“Henceforth and for ever” Jones in brief summary
The protagonist of the narrative – Private Robert Lee Pruit – was born and spent his childhood in the mines in Garlan village, which in the thirties became known throughout America thanks to a strike of miners brutally suppressed by the police. In this strike the father of the hero was wounded and imprisoned, and his uncle was shot as “resisted.” Soon after the death of tuberculosis and his mother. After proving to see America and seeing the species, Pruit enters the army, which with her discipline, order, paragraphs of the statute became for him a salvation from a citizen, where not very obedient Americans were sometimes warned in the most cruel way. The hero is not accidentally bears the name of the famous commander of the Civil War, the commander-in-chief of the army of Southerners Robert Lee, the “officer and gentleman,” who showed personal courage, strategic talent and selfless adherence to the ideals of the South – for all their historic
Among the large number of very colorful representatives of the Scofield garrison are the private Angelo Maggio and Sergeant Milt Thurber. The first, like Robert Pruit, accepts with hostility the slightest encroachment on his “free self” and as a result falls into a military prison, famous for its intransigence to troublemakers. Sergeant Thurber, on the other hand, hating the officers and as an institution and as a sum of specific persons, resists in his own way – irreproachable knowledge of his duties and high professionalism, making him simply irreplaceable in the company. However, his revenge on the authorities takes also quite concrete forms – he starts an affair with the wife of his company commander Karen Homs, who does not feel anything but contempt for her husband, and only supports the appearance of family relations. However, neither Thurber, nor Karen has any illusions about the longevity of his novel, which nevertheless threatens to outgrow the limits of the usual intrigue and turn into a big, all-consuming love. Pruit also has considerable problems on the love front. After parting with her former mistress Violet, who is tired of the uncertainty of their relationship, he falls in love with the beautiful Alma from the brothel of Mrs. Kipfer. However, the struggle with the army machine takes Pruit too much time to completely surrender to the elements of love. If for him non-participation in sports competitions becomes an important principle of existence, an indicator of inner freedom, then it is equally important for his superiors to subordinate the rebel to his will, instill fear to him and his comrades in arms. Visiting the Hawaiian garrison, General Sam Slater expounds his theory of fear as an organizing social force. “In the past,” he says, “fear of power was just the reverse side of the positive moral code:” honor, patriotism, service… “But practicality triumphed, the era of machines came and everything changed. It is impossible to force a person to voluntarily tie himself to the car, claiming that it is a matter of his honor, that man is no fool, so that only his negative side that has gained the power of the law has survived from this code. m element is now turned into a foundation, because there is nothing else to do. ” This formula, which absorbed numerous arguments about freedom and coercion, precisely determines the essence of what is happening in the novel. Events are developing on the increase. As a result of a skirmish with a drunken sergeant, Pruit falls under a military tribunal and finds himself in the same prison where his friend Maggio is languishing. Prison authorities are a bunch of notorious sadists, but ultimately the regime there is only an even more capacious and visible symbol of the anti-human nature of the military machine, as the author sees it.
Quite quickly, Pruit is in the famous penalty barrack number two, which contains those whom the prison authorities consider unpromising and remedial not subject. This is a kind of elite, the keepers of the original American spirit of disobedience.
However, the idyll of freedom in the barracks of the special regime ends quickly. Angelo Maggio makes a desperate attempt to free himself – he simulates insanity. Another pillar of the “unruly union”, Jack Malloy, makes an escape, and so successfully that he can not be found. However, the third of Pruyt’s friends is unbearable: he becomes a victim of sadistic jailers. Pruitt vows to kill his chief tormentor, Sergeant Judson, and soon after the release of freedom carries out the conceived. However, he has a stubborn resistance and, before dying, he himself inflicts a severe knife wound on Pruitu. The poor fellow can not return to the company in this form and is to his friend Alma.
Once in the city he encounters Teber, who persuades him to return, assuring that no one thinks of suspecting him of Judson’s death and the worst thing that threatens him is two more months in prison. But Pruit is not ready to pay such a price for the restoration of relations with the army. He declares that he will not return to prison any more. Terber can not offer anything else to him, and their ways diverge. It is the seventh of December 1941, when the Japanese Air Force attacked the US military base in Hawaii. To his shame, Pruet discovers that during this raid, which resulted in the death of thousands of his comrades in arms, he peacefully slept with his girlfriend Alma. He makes an attempt to find his own, but the meeting with the military patrol turns out to be fatal. Realizing what arrest might lead to, Pruit tries to escape,
Milt Thurber becomes an officer, and Karen Homs, finally convinced of the meaninglessness of living together with her husband, takes her son and returns to America. On the ship she meets a young and beautiful woman who also returns to America. According to her, with the raid her fiancé died here. She talks about how he tried to take the plane into a shelter under bombing, but a direct hit put an end to his heroic efforts. When a woman names the name of the hero-groom – Robert Lee Pruit, Karen realizes that all this is pure fiction and that before her prostitute Alma Schmidt. Karen’s son, dreaming of a military career, asks his mother, is it true that this war will end before he learns to be an officer and can also take part in it. Seeing the grief on her son’s face after her words that he is unlikely to have time to prove himself in this war, she not without irony assures him that if he is late for this, then he can quite take part in the next. “True?” he asked with hope.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)