Percival

Today in class, we, with subtlety, likened the characters' admiration for Percival to the appeal of fascism. A passage on page 25 provides excellent support for this comparison -- "Look now, how everybody follows Percival...his magnificence is that of some mediaeval commander...look at us trooping after him, his faithful servants, to be shot like sheep, for he will certainly attempt some forlorn enterprise and die in battle." At the beginning of the passage, Percival's predispositions as a leader emerge. By the end, however, the simile that Woolf (or Louis, in this case) employs to compare the other students to sheep ready to be shot unsettles Percival's possible benevolence. This allows me to invite my comparison to that of fascism -- appealing to the masses (in a sinister way), yet potentially very dangerous.