I didn't understand how come Sir has so much trouble beating up the little twerp at the end.
It seems the little twerp spends a huge amount of time beating up Sir, and then Sir gets in one lucky fluke punch to win.
Shouldn't Sir have just punched out that little twerp way faster?
Here he is living up to the same standard he had vehemently demanded of others, decrying anger and violence as solutions to a problem.
Just a little earlier he had taken Potter ("Potts") to task for his enraged attack on Bell, the PT teacher whose taunting and mistreatment of "Fats" Buckley resulted in his injury. He called Potts' behaviour inexcusable and sternly called on Potts to apologize to Bell despite Bell's grossly unjust attitude toward Fats. He raises the issue with Bell another time, privately ("I understand that Buckley is a pet whipping-boy of yours. Is that right?"), but he does not bring that conversation into the discussion with Potts and the class.
He challenges them: "Suppose that, instead of a piece of wood, a gun or a knife had been handy? ... Are you going to use a weapon every time someone makes you angry?"
After the boxing match, Denham waits for him in the stairwell and in the ensuing conversation Thackeray acknowledges that he lost his temper momentarily and that's when he hit and winded him. Denham then freely admits he's been baiting and harassing Thackeray since the beginning and asks the very question you do in your question: why didn't Thackery hit back, knowing he could? Thackeray responds, "Hitting you wouldn't have solved very much, would it?"
Admitting that he is human enough to have lost his temper he still stands by the lesson that violence does not fix things. Denham is confused; this is entirely foreign to the lessons of his brutal upbringing ("It's the truth; I don't understand you at all"). This seems to be a turning-point for Denham. He has had a gradual growth of respect for Thackeray but it's been masked by his old ways. This conversation seems to strip away the last of his resistance.
A little later he admits to his classmates, almost proudly, that "chimney sweep" could have "done me with one hand behind his back." His long-standing rebellion has been replaced with respect and admiration. If Thackeray had used his advantage in the boxing match to get back at Denham, he would have been descending into the same moral morass he's been fighting since the point when he changed the class' direction from conventional education to lessons for adulthood and dealing with the world.
rsimard, wow, great post there, thanks for taking the time out to post that!
But, from this situation I don't get how it can be said that violence doesn't solve anything.
Violence by Sir solved the situation. The situation going from Sir getting beaten up by a twerp. Then once Sir went ahead and used violence the situation progressed to Sir no longer getting beating up by a twerp, and also in the future no more of the twerp antagonizing Sir.
So then, isn't it reasonable to conclude from that that violence does solve things?
It's a long time since I saw the film so my memory might be a little hazy on this. As I recall, it's not the violence that solves the issues directly. The reason he hits the kid in the end is to prove that he can, and that he can do it when he chooses to.
The kid then respects him because he sees that his refusal to use violence is not related to his lack of strength or ability to be violent, it's because he chooses not to be.
That's interesting.
But ultimately, he had to choose to use violence.
Or else the situation would have either remained in a stalemate. Or Sir would eventually have been knocked out.
Doesn't that kind of undermine the above points?
The point Sir made is that you can't *always* hit someone just because they get you angry. There's a bit of a difference however, between stopping someone from attacking you and not killing them and trying to club an unarmed man senseless because he made you angry. Denham had hit Sir several times and therefore Sir was not "picking on him" or something. Sir tried to hold back but in the end he only gave Denham one punch in self-defense. Instead of pressing his advantage and harming Denham more however, he chose to leave the fight. Sir preached against controlling anger, not ignoring it altogether.
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I dont think Thackery's act of violence was so much violence as self defense. He tried to avoid the fight and then really had no choice in the end than to accept Denham's challenge. He took a lot of good shots before he landed one on him. In self defense, you have have to fight back and in fighting back he hammered the rebellious bully and taught him respect.
shareI wouldn't say he had no choice to fight he didn't have to accept Denham's challenge but choose to just to get it over with, maybe he felt it would never be resolved. He did take few good shots and even tried to push him away, and just and finally just reacted out of reflex. As for self defense, you don't always I have to fight back just use reasonable amout of force to subdue the attacker, it will vary depending on how much the threat its, with Mr. Thackery's case, considering the size differences, he could easily put Denham in a choke hold if he wanted to. But I wasn't to bothered by the his reaction, since as you say, it straightened out a bully and taugh him respect.
shareSir punched this kid ONCE, during a boxing match HE was lured into, that DENHAM wanted. one punch. This doesnt mean I condone a teacher beating up a student, but, i'm pretty sure we can all figure out that this was not the case. I've kind of noticed a pattern of defending bad behavior towards teachers in other threads as well. Not by the majority, but a few people. And on other movie boards. To the point of kind of following a person around from forum to forum and nit-picking. Not cool. you know who you are. there's a private message box if you feel I've offended you and you need to contact me to correct me in any way. :) Because this forum is about movies, not for ppl's personal issues.
THAT said, we kinda all should have figured out Denham would be that character, who was affected the most by Sir. This is usually predictable in any movie that features a mentor and a *hardazz*.
They were sparring - it wasn't supposed to be a fight!
shareI learnt that Sir had the fabulous ability to cure Denham's naughtiness by punching him in the stomach.
shareHe probably could have taken the kid out in two seconds, but he didn't want to.
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