Summer Of 17th Doll Review

Year 12 Literature SAC

Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll

The play “Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll” is a mixture of people’s inability to grow up and let go of dreams, in a typical Australian atmosphere in the nineteen fifties. Ray Lawler focuses on showing the characters finally waking up to their lives and realizing they don’t live in “heaven, “ within in a simple plot. These techniques allow readers to connect and understand the disillusionment suffered by these Australian’s in this time.

Our setting for “Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll’ is a Melbourne suburb, Carlton. Australia in the fifties had just began massive social and economical development. During the war Australia had relied on the United States of America for support, meaning now in post war Australia’s main partners had swapped from United Kingdom to them. With their support came their influence. Australian’s some-what simpler, laid back lifestyle was being altered. A new unstable Australia full of uncertainty in social values and morals had evolved. “Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll’ questions the previous Australian dream and asks f it can survive in the new country evolving. Carlton “a now scruffy but once fashionable suburb of Melbourne” was an industrial, working class area. Our characters find themselves in the working class status.

Ray Lawler uses a group of friend’s, lovers, to show the catalysts of change evolving around Australia at the time. For seventeen years Roo and Barney had been traveling down from Queensland for they layoff season. Waiting for them were their “girlfriends” Olive and Nancy. These four characters each represent a key theme in the play. The ability to link them all together and show their enchanted world crumbling around them is what makes the play one of Australia’s finest.

Roo and Barney are the typical Australian larrikins. They rare the representation of mate ship and freedom in Australia are known for. In the play their relationship acts as one of the first things to fall in their “paradise.” Roo’s position as head cane cutter was taken by Dowd. Roo finds his masculinity diminished. As most larrikins he can’t accept the fact he is not one of the best. Roo leaves early. To add to the reality of things, we learn Barney’s “girlfriend” Nancy has gone at got married. Their world begins to fall.

It is Nancy’s marriage that plays a key role in forcing the group ...

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... their world.

With nothing left of their once happy world Lawler prepares us for the dramatic end. As Roo feels he can no longer live up to his previous life her scrambles to build a new one, even if it only slightly mimics the old one. He believes by proposing to Olive they will both still have a form of what they had before, by doing this he shows he knows what they had is over and can never return, he understands that he must grow up. Olive wont allow this to happen. She is still clinging to her world “you’ve got to go back, it’s the only hope we’ve got.” She attempts any thing to piece it back together. Emma enters and sees that Olive is gutted; she can’t accept the new reality. With the rejection from Olive Roo becomes a beaten disheartened figure. Each character now knows they cannot stay here, they must all move on for good.

Ray Lawler concludes the play and has expressed the characters as far as they can go. He created Australia compelled by the demand for liberation of women, but killed by the disintegration of mate ship. Lawler leaves the audience knowing their dream, their world cannot survive the new Australia, and we must all allow it, and us to evolve.

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