Summary :
The works of Alan Sillitoe are preoccupied with man's struggle to attain personal identity in an increasingly impersonal world. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959) depicts the life of a 17-year-old inmate named Smith in an English Borstal, reform school. The story unfolds in a first-person point of view. He exhibits the "Angry Young Man" attitude toward his authoritative world, but he is also an emblematic of universal aspirations.
Smith receives a two-year prison sentence for breaking into a local bakery, later he finds out a way to improve his conditions in jail. The warden of the reform school identifies the exceptional running skill in Smith and equips him to participate in the Borstal Blue Ribbon Prize Cup for Long-Distance Cross-Country Running. Eventually, he becomes the insurmountable fastest runner in the institution, needs to do nothing but train for the race. He enjoys the flavour of freedom in every early morning as he runs across the countryside of the reform school. The governor of the reformatory makes Smith for busy practicing in the cross-country running, hopes of winning the "Borstal Blue Ribbon Prize Cup for Long-Distance cross-country Running (All England) to enhance his office's proud collection of trophies won by his wards. But Smith vows to himself not to win the race. Smith does enjoy the running, however, since it gives him time to think upon him and the governor's state of mind. He also gains a sense of freedom and self-fulfilment in his early-morning jaunts through the icy winter woods, despite the class battle that rages in his mind.
The primary concern of the narrator is to bring out the conspicuous class distinction between the "in-laws" and the "out-laws"(the person who breaks the Law). The unrefined and colloquial language marks the "out-laws" in which smith belongs. The authoritative People like the warden and his companions speak Oxford English. They support and sustain the existing system. While the residents of the Borstal are inhabitants of the working class who have nothing to lose and always expose to the predicaments. During the times in prison he develops his self, realizes his skills and abilities. For him, to win the race would be a compete obedience towards the authority which he abominates, this is how he expresses his sense of frustration and aversion against the power.
Sillitoe offers a realistic snapshot of working class life. He captures the social and economic struggle between the classes in post-war England. The life of Smith unravels in retrospection, his early life and the robbery that caused him into his immediate trouble, we find that he has always been alone.
Afterwards, he explains his family background; his father dies miserably of stomach cancer after lifetime drudgery in a factory, while his mother was constantly unfaithful to her husband. She spends the death benefit of 500 pounds is quickly on clothes, cream cakes, a television set, and so on. Having grown accustomed to such luxuries, Smith and his friend Mike set out to find or steal more money. In their search they notice an open upstairs window of a bakery and climb in, take the cash box, and leave. Having aware that a sudden unexplainable uplift in financial standing will arouse suspicion, they decide to keep the money within the paper rolls and stick it up the drainpipe outside Smith's backdoor. It was not a very clever hiding place as it turns out. Later, an investigating detective finds it after a series of questionings and incriminates Smith.
In the final section, the reader is returned to the Borstal where it is summer and the cross-country race is about to begin. Smith still pledges to himself to lose the race, knowing that the "pop-eyed potbellied" governor and his friends will bet on him. Moving on to the Borstal race, Smith makes use of the perfect opportunity to defy the authority. Though he is far ahead of his nearest competitor, he slows down and then stops before the finish line, allowing his rival enough time to catch up and to win the race. Smith's action seems quite strange to the viewers. He relinquishes his lead to pay the retribution against the smug officials who had dreamed the Borstal’s reputation on his anticipated win. “‘Run’, ‘Run’, they were shouting in their posh voices,” but Smith stops running.
As the climax of the race (and of the story) is reached, Smith rips a piece of bark from a tree and, stuffing it into his mouth, begins to cry. As he does so, he deliberately slows down so that the runner behind him can pass. When Smith is certain that he has lost and has been seen by the governor, he trots up to the finish line and collapses without ever crossing it. As punishment, the governor fills the remainder of Smith's six months with the dirtiest and most debasing jobs he can find. But Smith does not regret his actions.
Analysis:
Alan Sillitoe can be considered as one among the “Angry young men” writer along with John Osborne, Harold Pinter, John Braine and Kingsley Amis etc. even though he disliked that label, his works replete with the tone of frustration and disillusionment of the young generation in 1950s. He is well known for his debut novel “Saturday night and Sunday morning”. He was born to a working class parents. His father was illiterate and unsteady with his jobs. The family was often on the verge of starvation.
The novella captures the life a teenage boy and his rebellion against the authority. The tone of a typical angry young man is conspicuous here. ‘Angry young men’ refers to a new generation of writer who came significantly after 1950s, who attacked the social and political institution through their literature. This term is a journalistic coinage soon after the success of the drama “Look Back in Anger” by John Osborne. They vehemently raised their voice against the socio-political establishments. Their radical voices were trying to convey the plights of working class people in their own colloquial language.
The protagonist of the story Smith can be considered as a prototype of Angry young men. His young blood always hunger for a revolt. It contains a stark realism accompanied by sardonic humour. Here, running can be considered as a metaphor, rather than a physical activity it denotes the working progress of the mind. A stream of thoughts regarding class conscious and rebellion always runs inside his mind. Smith is portrayed as an ‘outlaw’ (act of breaking law) and a true representation of an unlucky working class fellow. In a sense all working class people are long distance runners, they run alone for life endlessly.
“As soon as I got to Borstal they made me a long-distance cross-country runner. I suppose they thought I was just the build for it because I was long and skinny for my age (and still am) and in any case I didn't mind it much, to tell you the truth, because running had always been made much of in our family, especially running away from the police. I've always been a good runner, quick and with a big stride as well, the only trouble being that no matter how fast I run, and I did a very fair lick even though I do say so myself, it didn't stop me getting caught by the cops after that bakery job”.
This is how the novella begins; at the outset itself it sets the tone of the story and the nature of the protagonist. Structurally Sillitoe’s text can be classified into three distinct sections. The first section includes Smith’s present experience as a Borstal inmate and his rigorous training at long-distance running. He makes use of his exceptional ability in ‘running’ as a method of ‘cunning’ to defeat the expectations of the governor by losing the race.
The second part consist of lengthy flashbacks referring to the period prior to Smith’s imprisonment when his father died of the throat cancer, which won the family “a cool five hundred in insurance and benefits from the factory”. The whole amount is lavishly spent by his irresponsible mother, buying a brand new fur cloak, a “twenty-one-inch telly,” a new carpet “because the old one was covered with blood from my dad’s dying;” and “bags” of food etc.
“Night after night we sat in front of the telly with a ham sandwich in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other, and a bottle of lemonade between our boots, while mam was with some fancy man upstairs on the new bed she’d ordered…”
“Night after night we sat in front of the telly with a ham sandwich in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other, and a bottle of lemonade between our boots, while mam was with some fancy man upstairs on the new bed she’d ordered…”
The entire money gets wasted by the spendthrift mother. Later, it also relates the foredoomed burglary of the bakery; the police finally find out and arrest him.
The third part dramatizes the running experience and the deliberate defeat.
The plot of Loneliness represents a continual movement of Smith's mind from an unconscious to a conscious awareness of the class struggle. When he first enters Borstal, Smith is aware through previous social conditioning that there is a powerful, and malevolent force which he must beware. As he ponders this relationship between himself and his natural enemy during his long-distance running, Smith decides that the only honest way for him to fight this enemy while still its captive is simply to lose the race. As he says, "I only want a bit of my own back on the In-laws and Potbellies by letting them sit up there on their big posh seats and watch me lose this race".
“I am the greatest warrior in the world”
