Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil

Allen Kurzweil born December 16 1960 is a journalist and author of children's novels

Full Title.  Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Allen Kurzweil

Historically, bullying has been viewed as one of the components of growing up.  While generally associated with boys, girls have been equally culpable-their torment often psychological, but equally likely to leave lasting scars. 

Sadly, it was considered cowardly to “rat on” a fellow student or peer; those who were harassed were expected to cope, and ideally be strengthened for life’s realities by the experience. To some degree, both genders were pressured to “take it like a man”, allowed to vent lingering rage and hatred on those several years younger.  

For nearly all of us, if nightmares and memories lurk and attack, it is natural to hope the rigors of life has avenged the sense of absolute helplessness at the hands of another.  We might, at least in imagination, find opportunity to confront and retaliate. 

The question this book presents is at what point the urge to find and punish the playground or boarding school beast evolves from thought to obsession.  At age ten, Allen Kurzweil was eager to become anchored at the Aigion School in Switzerland.  His father’s early death left his mother, though affectionate in her way, in quest of a new husband.  Still, Allen’s hopes for security soon disappeared when he found himself in a room at the top of the residence hall with four other boys, one of whom was the predominant, twelve-year-old Cesar Augusto Viana. 

Perhaps not even a bully knows why he or she chooses a particular victim.  In Allen’s case, his newness combined with his Jewishness, rare at the school, made him his prey.  Cesar’s tortures included forcing Allen to chew and swallow a series of bread pellets saturated in hot sauce, inflict the thirty-nine lashes demonstrated in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar" in a deliberately offbeat rhythm, and most unforgivably, order another boy to hurl Allen’s dead father’s pocket watch from a high window.

While it is not clear whether Cesar understood the significance of this watch as a memento, it seems likely it would not have mattered.  In fact, it might have enhanced his pleasure.  It was this final act which left Allen with an inflexible quest to get even.

In a macabre sense, as an adult, Allen was lucky.  Despite the Internet, most bullies, if located, are found to be living conventional lives.  Cesar, who always seems to have perceived himself as superior to human judgments, involved himself in a fraudulent cartel resulting in a criminal record and prison sentence.  

While brilliantly summarized in this memoir, it took Allen four decades to garner this information and eventually make seemingly amiable contact with Cesar.  During this time, Allen married, had children and wrote several successful children’s books.  Still, he had to find Cesar. Though at first surprised at the co-operation of those who helped facilitate his often complex research, each of them admitted, when asked, recollections of their own Cesar sparked their incentives. 

Eventually, the two do connect, though Cesar no longer views Allen in an adversarial role.  Ultimately, Allen feels impelled to view aspects of his own character which he had tried to avoid. Once having reached these realizations, he is able to begin shedding the grudge which has held him in shackles for so many years.  Only then, after having lived on this earth for more than half a century, does he begin to experience a sense of complete maturity.

This book is a must read for those who have been bullied and those who are coming to terms with having been bullies.