Good-bye, Mr. Chips

Despite his own mediocre academic record, he goes on to have an illustrious career as an inspiring educator at Brookfield. Although the book is unabashedly sentimental, it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life: he begins his tenure at Brookfield in 1870, as the Franco-Prussian War is breaking out and lies on his deathbed shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He is seen as an individual who is able to connect to anyone on a human level, beyond what he (by proxy of his former wife) views as petty politics, such as the strikers, the Boers, and a German friend.