“You cannot cheat with the law of conservation of violence: all violence is paid for, and for example, the structural violence exerted by the financial markets, in the form of layoffs, loss of security, etc., is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of minor and major everyday acts of violence.” P Bourdieu (1998)
In Bourdieu's view, a violent act sets in motion a chain of violence: someone who has suffered some sort of oppression will later commit new acts of violence. The conception of the French sociologist is useful to explain Keith´s violent outburst in chapters 6.
In chapter 6, when Stephen and Keith realise that there is somebody hiding in an underground tunnel under a piece of corrugated iron at the end of the Lanes, Stephen takes a metal bar and starts hitting the man´s makeshift roof with a self-assured violence that is unusual in him: “We rain blows down until the iron begins to dent”. For the first time, he takes the lead.
If we think of Stephen's behaviour in terms of Bourdieu´s theory, we may say that his sudden eruption may be explained by his pent-up anger for always feeling in an inferior position.
At school, he was constantly bullied by his classmates. Besides, he is constantly manipulated by other characters whom he considers superior in different ways (Barbara, Keith, Mrs Haywards.) Moreover, we may say he is consistently violent with himself, not accepting his personality, bringing himself down and criticizing his own actions. Finally, he also suffers some structural violence for his social position in the Close. He feels that his family doesn't quite fit with the rest of the families in the Close, and that they will never fit. He also seems ashamed of the state his house was in when he lived there, ranting about the bald lawn his father never gave importance to, or the entrance to the house itself.
At the end of the Lanes, at last, he finds somebody who is at the lowest level of the social scale, even lower than himself:
We´ve come on a journey from the highest to the lowest- from the silver framed heroes on the altars in the Hayward`s house ; through the descending social gradation of the Close, from the Berrills and the Geests to us; from us to the Pinchers; on down through the squalors of the Cottages and their wretched occupants; and then reached even lower, to an old derelict taking refuge under a sheet of corrugated iron in a stinking elder bush, without even a dog to speak up for him. Without even a privet to go to the lavatory in.
For the first time, Stephen feels superior to somebody: “He (the man under the corrugated iron) is scared. Scared of Keith, scared of me. He's that low in the table of human precedence”. This new feeling empowers Stephen: he becomes confident enough to release the rage he has been accumulating as he had to suffer so many acts of violence. But his pent-up anger comes out only to reproduce and continue the chain of violence he has formerly been a victim of.
