The History Boys - Hector and Irwin

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The History Boys: Hector and Irwin Up to page twenty nine of the play Bennett gives the audience a fairly clear perception of the characters Hector and Irwin. On one hand we have Hector, the general studies teacher to the boys, who is a particularly eccentric man, that has an already close and established relationship with the boys. Whilst on the other hand, we have Irwin, a young man that has graduated from Oxford and is fairly inexperienced in the field of teaching, but has been drafted in to help the boys try and obtain their dream of getting into Oxford. Bennett has presented these men to be somewhat well matched intellectual adversaries for one another, in order to show their inevitable rivalry. Bennett shows both men to crave the boys’ approval, but for different reasons. Hector does it so that he can feel he has established his position of ‘top dog’ among the teachers, and it seems that he may also have mild homoerotic feelings towards particular boys in the group. This is suggested through his scene in ‘a brothel’ during class, where some of the boys play prostitutes and when he makes them do ‘pillion duty’ where one of the boys are forced to ride his motorcycle with him for no particular reason, other than his own personal gain. Bennetts presents Hector to be this way to almost shock the audience, as it is completely out of the confines of his call of duty to teaching. Despite these advances, the boys don’t seem phased, even though they do acknowledge them, they still respect Hector greatly and are extremely grateful to have him as a teacher, this is most likely due to his relaxed and unorthodox yet effective style of teaching. Hector is shown to be this way by Bennett in order to show two completely ends of the teaching spectrum, when compared to Irwin’s style of teaching, which is quite formal and traditional, so that he can show the audience his
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