Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Yes, these were definitely some of my favourite parts. It has to include, too, his father catching the leveret (baby hare). They are gorgeous creatures.
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The 13yo I can (now that I'm well past school age) forgive. I am much less forgiving of a 40yo trying to blame his behaviour on the teachers. Maybe it was an awful school, but I'm not about to take the word of a 13yo thug, nor a 40yo adult who won't allow that at least some of the teachers might have meant well even if his 13yo self couldn't see it.
James might have been the only son of a generation that left things only to sons, and so his future may have been secure (although he learned later it wasn't), but didn’t he know any kids that were the youngest of many sons? Kids who were always going to have to find a living somewhere outside the shelter of this tiny community? Surely he must have known some. And what if James had had an accident as a young man and could no longer work the farm? (It almost happened to his grandfather.) So his 13yo self was not just selfish, but stupid too. That’s okay, most 13yos are, but how can the 40yo James not look back and see this, and accept that maybe the families of the area should own up to their responsibilities. Generations of ignorance and prejudice is no reason to perpetuate the problem.
In fact he does seem to make it part way there near the end, as he talks about his own children, but if he truly does see this, I wonder why he left the start of the book as it was. There is quite a lot that feels like personal development between the start and tend of the book, which again has me wondering if this was an intentional progression - if so it ran (and hit with me) the risk of alienating the reader from the start.
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Yes, that was a lovely passage about the leveret. I think the contrast between the early part of his life and his thoughts about his children was indeed to show his development.
Indeed, if you go back and look at the early pages, he is acknowledging very early in the book that, for example, tourism is hugely important to keeping the place going: "More than half the employment in the area is reliant upon tourism ..." Later in the book of course he talks about "... the upside to new people coming into a community ...", though of course he also writes that "two worlds that didn't understand each other were colliding".
At the same time, his 13 year old self felt that the teacher was looking on the lives of his family and the families of his fellow students with a lack of respect. And really, if someone shows no respect for you and your way of life, why would you respect her different value system?