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Chapter 2: On Fire
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Old School, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Honesty and Honor
Identity and Belonging
The Power of Literature
Competition, Masculinity, and Pride
Education, Failure, and Growth
Summary
Analysis
The day after Kennedy wins the presidency, George Kellogg wins the audience with Robert Frost. His poem is published in the school newspaper: it’s a dramatic monologue in which an old farmer feels the bite of mortality on the first day of autumn. The poem is entitled “First Frost.” In the interview about the poem, Robert Frost tells the school reporter that he enjoyed the fun George had at his expense. The narrator is surprised that Frost read the poem in this way; the narrator read it as bad imitation. That afternoon, George reveals to the narrator that he didn’t mean the poem as a parody—he meant it as an homage to Frost. He’s upset that Frost interpreted the poem as making fun of him. The narrator tries to reassure George, complimenting him on the title and the details.
The question of authorial intent versus reader interpretation comes into focus here. Frost, who views it as satire, finds the poem entertaining and biting, while the narrator believes it is meant to be an homage to Frost (and a poorly written one, at that). This discrepancy again emphasizes how writing’s power lies in how it strikes the reader. George’s displeasure also illustrates how this misinterpretation has wounded his pride, because he realizes that he won the competition for an unintended interpretation—and possibly offended a famous poet.
Themes
Once a week, the sixth-form Honors English Seminar is invited to eat at the headmaster’s table for dinner, where they share literary conversation late into the evening. It was the headmaster who persuaded Robert Frost to visit; Frost was his teacher. After dinner, Purcell chats with the narrator and reveals his astonishment at the fact that George’s poem was selected. The narrator explains that Frost couldn’t have known that George’s poem was serious. Purcell angrily criticizes Frost, saying that he’s still using archaic forms like rhyme, which give poems the sense that everything works out okay.
Purcell’s criticism of Frost illustrates how important the competition and writing in general is to the boys, and how they understand that different writing styles can affect how readers interpret the world. He argues that rhyme, with its formal structure, imparts optimism and order; it makes people feel that the world is too neat. However, his criticism likely stems from his wounded pride because Frost didn’t choose his work to win the contest.
Themes
A few days later, Robert Frost arrives during dinner and sits with the headmaster. Dean Makepeace leads an applause for Frost, and Frost bows his head and smiles sheepishly. The boys then remain conscious of him through dinner, simultaneously trying to act as though they are and aren’t conscious of him, like he’s a “glamorous woman.”
Frost joins the boys in the chapel that night, though writers usually speak in the auditorium. The headmaster introduces Frost, explaining that when he was a farm boy, he had read a poem entitled “After Apple-Picking” and was stunned by the exactness of the detail in the poem and by its mysterious musings. He concludes that a piece of writing can be a dangerous thing because it can change a person’s life.
The headmaster’s story underscores the power of literature, and particularly how it moves readers. The headmaster’s experience with “After Apple-Picking” set him on the path to study literature and led to his position as headmaster, proving his assertion that writing can literally change a person’s life.
Themes
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Frost then takes the pulpit. He talks about Shelley, who used to say that poets are the “unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” He also addresses George specifically, complimenting George on his piece of “legislation” and his poking fun at Frost. Frost then takes out his own work and reads “Mending Wall.” As Frost reads, the narrator hears new life in the poem. On the page, the poem seems predictable, but in Frost’s voice there is hesitation and complexity.
This quote is a slightly paraphrased version of English poet Percy Shelley’s famous claim in “A Defence of Poetry.” It reinforces the power of writing: that even though people may not always realize it, poets can shape morals, politics, and debate in the world. George’s work is a case in point, as Frost views it as a way of discussing his own work.
Themes
Frost reads several more poems and then takes a few questions. Mr. Ramsey, one of the English teachers, asks Frost if his rigidly formal poetic structure is “adequate to express the modern consciousness,” because industrialization, two world wars, and science dimming faith have changed people’s way of thinking. Frost asserts that science and war have always existed, and counters that Homer still wrote in dactylic hexameters. He says that grief can only be expressed in form—without form, there is no depth or weight to a poem.
Frost and Mr. Ramsey’s debate examines whether some literary forms are too outdated to have an impact on modern readers or to express the human condition. Mr. Ramsey illustrates his belief that different times require different kinds of poems, in line with the modernist literary movement that was popular in the first half of the 20th century. Robert Frost takes the side of the traditionalists here, arguing that some forms are timeless. His reference to Homer, who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey around the 8th century B.C.E., illustrates the enduring impact that more rigid approaches to rhyme and meter can still have on readers centuries later.
Themes
As the boys file out of the chapel, the narrator sees George looking glum. George is upset that Frost really thinks he was making fun of him. George hints that he might not even meet with Frost. The narrator is shocked and calls George a baby for backing out, emphasizing that this is the chance of a lifetime. The narrator implies that if George doesn’t want to go, he’ll take George’s place. George insists that the narrator didn’t earn the audience, and the narrator says he’d still go. George dejectedly walks off.
That the narrator is willing to meet with Robert Frost even if he didn’t earn the honor foreshadows his willingness to take credit for someone else’s work later on in the novel. While honor is clearly important to George, it is less fundamental to the narrator, who merely wants the accolades.
Themes
That night, the narrator, Bill, and some of the boys in the English Club gather in Blaine Hall because it was rumored that Frost would make an appearance there. He doesn’t, but Mrs. Ramsey—the most attractive of the faculty wives—does. She says she’s standing in for Mr. Ramsey (who advises the English Club), who isn’t feeling well. Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Rice, another English master, discuss a rumor that Ayn Rand will visit the school. Bill chimes in that he’s read some of Rand’s work and that she has interesting ideas. Just then, some of the boys break into song and serenade Mrs. Ramsay. After a few songs, the masters stop the boys and everyone disbands, given the late hour.
The evening at Blaine Hall showcases how competitions constantly crop up among the boys, even over small things. Noting that Mrs. Ramsey is at the event without her husband, the boys try to vie for her attention—as seen from Bill’s attempt to impress her about reading Ayn Rand to the others’ more overt serenade. As the narrator noted earlier, the presence of a woman to win over is like a prize to them, and they each want to demonstrate their ability to woo her.
Themes
The next morning, George meets with Frost and relays their conversation to the narrator later. He says that Frost gave him some literary pointers, an inscribed copy of his Complete Poems, and told him to go to Kamchatka or Brazil. George says he doesn’t know where Kamchatka is, and that Mr. Frost didn’t have time to explain. Later the narrator looks up Kamchatka, discovering it is a remote peninsula in the Soviet Union. He wonders why a writer would forsake his schooling to go there—perhaps “solitude, darkness, and hardship.” But he notes that Frost lived in New England all his life at no cost to his art.
Frost’s advice introduces the idea that failure and practical experience are an important part of education—perhaps even more important than what the boys learn in school. At the heart of his counsel, as the narrator points out, is that the boys should experience the world outside of their elite New England prep school and gain broader knowledge and new experiences to write about.
Themes
