Superiority

3 8 0 SUPERIORITY

be the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The adjective 'Homeric' is used to denote actions and events that happen on a grand, superhuman scale or people who perform such actions.

The papers in South Africa eulogised them [the Springboks rugby team] in Homeric

terms.

The Daily Telegraph, 1995

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher whose works include Also Sprach Zarathustra ('Thus Spoke Zarathustra') (1883-5) an d Jenseits von Gut and Base ('Beyond Good and Evil') (1886). Themes in his writings include contempt for Christian ethics and for democracy and admiration of the 'will to power', the Ubermensch (superman), and the 'master class', the small group of superior people who dominate the mass of inferior people, the 'herd'. Nietzsche's Ubermensch was an ideal being whose superior physical and mental qualities represent the goal of human evolution.

Because she was brave, because she was 'spoiled', because of her outrageous and commendable independence of judgment, and finally because of her arrogant consciousness that she had never seen a girl as beautiful as herself, Gloria had developed into a consistent, practising Nietzschean.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD The Beautiful and the Damned, 1922

'I should like some coffee,' she announced, with what she hoped was Nietzschean directness.

ANITA BR00KNER Hotel du Lac, 1984

Olympian Mount Olympus, in Greece, is traditionally held to be the home of the Greek gods. An Olympian or Olympian figure is someone godlike in his or her superiority over lesser mortals.

I think I shall have a lofty throne for you, godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian goddess.

GEORGE ELIOT Adam Bede, 1859

'Indeed!' Mr Barbecue-Smith smiled benignly, and looking up at Denis with an expression of Olympian condescension, 'And what sort of things do you write?' ALDOUS HUXLEY Oome Yellow, 1921

Ruth can hardly keep still and Philip Drummond has to tell her to sit down and await her turn, and when her turn comes she tears Molteno to pieces for his equivocal espousal of justice. Molteno looks at her as though her were some Olympian Judge of Appeal, astonished and mystified that a lawyer could exhibit such passion.

ALAN PATON Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, 1981

Titan In Greek mythology, the Titans were the older gods who preceded the Olympians. They were the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). They rebelled against and overthrew Uranus and were in turn defeated by their own children, the Olympians, led by Zeus.

Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade!

OSCAR WILDE The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

TEACHERS 3 8 1

Teachers

Among the teachers included here, MR CHIPS and WACKFORD SQUEERS

represent the opposite poles of their profession.

Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, first published in 1961, tells the story of Miss Jean Brodie, an Edinburgh schoolmistress during the 1930s. She is a spinster with firm views on the education of young women, remembered for saying: 'I am putting old heads on your young shoulders . . . all my pupils are the crème de la crème'.

Kevin would exclaim, 'Yoghurt! Steamed vegetables! Lots of fruit!—this is Miss Jean Brodie warning you!' Gabe would just smile feebly, sleep sand in his eyes.

EDMUND WHITE Farewell Symphony, 1997

Mr Chips In James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr Chips (1935), Mr Chipping is a classics teacher at Brookfield School. Known to his pupils as Mr Chips, he devotes himself to teaching generations of boys at the school until his retirement. He is the archetype of the dedicated schoolmaster.

Opposite Bruce sat Professor Chambers, a sad-looking, dusty old Mr Chips whom the students had asked to chair the occasion.

BEN ELTON Popcorn, 1996

Chiron In Greek mythology, Chiron was a learned centaur who acted as tutor to many heroes in their youth, including Jason, Hercules, and Achilles.

Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract; but the old sea Chiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had sufficiently instructed his young Achilles, pursed his lips, gathered all his wrinkles together, and would commit himself to nothing further.

HERMAN MELVILLE Billy Budd, 1924

Wackford Squeers Wackford Squeers is the ignorant headmaster of the Yorkshire school Dotheboys Hall in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (1839). Squeers presides over a cruel regime, starving and bullying his miserable pupils under pretence of education.

Trembling first-formers (secretaries) huddled over their work like Dickensian pupils, fearing the inevitable moment when a toothy, strigine, six-foot Wackford Squeers of a Headmistress would come screaming into the room.

Time Out, 1991

3 8 2 TEMPERATURE

Temperature

This theme covers both extremes of temperature: bitter cold, as rep-

resented by the HYPERBOREANS and SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC, and intense

heat, as associated with the fires of HELL and SHADRACH'S fiery furnace.

Hell According to Christian, Jewish, and Islamic tradition, Hell is the place of punishment where the souls of the damned are condemned after death. It is sometimes pictured as a place of great heat and fire, and the souls of the wicked are 'cast into hell fire' (Matt. 18: 9).

Hyperborean In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a fabled race worshipping Apollo and living in a land in a distant northerly land 'beyond the north wind'. This was in fact a land of perpetual sunshine and happiness, but because of its location the term 'Hyperborean' has come to denote cold northern climes.

It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It's a blasted heath.—It's a Hyperborean winter scene.—It's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. HERMAN MELVILLE Moby Dick, 1851

PhoebllS Phoebus (literally 'bright one') was an epithet of the Greek god Apollo, used in contexts where the god was identified with the sun.

He would never have survived the lash of Phoebus.

UMBERTO ECO The Island of the Day Before, 1994

Scott of the Antarctic Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) was an English explorer and naval officer, who led two expeditions to Antarctica. On the second expedition (1910-12) Scott and four companions reached the South Pole by sled, only to discover that the Norwegian explorer Amundsen had beaten them to their goal by a month. Scott and his companions died on the return journey.

With low pressure sweeping in from the Bay of Biscay, you'd have to be Scott of the Antarctic to go out collecting conkers.

The Observer, 1998

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego The Bible relates a famous episode during Nebuchadnezzar's reign, in which the king set up a golden idol and commanded all to worship it. When three Jews, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to do so, the king ordered some of his soldiers to throw them into a 'fiery furnace'. Although the soldiers were consumed by the flames, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego miraculously came out unharmed: 'these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell offirehad passed on them.' • See special entry • DANIEL on p. 86.

Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes,