School is Hell by Matt Groening

The comic strip “School is Hell” by Matt Groening is a snapshot of school life featuring an anthropomorphic rabbit. It is the kind of comic we can read and say to ourselves: “I have been there!” It is a great combination of humor and sarcasm about our time and extremely accurate interpretations of school.

According to most of the students, school can be as bad as hell. Therefore, Groening chooses to represent students through a rabbit and he does a very good job by turning his well of wit to childhood.

For example, in this comic strip, when the teacher asks the class whether they have any questions, one student comes up with a lot of questions, which signifies his state of mind and his observations regarding schools. The student thinks of questions like “How come you’re so boring?”, “Does school have to be this bad?”, “Why do we have to answer such trivial questions on tests?” However, at the end, he fails to express his feelings out loud and hence ends up asking the teacher if he can sharpen his pencil. But obviously, he is not given that permission.

In real life, students may go through the same kind of situation. Because of the workload they are given, and the rules they have to abide by, it is very easy for the students to get frustrated and discouraged. They start to feel school is nothing but a source of anxiety and pressure to them. They start hating their school, teachers, books, and everything related to the school. Nevertheless it is very sad how they are not able to express their feelings regarding schools, just because they are scared of what might happen if they do. So they end up showing interests in rather irrelevant topics (in this case, sharpening the pencil), which is far from what they are supposed to learn. And this is exactly what Groening tries to portray in his comic “School is Hell”. He tells us about a very major problem of our society by his simple but meaningful comic strip.