Such, Such Were the Joys by George Orwell
The next step on my reading journey.
After Shooting an Elephant I went back to the beginning of the collection, ignoring my previously-read “Marrakesh” and “Politics of the English Language” for the time being.
The first essay in the collection is entitled “Such, Such Were the Joys” and is broken into a few parts- understandable since the essay is forty-seven pages long (not that I knew that when I started). This article will cover part one.
The title of this essay made me think of someone reminiscing fondly on their childhood. While this essay is indeed about childhood, it certainly isn’t fond. Orwell recounts that when he was eight years old, he was sent to Crossgates (which I assume is some sort of boarding school) and began wetting the bed again, something he thought he had grown out of.
I don’t think that’s odd- Orwell himself points out that he was a child far from home in a foreign place- but Orwell reports that the teachers saw it as both a personal failure and something done out of spite. Neither of those things are true. Orwell also reports that he prayed for it to stop, but he didn’t know when he would wake up wet. I suppose that’s a normal reaction from an eight year old raised religiously- when something is out of your control or understanding, you pray.
Orwell’s prayers were for nothing, though- it didn’t stop his bedwetting. Orwell reports feeling ashamed, which is a natural reaction when faced with what the teachers instilled in him- that it was his fault. After the second or third occurrence, Orwell was informed that if he did it again, he would be beaten. That horrified me. Beating children is something that should never have happened, and unfortunately still does. Children are people, and people make mistakes. Mistakes that they often don’t even know they’re making until they’re made. They’re acting with extremely limited experience and doing the best they can.
Orwell, funnily-not-funnily writes that he wasn’t told in a straightforward way that that would be his punishment. He recalls that a stranger visited the school and he walked by her and the headmaster’s wife talking. The headmaster’s wife- nicknamed ‘Bingo’ by the boys- announced to the visitor that Orwell was wetting his bed, and that if it happened again, the ‘Sixth Form’ would beat him. Orwell took three emotions from this announcement- shame that yet another person learned of his ‘failure’, fear of a beating, and confusion.
Orwell mentions in an aside to the reader that the ‘Sixth Form’ was a group of older boys who were allowed to beat younger ones for transgressions. At the time, Orwell was new to the school and didn’t know this. He heard ‘Sixth Form’ as ‘Mrs. Form,’ and naturally assumed that was the stranger’s name.
Orwell’s way of vivid description is as present in his essays as it is in his novels, and he describes ‘Mrs. Form’ and Bingo with such detail that it’s nearly impossible not to feel present in the story; I had to force myself to stop reading and grab a notebook to record my thoughts.
Orwell, of course, wet the bed again. He was told to ‘report’ himself to the headmaster. Orwell writes something that further saddens me- he had to do this throughout his schooling, or at least the early part of it, and ‘only very rarely that it did not mean a beating.’ Orwell also admits that that sentence- ‘report yourself to the headmaster’- sounded like a death sentence every time.
So Orwell reported himself, and was beaten with a bone-handled riding crop by Mr. Simpson, nicknamed Sims. Orwell was relieved when the headmaster was done for two reasons. One- he claimed that it didn’t hurt, and two- he most likely felt that the bedwetting would now stop.
But Orwell was unfortunate enough to run into boys who asked if he was beaten. He said that the beating didn’t hurt, and Bingo overheard. She sent him back into the office to report himself again. Sims, now angry, beat him harder, hard enough that he broke the crop.
Orwell started crying, but not from pain (he writes that “fright and shame seemed to have anesthetized” him) but because it was expected of him- or so he felt- and because he felt despair because of something I, too, felt as a child. That no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I was going to make a mistake somewhere along the way. Orwell puts it much more poetically- he framed it as being “locked up…in a hostile world…of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for [him] to keep them.” In all honesty, I felt that way as a child, as well. To me, the rules were constantly changing and I wasn’t told.
Children- which we all were at some point in either the near or far past- are mostly helpless in terms of what is done to them. They can’t stand up for themselves to adults without being seen as disobedient, and often can’t stand up to their peers because one of the early forms of bullying is making someone feel like an outcast, that they can’t talk to any of their peers without being at best ignored and at worst mocked.
Orwell experienced this, as does everyone at some point or another. Orwell goes on to write that wetting was ‘a) wicked and b) outside [his] control.’ The second he was aware of, and the first was drilled into him.
I never understood adults who think it’s ever justified to beat children. Everyone is hurt in one way or another at some point, and in my opinion there are two responses- 1) I was hurt, so I will do my best to not hurt anyone else, and 2) I was hurt, so why should anyone else not be hurt?
Orwell goes on to write that ‘sin’ is something that just happens without you doing or even wanting to do something wrong. That reminded me of a quote from The Shawshank Redemption- the movie, not the written story, though the latter is certainly on my list- about bad luck. That it floats around, waiting to land on someone, and that it was just Andy Dufresne’s turn. Whether you call it bad luck or sin or misfortune or another name, the concept is the same. There are bad things that happen to people, and there often isn’t rhyme or reason as to who, when, or why.
Orwell concludes the first part of the first essay in this collection with the thought that time brings distance. I can remember certain instances of my own bullied years with clarity that will hopefully cloud over the years. But looking back, with age and experience on my side, I can say one thing with conviction. If it wasn’t me, someone else would have been ostracized. If I wasn’t bullied, perhaps I would have joined the ranks of bullies. I can’t say for certain which side I would have been on if I wasn’t the target, but I hope it would have been on the victim’s side.
Thanks for reading this article. Let me know what you thought below so I know I’m not shouting into the void.