Poem: The Prefects’ Room
The prefects’ room at an elite boarding school could be a place of rest and tranquillity … unless, of course, a junior was up for a beating.
This poem published in the boys’ story
paper the Magnet,
4 December 1937 (available online here)
gives a flavour.
Picture and story credit: Amalgamated
Press
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A few of the lines in the final verse of this poem make it really interesting. Most descriptions of prefects' canings suggest that. Although there might be yelps or even howls during an especially big caning, there wouldn't be any begging. Or sometimes the kid being caned wouldn't even cry. But the implication here is that the caning goes on for a very large number of whacks (not just three or six) and that the kid is crying (therefore "gurgling") and howling *and* begging for mercy all the way through.
ReplyDeleteWhich is completely unlike Roald Dahl's portrayal of the kid just saying "Please, I'm sorry" only *before* the caning. And the guy in If.... taking a unfairly and unusually large caning without crying or reacting much at all. And lots and lots of other portrayals where the kid being caned takes it really stoically. (In Damn the Defiant, the kid yelps and eventually cries, but he doesn't beg, either before or during the canings. In some other movies or shows the kid doesn't make any sound at all.)
Instead, this poem makes it seem that *all* kids being caned would get a very large number of whacks and would be crying and yelling and begging pretty much all the way through, and that this is normal and expected.
Amalgated Press haven't much idea about how to portray a prefect's beating. Could they (it? have another try?
ReplyDelete