Stoner

On the afternoon set for the examination Stoner came deliberately late to the seminar room on the third floor of Jesse Hall. Walker was seated at the end of a long, highly polished table; the four examiners already present--Finch, Lomax, the new man, Holland, and Henry Rutherford--were ranged down the table from him. Stoner slipped in the door and took a chair at the end of the table opposite Walker. Finch and Holland nodded to him; Lomax, slumped in his chair, stared straight ahead, tapping his long white fingers on the mirrorlike surface of the table. Walker stared down the length of the table, his head held stiff and high in cold disdain.

Rutherford cleared his throat. "Ah, Mr." --he consulted a sheet of paper in front of him--"Mr. Stoner." Rutherford was a slight thin gray man with round shoulders; his eyes and brows dropped at the outer corners, so that his expression was always one of gentle hopelessness. Though he had known Stoner for many years, he never remembered his name. He cleared his throat again. "We were just about to begin."

Stoner nodded, rested his forearms on the table, clasped his fingers, and contemplated them as Rutherford's voice droned through the formal preliminaries of the oral examination.

Mr. Walker was being examined (Rutherford's voice dropped to a steady, uninflected hum) to determine his ability to continue in the doctoral program in the Department of English at the University of Missouri. This was an examination which all doctoral candidates underwent, and it was designed not only to judge the candidate's general fitness, but also to determine strengths and weaknesses, so that his future course of study could be profitably guided. Three results were possible: a pass, a conditional pass, and a failure. Rutherford described the terms of these eventualities, and without looking up performed the ritualistic introduction of the examiners and the candidate. Then he pushed the sheet of paper away from him and looked hopelessly at those around him.

"The custom is," he said softly, "for the candidate's thesis adviser to begin the questioning. Mr."--he glanced at the paper--"Mr. Lomax is, I believe, Wr. Walker's adviser. So ..."

Lomax's head jerked back as if he had been suddenly awakened from a doze. He glanced around the table, blinking, a little smile on his lips; but his eyes were shrewd and alert.

"Mr. Walker, you are planning a dissertation on Shelley and the Hellenistic Ideal. It is unlikely that you have thought through your subject yet, but would you begin by giving us some of the background, your reason for choosing it, and so forth."

Walker nodded and began swiftly to speak. "I intend to trace Shelley's first rejection of Godwinian necessitarianism for a more or less Platonic ideal, in the 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,' through the mature use of that ideal, in Prometheus Unbound, as a comprehensive synthesis of his earlier atheism, radicalism, Christianity, and scientific necessitarianism, and ultimately to account for the decay of the ideal in such a late work as Hellas. It is to my mind an important topic for three reasons: First, it shows the quality of Shelley's mind, and hence leads us into a better understanding of his poetry. Second, it demonstrates the leading philosophical and literary conflicts of the early nineteenth century, and hence enlarges our understanding and appreciation of Romantic poetry. And third, it is a subject that might have a peculiar relevance to our own time, a time in which we face many of the same conflicts that confronted Shelley and his contemporaries."

Stoner listened, and as he listened his astonishment grew. He could not believe that this was the same man who had taken his seminar, whom he thought he knew. Walker's presentation was lucid, forthright, and intelligent; at times it was almost brilliant. Lomax was right; if the dissertation fulfilled its promise, it would be brilliant. Hope, warm and exhilarating, rushed upon him, and he leaned forward attentively.

Walker talked upon the subject of his dissertation for perhaps ten minutes and then abruptly stopped. Quickly Lomax asked another question, and Walker responded at once.

Gordon Finch caught Stoner's eye and gave him a look of mild inquiry; Stoner smiled slightly, self-deprecatingly, and gave a small shrug of his shoulders.

When Walker stopped again, Jim Holland spoke immediately. He was a thin young man, intense and pale, with slightly protuberant blue eyes; he spoke with a deliberate slowness, with a voice that seemed always to tremble before a forced restraint. "Mr. Walker, you mentioned a bit earlier Godwin's necessitarianism. I wonder if you could make a connection between that and the phenomenalism of John Locke?" Stoner remembered that Holland was an eighteenth-century man.