Exploration of Themes in Blood Brothers
Blood Brothers is a hugely popular play and musical written by the
well-known author of Educating Rita, Willy Russell. It is fast moving
and perceptive, entertaining and thought-provoking, funny yet
ultimately tragic. It tells the tale of twin brothers who are born
into a large working-class family and what happens when their mother
decides to have one of them adopted. Blood Brothers looks at the
differences and conflicts of their upbringings, their relationships
with each other and with their real and adopted mothers. The play is
set in Liverpool, 1962 and continues for around 20 years. Mrs
Johnstone and her family live in a poor part of Liverpool in contrast
Mr and Mrs Lyons lives a comfortable life in the more comfortable end
of town.
There are many themes used in 'Blood Brothers', the main ones being
based on class and superstition. In the country, class effects how
people are able to live their lives and the situations they are in. In
'Blood Brothers' Mrs Johnstone lives in a poor end of Liverpool,
struggling to bring up eight children on her own and is forced to give
one away to keep the others clothed and fed well enough, whereas Mrs
Lyons, whom she works for, lives in a large house, very comfortably in
a nice part of Liverpool, she wants children but is unable to have
any, even though she is rich, unlike Mrs Johnstone.
Love is a theme, shown by the two women who love their sons but show
it in completely different ways, and how Linda's Close friendship
slowly gets replaced with love for Eddie and Mickey. Along with
superstition, this is the basis of the whole story and is a theme that
continues throughout the whole play, the consequences of most of the
happenings can be traced back to superstition. It is also the reason
for the tragic end of the play. Superstition also features heavily in
some of the songs, the best example of this is the song "Shoes upon
the table" that features quite early on, when Mrs Lyons uses Mrs
As we see David Metzenthen about to accept yet another award on his latest book, we feel it necessary to review other titles this author has produced. Published in 2003, the best-selling novel ‘boys of blood and bone’ is a highly-commended book receiving an honor award from the ‘The Children’s book council.’ It is also selected nationwide as a year 10 curriculum novels. Although this impressive list looks appealing, the actual content of the novel is sadly not. Being a duel narrative, the author uses war and contrasting modern day to express the meaning of relationships in adolescent lives. Less prevalent values in the book are honor, mate ship and the acceptance of responsibility. This shows the potential to be a great influence on young lives
Blue Remembered Hills is set on a summer day in the west of England in
Live Performance Review of Blood Brothers On the eighth of July 2004 our Drama Class travelled to the New Theatre to see the sentimental Production of the musical Blood Brothers written by Willy Russel .Blood Brothers was musically directed by Richard Beadle and the performance was directed by Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright. It was designed by Andy Walmsley and the lighting was done by Nick Richings.
but she was also very keen to play Mrs. Lyons as she had never played
The loss of a loved one is never easy, and for author and memorist Coren Beck it shook him to his existential core and became the catalyst for a deep soul searching journey in which the exploration of his spiritual fortitude became a necessity that ultimately changed the course of his life. In his debut novel The Dead Brother Club, which memorializes his experiences, author Beck unflinchingly invites readers into his conflicted, grief shaken world and spiritual sojourn, which was started by the sudden and accidental death of his seventeen year old brother, Billy.
The first story that includes this theme is The Veldt. Wendy and Peter let their hatred for their parents drive their actions. Their greatest desire is to get rid of their parents, so they do exactly that. When the childrenś parents threatened to take away what they loved most, they released
The love one has for their family causes one to do anything to keep them out of harm, including taking the role of mother/father. Henry Lawson creates an image in his readers’ mind of the protagonist and all that she does for her
The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
How would a society mature if it did not advance alongside technology? This is one of the questions impressed upon me while reading an excerpt from American poet and author Robert Bly’s book The Sibling Society. Bly defines a sibling society as a society that is filled with half-mature adults filling the void left by improper role models. They use internet and electronic entertainment as a substitution for the values and convictions that would have been imparted in them by an authoritative figure. Although we have an alarming amount of immature adults, we are not becoming a sibling society due to technology. With the use of technology, recent generations are now growing up with an awareness of the issues in the world around them, helping them
Nonetheless, this really is a tale of compelling love between the boy and his father. The actions of the boy throughout the story indicate that he really does love his father and seems very torn between his mother expectations and his father’s light heartedness. Many adults and children know this family circumstance so well that one can easily see the characters’ identities without the author even giving the boy and his father a name. Even without other surrounding verification of their lives, the plot, characters, and narrative have meshed together quite well.
There is the major theme portrayed in both stories. In each, there is a forbidden marriage that comes about as a result of children disagreeing with and hence rebelling against the traditional customs or values of their family. The major protagonist in each account coincidentally is the father who goes to great extents to estrange the rebellious offspring. Despite the fact that each story is written within a different era and culture, they both exhibit the dominant male figure as the family head, with very little or no input on what is right for the family from any other member. The paternal figures are strongly opinionated and do not waver from what they believe should be the proper behavior of their children, resulting in conflicts between Papi and Sofia, and Okeke and Nnaemeka.
In the story this young mother is pictured as a careless and weak woman who barely pays attention to her children and the people who take most part of the mother’s responsibility is everybody else in the house. In the story the two boys realize that their mother is different from other mothers because she does not act like the rest of their friend’s mothers who care about their children. The problem keeps escalating because the mother’s parents keep putting pressure on her so that she can dedicate more time to her children. I noticed that things were a little different when she invited her boyfriend to the house to have dinner with her children, a true family moment in my opinion if you ask me. At this point I come to the realization that she wants to have a family like she once did. The young mother then enters a great depression after Max and her end the relationship and that drives her to take her life
The relationship between a father and his son can be articulated as without a doubt the most significant relationship that a man can have throughout the duration of his life. To a further extent the relationship between a father and a son can be more than just a simple companionship. Just like a clown fish and a sea anemone, both father and son will rely on each other in order to survive the struggles of their everyday lives. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness both depict a story between a father and son using each other as a means of survival when faced with adversity. When placed in a tough situation father and son must create a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. Upon the duo of father and son can creating a symbiotic relationship, it will result in a mutual dependency on each other. This theme of paternal love is omnipresent given the bond between the two characters.
The novel starts right off with the notion of a love between a mother and a son. Even at a young age, Stephen is able to distinguish that his mother is a source of pure, unabridged love. “His mother had a nicer smell than his father. ”(1) At a very young age the artist is already beginning to form because of women, he is beginning to see beauty through the senses.