Fight Or Flight

Chapter 5 - English Literature

Chapter 5 - English Literature

When we returned to school after half-term in October, we seemed to spend more time during English lessons sitting in our 'away' groups. I guess Tammy was right: our 'away' groups had somehow become our 'home' groups.

So much so, that when I came into our English class, I automatically sat down facing Layla and Ed, who always sat together anyway, and who were inseparable during tutor time, and all the other lessons they had together, I was told.

Everyone said that they were together. Everyone said that the two freaks deserved each other. Nobody knew, like I did, that Layla didn't even fancy Ed. That Ed wasn't her type. Layla told me that Ed fancied her. But she had to tell him that they would never get together. She also told me that he'd sometimes text her and say how much he loved her and that he believed they had met for a reason. That she had come to The Brook to save him.

When she told him that she liked him but didn't love him that way, he would tell her that he accepted it and that he would still be her friend, no matter what. Layla told me, she was fine with that and hoped he would stop the talk of love.

Even stranger than the gossip which sprang from Ed and Layla's friendship was that Adam sat next to me - rather than going to sit with the lads he usually sat with, even when not told specifically to do so.

"Remember, Romeo and Juliet is an odd sort of tragedy, completely different from classical tragedy or even Shakespeare's own, later and more famous tragedies," said Mr Mason.

I frantically scribbled down in my notebook what he had said. Layla doodled dreamily on her file, Ed looked pale, as if he was going to pass out, and Adam was texting under the desk.

Mr Mason said we had to finish our final piece of coursework by the end of the month. Then, he said, we could move on to the really cool stuff, like exam revision.

Everybody groaned.

He said he had left the Shakespeare coursework as the final piece because, for some, unknown reason, teenagers hated sitting in a stuffy classroom reading a play over four-hundred-year-old, written in a language they found alienating. Even worse, he said, was the reaction of those very same teenagers when asked to write a thousand word essay on the subject.

Anyway, we'd been arguing over who we thought was to blame for the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet.

"The Friar," said Aaron Kelly, when singled out by Mr Mason to suggest a character from the play who he thought might be most to blame.

"Good. But why Friar Lawrence?" asked Mr Mason.

"Cos I didn't like him in the film," Aaron replied.

"Great! Just wonderful. Be sure to use that in your essay, Aaron. Definite A grade answer right there."

He turned and walked back to the front of the classroom shaking his head. He turned, held his hands up to the ceiling, "Anybody else? Please, won't somebody give me a more thoughtful reason why Friar Lawrence may be to blame for the loss of these two, innocent souls?"

"Because he interferes, sir. He thinks he will make things better by bringing the two families together, but his interfering only makes things worse."

"Great! Thank you, Tammy. Always remember, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even though he thinks he's helping Romeo and Juliet, the Friar merely pushes them closer to the grave. Sometimes we think we're doing the right thing; then, afterwards, it turns out that all along we were making a bad situation even worse."

For most of the lesson, we looked at the role of fate and misunderstandings in the play in general. Mr Mason seemed to be suggesting or was arguing for the sake of getting somebody in the class to disagree with him - as he often did - that we have very little control over lives. We may think we do, but we don't, he argued. That we are all victims of misunderstanding and that sometimes it just seems like our fate is mapped out, like Romeo and Juliet's.