The Headmaster Character Analysis

I was conscious of him throughout the meal and held myself as though he were conscious of me. Some of the other boys at my table also suffered fits of dignity. The atmosphere in the hall had become theatrical. This had everything to do with Frost himself. The element of performance in his bearing—even the business with the napkin, awkward as it seemed, had a calculated quality—charged the room and put us on edge, not at all unpleasantly, as if a glamorous woman had entered the hall.

But no. Instead the headmaster told a story of how, as a farm boy completely ignorant of poetry, he had idly picked up a teacher’s copy of North of Boston and read a poem entitled “After Apple-Picking.” He approached it, he said, in a surly humor. He’d done more than a bit of apple-picking himself and was sure this poem would make it fancy and romantic and get it all wrong. Yet what struck him first was how physically true the poem was, even down to that ache you get in the arch of your foot after standing on a ladder all day—and not only the ache but the lingering pressure of the rung. Then, once he’d assented to the details, he was drawn to the poem’s more mysterious musings. […] Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.

Now they sounded different to me. The very heedlessness of their voices defined the distance that had opened up between us. That easy brimming gaiety already seemed impossibly remote, no longer the true life I would wake to each morning, but a paling dream.

Arch was sick of these competitions. The headmaster had launched them years ago to encourage more boys to try their hand at writing, and at the time Arch had seen merit in the idea, but it soon palled on him. The scramble to win a private audience set them against one another and sanctioned the idea of writing as warfare by other means, with a handful of champions waving the bloody shirt over a mob of failed pretenders.

Arch began to explain. He wasn’t used to talking about himself, and did it clumsily, but he tried to make the headmaster understand. This boy had laid false claim to a story, whereas he himself had laid false claim to much more—to a kind of importance, to a life not his own. He had been in violation of the Honor Code for many years now and had no right to punish lesser offenders, especially this one, who’d been caught up in a hysteria for which Arch held himself partly responsible.

I’m kicking myself out, he said. That’s my last act as dean.

Arch stopped and looked down the garden to where the headmaster stood by the drinks table with another master. The headmaster said, Late for his own funeral! and everyone laughed, then he put his glass down and came toward Arch with both hands outstretched. Though the headmaster was the younger man, and much shorter, and though Arch was lame and had white hairs coming out of his ears and white stubble all over his face, he felt no more than a boy again—but a very well-versed boy who couldn’t help thinking of the scene described by these old words, surely the most beautiful words ever written or said: His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.

I was conscious of him throughout the meal and held myself as though he were conscious of me. Some of the other boys at my table also suffered fits of dignity. The atmosphere in the hall had become theatrical. This had everything to do with Frost himself. The element of performance in his bearing—even the business with the napkin, awkward as it seemed, had a calculated quality—charged the room and put us on edge, not at all unpleasantly, as if a glamorous woman had entered the hall.

But no. Instead the headmaster told a story of how, as a farm boy completely ignorant of poetry, he had idly picked up a teacher’s copy of North of Boston and read a poem entitled “After Apple-Picking.” He approached it, he said, in a surly humor. He’d done more than a bit of apple-picking himself and was sure this poem would make it fancy and romantic and get it all wrong. Yet what struck him first was how physically true the poem was, even down to that ache you get in the arch of your foot after standing on a ladder all day—and not only the ache but the lingering pressure of the rung. Then, once he’d assented to the details, he was drawn to the poem’s more mysterious musings. […] Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.

Now they sounded different to me. The very heedlessness of their voices defined the distance that had opened up between us. That easy brimming gaiety already seemed impossibly remote, no longer the true life I would wake to each morning, but a paling dream.

Arch was sick of these competitions. The headmaster had launched them years ago to encourage more boys to try their hand at writing, and at the time Arch had seen merit in the idea, but it soon palled on him. The scramble to win a private audience set them against one another and sanctioned the idea of writing as warfare by other means, with a handful of champions waving the bloody shirt over a mob of failed pretenders.

Arch began to explain. He wasn’t used to talking about himself, and did it clumsily, but he tried to make the headmaster understand. This boy had laid false claim to a story, whereas he himself had laid false claim to much more—to a kind of importance, to a life not his own. He had been in violation of the Honor Code for many years now and had no right to punish lesser offenders, especially this one, who’d been caught up in a hysteria for which Arch held himself partly responsible.

I’m kicking myself out, he said. That’s my last act as dean.

Arch stopped and looked down the garden to where the headmaster stood by the drinks table with another master. The headmaster said, Late for his own funeral! and everyone laughed, then he put his glass down and came toward Arch with both hands outstretched. Though the headmaster was the younger man, and much shorter, and though Arch was lame and had white hairs coming out of his ears and white stubble all over his face, he felt no more than a boy again—but a very well-versed boy who couldn’t help thinking of the scene described by these old words, surely the most beautiful words ever written or said: His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.