Educating Rita Essay Example for Free

Educating Rita Essay Willy Russell was born just outside Liverpool, but at the age of 5, moved to Knowsley. Academically he was a failure at school, but it was during English silent reading lessons that he realized he wanted to be a writer. He left school with an English O level as his only qualification to work for six years as a hairdresser. The plays he has written include: Our Day Out, Educating Rita, Blood Brothers. Blood Brothers was a musical written in the 1980s about twin brothers who are separated at birth, but in later years become friends. They are friends throughout their childhood and always look out for each other. The play starts at the end, then goes back and tells the events that lead to the situations. Class was a major issue covered in the play the Lyons family was upper class and the Johnson family was lower class. If this class system wasnt in the play then the meeting of Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Lyons would not have happened, Mrs. Lyons employed Mrs. Johnson to clean her house so if the two different classes werent addressed in the play then Edward would have stayed with Mrs. Johnson, so this issue was also a theme that had a useful part in the play. The play is also built upon the theme of the superstition that if twins are separated at birth then they will die on the day that they discover that they are twins. This theme is reinforced throughout the play by the words of the narrator to keep the audience thinking about what will happen. The first time we see the theme of superstition is when the narrator first begins to speak and he says, So did you hear the story of the Johnston twins? How one was kept and one Given away Never knowing that they shared one name till the day they died At the end of the play the narrators last few lines are do we blame superstition for what came to pass or could it be what we, the English come to know as class. I think this is a very true statement that the class system is what killed them. Also the themes of love and friendship were in the play, this was between Eddy and Mickey who where blood brothers and Linda was in love with Mickey. The narrators songs had verses in most of the songs that stuck in my head, these were the lines to do with superstition like shoes on the table and the devils got your number. Act 2, Scene 2 shows the first meeting between the two boys. This is where Willy Russell explores class difference. He does this by contrasting the backgrounds that the boys were brought up in. Mickey, the twin that was kept, was brought up in a working class background with little money and uses slang terms and vulgar language, Im pissed off. Whereas Edward was brought up in a family that had a car, a nice house and plenty of money. This meant that he would have a better education and therefore have better opportunities in life. He also speaks very well and posh. Eddie is absolutely fascinated by the way that Mickey speaks as the people he is around dont usually speak like that, You say smashing things dont you? . My initial opinion of Eddie is hat he is friendly and confident, Are you going to come and play there again? , because he just goes over and starts talking to Mickey. Mickeys initial reaction is that he is suspicious of why Eddie started talking to him. Another time that Mickey is suspicious is when Eddie offers him some sweets. His reaction is one of shock, Are you soft? . I think he reacts like this because the people he grew up with had little as are poor and cant share what they do have. He also worries that people may have tampered with it, if Sammy gives you a sweet hes usually weed on it first. Ironically this is the scene where the two boys make a pact to become Blood Brothers. In Act 4, Scene 2 the difference in class becomes more apparent. Eddie returns at Christmas from university while Mickey is struggling to provide a living for his family. The brotherly bond between them seems to have disappeared.

Using Gothic Characteristics to Portray the Theme of Knowledge Essay

Using Gothic Characteristics to Portray the Theme of Knowledge in American Gargoyles, Johnny Mnemonic, Frankenstein, Good Country People, and Cyberpunk   Ã‚  Ã‚   Gothic literature has been interpreted, and even criticized by many people as just being scary stories. They feel the author's only purpose for using gloomy settings and grotesque characters is to horrify the reader. This however is rarely true of Gothic literature, instead an author will use these characteristics to portray a deeper purpose rather than to just scare the reader. This is true of all genres of gothic literature including classical, southern, and cyber literature. One theme that has been prevalent throughout gothic history is that of knowledge. Several authors have used gothic tendencies to convey the idea that too much knowledge can be dangerous. They use these characteristics to warn the reader that knowledge is not always good. Classical gothic literature, developed in the late eighteenth century, was most likely first concepted by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. Dark, dreary settings and frightening monsters often characterize the style of this category of literature. Mary Shelley, a classical gothic writer, has used these characteristics in her novel Frankenstein. In her novel Victor Frankenstein composes a creature that has all the potentialities of a child because it knows nothing. But this creature is far from looking anything like a child. The monster, created from different body parts, is grotesque, he has yellow skin that barely covers his muscles, long black hair and is very large. However, just as a child, he begins to learn, through experiences and especially by reading several books. This new knowledge he has learned has a harmful ... ... situations to warn or horrify the reader about a deeper theme. The terror felt by the reader as he/she reads the story mimics the terror another character is feeling in dealing with this hidden theme. Authors often use these tendencies to portray their ideas on current social conditions in order to warn the reader. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Flannery O'Connor. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Di Renzo, Anthony. American Gargoyles. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. Gibson, William. "Johnny Mnemonic." 5 April 2000 . Levine, George. The Endurance of Frankenstein. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979. O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." 5 Apr. 2000 . Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1994. The Cyberpunk Project. Christian Kirtchev. 3 Apr. 2000. 10 Apr. 2000 .

English Study Topic By The Company He Keeps

A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses. This quote simply tells one that you become who you are around. This means that people who have bad company will become bad company themselves. But interaction with other people is not all bad. Instead of this, looking for company that will improve who a person becomes is the best idea. The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you associate; either for the good, or the bad.Sometimes hanging out less with certain types of people will improve life through decisions made (or not made). Setting the bar high for friends is an important aspect of maturity. An important attribute found in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. While it is better to be alone than in bad company, good company is even better. Anita Desai has long proved herself one of the most accomplished and admired chroniclers of middl e-class India.Her 1999 novel, Fasting, Feasting, is the tale of plain and lumpish Uma and the cherished, late-born Arun, daughter and son of strict and conventional parents. So united are her parents in Uma's mind that she conflates their names. â€Å"MamaPapa themselves rarely spoke of a time when they were not one. The few anecdotes they related separately acquired great significance because of their rarity, their singularity. † Throughout, Desai perfectly matches form and content: details are few, the focus narrow, emotions and needs given no place.Uma, as daughter and female, expects nothing; Arun, as son and male, is lost under the weight of expectation. Now in her 40s, Uma is at home. Attempts at arranged marriages having ended in humiliation and disaster, and she is at MamaPapa's beck and call, with only her collection of bracelets and old Christmas cards for consolation. Uma flounces off, her grey hair frazzled, her myopic eyes glaring behind her spectacles, muttering under her breath. The parents, momentarily agitated upon their swing by the sudden invasion of ideas–sweets, parcel, letter, sweets–settle back to their slow, rhythmic swinging.They look out upon the shimmering heat of the afternoon as if the tray with tea, with sweets, with fritters, will materialise and come swimming out of it–to their rescue. With increasing impatience, they swing and swing. Arun, in college in Massachusetts, is none too happily spending the summer with the Pattons in the suburbs: their refrigerator and freezer is packed with meat that no one eats, and Mrs. Patton is desperate to be a vegetarian, like Arun. But what he most wants is to be ignored, invisible. â€Å"Her words make Arun wince.Will she never learn to leave well alone? She does not seem to have his mother's well-developed instincts for survival through evasion. After a bit of pushing about slices of tomatoes and leaves of lettuce–in his time in America he has developed a hearty abhorrence for the raw foods everyone here thinks the natural diet of a vegetarian–he dares to glance at Mr. Patton. † Desai's counterpointing of India and America is a little forced, but her focus on the daily round, whether in the Ganges or in New England, finely delineates the unspoken dramas in both cultures.And her characters, capable of their own small rebellions, give Fasting, Feasting its sharp bite. –Ruth Petrie From Publishers Weekly Short-listed for the 1999 Booker Prize, Desai's stunning new novel (after Journey to Ithaca) looks gently but without sentimentality at an Indian family that, despite Western influence, is bound by Eastern traditions. As Desai's title implies, the novel is divided into two parts. At the heart of Part One, set in India, is Uma, the eldest of three children, the overprotected daughter who finds herself starved for a life.Plain, myopic and perhaps dim, Uma gives up school and marriage, finding herself in her 40s looking after her demanding if well-meaning parents. Uma's younger, prettier sister marries quickly to escape the same fate, but seems dissatisfied. Although the family is â€Å"quite capable of putting on a progressive, Westernized front,† it's clear that privileges are still reserved for boys. When her brother, Arun, is born, Uma is expected to abandon her education at the convent school to take care of him.It is Arun, the ostensibly privileged son, smothered by his father's expectations, who is the focus of the second part of the novel. The summer after his freshman year at the University of Massachusetts, Arun stays with the Pattons, an only-too-recognizable American family. While Desai paints a nuanced and delicate portrait of Uma's family, here the writer broadens her brush strokes, starkly contrasting the Pattons' surfeit of food and material comforts with the domestic routine of the Indian household.Indeed, Desai is so adept at portraying Americans through Indian eyes that t he Pattons remain as inscrutable to the reader as they are to Arun. But Arun himself, as he picks his way through a minefield of puzzling American customs, becomes a more sympathetic character, and his final act in the novel suggests both how far he has come and how much he has lost. Although Desai takes a risk in shifting from the endearing Uma to Arun, she has much to say in this graceful, supple novel about the inability of the families in either culture to nurture their children. (Jan. ) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Earth Have An Expiration Date - 1151 Words

Earth have an expiration date? It just might. If we don t do something to help our environment there will be no future generations. Our earth has been sending us warnings and distress signals for over forty years such as the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery which left thirty thousand people unemployed and seven hundred communities in poverty. In china water supplies are already scarce and not able to meet the needs of people, industries, and culture (Linden, pg.18). The following are some issues that are affecting our world today. Our atmosphere provides us with crucial things that we cannot survive without; such as clean air and oxygen, a stabilized climate, and protection from ultraviolet solar radiation. Due to†¦show more content†¦Acidification damages oceanic organisms which are currently more endangered than any other ecosystem. Two thirds of all fish depend on coastal wetlands, seagrass, and coral reefs, all of which are disappearing in vast amounts. Fifty-eight percent of coral reefs are jeopardized by human activity, and eighty percent of grasslands are suffering from soil degradation. Fishing fleets are forty percent larger than the ocean can currently sustain. All these things are caused by poisoning our lakes and rivers with fertilizers, silts, and sewage waters. Too much water is being taken from rivers that oftentimes causes our rivers to dry up before even reaching the sea. (Linden, pgs. 18-19). You can help by doing simple things such as turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth, or running the dishwasher and washer only when its full. Take shorter showers. Carry a reusable water bottle instead of a plastic bottle that goes back into our lands, littering our lands. Another problem related to the depletion of our earth’s water sources is soil erosion. Soil erosion is a reduction in the quality of topsoil. We need healthy soil to be able to plant healthy foods. Soil erosion reduces cropland activity and contributes to the pollution of waters. Already half of our topsoil has been lost over the last one hundred and fifty years. Our soils are becoming infertile due to being over exposed to harsh chemicals and trash (Gray,