[spoilers] Sir Harry Pearce - Return of the Jedi (#3)

[Nixie]

Silktie, I absolutely agree with you! I've definitely thought at times that Harry embodies the very English 'stiff upper lip' and emotional repression required by his job to enable him to hold it all together for everyone, so I really love those moments when the veneer cracks a little and we see those emotions he obviously feels deeply, but holds in check.

(04-04-2011 02:10 PM)JHyde Wrote:  I think Harry sees music and literature as being fruits of democratic societies, as they embody free speech at its very best. And Harry, for all his cynicism, knows that what England has is something worth protecting.

I think we see this as well in S5.2 where Harry quotes Rupert Brooke to Collingwood, when being detained under the special measures: 'And stands the clock at ten to three?' Brooke's poem (written in Berlin in 1912) evokes a sense of nostalgia and homesickness, mixed with patriotism, a ‘blended yearning for England with an evocation of rural tranquillity’. Brooke captures memories of a happier, more stable, time while experiencing the threat of war and social upheavals. In quoting Brooke, Harry evokes a sense that all that England stands for – politically and socially – will be lost if the conspirators’ plot succeeds. England will be run by a self-appointed covert despotic council, hiding behind a democratically elected Prime Minister, whom they have turned into a puppet. So much implied in a one line quote! Clever writing and beautifully delivered!

Good point, A Cousin. Philosophy, history, the classics, poetry and other literature - a real Renaissance man