Hector: The best bits in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
(Alan Bennett, The History Boys)
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I am not sure why, or when, I first read The History Boys.
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individual
unrelated 10 adj.
nonuniform 17 adj.
original 21 adk.
self 80 n.
special 80 adj.
unit 88 n.
one 88 adj.
person 371 n.
(Roget's Thesaurus)
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Although the history of snow is as long as the history of water, and hydrogen, and oxygen, the history of the snowflake could be said to begin with Wilson Alwyn 'Snowflake' Bentley, born in Jericho, Vermont, who dedicated his life to photographing snowflakes. Having taken a few pictures of the reticent crystals, he proceeded to take another 5,000 images, just to make sure what he was seeing was correct. What he was seeing was perfect individuality, and he went on to record that individuality over and over again, receiving the American Meteorological Societies' first ever research grant in honour of his work, awarded in recognition of 'forty years of extremely patient work'. In the quest to prove that total, inexhaustible individuality is possible, one can afford to be patient.
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After beginning university, and realising how dismally average I was for my year-group, I printed Psalm 139, NRSV version, and blutacked it to the side of my wardrobe. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. Jeans, tee-shirt, socks. For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
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individualism
particularism 80 n.
independence 744 n.
selfishness 932 n.
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I saw The History Boys performed twice on stage. I had also seen a play at the National Theatre, so I felt that between the two, I had essentially seen the original History Boys. By the second time I saw it, I had read the play and worked out the french parts, and enjoyed myself laughing at the jokes in schoolboy french while the other students from my school looked puzzled.
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I want to light up with the zest of the words.
I want to wear a proper tragic mask.
I want to have an excuse for drama.
(Joanna Hollins, poem, c. 2009)
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The story of snowflakes does not begin with Wilson A. Bentley because he photographed snowflakes. He was not the first person to see snowflakes. The story begins with Bentley because he published them. Shortly before he died, he published a book, Snow Crystals, which made the snowflake, in all its minuscule glory, available to the public. The eye becomes the microscope, and what was once homogeneous falling snow became a whirlwind of infinite individual flakes.
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I date my first recurring nightmare, where I shrunk away from myself, and felt the universe shatter into infinite pieces, from the age I first learnt about atoms.
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In The History Boys, the students begin with the basic conviction that whilst they are individuals, history is one fixed story, to be learnt and memorised. The new teacher, Irwin, teaches them to think of history as individual perspectives, but that their own individuality is a lie - something to be constructed with care. The narrative is speckled with 'gobbets' taught by Hector and used by Irwin: fragments of poetry, mainly, but also philosophy, history, linguistics. For Hector, each piece given is a liberation, a sign of individuality. For Irwin, they are a tool to disguise the lack of it. In the play, Irwin's methods win out. By using individuality as a tool, a way of questioning the narrative, each boy is able to win his place at Oxford. Yet the play is successful because it is quotable, because it can be broken down into memorable 'gobbets', to be holed up, memorised, brought out at opportune moments.
'It is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours...'
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When I write my university application, I restrain myself to only one History Boys quote. However, I take Irwin's advice seriously; any method invented by a 20th century playwright to describe a group of grammar-school boys advancing to Oxford in the 1980's will clearly work for me. On this basis, I spend my sixthform years reading as widely and esoterically as I can, or at least, as I perceive. I reference Mark Steel in my history A level. Quote the Old Testament in English Literature. The highlight of my university application is a reference to George Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying, whereupon I compare myself to the eternally miserable Gordon Comstock.
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individualist
free person 744 n.
egotist 932 n.
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The website KnowYourMeme.com dates the phrase 'special snowflake' from the 1999 film Fight Club. At this point, 'snowflake' is synonymous with 'individual'.
It is also synonymous with a kind of education where children are taught that they can, and should be individual, like snowflakes, and then punished when they fail to attain these standards.
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31st January, 2012. Question and Answer session with the Education Committee.
Chair: One is: if 'good' requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?
Michael Gove (Secretary for Education): By getting better all the time.
Chair: So it is possible, is it?
MG: It is possible to get better all the time.
Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?
MG: I cannot remember.
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If the only mark of achievement is distinction, and every student achieves well, then there can be no distinction. There are three solutions to this. One is to limit the amount of students who can achieve, thus increasing the distinction of those who do. One is to diversify the number of ways in which students can achieve, and the types and forms of distinction. In this way, many students will be able to achieve moderate levels of distinction, at the expense of a system of objective value. The other is to accept that the only distinction worth having is achievement itself, and work blissfully and invisibly into nothingness.
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Shortly before starting university, I read A Very Short Introduction to Marx. My purpose in reading it was to avoid having to actually read Marx, but improve my ability to argue with my Oxford-educated and rather good-looking history teacher. I learnt that under communism, individuals aren't important; we matter as part of the whole. This conflicted strongly with my innate Christian belief that our intrinsic worth is tied to our individuality. Being a contradiction in terms made me feel more individual, so I spent my first year of university loudly announcing that I was a Catholic Marxist.
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individuality
essence 1 n.
speciality 80 n.
nonconformity 84 n.
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Thinking about it now, it seems all a matter of perspective. How far you zoom in on the microscope.
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The insult 'special snowflake' can be broken down thus:
firstly, the word 'special', from 'special needs', used to create negative associations around disabilities and then to negatively associate the subject with disability;
secondly, in the connotations around snowflake, which are:
fragility and weakness, and therefore femininity, with a hyper-masculinity that does not melt, yield, or break in antithesis;
infantility, in that the perception that individuality exists and should be valued is naive, and what is naive is infantile; also in the association with the schoolroom and the teacher who tells her class that they are all valued for who they are, before the world teaches them that this isn't true
and waking one day unable to distinguish themselves, believe that the best recourse is to knock down those who still perceive themselves as individual;
and thirdly, in combination, as an expression that to express individualism, and take pride in it - or defend it - is to be abnormal, and inferior; a suggestion that being differing from the collective identity is reductive.
This all depends on the existence of such a collective identity.
And of course, the perception that such an identity would be superior.
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Shortly before leaving for university, my best friend and I went to the theatre to see another Alan Bennett play, called The Habit of Art.
The Habit of Art is a very erudite, meta-play. A second stage is erected on stage, and the play concerns a group of people putting on a play about Auden and Britten, who were the only memorable characters. The dialogue flickered rapidly between play and meta-play with no chance to get into either. We left disappointed, but it took me a few months to admit I'd disliked it.
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Ironically, Wilson A. Bentley was killed by the collective; he caught pneumonia after walking home in a blizzard.
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Later on in my degree, I had the first of a series of conversations which would go along the lines of this:
me: Gosh, you know, I quoted The History Boys in my personal statement. I thought it was ever so clever back then.
them: Oh yes! I did as well.
me: Ah, really?
Of all the crushing realisations, the realisation that the document you had written to prove your individuality constructed from quotes about a play about constructing individuality is particularly crushing.
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For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
(Psalm 139.13-14)
Am I the sum of my parts? And if I add more parts, am I more likely to be individual?
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Identical snowflakes were first proven possible by Nancy Knight, in 1988, and created in laboratory conditions by Kenneth G. Libbrecht around 2015. Smaller crystals form similar base shapes, growing more individual as they become more complex. Under perfectly identical conditions, perfectly identical snowflakes can be created.
With this stunning revelation, every argument ever which placed value on identity simultaneously collapsed, and everyone agreed that we were just 'humans', and should probably stop all this nonsense with racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and classism, and we all settled into perfect peace until someone picky pointed out that one of the snowflakes was on the left, and the other the right, and this was a fundamental difference between them, at which point we went back to bombing the hell out of each other and insulting minor differences in identity.
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There came a point in my third year of university, when I had eventually realised that I was average for what I did, achieving without distinction, when I decided to stop worrying about being an individual. My faith taught me that I had intrinsic worth purely by merit of existing, and if I didn't think about that too hard, it wasn't an entirely terrifying concept. I had also decided to stop writing essays as if I was Alan Bennett.
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I have always been terrified of individuality, because it felt like a challenge I could fail at.
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This is not an individual experience.
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Not being individual is not the terrifying thing it was made out to be as children. Sometimes, once in a million billion times, one snowflake may brush another snowflake who looks a little like it.
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Thousands of pounds and tens of thousands of photographs have been used to make this point.
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When the phrase 'special snowflake' is used as an insult, the speaker is using the term to express their own fear at failing, and their hatred of anyone who embraces being different, or believes that different identities require different treatments. Rather than coming from a belief that individual identity is valueless, this comes from a strong belief in individual identity: their own, which is justified by the claim that their identity is part of the collective identity. Strangely, these kinds of people rarely react well to situations where their identity is not part of the majority.
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In a blizzard, as the unfortunate Bentley discovered, it does not hugely matter if snowflakes are completely unique, or if they may have some similarities.
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The students of The History Boys were all remarkable characters in their own right. Rudge with his golf and dark humour. Scripps and his faith. Posner, with his anxiety and biting sarcasm. Dakin, with his rampant sexuality and excessive self-consciousness. Timms. Akthar. Crowther. Lockwood. All innately part of the play. Desperate to stand out from the crowd, they are forced into a homogeneous character, the sarcastic, doubtful scholar, churned through Oxford in order to claim the same, identical mark of distinction. The play I had thought for so many years was about becoming an individual turned out be about destroying individuality, and it nearly took me with it.
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The reason why we know that most snowflakes are unique, but once in a million crystals, some can be made to look similar, is because humans love and are fascinated by snowflakes. Their difference is something to be celebrated and encouraged. It doesn't matter that sometimes their differences are minute, that many are broken, that they are fragile. The whole is made by their variations. Being the same and being individual is only a matter of distance.
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Bentley's book sold because it was beautiful.
