The History Boys: Revision Guide

The History Boys: Revision guide

Themes

Themes have been broken down into sections with quotes relating to each characters position within these themes.

History (different views/representations of)

As the play’s title suggests, one of Bennett’s main preoccupations in The History Boys is the subject of history.

The character of Irwin is representative of many modern historians in search of untrodden ground. Irwin teaches his boys to take some hitherto unquestioned historical assumption and prove the opposite. Using this theory, Irwin makes the short leap from history teacher to journalist to government spin-doctor, whose job it is to prove that the loss of trial by jury does not impinge on civil liberties, but instead broadens them.

For Irwin, history is not a matter of conviction, and he encourages the boys to be dispassionate, to distance themselves. This is a theory which works well when he is teaching the Reformation, but causes controversy when the class moves on to discuss the Holocaust. In a key scene, Irwin, Hector and the boys argue over whether the Holocaust should be studied, and if so, how. Whilst Hector’s approach – to perceive the Holocaust as an unprecedented horror – may seem typically naive, Posner points out that to put the Holocaust ‘in context is a step towards saying that it can be… explained. And if it can be explained then it can be explained away.’ The History Boys highlights the responsibility of the historian, and asks questions about the approach the historian should take in studying the past.

(See the extension sheet on references for further information)

Quotations

‘How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another’( Rudge-85)

‘History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.’ (Mrs Lintott-85)

‘ History is women following behind with the bucket.” (Mrs Lintott-80)

“[talking about the Holocaust]
'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.'
'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.’

‘It's subjunctive history.’ ‘ You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.’ (Dakin-90)

‘History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.
It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.’(Irwin-35)

‘History’s not such a frolic for women as for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table’ (Mrs Lintott-84)

‘Story-telling, so much of it, which is what men do naturally (Mrs Lintott-22)

‘…having taught you all history on a strictly non-gender orientated basis I just wonder if it occurs to any of you how dispiriting this can be?’ (Mrs Lintott-83)

Education (The purpose of)

The play begins as the boys return to school after receiving their A level results and follows them as they set to preparing in earnest for the entrance examinations for Oxford. While Hector insists throughout the play that his lessons are to guide the boys in life, the Headmaster and Irwin have differingeducational goals. Their plan is to teach theboys how to pass the test, to give their workpolish and make them stand out. The HistoryBoys pits these duelling philosophies oneducation—learning for life and learning

how to pass a test—against one another,encouraging us to examine what truly ismost practical in our own educationalsystem.

Quotes

‘…or what’s all this learning by heart for, except as some sort of insurance against the boys’ ultimate failure?’(Mrs Lintott-69)

‘Turning facts on their head. It’s like a game.’(Dakin-80)

‘I would call it grooming did not that have overtones of the monkey house.

‘Presentation’ might be the word’(Headmaster-8)

And they are bright, brighter than last year’s. But that’s not enough apparently’ (Mrs Lintott-10)

‘…teachers just remember the books they loved as students’ and shove them on the syllabus’ (Mrs Lintott-23)

Irwin

‘The wrong end of the stick is the right one. A question has a front door and a back door. Go in the back, or better still, the side... Flee the crowd... History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so. (38)

‘Education isn’t something for when they’re old and grey and sitting by the fire. It’s for now. The exam is next month.’ (49)

‘I sympathise with your feelings about examinations, but they are a fact of life (48)

‘Dakin:Like Mr Hector’s lessons then, sir. They’re a waste of time, too.

Irwin:Yes, you little smart arse, but he’s not trying to get you through an exam. (38)

‘…truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine-tasting or fashion at a striptease.’ (26)

Hector

‘It’s to make us more rounded human beings’ (Timms-38)

‘Hector never bothered with what he was educating those boys for’ (Mrs Lintott-107)

‘Akthar:It’s just the knowledge, sir.

Timms:The pursuit of it for its own sake, sir.’(37)

‘Hector:All knowledge is precious, whether or not it serves the slightest human use’. (4-7)

Hector: … proudly jingling your A Levels, those longed-for emblems of your conformity, you have come before me once again to resume your education... A Levels... are credentials, qualifications, the footings of your CV. Your Cheat’s Visa. (4)

‘Headmaster:Mr Hector has an old-fashioned faith in the redemptive power of words. (49)

‘Mrs Lintott:Forgive Hector. He is trying to be the kind of teacher pupils will remember. Someone they will look back on.’

‘You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it’ (Hector-23)

Women

Women are completely side-lined in the play, but this doesn’t mean that the role of women could not come up as a theme.

It could be said that they are significant by their absence.

Women in the play are side-lined just as they are in society and education as a whole.

Mrs Lintott is the only women with a voice in this play.

Quotes

“History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.” (Mrs Lintott-85)

‘…the predilections and preoccupations of men. They kick their particular stone along the street and I watch.’(Mrs Lintott-68)

‘Women so seldom get a turn for a start. Elizabeth I less remarkable for her abilities than that, unlike most if her sisters, she did get the chance to exercise them (Mrs Lintott-83)

‘…and that I should be assumed to be so discreet is in itself condescending. I’m what men would call a safe pair of hands’ (Mrs Lintott-68/69)

‘…a feminine approach to things: rueful, accepting, taking things as you find them (Mrs Lintott-84)

‘It’s not our fault, miss. It’s just the way it is.’ (Timms-84)

‘…there are no women historians on TV, it’s because they don’t get carried away for a start, and they don’t come bounding up to you with every new historical notion they come up with…’ (Mrs Lintott-84)

Women as sex objects:

‘Lecher though one is, or aspires to be, it occurs to me that the lot of women cannot be easym who must suffer such inexpert male fumblings, virtually on a daily basis.’ (Dakin-77)

‘chases her round the desk hoping to cop a feel’ (Dakin-29)

‘She’s my western front. Last night for instance, meeting only token resistance. I reconnoitred the ground…’ (Dakin-28)

‘I asked [the headmaster] what the difference was between Hector touching us up on the bike and him trying to feel up Fiona (Dakin-102)

POETRY AND LITERATURE

At first glance, The History Boys appears to be just one reference after another. If the boys or Hector are not quoting Auden, they are performing scenes from Shakespeare, or from 1950s films. Hector is the main representative of this theme.

For Hector, poetry and literature are part of his preparing the boys for life. When Timms complains that he doesn’t always understand poetry, Hector says: ‘Read it now, learn it now, and you’ll know it whenever. We’re making our deathbeds here boys.’

Hector sees poetry as a way of understanding life, making sense of the endlessly complicated world. Posner says he sees literature as ‘elastoplast’, and when confronted by the headmaster about his behaviour on the motorbike, Hector comments this is ‘just the time’ for poetry.

Irwin, on the other hand, has a different use in mind. Soon after arriving at the school, he sees the boys have this amazing resource of quotations; ‘gobbets’ that could be used to make their ailing essays more interesting to the examiner who will decide if they are offered a place at university or not. Lockwood describes Mr Hector’s stuff as

‘nobler’ than what the boys learn with Mr Irwin, but Hector himself describes it as a waste of time. During the course of the play, the boys change from being very resistant to Mr Irwin’s teaching style to embracing it fully. Even Rudge says all the right things at his interview – ‘Wilfred Owen was a wuss and Stalin was a sweetie’.

However, it is Hector who is given the last line in the play. His often-criticised teaching methods are given a defence:

‘Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me,

not for you but for someone, somewhere,

one day.’

(See the extension sheet on references for further information)

Quotes

‘Poetry is good up to a point. Adds flavour’ (Irwin-26)

‘…They’re being learned by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order. (Hector-48)

‘It’s not education. It’s culture (Akthar-39)

“I don't always understand poetry!' (Timms-40)
'You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it... whenever.” (Hector-40)

“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. And 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”(Hector-56)

Innocence

The History Boysdeals quite heavilywith the issue of growing up. Not only doesthe future of the boys hang in the balancewith the entrance exams, but the school’sreputation lies squarely upon theirshoulders. As Hector and Irwin battle overeducational ideologies, the boys becomeaware of how the world works, no longersimply clinging to route memorization offacts and quotes. They are forced to step

outside of their childlike innocence andstake claim to a more critical and cynicalassessment of their surroundings. The playalso takes on the issue of sexual identity, asthe boys deal simultaneously with Hector’ssexual abuse and the confusion of trying tofind their own identities.

THE ‘FIDDLING’

One of the liveliest discussions we had inrehearsals was on the subject of what Hector

does with the boys on the motorbike. In thehands of a different playwright, the image of ateacher touching his students’ genitals wouldbe sinister, if not downright disturbing, but inThe History Boys it becomes a source ofamusement for the boys – at least until it provesto be Hector’s undoing and the end of histeaching career.Part of the reason we are not disturbed byHector’s actions, either as a reader of the playor as an audience member, is because Hector does not force himself on the boys. He offersthem a lift home which they are free to declineor accept, knowing what they are agreeing to.Far from being forced into sexual contactagainst their will, Dakin even goes so far as tosay he wishes Hector would ‘just go for it’.The motorbike is another reason why thefiddling is benign rather than threatening. Thefact that this all takes place on the back of amoving vehicle creates a humorous rather thansinister picture. Alan Bennett explained wherethis idea came from. Once, as a teenager, hewas hitchhiking in Wales, and was picked up bya passing motorcyclist. As they sped along,

Alan became aware that the motorcyclist wasreaching behind in order to touch his

passenger’s crotch. When he realised that Alanwas not interested, the man pulled over, andleft him in the middle of nowhere, near adeserted quarry.Alan Bennett laughed as he told us theanecdote, and we laughed too – his naturalsense of humour brushed away any idea thatHector abuses his position of power, or that theboys would be ‘scarred for life’.

‘Are we scared for life, do you think’ (Dakin-77)

HOPE AND FAILURE

The theme of hope andfailure plays a large part in The History Boys.Whilst the boys seem to have everything to livefor – the rest of their lives ahead of them –Hector, and to an extent Mrs Lintott, are placedin stark contrast. Theirs is a life of failed

ambition.Mrs Lintott asks the boys if they realise howdispiriting it is to teach ‘five centuries ofmasculine ineptitude’. She does not think ofherself as bold, as she confesses in Act Two.

Hector tells Irwin not to teach:

‘It ought torenew… the young mind; warm, eager, trusting;instead comes… a kind of coarsening. Youstart to clown. Plus a fatigue that passesfor philosophy but is nearer to indifference.’

Even Posner, an exceptionally bright studentwho is later awarded a scholarship,

goes on to drop out of university, and ‘hasperiodic breakdowns. He haunts the local

library and keeps a scrapbook of theachievements of his one-time classmates’.

The theme of loneliness recurs throughoutmuch of Bennett’s writing, and is particularlyapparent in his series of monologues TalkingHeads. The former Director of the NationalTheatre, Richard Eyre, has described Bennett’swriting as ‘‘all about unrealised hope anddefeated expectations’’.It could be argued that just as Hardy’s

‘Drummer Hodge’ reaches out and touchesthe hands of Posner and Hector, so Bennett’s

characters’ feelings of isolation andloneliness, touch his audience.

Main Characters

Hector

Hector is the focus of more scenes than any other character, it is his life which is celebrated in the final scene of the play and it is his words which provide the conclusion to the piece.

What is obvious from the scenes in the classroom is the depth of the bond between Hector and the boys. He knows them as individuals and the class, individually and collectively, regard him as much more than just one of the teachers they have encountered in their school careers. It is not hard to see why this should be so. His erudition is such as to appear not in any way a kind of showing off by an adult before impressionable young people but a manifestation of someone for whom literature has always provided the truest and most dependable source of wisdom and guidance in life. His enthusiasm for writing and writers is infectious and we see on numerous occasions the boys’ ability and readiness to contribute quotations and references of their own in discussions with him and with Irwin, a trait which the latter appears to find more than a trifle unsettling. As Mrs Lintott states about Hector and the effect he has on students, Heimpinges (p. 50).

Although there is a seeming lack of direction and purpose to Hector’s lessons, yet the very fact that the boys appear to have previously studied English with him at A Level and done well suggests that his methods cannot have been totally unfocused. Even in the set-piece of the General Studies ‘brothel-scene’ (pp. 12–16), he insists that the students use the conditional or subjunctive forms in their French. In other words, Hector has the enviable knack of ‘sugaring the pill’, of making learning fun. Of course, this involves taking risks and the success of this approach is dependent upon the trust established between the teacher and the class. This bond is apparent in the way the boys show, initially at least, a reluctance to respond positively to Irwin’s encouraging them to use every available piece of knowledge, including literary works, in their Oxbridge History examinations, the irony in their voices on p. 39 notwithstanding:

Akthar:We couldn’t do that, sir.

That would be a betrayal of trust.

Laying bare our souls, sir.

Lockwood:Is nothing sacred, sir?

We’re shocked.

The seemingly anarchic approach to teaching and learning is troubling to Irwin, who keeps asking the boys about what actually happens in Hector’s lessons and complains to Hector himself (p. 48) and to the Headmaster (p. 49) about the reluctance of the boys to utilise their Hector-inspired knowledge in the context of the preparation for the imminent examinations. Less surprisingly, the Headmaster is frustrated in his attempts to classify the gifts of the English teacher within the established framework, complaining that his methods areunpredictable and unquantifiable and in the current educational climate that is no use (p. 67).