Willie Russell's Educating Rita In this play, Willie Russell has created two extremes of culture and put them together to focus on the differences between them and how these two cultures change as the play develops. Firstly there is Frank with a good job as a teacher and a large house and is well educated, who is contrasted with Rita who has a council house, works as a hairdresser and is not well educated. They first meet when Rita goes to Frank because she wants to be educated. As the play continues, Frank and Rita almost completely exchange roles as they are both unhappy with their culture and want to be more like the other. This play was written in the 1980's where the working, middle and upper classes were still used widely to determine what your culture was and how important you are to the social society at the time. The theme of culture appears a lot in the play. One of the ways that Willie Russell shows the two distinctly different cultures is how much power the higher classes have over the lower classes. In the play knowledge is shown as a symbol of power. Frank has the superior knowledge over Rita so therefore he also has more power over Rita. But when Rita returns from summer school and is more knowledgeable than Frank because Frank wanted to be more like Rita, so Rita has more power over Frank as she now has the superior knowledge. I think that the swivel chair determines who is most in control over the other person in terms of power and knowledge. At the start of the play Frank is sat in the swivel chair, but once Rita is further educated she sits in the swivel chair. The fact that it is a swivel chair that determines power is significant because it turns around. Much like Frank and Rita as the power turned from being in Frank in to Rita. Willie Russell also used education to show the two different cultures that Frank and Rita live in. Rita says that she wants to be educated because she wants to know everything as she is not happy being classed as working class. But Denny, Rita's husband, does not want her to change and he does this by burning all of her books. Education also symbolises power as Frank has the power to change is life because he is educated, but Rita wants to become educated so she can change her way of life and culture. Education affects the audiences' interpretations of the play as the two extremes of culture that are
Alice Walker, John Updike, and Tom Whitecloud write stories in which culture plays an important role in many aspects of the conflict. In each story, a particular ethnic, occupational, social, gender, or age group's culture may be observed through characters' actions, thoughts, and speech. The decisions the characters make to resolve these conflicts in Everyday Use, A & P, and Blue Winds Dancing are affected by the characters cultural experiences. In fact, the conflict itself may be about clashing cultures or entirely generated as a result of cultural experiences. A character's culture continues to guide him as he tries to resolve the conflict. In short, culture heavily affects the three stories' conflicts.
his life is morally wrong. This contributes to the theme or themes of the play
To represent and to appeal to today's society while a large amount of the themes and values stayed the same, some of these ideas I had to alter. I did this through the language and form of the play and also by using film techniques, if I hadn't of done this the appropriation would have seemed unrealistic and the audience would be unable to relate to the film.
project of the play, of which is touched upon in Act One. It is this
something in his life, and Rita also says ‘ I want to be free’ which
After reading this wonderfully written play I do believe that our culture plays a very important role in how we as people form our identity and determines where we feel we belong. Nanabush had a great deal to do with the women keeping their current identities and since of belonging. I feel that if we believe in a spirit and surrender or lives to them they will take care of us just as Nanabush did in this play.
of magic as a theme, and why it has made the play so successful and timeless.
central to the play. I am going to look at only the first act of the
of the play. I will also explore the role the common man plays in the
The preconceived ideas that Rita has about the working class, as well as the educated class, greatly limit the way that she sees people and their roles within the world. Throughout Willy Russell’s Educating Rita, we see that Rita uses education in an attempt to become a self-supporting individual and, in turn, shed the stereotypes that plague the working class. She attends the university in an attempt to free herself from the bonds that are holding her back from being the person that she believes she has the potential to be. But at the end of her transformation, the reader can see that all she has done is allow herself to be bound by a different set of expectations than she was before. Rita has not truly changed, she has only made superficial changes and conformed to another set of expectations. Although Rita wants to become an autonomous member of the higher class, her efforts to do this through education cease to be an act of individuality and she becomes dependent on her peer’s opinions rather than her own as she falls into the stereotypical role of an accomplished woman. As a result of Rita’s eagerness to become an independent member of the educated class through education, she conforms to the oversimplified pretence that surrounds the educated class, forfeits her own opinions and alters her true personality.
...s also portrayed as a nonmaterial culture when they state that much emphasis is put on drama when they say: “I think the whole world addicted to the drama/ Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma (lines 3-4)” This indicates how much the world is a material and nonmaterial culture. (Newman, 93).
He is a lazy man, bored and frustrated by his life he too does not
the phone Frank says " yes that's it you go and put your head in the
Educating Rita by Willy Russell Frank and Rita's relationship develops gradually throughout the play. Educating Rita. The first few pages of the play show immediately how different Frank and Rita are both. While Frank seems quiet, polite, nervous and lost, Rita. is loud, pushy, confident and self-assured. This is how they appear at the start of the play, but as they get to know each other they reveal more about the people themselves.
Educating Rita Educating Rita is a story written by Willy Russell. He was born in Whiston, which is just outside Liverpool. When he was five his mum and dad moved to Knowsley, on an estate full of Liverpudlians who taught him how to talk properly. It is about two main characters Rita and Frank. Rita is a literature student at the Open University.