Part 1- Comparison of Blue remembered hills and Friend or Foe

I will be comparing two pieces of text which are ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ in which a group of children lead one of their normal days playing in the fields and forest during world war two. The play is by Dennis Potter which is a script meant to be televised but can be staged. This will be compared to ‘Friend or Foe’ in which two young friends are evacuated to the countryside and then discover two German bombers and struggle to befriend them as they should hate them. This is a novel by Michael Murpurgo written for children.

The historic period in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ is set in world war two in the rural area of the west country, the whole play is set during one day. ‘Friend or Foe’ is also similar as it is set during world war two in the countryside. The biggest difference between the two is that ‘Friend or Foe’ is set over a period of a few months which is quite a big difference with ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ which is set over a day.

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The society we see in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ are very young children at the age of seven to nine which is similar to ‘Friend or Foe’ but the children are two or three years older. The character of Willie who is a very sharp child that manages to find away around most dilemmas but feeble this similar to the character of Tucky in ‘Friend or Foe’ who devises most of the plans to help the German pilots such as organising the food and drink for the pilots. A powerful character in ‘Blue remembered hills’ is Peter who is all brawl picking on everyone else smaller or lower than him, this is a big difference to ‘Friend or Foe’ as there is no real hierarchy as Dave and Tucky do not try to over power each other much. The hierarchy in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ is simple with the quieter and weaker people at the bottom and the louder, stronger people at the top end but it does change slightly in the play when a fight does break out. Also in ‘Friend or Foe’ there are two German pilots that have crashed that remain unnamed throughout the story, we don’t learn much about them except they just bombed Portsmouth this is similar to ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ as we hear of Wallace Wilson but don’t learn much about him except he is at the top. There many more characters in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ such as Raymond who is very quite and down at the bottom just above Donald who is abused by his mother, he also has no friends and ends up in a severe tragedy which takes his life.

The culture in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ is similar to that in ‘Friend or Foe’ as both of them use some sort of child imagination, there also some differences such as ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ uses child abuse as a culture but in ‘Friend or Foe’ the most visible culture is nationalism as there is a lot of conflict with Dave wondering if he should hate the Germans due to the war or should he help them as they are stranded and need desperate help. Another culture discovered in both texts is Friendship we see this in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ especially between Angela ad Audrey when Angela plays the friendship around by acting not bothered with her at all until Audrey requests to beat up another contestant to Angela, she then suddenly is Audrey’s best friendship. In ‘Friend or Foe’ the friendship between Dave and Tucky does sway slightly but they manage to stay close to each other.

Both the texts have a naturalistic style as Blue Remembered Hills’ is has very everyday simple childhood day, playing in the fields and imaginary dilemmas, but in Blue Remembered Hills’ the naturalism is broken by the children being played by adults. Both texts have a tragedy at the end, in Blue Remembered Hills’ Donald dies in a barn fire witnessed by the other children, in ‘Friend or Foe’ the two German pilots (who become close friends with Dave and Tucky) are captured and taken as prisoners of war, then die as prisoners wishing to be free. ‘Friend or Foe’ can be seen as naturalistic as the children lead a normal life of an evacuee during world war two.

To conclude both texts have many similarities for example both are set during world war two and they are both naturalistic and the ends are very tragic as Donald dies in the fire created in the barn and the two German soldiers were captured and never seen again with a rumour going around that they had been killed they are many similarities that are present. There are also some differences like the society in ‘Friend or Foe’ have slightly older children than that of ‘Blue Remembered Hills’. There is a huge difference between the two texts that we must take into account that one is novel for children and the other a play that is meant to be televised.

By Arjan Pahal