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Human Dignity and Social Anarchy: Sillitoe's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" Author(s): Allen R. Penner and Sillitoe Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1969), pp. 253-265 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207764 Accessed: 05-01-2016 13:04 UTC

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HUMAN DIGNITY AND SOCIAL ANARCHY: SILLITOE'S "THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER"

Allen R. Penner

Alan Sillitoe's "The Lonelinessof the Long-DistanceRunner," the title storyof the collectionawarded the HawthorndenPrize for Litera, turein 1959,has engagedthe attentionof most of the criticswho have dealt with his works.1While there is generalagreement that it is one of the best Britishshort to have been publishedin recentyears, the interpretationsgiven it have generatedsome surprisingcritical conflicts. One scholar submits that the purpose of the story is to depict the "moraldecay" of the hero, Colin Smith: "he is lonely, too, becausehe lives his life accordingto a 'code' that denies him any joy in life, a 'code' that consists, in fact, of the denial of the ordinary human pleasures."He concludes,"we are led into seeing that all of

lSee N. Denny, "The Achievementof the Long-DistanceRunner," Theoria, No. 24 (1965), pp. 1-12; G. S. Fraser, The Modern Writer and His World (Baltimore, 1964), pp. 179-182; James Gindin, "'s Jungle," in PostwarBritish Fiction (Berkeley,1962), pp. 14-33; John D. Hurrell, "Alan Sillitoe and the Serious ," Critique, IV (Fall-Winter 1960-61), 3-16; FrederickR. Karl, The ContemporaryEnglish Novel (New York, 1962), pp. 281-285; Saul Maloff, "The Eccentricity of Alan Sillitoe," in Contemporary British , ed. Charles Shapiro (Carbondale, 1965), pp. 95-113. Other studies of Sillitoe's works include Frederick P. W. McDowell, "Self and So- ciety: Alan Sillitoe's Key to the Door," Critique, VI (Spring 1963), 116-123; J. R. Osgerby,"Alan Sillitoe's SaturdayNight and Sunday Morning," in Renais- sance and Modern Essays, ed. G. R. Hibbard (London, 1966), pp. 215-230; Allen R. Penner, "'What are Yo' Looking So Bloody Black For?': Survival and Bitters in 'On SaturdayAfternoon,'" Studies in Short Fiction, IV (Sum- mer 1967), 300-307; Hugh B. Staples, "SaturdayNight and Sunday Morning: Alan Sillitoe and the White Goddess," Modern Fiction Studies, X (Summer 1964), 171-181; and Nelly St6phane, "Alan Sillitoe," Europe, No. 417-418, pp. 289-293.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith'sbeliefs have been false. . . ."2 Anothercritic presentsa contra- dictory reading,explaining that Smith attains "'honesty' in all its fullness.And at this moment when truth is fully apprehended,the runner'skinship with humanity (corollaryof the liberationand the attainment), as distinct from his formeralienation from it, is deci- sively established.It is almost a Christlikepassion, for a tragically deludedsociety suicidallyhostile to life. . . ." While such interpreta- tions may be defensible,Sillitoe's subsequent publications, including the screenplayof "The Loneliness"which he preparedfor Woodfall Film Productions,Ltd., suggestthat neither is the readingintended by the author.None of the studiesthus far publishedseems to have unraveledthe perplexingthematic question of the story, which is essentialto an understandingof Sillitoe'sother works.4 "The Lonelinessof the Long-DistanceRunner" is written in a tradition in English fiction which dates at least from Elizabethan times, in the works of Greene, Nashe, and Deloney-the rogue's tale, or thief's autobiography.These workshave traditionallyjustified their existence by purportingto serve two functions: to allow the readerto learnthe tricksof outlawsso that he may avoid fallingprey to them, and to lead the readerto virtuethrough the terribleexample of its opposite. The moral in many instances is delineated by the repentant criminal himself. Sillitoe's criminal in this story is not repentant,and the moralof the tale is not so simpleas to promotethe cause of virtue as opposedto vice. Defoe, in his famousthief's auto- biographyMoll Flanders,satisfies our moral sense by having Moll earnestlyrepent her past crimes;he maintainsour interestby showing how Moll survivesphysically through cunning. Sillitoe offends our moralsense by havinghis thief stubbornlyrefuse repentance, but he maintainsour interestby showinghow the man keeps his integrity while underthe physicaland legal authority of thosewhom he despises.

2Hurrell, pp. 12-13. 3Denny, p. 10. 4 Sillitoe's published works include two volumes of verse: The Rats and Other Poems (London, 1960) and A Falling Out of Love and Other Poems (London, 1964); two collections of short stories: The Loneliness of the Long- Distance Runner (New York, 1960) and The Ragman'sDaughter (New York, 1964); and five novels: SaturdayNight and Sunday Morning (New York, 1959), The General (New York, 1961), Key to the Door (New York, 1962), The Death of William Posters (New York, 1965), and A Tree on Fire (London, 1967). References in this paper to Sillitoe's works are to the editions cited above.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions In so doing, the authorhas reversedthe formulaof the popularcrime tale of fiction, wherein the readerenjoys vicariouslywitnessing the exploitsof the outlawand then has the morallyreassuring pleasure of seeingthe doorsof the prisonclose upon him in the conclusion.Silli- toe begins his tale in prison, and he ends it before the doors have openedagain, leaving us with the unsettlingrealization that the doors will indeed open and that the criminalwill be releasedunreformed. Insofaras Sillitoe'sworks are dominatedby any one theme, that theme is rebellion.In manyof his novelsand short storieshe presents his heroes, who, with few exceptions,are members of the laboring class,rebelling against those mainstaysof proletarianliterature of the 1930's,oppressive management and conservativepoliticians. To those who regardthe subjectsas anachronisticin the presentdecade, Sillitoe might assert,as he did in an essayon contemporaryBritish social con- ditions, "In Englandthere are half a million people out of work,and ten times that numberliving in realpoverty, what I would call below the telly-line,as well as below the bread-line.The gap between the verypoor and the normalrich is widerthan it has everbeen."5 Never- theless,while the equalitariansociety which Sillitoe desiresis far from becoming an actuality,the theme of rebellion is at best somewhat muddled for a "working-class", as Sillitoe is, in a country with a Socialist Labour governmentduring a time of comparative prosperity.The conflict,however, can be clearlydefined once againby a writerof Sillitoe'spredilections if he placeshis characterin physical bondage. For this reason, I believe, "The Lonelinessof the Long- Distance Runner"has provedto be one of Sillitoe'smost successful explorationsof the theme of rebellion.6 The storyis relatedin the first personby Colin Smith (the first name is given in the film scriptbut not in the short story), who tells of a theft whichhe has committed,his imprisonmentin EssexBorstal, his decision to lose deliberatelya long-distancerace, and his hatred of prison officials.One may be tempted to justify Smith's crime, as ProfessorDenny does, in terms of his "unfortunatehome back- ground (working-classinsecurity, slum life, unemployment,periodic want) . .." (p. 3), but it is embarrassingto attempt to do so in relationto the facts of the story.The crime was not committed out of economicnecessity. After Smith'sfather died of cancer,the factory

5 Alan Sillitoe's "Poor People," Anarchy, No. 38 (April 1964), p. 124. 6 In his letter to me of May 18, 1967, Mr. Sillitoe cited The Loneliness of the Long-DistanceRunner and Key to the Door as being, in his estimation, the best of his published fictional works.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions wherehe had been employedpaid the family five hundredpounds in insurancebenefits; as Smith explains,"how could any of us go to work after that?" (p. 21). Sillitoe'ssympathies are with the poor, but he does not pretend,in this storyat least, that the 1950'sare the 1930's. Smithis unemployedbecause he does not want employment.He com- mits the crime-stealing a bakerycashbox-not out of necessitybut out of choice. Moreover,he is utterlywithout a sense of remorseor guilt: "I don't say to myself: 'You shouldn'thave done the job and then you'd have stayedaway from Borstal';no, what I ram into my runner-brainis that my luck had no rightto scramjust when I was on my way to makingthe coppersthink I hadn't done the job after all" (p. 20). The matterwhich the story presentsis not the question of whetheror not Smith is guilty or innocent. Once the crimehas been committed,his guilt determined,and the sentence passed,the social questionsof guilt, innocence, and responsibilityregarding the theft are no longer the centralissue, for they have, in effect, been settled. The subject of the story then becomes a presentationof the more complex conflictbetween the capturedand his keepers. Smithhas not been assignedto a prisonbut to a Borstal,designed especiallyfor young offendersand intended to rehabilitatethem for a usefullife upon release.Officially, the essenceof the systemis thatthe youngperson under training is to be regardedas "aliving organism . . .with a life andcharacter of his own.The taskis not to breakor knead him into shape,but to stimulatesome powerwithin to regulateconduct aright.... It follows,therefore, that the men and womenengaged in his traininghave first to knowhim, outsideand inside,learning a little more each day abouthim."7

Ironically,Smith's most tenable complaint against the governorof his Borstalmight have been based upon the above: "I'm not a race horseat all .... I'm a humanbeing and I've got thoughtsand secrets and bloodylife inside me that he doesn'tknow is there .. ." (p. 13). As in most human endeavors,practice falls short of theory in the Borstals,and it is Sillitoe'spurpose to explorein this storythe nature of the failure.The analysisis not objective.Smith does not conceive that he is in any way in error;he tells his story,not the governor's.He does,however, carefully point out the failureof this particularattempt at rehabilitation.The officialsdepicted in the story performcompe-

7 Sir AlexanderPaterson, quoted in Prisonsand Borstals,His Majesty's StationeryOffice (London, 1950), p. 60.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tently the duty of providing for the physical necessities of their charges,but their actionsclearly indicate that they have little interest in them as human beings. The governorin chargeof Essex is most concernedwith winning the field competition between the Borstals of all of in the annual cross-countryrunning match. His primarypurpose seems to be to furtherhis own professionalprestige by using Smith's unusualabilities as a long-distancerunner.8 From Smith's point of view, such an act-using another man's talents-is moreinsidiously criminal than his own, stealinga man'swealth. Smith does not pretendthat stealingis not theft, but the governorpretends that his actions are motivatedby a desire to improvehis prisoners: "We want hardhonest workand we want good athletics.. . . And if you give us both these thingsyou can be surewe'll do rightby you and send you backinto the worldan honest man" (p. 10). That is to say, the governorwill teach him the art of appearingto be honest. It is this particulartype of dishonesty,of pretendingto feel what one does not, which Smith succeedsin avoiding,and which his moral exemplarswillingly perform. What Smith recognizesis that "honesty" is not an absoluteterm: "anotherthing people like the governorwill never understandis that I am honest, that I've never been anything else but honest, and that I'll alwaysbe honest. Soundsfunny. But it's true becauseI know what honest meansaccording to me and he only knowswhat it meansaccording to him" (p. 15). The moralinversion in this story is not the simple and obvious one commonly found in proletariansocial thesis fiction, in which the "haves"are flagrantly, but legally,dishonest, and those convictedof crimesare either inno- cent or performtheir acts out of necessityfor physicalsurvival. Smith is quite guiltyof breakingthe lawsof his society,but he does not break the laws which he feels comprisea man'shumanity. In consequence, the matterof "existing"or "not existing"in this story operateson a moralrather than a physicalplane. As G. S. Fraserhas observed,Silli- 8In an explanatorynote in the filmscript ["Final Screenplay: 'The Lone- linessof the Long-DistanceRunner,'" unpublished script, Woodfall Film Pro- ductions, Ltd. (London, 1961), p. 25], Sillitoe emphasizesthe governor's duplicityby observingthat Stacey,the best runnerin the Borstalbefore Smith's arrival,will believe in the governor'sconception of honestyonly "so long as the Governorstands by his rulesand principlesin even the most subtleaspects. Shouldthe Governordeviate from them in orderto give preferenceto Smithas the better runnerwhen all the time Staceyhas believedthat it is the spirit that countswith him and not distance/speed,then there is no furtherguar- anteefor Stacey'sgood behaviour." The governor,of course,does preciselythat: he abandonsthe rulesand gives preference to performanceover spirit.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions toe's "viewof working-classlife is classicaland tragic:you cannotwin, but you can fight" (p. 179). The theme of the tale is the ancient Aeschyleanone-an indomitablewill pitted againstan overwhelming force, but Sillitoe has renderedit in an antisocial,nihilistic context. From Smith'spoint of view, the basisof the moraland socialorder, as he has experiencedit, is "cunning":it is "whatcounts in this life" (p. 7). What he meansby "cunning,"as we learn,is not simplya talentfor animalsurvival in termsof a jungleexistence, for both the stakesand the meansof survivalhere are more subtle than that. What is at issue is not food but humanwill. The matter of choice, or will, or spiritedselfhood, is associated in Smith'smind with life itself. His own positionis clear;it is the rest of mankind,even the "outlaws,"that he is not sure about. Conse- quently, he feels alternatelylike "the first and the last man on the world."As he explains, I feel like the last man in the worldbecause I thinkthat all those three hundredsleepers behind me aredead. They sleep so well I thinkthat every scruffyhead's kicked the bucketin the night and I'm the only one left, and whenI look out into the bushesand frozenponds I havethe feeling thatit's goingto get colderand colder until everything I can see, meaning my redarms as well, is goingto be coveredwith a thousandmiles of ice, all the earth,right up to the skyand over every bit of landand sea. (p. 9)

Dante used ice in the ninth circleof the Infernoas a punishmentfor the violatorsof variouspolitical and familialobligations; Sillitoe uses it to representa traitorousact of a more insidiouskind. The icy scene which Smith envisionsrepresents appropriately a massivedeath of the humanspirit, the failureof all mankind.Smith definesthe secondpart of the analogy-his feeling of being the "first man on earth"-in terms of his own circumstances,without relation to others: "I feel like the first man because I've hardlygot a stitch on and am sent againstthe frozen fields in a shimmyand shorts-even the first poor bastarddropped on to the earth in midwinterknew how to make a suit of leaves,or how to skin a pterodactylfor a topcoat" (p. 8). But "first"does not definewell in termsof itself, for it necessarilyimplies extensionin time and number,so Smith adds to his explanation.The psychologicalstate of feeling that one is the "first"man on earth dif- fers from its contraryin that when one is first, "Everything'sdead, but good, becauseit's dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive" (p. 11). What Smith hopes will come alive are the "threehun- dred sleepers,"but even if they do not, his own task lies before him,

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions unchanged.For Smith, the differencebetween being the "firstand the last man on the world"is hypothetical,not actual. Smith's con- sciousnessand his sense of dignity remainabsolute, even though the scale of the rest of humanitymay fluctuateand vary. The point is underscoredduring a practice session sometime before the actual running of the race. Far out in the countryside, whereSmith has reachedthe halfwaypoint of the coursenear a "sunk- en lane," the setting becomes primal, suggestinga time antedating man and his particularmoral and social consciousness.Sillitoe has his long-distancerunner associate himself with a creaturefrom the Mesozoicera, an extinct flyingreptile which appeared,flourished, and expiredmore than one hundredmillion yearsbefore the appearance of man. Each time Smith makeshis rounds,he follows an impulseto hurl himself down a "steep bush-coveredbank and into the sunken lane, when there's still not a soul in sight . . ." (p. 19). While he recognizesthe danger,the impulse to performthe act is irresistible: "I can't not do it becauseit's the only risk I take and the only excite- ment I everget, flyingflat-out like one of them pterodactylsfrom the 'Lost World' I once heard on the wireless,crazy like a cut-balled cockerel,scratching myself to bits and almost letting myself go but not quite" (p. 19). The episodesuggests a type of primaland instinc- tual will to survivein man that transcendsall his notions of morality and sociallaw. It seems to be more fundamentaland innate than any- thingproduced by cognition;as Smith describesthe particularpleasure which he finds in the experience,"It's the most wonderfulminute becausethere's not one thought or word or pictureof anythingin my head while I'm going down. I'm empty, as empty as I was before I was born, and I don't let myself go, I suppose,because whatever it is that's farthestdown inside don't want me to die or hurt myself bad" (p. 19). The same qualitythat's "farthestdown inside" forbidshim to give over his will to his captors,for that would involve a death of spirit.It is for this reasonthat Smith, in the most intense scene in the story, intentionallyloses the race, stopping short of the finish line, wherethe governorand otherofficials can see him markingtime as the other runnersat last catch up and pass him. What Smith recognizes is that the governor'srace is not his race,nor is any contest arranged by captorsfor their captives.What Smith does not recognizeis that the racewhich needsto be won by both sidesis one of comprehension. The author inevitablyacts as judge, whether overtly (as Henry Fieldingpreferred to do), or reticentlyyet implicitly,as Sillitoe does here. Smith has receivedone trial, conductedby society'sjudge and

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions jury;he receivesanother one conductedby the author.The difference between the inquiriesis that society asks what the accused will say publiclythat may bearrelevance to legalityand morality;Sillitoe asks what Smith thinks when he is alone. In so doing, the authorconveys to us with superbartistry the psychologyof a recalcitrantmind. The point of the story, however,as a solution to society's problems,is simplynihilistic. The Borstalsystem described in the storydoes not succeedbecause at its baseis a failureof understanding.The in-lawsdo not understand the out-laws,and despite Smith'sclaim that he can "see furtherinto" the governorthan the governorcan see into him, Smith sees with a jaundicedeye. The centralproblem is that both Smith and the gover- nor make the mistakeof assumingthat a classificationof humanity accordingto the terms"in-law" and "out-law"is in any sensemeaning- ful. What the story suggests,although perhapsnot intentionally,is that such simplisticcategorizing is at the base of much humanagony. The art of fiction is one means of promotingunderstanding between individuals,and this storycan conveyto the governorand to us, if we arewilling to listen, what the "out-law"point of view is. Communica- tion, however,is complicatedby the fact that the readeris "they,"a personwho must have the natureof prisonlife explainedto him, and who, moreover,is morallyand sociallyopposed to the narrator:"And there are thousandsof them, all over the poxeatencountry, in shops, offices,railway stations, cars, houses, pubs-In-law blokeslike you and them, all on the watch for Out-lawblokes like me and us-and wait- ing to 'phonefor the coppersas soon as we makea falsemove" (p. 10). The narratorassumes that the audience is composed of those who have not, heretofore, comprehendedthe motivations behind his actions.He believes,moreover, that the failureof communicationis irremediable:"they don't see eye to eye with us and we don't see eye to eye with them, so that's how it stands and how it will always stand"(p. 8). We are thus led into a philosophicaland sociologicalcul-de-sac. We may feel-by way of justifyingthe author'sapparent sympathy with Smith'sposition, and the impasseto which it leads-that if there is amongcriminals an incorrigibleattitude, then it is Sillitoe'sobliga- tion, as a writerof realisticfiction, to convey the attitude to us accu- ratelyin his portrayalof such men. It is what we as readersought to hear, even if we would preferto be told that reform schools make peoplefirst contrite and then obedientand lawful.On the otherhand, we may feel, as ProfessorHurrell does, that no justificationis neces- 260 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions sary,in that the readeris at last "led into seeing that all of Smith's beliefs have been false. . . ." Early in Sillitoe'scareer (when in fact ProfessorHurrell's article was written), such an interpretationwould have been vulnerablebut defensible,since the first-personnarrative of the storyleaves the author'sposition technically indeterminate. At the presenttime, it would be a mistaketo suggestthat Sillitoe intended Smith'sviews to be readas "false."In his essayon the circumstances of the writerin the modernage, for example,Sillitoe is as pessimistic as Smith regardingthe possibilityof communicationbetween oppos- ing factions,in this instancebetween what he calls writersof the Left (such as himself) and writersof the Right (who are the "mouthpiece of governmentand ideology,"including party Soviet writers): For the purposeof this argumentI will call the writerwho is con- tent with the societyhe lives in a man of the Right,and a writerwho is by his natureagainst society I will call a man of the Left.... In writ- ing a man of the Left is not a memberof the opposition,which implies similarityin basicideas and the possibilityof becomingallies, but a revo- lutionary,for the Left and Right of literaturethat I have in mind can nevermeet for compromise.9

Such a statementleaves little doubt concerningthe author'sposition. Where this thesis would ultimatelylead Sillitoe was not readily apparentwhen The Lonelinessof the Long-DistanceRunner appeared in 1959.Saturday Night and SundayMorning (1958) had seemed on the whole a type of proletarianLucky Jim (1954), despite the occa- sional anarchisticgrumblings of its hero, Arthur Seaton. Sillitoe, accordingly,was groupedby reviewersand criticswith other novelists who were at the time being labeled "angryyoung men": , , and .Sillitoe later facetiouslyacknowl- edged the associationhimself by referringto an imaginarynovel, "Hurryon Jim by KingsleyWain that startedby someonewith eight- een pints and fifteen whiskiesin him fallingdownstairs on his way to the top" (The Death of William Posters,p. 166), which is, in effect, a descriptionof ArthurSeaton's entrance in SaturdayNight and Sun- dayMorning. Grouping Sillitoe with those novelistsis less appropriate now than in 1958 or 1959, and it was not wholly appropriatethen. John Wain's CharlesLumley of Hurry on Down (1953) is indeed angry,but his angeris not of the same qualityor intensityas that of

9 Alan Sillitoe, "Both Sides of the Street,"in The Writer'sDilemma (London,1961), pp. 70-71.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Sillitoe's heroes. Lumley most resents the boorish nature of "the respectable,"those who "weara uniform"of purposefulness.His aim is not to reformbut to escapethe valuesand the class systemof soci- ety by remainingaloof, and he at last attainswhat he calls "neutral- ity," workingas an anonymousgag writerfor a radiocomedian. The job giveshim the economicsecurity which he desires,but makeshim, ironically,a partof the educatedmiddle class which he had attempted to escape,but to which he belongs.Jim Dixon of Amis' LuckyJim is, of course, less an angry young man than a humorous, bumbling, befuddledyoung man. His rebellionagainst the pretensionsof aca- demia, like Charles Lumley's rebellion against middle-classvalues, ends in an adjustmentto society,and a partialacceptance of its values. Dixon wins a beautiful girl and a better job, a fanciful conclusion appropriateto the humoroustone of the novel. Sillitoe'sworks have more often been comparedwith those of John Braine,partly because their heroes seem to have a kindredanger, and partlybecause both authorsare from working-classbackgrounds. Braine's (1957)-which Sillitoe may have referenceto in his description of a character"falling downstairs on his way to the top"-demon- strates the important differencesbetween them, however. While Sillitoe's heroes champion the poor and despise the rich, Braine's Joe Lampton desiresmost of all to imitate the rich, culturallyand materialistically,and he referswith disdainto the laboringclass, into which he had been born, as "the overalledand sweaty,"10an attitude clearlyalien to Sillitoe and to his heroes. A workfrom the samegeneral period, more closely in accordwith Sillitoe'sspirit, was 'sdrama Look Backin Anger,which seemed to Sillitoe, when he first saw it performedin the spring of 1957, to be the harbingerof a new era in British letters: "Jimmy Porter'sshrapnel bombs were bursting with marvellousaccuracy above the neatlystacked sandbags of Cowardand Rattigan.I knew that the front was wide open, and to me it was a more impressiveand spec- tacularbreakthrough than LuckyJim had been on the fiction sector a few yearsearlier."" Sillitoe's enthusiasm is clearlygenuine, but the bellicose images he selects to convey his praisesuggest why, in the final analysis,Look Back in Angerwould not seem to him the most significantdramatic achievement of the day. Jimmy Porter'sanger expressesa sense of urgency, of justifiablerancor, and of needed

o0John Braine, Room at the Top (New York, 1963), p. 71. 11Alan Sillitoe, "Novel or Play?," Twentieth Century, CLXIX (February 1961), 209.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions redress;but one realizes,finally, that his angeris essentiallyegocentric and directionless,as, for example, when Porter reflects, "I suppose people of our generationaren't able to die for good causesany longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirtiesand the forties,when we were still kids."12For Sillitoe, the social causes worth fighting and dyingfor arelegion, despitethe generalincrease in Britain'sprosperity duringthe past twenty years.It is not surprising,in retrospect,that the workwhich Sillitoe found to be closest to his own spiritwas writ- ten not by KingsleyAmis, John Wain, John Braine, or even John Osborne, but by , whose Serjeant Musgrave's Dancel3 espousedthe same violent social rebellionwhich has graduallycome to dominateSillitoe's poetry and prose.Arden's play, in its details of costume and setting, suggests England of the period 1860-1890, althoughthe exact time of the setting is not given. The messageof the play, however (as its subtitle- "An UnhistoricalParable"-sug- gests), is intendedto bearrelevance as much to the presentas to the past. Its theme, in part,is that violent overthrowof the government, the rich, the clergy-the Establishmentin general-is both justified and desirable,as a meansof correctingcurrent social evils and redress- ing the wrongsof the past. Sillitoe clarifieshis attitude toward the place of revolutionin social reform in his sympatheticreaction to Arden'srebellious hero, BlackJack Musgrave: "The rageof Blackwas a step beyond the anger of Jimmy Porter-both were melancholics, and Arden took Black Jackas far as one can go in this direction-to extreme yet understandablerebellion so that where Jimmy ended married,Musgrave hanged."'4 This earlyappreciative response to "extremeyet understandable rebellion"suggests that Sillitoe was never, really, simply an "angry young man."His hostilitywas not a transitoryemotion of youth, but a permanentrancor well-grounded in classhatred. "The Lonelinessof the Long-DistanceRunner" contains the seeds of the revolutionary philosophywhich would eventuallyattain full growth in his works. At the base of Sillitoe'smoral perspective is the convictionexpressed by Smith that those who are in accordwith the presentorganization of society"don't see eye to eye with us and we don't see eye to eye with them, so that'show it standsand how it will alwaysstand." The posi- tion permitstwo possibleconclusions: an impasse,as I have suggested,

12John Osborne, (Chicago, 1959), p. 69. 13 In The New British , ed. Henry Popkin (New York, 1964), pp. 271-272. 14 Sillitoe, "Novel or Play?," pp. 209-210.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions or revolution,which is the path that Sillitoe has chosen. Smith makes the point with brutalclarity: "in the end the governoris going to be doomedwhile blokes like me will takethe pickingsof his roastedbones and dance like maniacsaround his Borstal'sruins" (p. 46). At the time the storywas published,it seemed to some readersthat Smith's views were clearlyintended to be read as "false";to others, such as ProfessorDenny, that Smith evidencesan "almostChrist-like passion, for a tragicallydeluded society" (certainly a most ingeniousreading); and to others-perhapsthe majorityof readers-that Sillitoe had pro- duced a remarkableand sympatheticportrait of a recalcitrant,revolu- tionaryyoung man whose extremeviews were not necessarilythose of the author.His subsequentpublications (and his first novel as well) suggestthat Smith'sviews and Sillitoe'sare virtuallythe same. His long poem, "The Rats," is franklyrevolutionary. Its raison d'etreis instructional,and its intendedaudience the poor of England (Ogads): "The ratsare government,and Ogadsslaves / Who know not where they go nor what road paves / The way to Revolution" (p. 20). The poet exhortsthe poor, Tutoryourselves in map-readingand crime And devil'scourage for the sad bleaktime rWhenyou alonewill facethe emptyplain Armedonly with a visionarybrain .... (p.42) The heroes of four of his novels share similar sentiments. Arthur Seaton of SaturdayNight and Sunday Morning took pleasure in imagining the machine-gunningof "blokes with suits and bowler hats" (p. 221). His older brother,Brian Seaton, of Key to the Door is describedaccurately by one of the charactersin the novel as a "socialist-anarchist"(p. 432). The hero of The Death of William Posters,Frank Dawley, envisions a type of social-theologicalrevolution in whichmen's conceptions of the soul and of God are to be displaced by the productsof moderntechnology: "All the space that's left by kickingout the soul is taken by a railway,a hammer,a whole land- scape of industrial and material necessity .... The bum-bailiffs march up to the soul and sling God out kicking and screaming.Then the real things of life move in . . ." (p. 260). In his most recent work, A Tree on Fire (a sequel to The Death of William Posters and the second volume of a projectedtrilogy), Sillitoe-through the novel's hero-apotheosizes revolution.Fighting with the AlgerianF. L. N.

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This content downloaded from 131.172.36.29 on Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:04:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions againstthe French,Frank Dawley conceiveshis mission to be essen- tially religiousin nature:

Evil is no mystifyingconcept. It is the inabilityto changefor the good. It is beingslothful among bad conditionsof life, and preachingthat the acceptanceof presentsuffering makes the adventureof changeunnecessary, therebyimplying that sufferingis sufficientadventure for the soul. One must provethat it is not-by makingit possiblefor the weakto inherit the earthand become strong, and to use theirnewly-won strength in order to help thosestill weakin the world,which is no less than the fight for eternaljustice, a unitingof mankindto give everyoneequality and food and dignitythat will enablethem to becomeindividuals in a universal sense.The treemust purify and burn, shed its leavesin the firesof insur- rection.(p. 195)

The idealisticand selflessintentions proffered seem innocuousenough, but they do not extenuatethe tone of puritanicalfanaticism apparent in the passage. To summarize,then, the paeanto violence conveyedin Sillitoe's most recent work had its genesis in "The Lonelinessof the Long- DistanceRunner." The earlierwork remains a powerfulexpression of the necessity of human dignity; it is, indeed, an exemplum of the forcefulnesswith which the humanwill is capableof sustainingitself. The necessityof human dignitywhich the storyimplies, however, has traditionallybeen counterbalancedwithin the consciousnessof West- ern civilizationby an equallystrong sense of the necessityof human order.We are faced,quite simply,with the ancient,paradoxical prob- lem of balancing any individual'sconception of human freedom against the inevitable restrictionof freedom necessitatedby living with othersin society.The tale suggests,whether intentionally or not, that the "governors"of the world,who are the instrumentsof social order,must come to know that orderis not in itself an end, that one may establish a well-orderedcolony of animals through systems of force and of punishment and reward,with a resultant civilization hardlyworthy of the name. Conversely,what the "Smiths"of the world must recognizeis that conceptionsof human dignity are not the prerogativeof any one social class-and that anarchyand social chaos are less likely to lead to freedomthan to tyranny.

Universityof Tennessee

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