"So, I've had a career fop foisted on me!"
These were the unforgettable words of Captain Bligh in the movie the first time he set eyes on Christian Fletcher. Trevor Howard's inimitable tight-jawed, stiff-upper-lip enunciation of the line was a precis of contemporary history. In Fletcher, he encountered everything that the bourgeoisie hated in the aristocracy. Fletcher had everything that Bligh did not "" affluence, distinction, family connections, and even two ladies to see him off at the pier! One of these ladies was French and, when Bligh professed his ignorance of the language, she commented "That's unceeveelised of you!"
Clearly, the two men were denizens of disparate worlds. Bligh was a type whose standards not only disagreed with those of Fletcher, but whose standards did not even overlap. The two men lived for disjunctive goals. Bligh was the man who had to prove himself: he candidly admits his ambition to gain rewards and honours. Fletcher merely nods his comprehension: these honours and rewards had no meaning for him.
The year was 1787. Two years later, the mutiny would occur, and, according to one tradition, the death of Fletcher on the Pitcairn Islands. But consider the date: 1789 was the year of the French Revolution. The triumph of the bourgeoisie over the aristocracy would be complete, notwithstanding the events on board the Bounty. Pace Napoleon Bonaparte, the future clearly lay with the shopkeepers.
Captain Bligh and the first Homo sapiens have the same relationship to modern man. They both outlived all other types, and triumphed. Natural and social selection have acted against the Fletchers. The Fletchers have no will-power: they are unable to regard every external goal dangled by those in authority as something to be secured with canine tenacity and canine subservience for one's master. The future clearly belonged to the class that had nothing and had everything to gain through sheer doggedness and hard work. Even Karl Marx had a few laudable things to say about the species.
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