The History Boys

by

Alan Bennett

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on History Boys makes teaching easy.

Hector Character Analysis

Hector is the central character in the play, a beloved teacher who believes that his students should learn literature by heart in order to help them weather life’s difficulties. His teaching style is irreverent and energetic. He often has the boys act out scenes or sing songs, and he seems unhampered by the usual school rules. He does not believe that exams are useful. The Headmaster deplores Hector’s teaching style, because its results cannot be measured or quantified. We learn over the course of the play that Hector is lonely and dissatisfied in many ways. He has become disillusioned with teaching, he suppresses his homosexual desires, and he is in an emotionally distant marriage with a woman. He gropes his students while they ride behind him on his motorcycle, and this eventually leads him to lose his job. Dakin helps him re-gain his position at the last minute, but to no avail—Hector is killed while driving his motorcycle with Irwin on the back seat.

Hector Quotes in The History Boys

The The History Boys quotes below are all either spoken by Hector or refer to Hector. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Purpose of Education Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone. If I had gone to Oxford I’d probably never have worked out the difference.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Mrs. Lintott
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

TIMMS: Sir, I don’t always understand poetry.
HECTOR: You don’t always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you’ll understand it whenever.
TIMMS: I don’t see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry’s about hasn’t happened to us yet.
HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you’re dying. We’re making your deathbeds here, boys.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Timms (speaker)
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education, too.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:

HECTOR: Codes, spells, runes — call them what you like, but do not call them gobbets.
IRWIN: I just thought it would be useful…
HECTOR: Oh, it would be useful…every answer a Christmas tree hung with the appropriate gobbets. Except that they’re learned by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order.
IRWIN: So what are they meant to be storing them up for, these boys? Education isn’t something for when they’re old and grey and sitting by the fire. It’s for now. The exam is next month.
HECTOR: And what happens after the exam? Life goes on. Gobbets!

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Irwin (speaker)
Page Number: 48-49
Explanation and Analysis:

HECTOR: The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the Renaissance…
HEADMASTER: Fuck the Renaissance. And fuck literature and Plato and Michaelangelo and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school and it isn’t normal.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Headmaster (speaker)
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Posner
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

What made me piss my life away in this god-forsaken school? There’s nothing of me left. Go away. Class dismissed. Go.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:

Shall I tell you what is wrong with Hector as a teacher? It isn’t that he doesn’t produce results. He does. But they are unpredictable and unquantifiable and in the current educational climate that is no use.

Related Characters: Headmaster (speaker), Hector, Mrs. Lintott
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:

What’s all this learning by heart for, except as some sort of insurance against the boys’ ultimate failure?

Related Characters: Mrs. Lintott (speaker), Hector
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t teach you and Wittgenstein didn’t screw it out of his very guts in order for you to turn it into a dinky formula.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Dakin
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
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Hector Quotes in The History Boys

The The History Boys quotes below are all either spoken by Hector or refer to Hector. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Purpose of Education Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone. If I had gone to Oxford I’d probably never have worked out the difference.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Mrs. Lintott
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

TIMMS: Sir, I don’t always understand poetry.
HECTOR: You don’t always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you’ll understand it whenever.
TIMMS: I don’t see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry’s about hasn’t happened to us yet.
HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you’re dying. We’re making your deathbeds here, boys.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Timms (speaker)
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education, too.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:

HECTOR: Codes, spells, runes — call them what you like, but do not call them gobbets.
IRWIN: I just thought it would be useful…
HECTOR: Oh, it would be useful…every answer a Christmas tree hung with the appropriate gobbets. Except that they’re learned by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order.
IRWIN: So what are they meant to be storing them up for, these boys? Education isn’t something for when they’re old and grey and sitting by the fire. It’s for now. The exam is next month.
HECTOR: And what happens after the exam? Life goes on. Gobbets!

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Irwin (speaker)
Page Number: 48-49
Explanation and Analysis:

HECTOR: The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the Renaissance…
HEADMASTER: Fuck the Renaissance. And fuck literature and Plato and Michaelangelo and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school and it isn’t normal.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Headmaster (speaker)
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Posner
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

What made me piss my life away in this god-forsaken school? There’s nothing of me left. Go away. Class dismissed. Go.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker)
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:

Shall I tell you what is wrong with Hector as a teacher? It isn’t that he doesn’t produce results. He does. But they are unpredictable and unquantifiable and in the current educational climate that is no use.

Related Characters: Headmaster (speaker), Hector, Mrs. Lintott
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:

What’s all this learning by heart for, except as some sort of insurance against the boys’ ultimate failure?

Related Characters: Mrs. Lintott (speaker), Hector
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t teach you and Wittgenstein didn’t screw it out of his very guts in order for you to turn it into a dinky formula.

Related Characters: Hector (speaker), Dakin
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis: