Childhood
- Mr Hooper
- Charles Kingshaw
- Edmund Hooper
- Powerlessness
- Evil can exist in young people
- Adults’ insensitivity
Isolation and lack of love
- None of them loves another – they are each isolated
- Hoopers – cold and unaffectionate
- Mrs Kingshaw – superficial – her displays are for show
- Mr Hooper – didn’t love his first wife
thinks only of sexual gratification with Mrs K not love
- Love is an empowering emotion
- Fielding shares his happiness and confidence
- Lack of love debilitates – holds back, undermines
- Edmund – isolated – in emotional vacuum
- No barriers to his evil
- Lack of communication – Mrs Kingshaw on the phone to her friend
- Hopes dashed – Charles will be sent to Edmund’s school.
- Isolation reinforced through setting
- Warings – stands alone outside village
- Hemmed in by countryside – hostile images, Hang Wood, the crow, the stubble in the field
Cruelty and the power of evil
- Collection- of moths
- Predatory – crow
- Killing of – turkeys
- Veal calves off to be slaughtered
- Thrush – banging snail shell open
- Humiliation of- elephants at the circus
- Cruelty in children is quite common – cruelty is punished by family and society and the values of love and compassion taught.
- Hooper’s experiences are not that unusual – mother died, unloved by father, jealous of new arrival
- Hooper is described as strange – thin, sharp neck bones, something in his eyes, obsession with war, preferred reading material
- Hooper’s triumph
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