Department of English
Stoner and Holland:
Depiction of Success and Happiness in Educational Narratives
Linus Sahlén BA Degree Project Literature
VT 17
Instructor: Elisabet Dellming
Abstract
There have been many teachers featured in fiction over the decades, with some of them being portrayed as successful and some of them not. This essay focuses on two of these teachers, namely William Stoner in John William’s 1965 novel Stoner and Glenn Holland in Stephen Herek’s film Mr. Holland’s Opus from 1995. The aim is to see how their two different approaches to their roles as teachers affect how their sense of, as well as experience of, success and happiness is depicted. Through a close reading of the book and a close viewing of the film the essay presents an analysis of the two characters and their approaches to the teaching profession. A lot of research on the topic of success and happiness have been done and the characters are analysed through notions of personal development, duty and unlearning as described in three articles with previous research. By comparing the previous studies on personal development, duty and unlearning with the narratives of the two characters, the results presented shows both similarities and differences in the character’s approaches to their professional roles as well as their notion of success and happiness. While Stoner finds his happiness through personal development, Holland does so by realising his duty towards his students. What the two characters have in common is that they reach success through unlearning what they thought it meant to be a teacher.
Keywords: happiness; success; educational narratives; Stoner; Mr. Holland’s Opus
