The Unseen Hook story
In May 1926, Charles returns to England to volunteer his services during the General Strike. In the East End, he meets Boy Mulcaster. At a party they encounter Anthony Blanche, who describes how Sebastian is living in Fez. Julia tells Charles that her dying mother is anxious to see Sebastian, and he agrees to go to Morocco and bring him home. He discovers Sebastian has been living with Kurt, a German ex-soldier discharged from the French Foreign Legion after deliberately shooting himself in the foot. Sebastian is a chronic alcoholic, and has been hospitalised with pneumonia. Charles finds his friend emaciated and dissipated, unwilling to follow doctor's orders, and disinclined to leave Kurt. Before Charles leaves Morocco, he learns that Lady Marchmain has died.
22 total · 2 choice · 5 major · 15 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| coping with a terminal illness | choice | At the center of this story is the dying Lady Marchmain and her desire to be reunited with her estranged son, Sebastian, who ran away from her to wallow in dipsomania in Morocco. Lady Marchmain also sought to apologize to Charles. Her two daughters waited on her deathbed. |
| friendship | choice | The story centers around the intimate friendship between Charles and Sebastian. Charles visited Sebastian in Morocco to encourage him to return to England to visit his dying mother. |
| alcohol abuse | major | Charles became reunited with Sebastian in Morocco, only to find him sunken hopelessly deep into alcoholism as well as various dark emotions. |
| life in late modern Britain | major | The story portrays life for a variety of people across the social strata, in Britain during the interwar period as well as during the Second World War. In particular, the viewer was shown striking workers and upper-class strike breakers have a go at each other on the streets of London during the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. |
| male homosexuality | major | Antoine was clearly a raging homosexual. It seems strongly implied that Sebastian was too, and that he lived in a homosexual relationship with Kurt, though it is possible to imagine the story otherwise. |
| prejudice against someone of a different social class | major | Charles and his volunteering upper-middle to upper-class compatriots relished the opportunity to bludgeon some striking lower class workers over their noggins with makeshift batons and other blunt instruments. What they had not reckoned on was having to dodge just so many rotten cabbages, alas. |
| romantic relationship | major | Sebastian had gotten himself entangled in what appeared to be a dominance and submission relationship with a rather despicable German deserter, named Kurt, who had shot himself in the foot and suffered from syphilis. Kurt was clearly a witless moron and would be helpless with his crippled foot. Yet Sebastian let himself be bossed around. Sebastian spelled out the reason: he needed someone more pathetic than himself to look after, and Kurt was the only one that could be so pathetic. [dominance and submission relationship] |
| coping with a moocher | minor | Those who knew Sebastian, but Charles notably, were outraged by how the base and thankless Kurt took advantage of his sensitive benefactor. |
| coping with being ill and indisposed | minor | Sebastian was in the hospital recuperating form pneumonia. |
| cowardice | minor | Kurt had shot himself in the foot to get out of the German foreign legion. |