Such, Such Were the Joys
Title essays reveals the abuse Orwell experienced as a child at an expensive and snobbish boarding school and other essays focus on Gandhi, Dickens, Kipling, and Henry Miller.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
26mentions
10people
2014–2026years
23% recommend77% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Have you heard the joke that ends "I don't have to outrun the bear"?
I went to elementary school in the US, and it was there that I learned how you have to handle bullies. You don't have to be able to beat them up, you only have to make them work[0] hard enough to beat you up[1] that they start picking on someone who is more fun and less work to abuse[2].
[0] when I told my wife how "calling someone out" worked in the States, she was horrified: she said, yes, of course the boys here fight, but they fight in anger, spontaneously — what kind of barbarians make notes in their agendas to kick each others' ass, in cold blood, later?
[1] the better kind of bully only goes to first blood. Worse are the O'Briens (read "Such, such were the joys" and you may understand were that character comes from) who continue beating you up just so others see they can:
> "Even if people stop rebelling against the party, the Party will manufacture new traitors so that it can be seen crushing them."
Either way, even though I lost every single fight, no one picked on me again after I'd called them out. (bullies are not into schlep?)
[2] yes, maybe in hindsight it would have been better to stand up for those they switched to. My wife was also horrified by "snitches get stitches". In practice, JFK tried to create a world in which the strong were just, the weak secure, and the peace protected, but obviously others in the US didn't care for those goals.
- In connexion with 1984, I recommend "Such, Such Were the Joys"
> willingness / ability to cut deep into his own ideology
the Pythons' Life of Brian? "What have the Romans ever done for us?" "You're all individuals" "Where's the fetus going to gestate?" etc. etc.
- On that note, I found Orwell's posthumously-published Such, Such Were the Joys (about his boarding school days) suggests the inspirations behind large swaths of 1984.
- > We conclude that being bullied in childhood creates a lifetime of misery.
Playing devil's advocate here in case someone has a clearer causation-not-correlation story: what could we look at to determine whether bullying causes a lifetime of misery, or whether 7 and 11 year old bullies are deliberately picking on those they think are just beginning their lifetimes of misery?
(reading Orwell's Such, Such Were the Joys about his english private school days gave me great insight into his "the cruelty is the point" world of 1984)
- Here is Orwell's essay about his time at a public school, "Such, Such Were the Joys." I, an American, had had a romantic view of these schools for years, after reading Harry Potter as a youngster. Reading this essay disabused me of my enchanted castle imaginings. It also speaks more generally of the cruelty of the old ways of thinking about children and sexuality.
- Reminded me of Orwell's account of his education (Such, Such Were The Joys) which contains one of my favourite quotes ("It was not only money that mattered: there were also strength, beauty, charm, athleticism and something called ‘guts’ or ‘character’, which in reality meant the power to impose your will on others.").
Related
Notes on Nationalism
6 recommend · 33
Animal Farm
105 recommend · 487
Nineteen Eighty-Four
53 recommend · 337
2009–2026
In praise of idleness
64 recommend · 134
Politics and the English language
112 recommend · 263
Homage to Catalonia
74 recommend · 149
Down and Out in Paris and London
50 recommend · 100
