![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
George Orwell on punishment
Oct. 7th, 2020 08:19 amFrom the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys..."
The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting [...] Some small boys were hanging about in the passage outside the door of the ante-room.
"D'you get the cane?"
"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.
Bingo [one of the teachers] had heard everything. Instantly her voice came screaming after me:
"Come here! Come here this instant! What was that you said?"
"I said it didn't hurt," I faltered out.
"How dare you say a thing like that? Do you think that is a proper thing to say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!"
This time Sim [the headmaster] laid on in real earnest. He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me--about five minutes, it seemed--ending up by breaking the riding crop. The bone handle went flying across the room.
"Look what you've made me do!" he said furiously, holding up the broken crop.
[...]
I knew that bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to you. I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane: I must have had glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been altogether happy. But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good. And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung. Life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined. At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a chair in Sim's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have had before.
The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting [...] Some small boys were hanging about in the passage outside the door of the ante-room.
"D'you get the cane?"
"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.
Bingo [one of the teachers] had heard everything. Instantly her voice came screaming after me:
"Come here! Come here this instant! What was that you said?"
"I said it didn't hurt," I faltered out.
"How dare you say a thing like that? Do you think that is a proper thing to say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!"
This time Sim [the headmaster] laid on in real earnest. He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me--about five minutes, it seemed--ending up by breaking the riding crop. The bone handle went flying across the room.
"Look what you've made me do!" he said furiously, holding up the broken crop.
[...]
I knew that bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to you. I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane: I must have had glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been altogether happy. But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good. And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung. Life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined. At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a chair in Sim's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have had before.
