COMMENTARY ON TEXT “THINKING AS A HOBBY”
Foreword: A friend of mine friendly calls me a maniac of being self-tormented with studies. Sound hilarious, but it may be true to some extent. I can't dare say it is destiny or a sheer coincidence, but somehow it turns out to be an incredible incidence that proves her saying. The text below is a precious thing from the chances I again kept tormenting myself while each of my friends did have some spare time for other stuff.
COMMENTARY ON TEXT “THINKING AS A HOBBY”
BY WILLIAM GOLDING
Considered the first of William Golding’s essay, published in August 1961 in the United States of America, “Thinking as a hobby” provides readers with an insight into the so-called critical thinking from the author’s perspectives. Worldly known as an eminent Nobel Prize winner, William Golding made a name for himself for his illuminating writing style and the realistic depiction of the universality of myth. Written with the same style, the essay “Thinking as a hobby” classifies “three grades” of human thinking adopting the symbolic statuettes in a humorous and satirizing manner.
Written in simple and easy-to-understand proses, the essay can target readers even from laymen to experts. Employing the three statuettes and examples from his school time, the author categorises three different ways of thinking, from which he humorously exemplifies and mocks the fallacies in the second and third grades of thinking. Reading through the lines, one can detect insightful thoughts and even slightly sarcastic stories which serve as food for thought on the differentiation of the three grades of thinking. In approximately 50 paragraphs, the writer vividly illuminates the difference, starting with his schooltime stories related to the statuettes, which are also central symbolic images of the essay, in the first 18 paragraphs. Then, the author sequentially clarifies grade-three, grade-two, and grade-one thinking in the next 24 paragraphs with myriads of facts and contradictions. The last 5 paragraphs are allocated for the contemplation of the author himself regarding the position of these three types of thinking in social life.
A sophisticated person as he depicts himself - “an unsatisfactory child for grownups to deal with”, the author begins with the notion of classification of thinking, which starts to take root in the author at his school time. The essay commences in the classroom settings, or to be exact, the headmaster’s room with the three statuettes. The description of the three figurines, namely The Venus of Milo as “a lady wearing nothing but a bath towel”, The Leopard which is crouching as if ready for an attack, and “a naked miserable muscular gentleman” known as the Rodin’s Thinker, is presented via the observation of school child, and this does create funny images which only exist in children’s mind, innocent and full of curiosity and imaginations. However, this description does pave the way for a puzzle to be created later when the young author confronts the headmaster with his irrational and somehow incomprehensible questions such as “Don’t you ever think at all?”, or “Why can’t you think?”. These are the questions that at first glance seem to be quite ordinary, but then turns out to be full of prejudices and assumption according to the writer on his aging, which is conveyed via the claim “The whole thing was incomprehensible”, and the rhetorical questions “Were they clear, untormented people who could direct everyone’ action by this mysterious business of thinking?”
From such provocation in early years, combined with the following examples, the writer conjures up the first category of thinking - grade-three thinking. Employed in this illustration are the examples of his teachers, Mr. Houghton and Miss Parsons. Mr. Houghton is sarcastically described as someone who always claims himself as a true thinker, with intense hypocrisy and self-belief. However, huge loads of contradictions and paradoxes are evidenced, which creates an ironic effect and meaning that he is actually not that extreme thinker. For example, he claims his life as “sexless and dutiful”, but he still casts his eyes on the girl passing through the class window until she is out of sight, with “his neck turns out of itself”. The neck is also an ironic image, “Mr. Houghton thought with his neck”, which contributes to prove the fact it is his emotions taking control of himself and that he does not think the way he claims. Another typical example from the author’s childhood for grade-three thinkers is Miss Parsons who always announces and speaks of students' well-being in the dearest dedication, but it turns out that “what she wanted most was the husband that she never got”. This, another contradiction, is conveyed with a slight mockery, which clearly justifies the writer’s conclusion of the grade-three thinkers as “full of unconscious prejudices, ignorance and hypocrisy”, and as those “who will not value it” when their follies are pointed out. And, that type of thinkers is considered immature by the author. The simile is deployed, in which this group of thinkers is compared to the cows grazing on the side of a hill, thus creating another mockery image that conveys negative attitudes from the writer towards the largest and most common group of thinkers.
Considered more advanced than the grade-three thinkers are those of grade two, with the ability to detect contradiction but at the same time “destroy without the power to create”. The instance adopted for illustration is Ruth, a young girl who he has experienced grade-two thinking during his teenage. Throughout the judgments of Ruth on the devout people, disagreement happens between the two, and this also shows that grade-two thinkers are not those who are easily negotiated and led up the garden paths. After the incidents, the writer puts himself in a ridiculous situation with Ruth’s father, who questions him of the aforementioned perspective, and accuses him of “potential libertine”. This shows that apart from being incredulous, these persons also have a tendency to question, seek deficiencies in others’ opinion; however, it is not for finding out the truth. The imagery of this kind of thinking is to “bring a swimmer off-shore and let him there struggling”, which denotes the dangers of itself. The diction employed in the passage is somehow biased, with a number of words expressing slight satires and irony, such as “the statuettes were still here glimmering”, “the combination of my arm and those countless secular heads was too much for her”, which, again, conveys the author’s attitudes.
The last group of thinking, which is also the highly-appreciated, by the writer, is grade one. It is not quite difficult to identify the respect the writer nurtures for this group of people, via the choice of such highly complimentary words as “beamed at him”, “affections and respect wordlessly”, “with true greatness”, and the way he uses the title “Professor” to address Albert Einstein. With the tone changing and word choices diverted in the opposite directions compared to the previous paragraph, the essay not only expresses a different effect of this way of thinking but also connotes the author’s recommendations and positivity towards it. Albert Einstein plays the role of a perfect example of a grade-one thinker, and which the author compares to his own as an equivalent grade-one thinker. Of course, the choice of exemplified representatives is reasonable for the purpose of indicating the limited number of this kind. Additionally, the order of this arrangement from the third to the first grades of thinking is also compatible with the ranks of respect allocated for these types. At the highest recommendation, grade-one thinking is considered “a coherent system for living, a wholly logical and moral system”, which deals with facts and sets out to find answers for the unknown.
After presenting his differentiation of three types of thinking, William Golding ponders on the correlated existences of them in life and associates them with symbolic images of the three statuettes. Comparing the thoughts fostered from the three types, he points out to the conclusion that grade three is feeling being disguised in the assumed shape of thoughts, grade two is thinking lacking in reasons, or incomplete in other words, and grade one is a rational way of thoughts but it is hard to maintain and be widespread as being surrounded by prejudices under the shape of “customs”. That is the reason why people tend to be complacent with their so-called thoughts while they are actually just feelings. Picturing the aforementioned facts, the author returns to the rearrangement of the familiar statuettes in the headmaster’s room. The Venus being put aside is a metaphoric image of grade-three thinking, as an appreciation of feelings yet acknowledged for its miniature values. That the thinker is put after a shadow and before the Leopard being crouched for an attack also symbolises the fact that grade-one thinking is surrounded by many “trifles and assumptions” to put away and is judged and hindered by the second level of thinking, thus not easy to be integrated into life.
In summary, by using the first person in sharing his essay, William Golding retells the journey of his thought process adopted and furnished during his aging. From a personal perspective, he classifies three ways of thinking observed throughout his maturity, with grade three as being quite superficial, grade two as being incomplete and possibly destructive, and grade one as to be remembered and cherished for its logicality and morality. In the same way, he also admits that his categorisation may not be widely accepted, because “pointless actions are hallowed into customs by repetitions”, and that explains why he said to be discontented with his hobby at the beginning of the essay. Personally, I think that Golding’s categorisation does work in modern societies, especially when the integration happening in the flat world leads to loads of information for a human to process and thus less time to actually think, not to mention the fact that we are also struggling every day to keep ourselves stable against assumptions. Understanding such a system, people in general and students in adolescence can have an insight into human’s process of thinking, hence practicing to reach the first-grade thinking and looking at thinking objectively and in an in-depth manner.
Vo Hong Yen Phuong - 21/05/21
REFERENCES
Golding, W. (1961). Thinking as a hobby. Holiday Magazines. USA
Golding, W. Writing styles. Retrieved from: https://williamgoldinginfo.weebly.com/writing-style.html
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