Goodbye Mr. Chips

James Hilton's novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips is the story of an English schoolmaster who dedicated his entire adult life teaching young boys. He was a somewhat shy person. Nevertheless he was a competent school teacher, professional and attractive in many different ways. Although his first teaching experience was not successful, he was determined to become a good schoolmaster. After coming to Brookfield, he began to warm up to his students. But more important he brought discipline to his school which is the requirement for good teaching--something he did not achieve while teaching at Melbery.

After teaching 25 years at Brookfield, Chips was still unmarried. Everyone thought that he would never get married because he had passed the usual marrying age. But, he did marry and it happened under unusual conditions. He went on a trip to the Lake district of England and there, he met his future wife, Katherine Bridges. During the trip, he was climbing a steep hill when he saw a woman from far waving at someone down below. The woman was standing on a dangerous-looking ledge and appeared to be asking for help. Chips thought that she needed to be rescued and proceeded to help her. Instead of helping her, he hurt his ankle, and in the end, she ended up helping Chips. Within weeks after their first meeting, they fell in love with each other and before the end of summer, they got married.

Katherine deeply loved Chips and he loved her in return. Within a short time, the charming Katherine turned Mr. chips into an good-natured gentleman who was adored by his students. He was changed by the power of love. Chips became a kind, congenial, friendly individual to everyone--so much so that he became the most beloved teacher at Brookfield. Full of enthusiasm, young English schoolmaster Mr. Chipping came to teach at Brookfield in 1870. It was a time when dignity and a kindness of spirit still existed, and the dedicated new schoolmaster expressed these beliefs to his disorderly students. Nicknamed Mr. Chips, this gentle and caring man helped shape the lives of generation after generation of boys. He became a legend at Brookfield, as continuing as the institution itself. And sad but grateful faces told the story when the time came for the students at Brookfield to bid their final goodbye to Mr. Chips.

This novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips shows its age from the point of sixty five years later. The story becomes a set piece, lost in its 1930s era assumptions. Hilton's simple, sentimental story about an English school teacher, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, remains as unabashedly accessible as it must have been when it was written. This novel is not a call for whole sale reform of an educational system. Instead, Hilton uses the Chipping character as a metaphor for the value of education in giving the student that most indefinable of the possessions of civilization, a sense of proportion.

The story recaps the professional life of a devoted teacher. The story is propelled cheerfully along, through flashbacks and ironic anecdote. Although the author's approach may be said to be sentimental, the construction of the plot and the direct yet delicate way in which the themes are driven home are quite appealing. The book does indeed read as though the author understood the potential in his story from the opening paragraph onward.

Mr. Chips' school bound world is not a "real world" in many ways, and yet the novel retains a sense of warmth and reality that many school boy days books can't maintain. Hilton squeezes into a brief short story gentle wit, a mild love story, and shrewd observations about the importance o a sense of permanence. In some ways, Mr. Chipping is a metaphor for the survival of English middle-class life in the wake of the first world war. We might also view Hilton's creation of Mr. Chipping in the late 1930s as an attempt to preserve the English middle-class sense of proportion and the rightness of things for a generation under the shadow of the impending war against fascism. Whether we take Goodbye, Mr. Chips as an extended metaphor, or merely as a crackling good read, we are drawn again and again to its quiet, direct story and simple message. In a time when we are rediscovering the virtues of simplicity, perhaps it is time we rediscovered the value of educators who pass our values through the generations.

The main character, Mr. Chips evolves into a personable old man who gains substantial sympathy from the readership. The main character represents an instructor who teaches generations of boys in a local middle or high school. The setting is in Brookfield, England. There is a weirdness about the town, as well as the characters in the book. The portal of time preceded the Twentieth century when teachers stayed in the same job and the same environment for multiple generations.

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