Pass it on

Passing On the Sense of Wonder « Dembekenelm’s Weblog

I recently watched the film of The History Boys. I will have more to say about the film (and the play upon which it is based) in a future essay. This work from Alan Bennett is flawed and problematic in some ways, but it is hugely entertaining, often wonderfully written, and stupendously theatrical in the very best sense. (...). The central conflict in the play is between Hector, a teacher of about 60 who “merely” provides “inspiration,” which the headmaster considers “unquantifiable” and therefore insufficient, and Irwin, a young man in his twenties, who views education as a “performance,” where the primary goal is to satisfy the requirements of the system as it exists, solely so that one may be successful.

Hector instructs largely by subverting the accepted conventions of teaching; for example, in one game with his students, they try to stump him by acting out the final scenes of different films, including the wonderful Noel Coward-David Lean Brief Encounter (with a dizzyingly uncanny Celia Johnson recreation from the indecently talented Samuel Barnett), and the Bette Davis-Paul Henreid Now, Voyager (a title which comes from Walt Whitman, you will recall). In a key scene where we see Hector’s methods at work, he and the young man played by Barnett discuss Thomas Hardy’s “Drummer Hodge.” Hector says:The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.As brilliantly acted by Richard Griffiths and Barnett, and in the context of who these people are and of their relationship, it’s a wonderful moment. (The film is acted by the cast of the original production, which had played at the National Theatre in London for a year prior to the film being made.)

At the very end of the play (where the speech is just a bit longer than in the film), we again hear words spoken by Hector earlier:Pass the parcel.
That’s sometimes all you can do.
Take it, feel it and pass it on.
Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day.
Pass it on, boys.
That’s the game I wanted you to learn.
Pass it on.