Who knew a funny poem for children would be so disturbing if you thought about it too deeply?
Thought about this character for a while. I think she may also be an IH candidate considering she has no remorse for all the deaths she caused. Anyway, she sounds like she’s worth a shot.
What’s the Work? Who’s the Character?[]
No Breathing in Class, also known as Strict, is a poem by Michael Rosen. It follows the story of a teacher who’s so strict that she prohibits her class from breathing. This ended up causing her students to hold their breaths for the whole class in order to abide by her rules, resulting in 43 students suffocating to death by the end of the week. Some kids ask her for permission to breathe, and she tells them they’ve got all of playtime to do it. The protagonist along with a few other students were able to survive by stealthily breathing under their desks when she wasn’t looking, but she ended up catching a student slamming his desk down after trying to catch a breath, and she sentenced him to the school prison where he was chained to a wall for three years while rats bit his toenails… yeesh.
What makes her Pathetic?[]
She indirectly killed dozens of children by preventing them from breathing, and felt no remorse for it even when she saw them dying in the middle of her classes. And when she caught them breathing in class she’d punish them by throwing them into the school prison, where they’re forever trapped in a cell infested with rats, just for wanting to breathe. Though this is only in the version from 2008 onward, in the original books she instead baited her students into breathing by asking them questions, and then scolding them for breathing after answering her question just to rub it in.
What makes her a Pinhead?[]
She is definitely stupid as she banned breathing, which is a natural bodily function that’s required to survive. By preventing her students from breathing, she will not only suffer the legal consequences of causing the deaths of 43 kids and nobody in their right mind would want to attend the school, but her job as a teacher will be made pointless as she can’t educate students if they’re dead. Furthermore she’s a hypocrite as she has no problem breathing any time she wants, while punishing her students for doing the same.
While her forcing students to answer questions in the original books may seem smart, it instead feels like she’s trying to do her job but inadvertently causes the students to break her own rules in the process.
Mitigating Factors?[]
- The work is too comedic and light-hearted: Yes it’s a Michael Rosen poem so it’s got a lot of comedy: breathing is treated as a form of misbehaviour and the narrator makes jokes about the classmates that died as if they failed a test. However despite the tone the teacher is unironically taking her ban on breathing seriously, and the comedy is more on the narrator making light of the situation rather than anything the teacher does. Besides if the Enormous Crocodile can qualify here, then another children’s book character can as well.
- The teacher lets the kids breathe during breaks: Even though she lets the students breathe whenever they like during playtime without punishing them, it doesn’t specify if she did it out of honor or care of anything like that. Perhaps she has no choice but to dismiss her students during breaks where she can’t stop them, as per school protocol. And speaking of which:
- The teacher’s heinous acts are enforced by the system: While the existence of the school prison shows that the school is extremely disproportionate in its punishments, no other teachers are mentioned in the story and it’s stated that only this teacher is strict enough to ban breathing. So she’s the main cause of the ban on breathing, and is therefore responsible for all of the deaths caused.
Verdict[]
Weak yes. Your thoughts?