Professor Andrew Crocker-Harris
The professor is not exactly the person he presents to the rest of the world. He hides behind a façade of unflappability and presents the persona of stuff British stiff upper-lipped control of impulsive emotions. The imagery presented in the stage directions of his introduction betrays this construction, however:
“Andrew Crocker-Harris enters and appears from behind the screen. Despite the summer sun he wears a serge suit and a stiff collar. He carries a mackintosh and a rolled-up time-table and looks, as ever, neat, complacent and unruffled.”
Agamemnon
Aeschylus’s tragic drama Agamemnon should be considered imagery and an important bit of imagery at that. Not only do direct references to the tragedy pop up throughout the play, but the very title is an allusion to the most famous English translation of the original Greek. The most significant element of the play related to its imagery here is the mechanics of character and plot, however: a bad marriage in which the wise takes a younger lover and plots to kill her husband. The plot to kill is only figurative in this play, of course, but nevertheless...Andrew can be considered among living dead.
The Living Dead
Imagery is engaged throughout that speaks to the idea that Andrew is already among the dead even as he remains among the living. The imagery begins with the fact that he makes his living teaching a “dead” language: ancient Greek. In one speech he describes himself as suffering a “sickness of the soul” before“ ruminating that the abusive nickname the students level at him—"Himmler of the lower fifth”—will be his epitaph. The imagery is punctuated with the exclamation point courtesy of Millie’s derisive description: “You can’t hurt Andrew. He’s dead.”
Anticlimax
As the play comes to its close, Andrew finally stands up for himself by reversing an earlier decision and insisting on speaking last at the award ceremony. Of course, “standing up for himself” is a relative term as he does so while at the same deprecating himself with his cryptic remark about how “anti-climax can be surprisingly effective.” This is a scintillating bit of self-referential humor as literally seconds later this play comes to its surprisingly effective anti-climax. Although the imagery taking place on stage just before the curtains are draw or the lights go out is simply that of a husband offering a piece of bread to a wife ignoring the gesture, it is absolutely pregnant with meaning about the state of their marriage to that point as well as deep into its interminably repetitive future.
