New Zealander Literature

In Youth is Pleasure by Maurice Duggan

Early Losses:

 Maurice Duggan was a New Zealander fiction writer who is best known for his short fiction, often
targeted at children. His stories focus on:
- Carefully observed physical detail
- Realistic environments
- Feature glum characters.
 He was born in Auckland in 1922 to Irish immigrant parents. His mother died of heart failure when
he was young what devastated him.
 He attended a Convent School where he showed interest in sports, not literature. When he was 18
years old, Duggan was diagnosed with osteomyelitis (a disease of the bones) and his leg had to be
amputated just below the knee. The amputation ended his interest in sports and prevented him
from fighting during World War II.

Writing Years:

 The amputation spurred his desire to write. By 1944, he had made contact with Frank Sargeson,
New Zealand’s most famous writer of the time, and the older man soon became his mentor.
 Duggan’s first efforts, though encouraged by Sargeson, were less than remarkable in their overblown
use of language and a disregard for convention. Yet as the young writer evolved, his stories became
highly stylized and sophisticated.
 In 1950, Duggan travelled to England, a country still recovering, like much of the world, from the end
of World War II a few years earlier. During his two years in Europe, he attempted to write a full-
length book. Parts of the uncompleted work were eventually refashioned into short stories,
including ‘‘Guardian,’’ ‘‘In Youth Is Pleasure’’ (1953), and ‘‘Race Day.’’ At the same time that Duggan
was writing these stories featuring the Irish Lenihan family, he was also working on a travel diary
titled ‘‘Voyage.’’ The three-part story features his journey by ship to England, a holiday through Italy,
and his adventures in Spain. It was widely admired when published in New Zealand in Landfall in the
early 1950s.
 For the next few years Duggan tried to bring the richness of his style into the New Zealand realist
tradition. He also produced two long monologues that effectively pushed the New Zealand short
story out of its social-realist rut.
 Duggan died in 1974, in Auckland. His last story was published one year after his death and caused a
sensation with its skillful use of form and its relevant story of a writer’s relationship with fiction.

Works in Literary Context:

 Duggan was encouraged by Sargeson though he never really adopted his mentor’s colloquial style.
From the beginning, Duggan’s early stories displayed wordiness and a lack of interest in conventional
forms. As he developed, his stories showed a stylishness and sophistication previously unknown in
New Zealand fiction.
 Many of the events in his stories mirror Duggan’s own early life. These works also inspired by his
mentors include pieces that further show the influence of James Joyce. In Duggan’s Lenihan stories
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like ‘‘In Youth Is Pleasure,’’ there is the clear influence of Joyce’s Dubliners. Yet the Leni-han stories
are some of the finest series written by a New Zealander.

Works in Critical Context

 Despite the scarcity of Duggan’s output he has been ranked with Katherine Mansfield and Frank
Sargeson as one of New Zealand’s greatest exponents of short fiction. Several stories by Duggan
have been widely admired for their virtuosity of style and their lyric power.
 The Lenihan Stories: The Lenihan stories are built around the lives of the Lenihans, an Irish
immigrant family living in Auckland. Its rigorous, spare prose style, and the motif of the gate the
children swing on, reflecting the futility of all action, are typical of the stories of this period and are
critically admired.

Title:

For me it’s an ironic title since as the story shows there’s no pleasure in youth since adolescents are
defenceless against adults.

It may also make reference to how Brother Mark enjoyed humiliating and bullying his young students.

Tone:

Tense-Gloomy

Summary:

The story is about a teenager, Hopkins, who attends a religious boarding school and who suffers from
psychological and physical violence from his teacher. One day, tired of the abuse, Hopkins explodes and hits
his teacher. After the event, the other brothers discuss whether to expel him (because of what he did) or to
allow him stay (because they knew how Brother Mark mistreated him).

Historical Context:

In England, after the world war II Duggan tried to write a full-length book. Parts of the uncompleted work
were eventually refashioned into short-stories: “In Youth is Pleasure” (1953) “Guardian” and “Race Day”.
These stories featured an Irish immigrant family, the Lenihans, who lived in Auckland.

His writings of the 1950’s were characterized by a “stark style” (that is to say a rigorous and spare prose) and
by the use of “dark themes” (with the motif of the gate in which the children swing on reflecting the futility
or pointlessness of all action).

Setting:

In time:

 Summer: It is stated in the story: “the summer sun shone into the room…”
 Mid-20th century: By the 1950s lawn mower technology had advanced greatly and machines were
inexpensive and generally reliable. And the story was written in 1953.

In place:
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 Religious boarding school: The classes were taught by “Brothers”; in the story there are several
religious references (“You would do well to think of your soul”).

Characters:

Hopkins: He was a baited adolescent who attended a religious boarding school and who, tired of being
abused, punched his teacher.

Physical description:

He is the tallest of his class (he’s even a full head taller than the teacher). Ungainly. Scapegoat to the class.

He wears socks with their striped turn-down of green and white fallen over the tops of his heavy boots
(besmirched boots), serge shorts that end tightly above his grotesque knees and which seem that are about
to split over his thighs. Through the open neck of his shirt the hair could be seen, growing high up to the
base of his neck, where it had been trimmed in an even line.

He has a face patched with freckles and surmounted with a shapeless brush of pale hair.

 Bullied: During the story we can see how Brother Mark abuses both physically and verbally Hopkins.
Moreover, we get to know that it was not the first nor did anyone think it would be the last time that
he was going to be baited.
 Cheater: Because he had learned the translation of a book by heart.
 Lonely: It seems that he is the one that suffers abuses the most and doesn’t receive help from his
classmates: “…the book sank slowly and the mournful face, no longer searching for that assistance
once denied, swung slowly across those other glances which, meeting his, fell away or stared back
imperious, curious and removed”.
 Low social/economic class: “And Brother Mark’s eyes examined a Hopkins bereft of all possession”
 Contemplative: He didn’t blame Simpson for mocking him because he understood that he was
obliged to do it: “The very force of authority which commanded him released him from blame”
“Simpson did not mock: he had been chosen to mock, and there lay all the difference”.

On page 7 there is explained a moment in which Hopkins experienced a bunch of feelings:

 Hopelessness: “He feared to find, in the eyes beyond, not the dispassion which he knew would be
there, but sympathy which, even mistakenly, he knew he could not meet”.
 Fear: “…he knew for an instant that he had not done as much as he might have done, as much as,
through all his fright, he could have done”
 Anger: “Buried far down under his present despair was bile of slow anger, a record of outrage” “He
stayed bent forward and waited the next move: the little flame of anger burned up” (foreshadowing).
“Hopkins, finding no relief but only a further threat in the light, reasonable voice, shuffled one foot
over the dusty boards: under his tight shorts the muscles shifted”.

Brother Mark:

 Cruel: He delights from the suffering of his students. Brother Mark is described as profoundly
enjoying exposing Hopkins in front of everybody. The narrator uses words such as: malicious delight,
exquisitely questioned to show how much pleasure he has from baiting Hopkins.
 Violent: Brother Mark shows to be both physically and verbally violent (outcome: emotionally)
- Physically: He “snatched” the book and then he “thrust it back” into Hopkins’ hands. He also
tweaks Hopkins’ ear: “The manicured hands reached forward miming a gesture of plucking at
something odious, and nipped, thumb and forefinger into Hopkins’ ear.
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- Verbally: Brother Mark belittled and humiliated Hopkins by basically saying how stupid he was:
- “It is such as waste to put such a fellow to the classics”
- “A convoy, do you see, must take its speed from the slowest ship: we all suffer through such a
dunce.”
- “What could he do, he pleaded in eloquent silence, with such a dunce? How should he deal with
such a stupid deceit?”
- “I am afraid, Hopkins, you must be held unsuitable for any but the grosser tasks of this world.
We are 32 in this room; and yours are the only boots with dung on them.”
- “Your parents would be ill advised to spend any more money on you.”
- “There is nothing we can do.” “Nothing at all for such a massive dishonest loud”.
- Emotionally: Because all of what Brother Mark did and said it was obvious that Hopkins would
lose his mind and react by attacking him. (evidence that he was hit: “It’s left its mark”)
 Coward: He bullied kids.
 Arrogant: He didn’t like the idea of seeming to have lost: “Brother Mark, gay again and smiling,
regretting with light impatience that he had run the risk of losing face of seeming even for an instant
to have lost, stepped lightly up on to the teacher’s dais”.
 Mocking: “We did not remember so much of the scholar in you” “I confess, I’d be put to it myself to
do as nicely”.

Brother Ignatius:

 Sympathetic and Comprehensive: He justified Hopkins’ behavior: “He had been baited for a long
time, by all accounts. You’ll admit there’s an end to turning the other cheek.”
 Confused: He didn’t know what to do as regards Hopkins: “What he did was justified and wrong;
right and wrong, so to say. It will seem like splitting hairs, to him”
 Fair: He offered another option to expelling Hopkins: “Brother Mark might go”

Brother Superior:

 Hypocritical: Although he knew and understood that Hopkins reacted because Brother Mark was
constantly baiting him, he cared more about the school’s reputation. He justified Brother Mark. “Oh
wrong for discipline, wrong for the collage, yes. But do you see a way of keeping him on? I’ll confess I
don’t.”
 Unfair: He didn’t even consider the option of expelling Brother Mark for what he did: “That’s
flippant. You know that isn’t possible.” He even kind of justified Brother Mark: “He’s not stupid: the
boy, I mean. But I quite see that there is something in his slowness that could be immensely
irritating.”

Simpson: He was the smallest student in the class. In one part of the story (page 6) he and Hopkins are
compared “…the smaller boy was set like something precious and human and compact within the mere
animal mass of the greater bulk”. He was the one chosen to mock Hopkins (He didn’t blame him). He had a
piping voice that as much as his sized seemed to mock the ungainly Hopkins.

 Kind: He apologized to Hopkins and offered him a biscuit he had bartered for with a dayboy. He also
told him he would write him.
 Considered: he decided not to mock Hopkins.
 Smart: He was the one chosen to humiliate Hopkins

Students:
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 Indifferent: Students didn’t show any kind of interest in saving Hopkins from the bullying situation:
“The 30 heads watching from all sides offered neither assistance nor sympathy”
 Conformist; they follow his game: “The boys feeling themselves enticed, conspirators and partners
to this baiting game, shuffled and giggled”
 Afraid: When Brother Mark tweaks Hopkins’ ear and makes him face the class, the students are
described as being afraid: “…near the blackboard he was swung about until, clownish and wretchedly
benign, he faced the facing class whose eyes like magnetized needless swung to that north, trembled,
and stayed”.
 Accept the futility of all action: “They accepted all that happened as something which, determined
beyond them, carried its own air of permanence and order.

Parents (Direct characterization; from Hopkins’ point of view):

 Loving: Hopkins imagined that although his parents would be disappointed they still would love him:
“And in the over-furnished room hallowed to such occasions his mother would wait, with a
tenderness that was more remorseless than blows, for the moment which would prise from him those
assurances which would reaffirmed her in her belief that he was, in spite of all, a good boy yet at
hear”.
 Soft-hearted: “His parents would be disappointed and grave but they would not punish him.”
 Aged faces

Conflicts:

External:

 Abuse of power vs. lack of power/helplessness (man vs. man): In the story, Brother Mark abuses of
his authority as a teacher and as an adult to bait and belittle Hopkins. The boy, in his position of a
student and adolescent, faces the futility of any action.

Internal:

 Submission vs. Rebellion (man vs. himself): In the story it is shown the process in which the feeling
of anger and outrage started to invade Hopkins until he exploded and punched Brother Mark.

Themes:

 Religious institution’s hypocrisy: This kind of institution is supposed to be kind and forgiving and
grant pardon when people make mistakes. However, this doesn’t happen in Hopkins’ case. The
institution is supposed to put the other cheek (it doesn’t happen). The institution is supposed to be
trustworthy but they hide information about Brother Mark’s behaviour. The institution is supposed
to be supportive and caring but they don’t act like that with Hopkins.
 Unjust decisions/Adolescents’ lack of power: Brother Ignatius and Brother Superior decided to
expel Hopkins but not Brother Mark (although they knew his bad behaviour) for the situation.
 Abuse of authority/power: Brother Mark knows he is unpunished/untouchable so he can act as he
pleases without consequences. Everybody knows that. He cherishes humiliating Hopkins. (Discipline
– Authoritarianism at school)
 Bullying – Abuse – Physical assault: It is related to Brother Mark’s abuse of power, he humiliates,
belittles and even attacks Hopkins (tickles his ear with his fingers). He insults his cloths and says he is
smelly and poor.
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 Endurance: Hopkins attempts to resist all the situations with Brother Mark (not the first time).
 Frustration release/ Revenge: Acting impulsively, Hopkins hits Brother Mark, he had been taken to
the limit.

Point of view:

3rd person omniscient

Symbols:

 Green baize: The ‘Green Baize Door’ was the dividing line between the two domains, and
trespassing beyond meant going into foreign territory. The ‘Green Baize Door’ was a feature of
almost every substantial house. It was generally an ordinary framed door onto which was tacked a
green baize cloth, usually with brass tacks. It was the universal signal of the dividing line between
the two halves of the house. Houses evolved so that domestic staff could go about their task
without interruption, not to ensure the privacy of the residents. This might mean that there was a
clear division between adolescents and adults.
 Bird: The bird might represent Hopkins’ life. At first chocked (“The bird in the tree choked on a note
and gave up, disgruntled.”) due to his inability to do something against Brother Mark’s constant
abuse and then, relieved (“the bird found its song”) for he was going to be free at last of that
torment.

Other things to bear in mind:

 The confrontation between Brother Mark and Hopkins is compared to the arena (place in which
gladiators entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations
with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals).