Tommy’s bullying at Hailsham

Tommy’s bullying at Hailsham is a prolonged cycle of ridicule, exclusion, and retaliation that begins around his art and eventually reaches the classroom, dining hall, dormitory, and playing fields. Kathy H. reconstructs it partly from incidents she witnessed and partly from accounts she gathered by questioning others; Tommy’s later explanation, especially the story of his elephant watercolor, reveals how an apparent joke became the focus of a persecution lasting years. The episode’s decisive reversal comes not through a public reprimand but when Tommy begins to withhold the temper that had helped sustain the cycle.

Origins and Escalation

Kathy first notices a cluster of incidents during the summer of Tommy’s Senior 2 year, when he is thirteen, but later recognizes that the trouble had started much earlier. Ruth’s explanation in the dormitory—that Tommy had brought his problems on himself by failing to produce work for the Spring Exchange—echoes what Kathy understands to be a common Hailsham view. Lying awake after the conversation, Kathy realizes that the idea that Tommy deliberately did not try had circulated since the Juniors. What she had taken for a recent run of trouble was, in fact, the latest part of a history stretching back years.

Tommy later dates the beginning to one of Miss Geraldine’s art classes. He had previously enjoyed painting; then he made a quick watercolor of an elephant standing in tall grass, taking no more than twenty minutes. He described it as a joke, though Kathy suspects there was no clear motive beyond the uncertain wish of a child to get a laugh or cause a stir. The picture did get a laugh, but not the response he expected. Miss Geraldine, apparently trying to protect him from mockery, pointed out things she could praise and drew the class’s attention to the work. Her attempt to defend him instead intensified resentment. After the class, Tommy heard the other students talking about him without regard for whether he could hear.

Kathy surmises that Tommy already felt his painting was behind that of students younger than himself and had been covering his unease with deliberately childish pictures. Once the elephant made the issue visible to the class, his next attempts became occasions for watching and ridicule. He tried harder for a time, but sneers and giggles met his efforts; the more seriously he worked, the more laughable the others made him feel. He returned to childish-looking work as a defense, presenting himself as if he did not care. That defense, and the class’s response to it, deepened the pattern rather than ending it.

Forms of Persecution

The hostility first centered on art lessons, which occupied much of the Juniors’ schoolwork, but it spread into ordinary social life. Tommy was left out of games, boys refused to sit beside him at dinner, and dormmates sometimes pretended not to hear him when he spoke after lights-out. The pattern was not equally intense every day: months could pass without an incident, allowing Tommy to think the trouble was over, before something he did—or a tormentor such as Arthur H.—started it again.

By the period Kathy recalls most closely, the attacks included both humiliating pranks and episodes of open anger. A rumor described someone putting a worm in Tommy’s cereal; another, more vicious prank involved cleaning a toilet with his toothbrush and leaving it with filth on the bristles. Kathy also heard that Tommy had overturned two desks in Room 14, scattering their contents while the class escaped to the landing and barricaded the door. During football practice, Mr. Christopher had to pin back Tommy’s arms to stop him attacking Reggie D. Kathy did not witness every episode, but she questioned people until she had assembled what she considered a fairly full account.

His isolation could be seen even when nobody was actively teasing him. On the Senior 2 fields run, Tommy was the only boy without a running partner. He was a good runner and quickly opened a gap of ten or fifteen yards, perhaps hoping that distance would conceal the fact that no one wanted to run alongside him. His size and strength, along with his temper, meant that the bullying did not take the form of direct physical attacks on him. Instead, its persistence lay in repeated humiliations and refusals of companionship. For at least a couple of months, the incidents continued without anyone saying they had gone too far.

Social Complicity and the Peak

Kathy tries to challenge the group’s response in the dark of the dormitory, where the six students in her Senior dorm could speak more intimately than elsewhere. She summarizes what has been happening and says it is unfair. The silence that follows makes clear that the others are waiting for Ruth, whose judgment commonly determines how the group handles an awkward subject. Ruth concedes that the treatment is unpleasant but redirects responsibility to Tommy’s attitude and his failure to contribute to the Spring Exchange. Her answer gives voice to a social logic in which artistic output becomes a reason to blame the person being targeted, while the group’s conduct goes largely unexamined.

Kathy remembers Tommy’s temper as familiar even in the Infants, whereas Tommy later maintained that the tantrums began only after the teasing became bad. The account leaves that chronology unresolved, but Kathy is clear about the consequence: the outbursts escalated the persecution by giving his peers another reason to focus on him. Around the summer of Senior 2, the bullying reached its peak. The pattern therefore feeds on itself: ridicule and exclusion provoke anger, and the anger helps the group treat Tommy as responsible for the continuing hostility.

Reversal and Significance

The incidents do not cease all at once. For perhaps a month or longer, pranks continue at a steady pace, but Tommy fails to lose his temper. Sometimes he seems close to an outburst; at other times he shrugs quietly or behaves as though he has not noticed. At first, these responses disappoint the people provoking him, and Kathy senses that some may even feel he has let them down. Gradually they become bored, and the pranks grow half-hearted. One day Kathy realizes that more than a week has passed without one.

She notices that the change is social as well as behavioral. Alexander J. and Peter N. walk with Tommy across the courtyard toward the fields, talking naturally. The tone shifts when other students mention his name. Near the South Playing Field, Tommy is again at the heart of a football game. After he is tripped, he gets up, places the ball for a free kick, and prepares to take it. Arthur H., one of his most persistent tormentors, mimics Tommy’s stance from behind, but none of the watching boys join in. Tommy takes the kick, play resumes, and Arthur does nothing further. The familiar opportunity for ridicule is present, yet the group no longer responds to it as before.

Kathy is pleased by the change but cannot explain it simply through Tommy’s work: his reputation for creativity remains just as poor. She thinks the end of the tantrums mattered, but also sees a difference in how he carries himself, meets people’s eyes, and speaks with an open, good-natured manner. The bullying’s reversal does not erase its long history or establish that Tommy’s art has improved. Instead, the narrative links its decline to a change in his reactions and in the group’s willingness to sustain the old performance. Kathy’s delayed recognition of the years behind the episode gives its apparent stopping point a double weight: the persecution has eased, but only after a school culture of exclusion has been allowed to repeat itself for a long time.