Status Updates From This Is The Schoolroom

Back from Spain, and recuperating from his gunshot wound,Marcus seems appalledby the brutality, disgusted by Cummings' espousal of violence and disillusioned with political activiism. But the pacifism he seems to flirt with at this point rings hollow in the era of the rise of fascism. I was astounded could Alex Comfort adocate that at 'The Power House' published in 1944.

I knew that poor youth Juan's brother was doomed. I wholly sympathized with the manner of the protagonist's shooting the fascist sniper who killed him for no particular reason: 'This is war, sap,' the fascist jeers just before that. I am sorry to say, I would have done the same, even if the sniper was about to surrender to save his skin on finding himself behind enemy lines. Exellently written in this part.

Now the horror of the war in Spain starts. Though the democrats have justice on their side, atrocities are still carried out on both sides, even in a war against fascism, there are no angels on earth, one has to accept that and fght because there is nothing else to do; the protagonist has changed immeasurably from the spoilt youth we met at the beginning.

Now the Spanish Civil War has broken out, and Marcus goes to fight for the democratally elected government in Spain, as did so many young opponents of Fascism.
I suspect that with him, as with George Orwell, disillusion awaits. That is truly tragic, as his poverty leading to the end of his partiarchal relations with diverse 'show girls' and others whose rent he paid, is not.

If it was hard to sympathize with Marcus, the Cambridge undergraduate of the hungry 1930's who saw money as no object, then it is impossible not to feel for Marcus the aspring journalist in a lodging house with bed bugs and illegal abortionists, who is ill nourished. Perhaps that malnutrition means that he doesn't suffer so intensely from sexual frustration as he did at the beginning...

The description of the abuse of the girl caught by the sinister felow lodger in the miserable boarding house is truly horrific.

Alison, the girl whose rent Marcus was paying until he lost his money - is not symapthetic. She regards him as being unreasonable not to be able to spend £30 a week on her, when the average wage was about £4.00.

This is very well written and has something of the air of Patrick Hamilton's works, being partly set in a 'genteel' boarding house. The hero's awakening to the economic and political realities of pre-war UK is brilliantly depicted.