Boy

The novel tells of thirteen-year-old Arthur Fearon who, driven by his unhappiness at home, stows away on a merchant ship bound for Alexandria. Hanley himself went to sea as a boy. He wrote Arthur's story from personal observation and in a rage of indignation agains the romanticizing of life at sea. He portrays ignorant men, raised in poverty and trapped in the frustrating narrowness of that life, made helpless against their own brutality; dangerous beings to a highly strung boy. They assault him sexually, exploit him sentimentally, bully him, and finally land him in a situation far beyond his managing. The men "don't mean it", they boy's pathetic courage flickers on to the end -- James Hanley's understanding and compassion embrace all of them except for the representative of authority who brings the affair to its terrible end. And T.E. Lawrence expressed the matter exactly when he wrote Hanley in 1934: "Parts of Boy are very painful: yet I think your sanity and general wholesomeness stick up out of your book a mile high."