Word: hallam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...boys' American History teacher, Pete Hallam, presides over the conflict, commenting periodically on its progress. A wise but bitter former POW. Hallam tries to recapture the innocence he knew at Devon as a student but finds the same violence he thought he had escaped. Instead of adding depth to the Hochschwender Wexford confrontation, his observations reduce the action to a series of cliches. Reflecting on "that monster war," Hallam sees it "sending last thin even here to this still reverberating around the world even here to this little rural corner...
...place of subtlety and effective characterization, Knowles substitutes irrelevant plot contrivances. Inconclusive innuendos concerning Wexford's latent homosexuality are included, as are sporadic references to Hallam's ex-wife, the reason for the breakup and their eventual reconcilliation...
Knowles ends the story with the trite implication that the Hitlers of tomorrow are the school boys of today. Watching Wexford calmly graduate from Devon after effectively disrupting the last remnants of its peace. Hallam muses, "He's an incipient monster, and I can't stop him. For the last dozen years we've seen in the world how monsters can come to the top and just what horrors they can achieve. And these monsters were once adolescents...