“Circling the drain”

“Circling the drain” is a phrase used at Schulpforta to describe a prisoner reduced to extreme exhaustion during the school’s annual freezing ordeal. First spoken by Bastian as a name for the man’s appearance, it returns in Volkheimer’s account of the ritual, linking a moment of degradation to a violence the institution repeats each year.

The Phrase and Its First Use

Bastian introduces the expression while flourishing his hand toward the prisoner and describing the look of someone with nothing left. He contrasts that appearance with the ideal of a German soldier, who, he claims, would never reach such a state, then names it: “There’s a name for this look. It’s called ‘circling the drain.’” The phrase makes the man’s condition sound like a recognizable category. Its casual, almost diagnostic tone sits beside the immediate reality of a captive about to be drenched in the freezing night.

The scene gives that label a concrete setting. Instructors and senior students file past the prisoner, taking buckets from Volkheimer and throwing water over him; the boys watch and cheers rise. The phrase does not describe an abstract decline: it is spoken as the school prepares to inflict further suffering on a person already visibly spent.

A Recurring Ritual

Volkheimer later tells Werner Pfennig that the ordeal happens every year. The prisoner is variously said to be a Pole, a Red, or a Cossack, and accused of stealing liquor, kerosene, or money; the allegations change, but Volkheimer says the event remains the same. He recalls that the phrase does too: “Always the same phrase too,” followed by “Circling the drain.” The repetition makes the words part of the ritual’s vocabulary, as predictable as the yearly appearance of a prisoner and the school’s procession of tormentors.

That recurrence changes the expression’s weight. Bastian presents it as a label for one man’s condition; Volkheimer’s recollection shows that the school has attached the same label to successive victims. What sounds like an observation therefore also records a system of repetition, in which a captive’s degradation is made familiar to those who witness it.

Cruelty and Moral Recognition

Werner asks whether it was decent to leave the prisoner outside even after he was dead. Volkheimer answers that decency does not matter to them, but the identity of the people included in “them” remains unstated: Dr. Hauptmann enters before Werner can ask. The phrase’s return is set against this unresolved distinction between those who carry out the violence and those who recognize its indecency. “Circling the drain” names the prisoner’s apparent approach to death, while its calm, repeated use reveals how readily the school turns suffering into routine language.