of people who have influenced him or with whom he has a good relationship.  In the first part he talks about his life in borstal.  The headmaster of Borstal, who is called Governor, asks Smith to train in long distance running and compete a tournament between Borstal and other boy’s home with the aim of winning the Blue-Ribbon Prize cup.  And so every morning Smith runs for miles, which he finds liberating and a good time to think.  Though Smith tries to be a good kid and intending to win Borstal a long-distance award, inwardly he feels he is at war with the governor and in-laws.  According to him all the people who abide by the law are in-laws and the people born to steal, lie and break rules like him are out-laws.  So, he decides to lose the race on purpose to show the governor he is a human being and not just a racehorse to bet on.  As he is an out-law, he has a criminal nature.  So, he believes when he is acting as a criminal, he is being an honest person, to his mind.  But the in-laws like the governor and other policemen behave in dishonest ways, that is, ways contrary to their nature.  The governor wants Smith to promise to be an ‘honest’ person when he gets out of Borstal.  He believes he can nurture Smith and other boys to become honest men.  To Smith this is dishonest to become someone else for the sake of others.  He believes that being honest is being true to one’s principles.

          The second part deals with the events that have led to Smith’s being in the Borstal.  Smith’s dad whom he considers as a paragon of honesty, died from the cancer of the throat.  His dad’s company gave the family a large amount of money as a bereavement payment.  His mother bought a television which Smith enjoyed a lot.  One day Smith and his best pal Mike happened to see an open window at a baker’s store.  They decided to rob.  Mike hoisted Smith on his shoulders to climb the wall.  They stole a money box from the bakery.  They hid the money in a drainpipe near Smith’s door and took a little out at a time.  Though Smith’s mother was of the opinion that Smith wasn’t capable of such robbery, suspicion fell on Smith for robbery.  Policeman questioned him and searched the house many times.  Smith who was calm and unafraid of the policeman, lied easily and frustrated the cop with smart reply.  When he came again, it was pouring rain.  Smith purpose fully didn’t ask him to come inside as he secretly wanted the cop to catch cold and die.  When Smith was being interviewed on the Porch, the rain forced a couple of money bills up from the drainpipe.  Smith was caught red handed then with the stolen money.  However, only Smith was brought to Borstal. 

          The third part again deals with the race.  We see Smith who confronts temptation as the governor talks about the prospect of material wealth and social status that his running can give him.  Though he pretends to be eager to win the race, he simply rejects the temptation.  He also briefly considers running away from the Borstal but later decides to enjoy the pleasure of witnessing the governor’s disappointment and humiliation.  So, he lies to the governor that he would like to be a professional athlete when he grows up.  The race begins.  He knows he can easily win the race.  In the end stretch of the race, in a place where the governor and Borstal boys can see him, he purposely stalls and runs very slowly.  He waits until another racer passes him and has only a second-place finish.  The disappointed governor makes Smith do back-breaking chores for the rest of his six-months stay.  But Smith enjoys his defeating the governor.  However, he earns the respect of the other Borstal boys who know well that he threw the race.

          Now a young man, Smith tells the reader that he was relieved from Borstal and was excused from joining the army because he developed pleurisy while running and training at Borstal.  Smith has just pulled a big robbery and has an idea for an even bigger one.  He has written this story and given it to a friend, so in case he is caught, the friend will give it to the governor to show him what has happened to Smith and how ineffective his rehabilitation efforts are.  Thus, Smith wants to prove the world that rehabilitation becomes impossible and thus the principle of reforming young delinquents in Borstal and the governor as Borstal’s head master is a sort of lie is a really a make believe story.  Thus, honesty and lies is a constant theme in the story.  As they are at war the ‘out-laws’ and ‘in-laws’ cannot co-exist.  However, it is painful to see how Borstal has made Smith a more skillful burglar, rather than a reformed character.  This helps us to understand and become aware of the class divisional and class issues of Briton.

           

----Thulasidharan V

VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL: THE ORAL HISTORY OF A NUCLEAR DISASTER – SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH

 

 

          Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine in 1948.  Though she started her career as a journalist, she developed her own nonfiction genre and won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature.  Her ‘Voices from Chernobyl’ is a compilation of interviews with the survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident that occurred on 26^th April 1986.  It is the first book to present the personal accounts of the tragedy.  This is the oral history of those affected by the disaster like the self settlers, refugees from Tajikstan, firemen, soldiers, pilots, officials and bureaucrats.

          Voices from Chernobyl, begins with the story of the young pregnant wife of Vasily Ignatenko, named Lyudmilla Ignatenko.  It was Vasily, the fire fighter who reached first at Reactor IV of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the night after the explosion.  There was a tall flame and smoke.  Everything was radiant including the sky.  At seven in the morning Lyudmilla was told that her husband Vasily was in the hospital.  On reaching hospital, the policemen shouted, “The ambulances are radioactive. Stay away.”  With the help of a doctor friend, she entered the hospital and saw Vasily.  He was all swollen and puffed up.  As he needed milk, she went outside and bought milk.  As he and other patients like him started throwing up because of the excessive use of milk, they got put on IVS. The doctors said they had been poisoned by gas.  They didn’t say anything about radiation.

          As there was a sea of people in the evening, Lyudmilla couldn’t get into the hospital.  She came to know that all the patients were being taken to Moscow that night.  When all wives decided to go with them, they were asked to bring dresses for them.  When all came running back with the bags, the plane was already gone.  Even though she was six months pregnant, she decided to go to Moscow.  It was not easy to find the special hospital for radiology, where the Chernobyl victims were admited.  She had to bribe and beg many to enter and meet the head radiologist, Angelina Vasilevna Guskova.  When she asked whether she had kids, Lyudmilla not only hid that she was pregnant but said that she had two children, a boy and a girl.  She knew, otherwise, she wouldn’t be allowed to meet her husband.  She was allowed to spend half an hour with Vasily.

          There were twenty-eight from Pripyat.  They were all sitting on the bed, playing cards and laughing.  When she got some privacy she hugged him and kissed him.  But, the next day everything changed.  Some were knocking on the walls with their knuckles.  The doctors said everyone’s body began to react differently to radiation and what one person could handle another couldn’t.  Vasily too started to change.  The burns started to come to the surface.  They came off in layers.  The colour of his face and body changed to blue, then red and then grey-brown.  In fourteen days he died.  It was the victory day, 9^th May.  As the body was very radioactive, it had to be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way in sealed zinc caskets.  They were heroes of the State.  So, they belonged to the State.

          Two months later she went back to Moscow. When she visited the grave, as she started going into labour, she was taken to the hospital.  It was a girl.  She called out “Natashenka’. It was the name her father suggested.  Though she looked healthy, she had cirrhosis of the liver and had heart disease.  Four hours later Natashenka died.  Her body too was taken away by them.  In Kiev, Lyudmilla was given an apartment in a large building.  The survivors like Lyudmilla were living there apart from the people who worked at the Station.  That’s why the place is called Chernobylskaya, where the invalids with bad diseases live.  Often they die in a minute when they walk or sleep.  Such is the power of radiation, even after years of explosion.  Unfortunately, there are so many atomic reactors throughout the world.  More countries are building the same too.  Here, no doubt Lyudmilla’s words, as an eye opener, give us a timely warning.  Thus, Svetlana aptly presents the testimony of Lyudmilla and reacts to the human enthusiasm for nuclear power.

-------Thulasidharan V

LEAR – EDWARD BOND

 

LEAR – EDWARD BOND

 

            Edward bond was born on July 18, 1934, to working class parents in Holloway, a North London Suburb in England.  Bond’s education was interrupted by the war and he left school at fifteen.  He served two years in the British army.  However, he began writing plays in his early twenties.  For Bond violence is an integral part of the society.  So, violence is inevitable in his plays.  As it is very easy to subordinate justice to power, he is against power politics, irrespective of the left or right.  As Bond is a socialist he always stresses the need for awareness and action in his plays. 

A writer’s originality is often best seen in his individual variation on a traditional theme.  That was how Nahum State (1652-1715) reshaped Shakespeare’s Lear with a happy ending.  When Samuel Johnson defended the poetic justice of Tate’s adaptation, Joseph Addison protested at the mutilation of Shakespeare.  Bond’s ‘Lear’ is also a rewrite of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’.  This is not for entertainment but to make people question their society and themselves to bring about a change in society.  Bond has designed this play with a three-act structure.  Act I shows a world dominated by myth.  Act II shows the clash between myth and reality, between superstitious men and the autonomous world.  Act III shows a resolution of this in the world they prove real by dying in it.

            In the opening scene King Lear is observing the progress of the wall that he builds to keep his enemies out of his Kingdom.  Two workers carry a dead man along with a worker who caused the man’s death.  Lear shoots the worker on considering the unnecessary delay of the building of the wall on his causing the death.  His daughters Bodice and Fontanelle object to Lear’s violence and reveal their plan of marrying Lear’s enemies, the Duke of North and the Duke of Cornwall.  They believe their marriages will bring peace.  But, Lear rejects the plan and believes that only the wall can protect his people from his enemies.  Bodice and Fontenalle join with husbands after marriage and decide to attack Lear.  Lord Warrington, who is loyal to Lear says that both Bodice and Fontenalle separately asks him to betray Lear and then the other one.  Lear prepares for war.  Bodice and Fonenelle even plan to kill their husbands as they are not up to their expectations.

            Though Bodice and Fontenelle have won in the battle with their father, they can’t kill their husbands.  Lear escapes but Warrington is arrested.  His tongue is cut and he is deafened by Bodice’s needle that has been poked into his ears.  The crippled Warrington follows Lear with a knife to kill him.  Lear is saved by the Gravedigger’s boy.  He asks him to stay with him and with his wife Cordelia.  Warrington visits the boy’s house and attacks Lear.  A sergeant and the soldiers find the body of Warrington in the well of the boy.  The soldiers kill the boy, rape Cordelia and kill the pigs of the boy.  The carpenter comes and kills the soldiers and save Cordelia.  Lear is taken to Bodice and Fontenelle.  They present him before the judge and say that he is mad.  When he behaves like a tortured animal in a cage, on seeing him in a mirror, he is imprisoned.  Bodice and Fontenelle talk about the civil war that is led by Cordelia.

            Gravedigger’s boy’s ghost appears in front of Lear.  When Lear asks the ghost to bring him his daughters, the apparitions of Bodice and Fontenelle appear as young girls.  They sit on his knees and talk but leave him soon.  The ghost stays with Lear.  The Dukes of North and Cornwall are kept in cells and a death warrant of Lear is also signed.  As Bodice needs more soldiers, he stops the pulling down of the wall and takes all the workers take all the workers to be used as soldiers.  But, Cordelia’s soldiers win and release the prisoners.  Lear says that he only wants to live to find the ghost and help him.  Fontenelle is also brought as a prisoner.  The ghost arrives but it is very weak then.  At the carpenter’s command, a soldier shoots Fontenelle.  A medical doctor, who is also a prisoner, performs an autopsy on Fontenelle.  Lear is awed by the beauty of the inside of her beauty, in contrast to her cruelty and hatred when Fontenelle was alive.

            Bodice is also brought as a prisoner and sentenced to death.  The soldiers stab her with a bayonet three times.  Cordelia, who has become the carpenter’s wife, decides not to kill Lear.  But, by using a ‘scientific device’, the doctor removes Lear’s eyes.  In horrible pain, Lear leaves the prison with the ghost.  Thus he becomes blind.  Lear meets a family of a farmer near the wall.  Their son is about to join the army of Cordelia.  Then he goes to the boy’s house and lives there with Thomas Susan and John.  He also gives shelter to the deserters from Cordelia’s wall.  Hundreds of people assemble to hear the speech of Lear.  Lear’s old councilor accuses Lear for hiding deserters.  He also advises him not to speak against Cordelia and the wall.  Lear complains that he is still a prisoner and there is a wall everywhere.  As the well is poisoned, the ghost takes Lear to a spring to drink in the woods.

Cordelia and the carpenter meet Lear and say that her government is creating a better way of life.  So, she asks Lear to stop working against her.  When Lear asks Cordelia to pull the wall down, she says the kingdom will be attacked by enemies if she does.  This was what Lear said when he had power.  The ghost wants to speak to Cordelia but it can’t.  Cordelia leaves Lear after giving him a warning.  Unless he stops talking against her, he will be put on trial. This shows the moral development of Lear.  Actually, Lear’s blindness is a dramatic metaphor for insight.  Unfortunately the ghost is gored to death by the pigs that have gone mad.  Lear reaches the wall with the help of Susan and starts to dig it up.  The farmer’s son, who is a soldier now, shoots Lear.  Lear’s body is left alone on stage at the end, when the workers on the wall move away from the body at their officer’s command.  But, one of them looks back.  So, it is to be understood that Lear’s death will not be forgotten.  It gives hope for the future.

 

EDWARD BOND’S ‘LEAR’ – A PLAY OF VIOLENCE

 

‘Lear’ is a three act play by the British dramatist, Edward Bond (born 1934-).  His plays often depicting scenes of violence aroused much controversy. His play, ‘Saved’ (1965) caused sensation because of its having a scene depicting the stoning to death of a baby. So, it was the subject of a court of action because of its violence and blasphemy.  When Edward Bond was a child, during the bombings on London in 1940 and 1944, he had to evacuate to the countryside.  This early exposure to the violence and terror of war might have shaped themes in his work.  Apart from this, the violence that he witnessed in the later years like the assassination of Martin Luther king and Robert Kennedy might have strengthened his view. Edward Bond’s ‘Lear’ is a rewrite of Shakespeare’s King Lear.  By creating a politically effective piece from a similar story, he was more likely to cause people to question their society and themselves, rather than simply to have an uplifting aesthetic experience.  Thus, his plays are not meant merely to entertain but to help to bring about a change in society. 

In Bond’s play, Lear is a paranoid, autocrat, building a wall to keep out imagined ‘enemies’.  His daughters Bodice and Fontanelle rebel against him, causing a bloody war.  Lear becomes their prisoner and goes on a journey of self-revelation.  He is blinded and haunted by the ghost of a grave digger’s boy, whose kindness towards the old king led to his murder.  Eventually, Lear makes a gesture toward dismantling the wall he began.  This gesture leads to his death.  The play also features a character called Cordelia, wife of the murdered grave digger’s boy who becomes at the end a dictator herself.  Thus, power poisons everyone who touches it in ‘Lear’.  So, it is an extravagantly horrific parable on corruption by power.  ‘Lear’ has been called the most violent drama ever staged.  That is why in his preface to Lear, Bond states, ‘I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners’.  For Bond, violence is an integral part of contemporary society.  So, writing about modern culture means writing about violence. 

Lear begins and ends with violence.  In the first scene, Lear shoots a worker who has accidentally caused another worker’s death.  In the last scene, a soldier shoots and kills Lear.  In between, there are numerous acts of brutality.  Warrington, who is loyal to Lear is captured and brutally tortured under the direction of Lear’s daughters when they first rebel against their father.  Warrington’s tongue is cut out, he is tortured and knitting needles are shoved into his ears.  The innocent gravedigger’s boy is shot and his wife Cordelia is raped.  Even the ghost of the gravedigger’s boy has a second death.  Fontanelle is shot and Bodice is gored by soldiers.  Numerous minor characters also die violent deaths.

Apart from the violence, there are scenes depicting graphic gore.  The autopsy of Fontanelle and the blinding of Lear are among the most horrifying scenes in recent literature.  A medical doctor who is also a prisoner performs an autopsy on Fontanelle.  Using a ‘scientific device’,  the same doctor removes Lear’s eyes.  Bond actually uses the violence in ‘Lear’ to highlight the violence of modern society.  Because, he was profoundly influenced by the World War II and the Nazi’s concentration camps.  So, his interest is not simply in the violence itself.  It is also in the circumstances that provoke such savagery in both reality and fiction.

Most of the violence in ‘Lear’ is directly related to the desire for power.  When the first worker is shot in Act I, the audience immediately realizes a connection between Lear’s power and the violence that has repeatedly been used in the formation of his regime.  His daughters Bodice and Fontanelle who are horrified by Lear’s violence, revolt against their father.  But, when they get power, they are every bit as violent as he.  We all expect Cordelia, who was one of the most oppressed masses, to govern without violence.  But, once in power, she is as ruthless as Lear and his daughters.  Although the rulers change, their policies of governing through violence remain the same.  The very structure of this society is violent.  It is Bond’s intention that the audience sees the violence of Lear’s society as a reflection of its own.  

Moreover, Bond’s effective use of Epic theatre and alienation methods in Lear forces the audience to use their intellect rather than their emotions in considering the themes and actions of the play.  Edward Bond finds fault with the behavior of those who prove illiterate in their understanding of societal needs.  As such life becomes a cyclic pattern with one form of tyranny replaced by another.

 

LEAR’S TRANSFORMATION

 

Lear is the play’s title character.  The action revolves largely around his growth as an individual.  When he first appears on stage, he is a cruel king, who is building a wall around his Kingdom to protect his people.  Actually, he fears the Dukes of North and Cornwall as he has killed their parents.  But, he rejects the proposals of his daughters who decide to marry the Dukes of North and Cornwall and bringing them into their family to avoid rivalry with them.  When Lear sees two workers carry a dead man, he orders the firing squad officer to shoot the worker who accidentally caused the man’s death.  When the firing squad is not quick enough, Lear himself shoots the man.  These all make Bodice and Fontanelle turn against their father.  They declare Lear is not well and is a bit unhinged.  They also join their husbands and attack the wall before it is finished.

When his daughters’ revolution succeeds, Lear flees to the countryside.  There he meets the gravedigger’s boy, who generously feeds him and gives him sanctuary.  Lear actually witnesses human ability to forgive when the boy tells him about the king who caused so much suffering for the workers building his wall and yet allows the king to stay with him.  Lear’s education in suffering is continued when he sees the boy killed, his wife raped and their livestock killed.  Lear happens to see pain outside of him.  Then when he is in prison, the gravedigger’s boy’s ghost appears to him and on his request brings him his daughters as young children.  The apparitions sit next to Lear with their heads on his knees and he strokes their hair and says, ‘My daughters have been murdered and these monsters have taken their place”.  Thus, Lear is moving towards the moral maturity and realizing the needs to practice compassion, responsibility and action.

However, when Cordelia gets power, what happened to Lear on his daughters getting power, happen to Bodice and Fontanelle.  With Fontanelle’s autopsy, Lear’s responsibility becomes even clearer to him.  He opens his eyes and sees the damage for which he is responsible.  Unfortunately at this point, when he begins to see, Lear is blinded.  The blinding of Lear is also metaphoric.  In literature blindness is often associated with greater insight.  As with the legend of Oedipus, who unwillingly killed his father, married his mother, and upon learning what he had done, blinded himself.  Similarly, Lear is blinded just as he begins to realize his own responsibility for the pain of others.  Thus, Lear’s blinding occurs at the moment when he gains full realization of his life’s atrocities.

However, the blind Lear is released and meets the farmer, his wife and his son.  Lear now realizes that he has harmed not only isolated individuals but all his society truly sees their suffering and longs to end it.  He begins to live among the people and endangers his own life by offering sanctuary to all who need it and by speaking out against Cordelia’s regime.  Lear’s last act is his attempt to tear down the wall, a futile attempt that fail and he dies in this symbolic act.  Here Lear decides to destroy not only the physical wall that he has built but the metaphoric was that he has built between himself and others.  He is killed by the farmer’s son.  Violence and evil still reign.  Yet, in Lear’s transformation and virtuous final act, an example for positive change that has been presented.

------Thulasidharan V