- Kingshaw realises that Hooper is just learning to be a bully – so why does Hooper have such power over him?
- How precisely does Hooper victimise or intimidate (alternative words to bully and persecute) Kingshaw?
- How does H come to realise what K’s weak spots are?
- What precisely are K’s reactions?
- Why doesn’t K ever press home his advantages?
- Hooper’s methods are always offensive even if sometimes they are quite subtle.
- K is always ashamed of using violence which in this case would be his only sure method of getting the edge over Hooper.
- K is morally superior, but Hooper is morally bankrupt because there is not any depth to which he will not stoop.
- Hooper’s thoughts are solely concerned with how can he make K’s life worse; with driving him and his mother away. Whereas K’s are how can he just hang in there until he goes back to school.
- Kingshaw cannot say ‘no’ to his mother but he also cannot communicate with her at all – this breakdown probably occurred when his father died and she made Kingshaw be grown up and independent so that in fact she could depend on him. As a result she doesn’t understand the real situation but K does not help himself by not trying. However, inevitably when he does she is no longer able to take notice of his complaint because she has too much emotionally invested in maintaining the status quo and in not jeopardising her situation here.
- Kingshaw refused to use violence even when he has the opportunity.
- He refuses to speak up in his own defence; his pessimism or cynicism allows the situation to be perpetuated.
- He sees himself like the moths, pinned down helplessly.
- In fact how like the moth he is, drawn in some kind of fascination of horror towards the very thing which will kill him – unable to help himself.
- With the advent of Fielding he gets only a temporary reprieve, even when H falls off the castle walls he is sick with certainty that things can only get worse never better. He is on a down ward spiral and there is only one way out.
- There is ominous significance in the moth – Death’s Head Hawk Moth; and also in the wood – Hang Wood; even in the description of the house – dark, hot, stuffy, lifeless, colourless, oppressive with long narrow rooms – Edward’s in particular is coffin like and in some ways we see him as Vampire-like, doesn’t like the sun, preys on the weak, sucks the lifeblood out of those who live with him, deprives all those around him of normal and natural emotions. Even the crushing heat of the summer is oppressive, the occasional storms adding to the heavy, ominous, intimidating atmosphere.
- Hooper never sees the cost of battles in terms of real flesh and blood, emotion, tears, death and misery; he is a meticulous experimenter – curious and clinical but sterile; a general who never gets out on the front line to experience the full horrors of his men. So he doesn’t regard Kingshaw as a real flesh and blood victim, this is an exercise in torture such as he might subject a moth to, and cleaner because it is mostly psychological cruelty where the scars will never show visibly. Words not blows undermine Kingshaw’s confidence.
- Even when he is temporarily brought low by his own reactions to the storm, he counts on K not taking advantage of his weakness and as soon as his moment of weakness is over he takes up again where he left off.
- The two boys are never able to meet on equal ground even though the wood is neutral territory because Hooper always has the mental edge over Kingshaw.
- It is a mark of Hooper’s evil character that he deliberately chooses to play Charles like a fish on a line.
- If he starts off by unsubtly taunting K about his father, his poverty and his school, he grows in determination and viciousness with the crow on the bed just marking the start of his campaign.
- He goes out of his way to exploit every weakness in K’s armour.
- It is of course essential to the plot that Kingshaw has several opportunities to kill or at least severely frighten Hooper and yet never allows himself to sink to that level.
- With his rejection of temptations to kill Hooper, his heartfelt prayer that things will get better he is rather like Christ even down to his tormentors at his trial and subsequent crucifixion, and hence Kingshaw’s sacrifice of himself for his mother’s greater good becomes the ultimate example of self-sacrifice.
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