Characters - Stephen Wheatley Flashcards
“undersized boy with teapot ears.. open mouthed and credulous. (Ch5 p85)
Much humour in way Stefan shows himself as a child - inviting us to laugh gently at him. His physical appearance led his contemporaries and now even his own older self is teasing him.
“I’m a child again and everything before me - all the frightening half promise of life.” (Ch1 p3)
His fear os the first characteristic we see in the very first paragraph - he is constantly held back, dominated and afraid.
“Which is worse … To be embarrassed or to be killed?”
S is terrified of looking foolish. His natural response to difficulty is to ignore it or run away.
“The ways of Haywards were no more open to questioning or comprehension than the domestic arrangements of the Holy Family.” (Ch2 p25)
It is a bathetic comparison - the humour of this line underlines Stephen’s adulation. The degree to which S is in awe of Haywards never in doubt.
“incomprehensible niceness.” (Ch3, p39)
S can’t imagine that anyone would like him let alone Mrs H - he has been teased and bullied and his surname Wheatley
is very close to “weedy”
” only the first of a series of dominant figures in my life whose disciple I became” (Ch2 p16)
“his authority was entirely warranted by his intellectual and imaginative superiority.” (Ch2 p16)
The narrator says this looking back on his life and referring to Keith. He goes on tongue in cheek to say..but we learn Keith can’t spell and schemes fanciful but not feasible.
“He was the Officer corp in our two man army. I was the Other Ranks - and grateful to be so.”
Again shows how S happy for K to be in control.
“Everything about them is plainly laden with germs. “ (ch 6p126)
“I feel the germs entering my body”
“I was too busy thinking about the germs”(ch 9 p186_ - cig butt
S has a fear of germs from many things and this refers to the children in the lane, he is also afraid of germs from the slime, from the cigarette butt, man at the Barn, and the bayonet “bread knife”.
“His Germanness lingers in the air.. as insanitary as the germs he is giving off. (Ch10 p203)
As germ and german similar words S assumes link between the two.
“lavatories or some sort, and of some particularly disgusting sort that full of germs,” (Ch5 pp97 - 98)
Suggests S can be quite prim and fussy when the discuss the confusion over privet and privy.
“Things start as a game and then turn into a test which I fail.”
S struggles to be the hero he thinks he should be - often feels like a failure.
“An odd thought comes into my head; that I’ve found a value for x.”(ch9 p 186).
x = symbol of intrigue and secrecy = symbols of the adult world which he stats to decode when he comes into contact with romance.
” Please,” he says in a strange, urgent voice. I give him. Against this shameless and terrible word. I can’t hold ouy.
Shows S’s empathy for others - Mr H is either upset or using this empathy to get what he wants.
