Orwell's Such Were the Joys

George Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys" is about a boy that goes to a boarding school and learns about life while growing up in the presence of domineering adults. As he goes through his years, he faces the problem with feeling confined and imprisoned by the adults, not just the other students. He faces this feeling and takes it on; accepting the standards that are being put on him. Although, as this is a reflection on his time at boarding school, Orwell does mention that if he went back to the school now, the teachers would not be as awful as he may have remember them.

Orwell's experience is a unique one for it does have an older feeling to it. Teachers were allowed to beat children when they misbehaved and students lived with each other; it was really a boarding school. But no matter how different it may feel, there are similarities that he makes with any other kind of school. The schools today do make standards that they expect students to reach. Most students align with those standards, even if they don't like them because they have to, they know that if they don't there are real consequences that will ensue. Teachers also seem more terrifying to the younger kids then they do to the older ones. It mostly comes with age but it is how things seem. Orwell is right, if a student goes back to visit a teacher they once viewed as "scary," that teacher loses all "scary" features. They become normal. It is a growth thing, a coming with time, and possibly the world just looks different.