Characters Discussed
Old Students
Old Students, eight elderly people, fellow students of the Old Man Repeater, the Old Man with a Bike, the Old Man in the Loo, and the Old Man Exhibitionist. They are dressed in black, with black bowlers; they have grayish faces and dead, staring eyes. Each student carries a child puppet on his back, dressed in school uniform, as an effigy of lost childhood and imprisonment in the past.
The Old Man in the Loo
The Old Man in the Loo, a student. He sits in the school lavatory, engrossed in endless accounts and quarrels with God. This repetitive action suggests an eternal regression into the anal stage.
The Old Man with a Bike
The Old Man with a Bike, a student. He never parts with the beat-up remnant of childhood and ceaselessly rides the bike around the desks, adding yet another symbolic action to the eternal imprisonment in repetition of the members of the dead class.
The Old Man Exhibitionist
The Old Man Exhibitionist, a student. His fellow students drag him to the privy and pull his pants down. He exposes his backside, remaining in that pose for the duration of the lesson on Solomon.
The Old Man Repeater
The Old Man Repeater, a miserable looking student who is taunted and bullied by the others. He stubbornly recites his grammar lesson while the rest talk and squirm in complete indifference. As the Obituary...
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