Billy also doesn’t want to walk the path his older brother Jud walks as a miner “down t’pit.” Jud says, “Ar, just think; an’ next year tha’ll be coming down wi’ me.”
Billy responds, “I’ll not”
“Won’t tha?”
“No, ‘cos I’m not goin’ to work down t’pit.”
Perhaps Billy doesn’t want to work down the mine because he enjoys nature. Hines describes Billy’s relationship with nature and unique view of life in detail, using many descriptive words, similes and metaphors.
On the way to Monastery farm Barry Hines writes from Billy’s perspective.
All these descriptions of nature represent how Billy sees and feels about it. Most of us don’t even give nature a second glance, but Billy does, he is fascinated by it and interprets it in his mind’s eye with a poet’s intensity of feeling. This isn’t the only remarkable thing Billy does, he miraculously trains a kestrel hawk, although ironically he does it with the aid of a book he stole from a bookshop. Even though Billy is a very poor reader he manages to digest enough technical skills from reading his book obtained via unconventional methods. This is remarkable, as it requires great skill to train a kestrel from anyone let alone a child. The farmer’s remarks on page 30 further back up his achievement. Billy says to the farmer “Do you know anybody who’s kept one?” the farmer replies “One or two but they’ve allus let ‘em go’ cos they couldn’t do owt wi’em. They never seemed to get tame like other birds.”
Billy isn’t a stereotype, however he is unfortunately the victim of stereotyping. In the book many people stereotype Billy for many different reasons. The teachers in his school stereotype him as a lout who is always getting into fights, but really Macdowall, the clichéd school bully stereotype, picks on Billy because he is a bastard.
He pushes Billy to the edge and because he hasn’t been shown any other way to react to things like this, he resorts to violence causing the teachers to discriminate him.
Another person to discriminate him is the librarian. She serves other people behind him in the queue and when she finally serves him she insults him calling him “filthy”.
Whilst Mr Porter the shopkeeper tells Billy off for being late for his paper round he says to him “there’s a waiting list a mile long for your job, you know. Grand lads an’ all, some of em. Lads from up Firs Hill and round there.” This is Mr Porter discriminating Billy and he is stupid enough to say that the boys will be more “reliable” just because they are from Firs Hill. Ironically everyone who stereotypes Billy is a stereotype; Billy’s mother comes across as a jaded, shrewish hussy because she has lots of boyfriends which she calls “uncles” in front of Billy. Her reputation is well know throughout the estate. Another stereotype is Mr Sugden, an almost caricature character. Mr Sugden is Billy’s PE teacher who thinks he is a football God, while in truth he is rubbish at football and is just a sad old man holding on to childish dreams. Through this character we find light comic relief in the book despite his treatment of Billy.
In “Our Day Out” Willy Russell exploits social stereotypes for humorous effect, like Hines does with Mr Sugden. Most of the stereotypes Russell uses are clichés; the school bully Reilly and his sidekick Digga and their female counterparts Linda and Karen. Other clichés are the social “victims”, Carol a hopeless simple girl and Andrews. The teachers fall into stereotypes too. Mr Briggs, the strict teacher, Mrs Kay a middle aged easy-going “soft touch” teacher and two young student teachers and lovers Susan and Colin. Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay are opposite sides of the same coin, both representing different attitudes to education and both thinking the other is a bad teacher.
With “Our Day Out” being a screenplay, some of the humour needs visual impact and timing. Some scenes offer no dialogue at all because its what we see that’s important and humorous not what people say. For example between pages 48-50 we see 6 scene changes, which are very effective in the BBC TV production of the story.
We see Mr Briggs talking about the animals. Flash. The scene changes to the children playing with the animals then back to Mr Briggs talking about the animals. Then it changes to the children touching and picking up the animals and finally stealing them.
This stereotype of all people from Liverpool being thieves is seen here and it is also seen in scene 15 where “the kids are robbing stuff left right and centre” in the service station shop. The stereotype all Northern men eat, sleep and think football is echoed when two boys in the aviary are trying to teach two Macaws to say “Everton”. Another Liverpool stereotype is that they possess verbal wit. This is portrayed in the story too.
“Open the window.”
“Why?”
“Why’d you think so we can get a bit of fresh air,”
“Well there’s no fresh air around here. You just wanna smoke. An’ smokin’ stunts y’ growth.”
“I’ll stunt your friggin’ growth if y’ don’t get it open.”
During the zoo episode the BBC added several scenes to further exploit the humorous effects of stereotyping. Like when the zoo keeper gets on the coach and demands for them to return the animals and a whole host of furry animals appear from the children’s pockets and one boy produces a python while a goat runs out from the back seat. This makes a quiet funny scene totally ridiculous.
While the stereotypes are used by Willy Russell to amuse us he does make some serious points about the children and their lives. Like the “Carol on the Cliff” scene. This scene is the key top enabling us to see beneath the surface of the characters. Russell makes us pity Carol because she isn’t very clever and only wants the simple things in life like “one of them nice white houses an’ do the garden an’ that”. He even makes us pity tough-guy Reilly in scene 40 when he says “It’s friggin’ horrible when y’ come back to it, isn’t it?” Telling us that even Reilly has an inner vulnerability. This is Russell using pathos; pathos is when you make people feel sympathy for a character.
Both texts raise the issue of social stereotyping for humours effects and to make serious points. The difference lies in the emphasis, “Our Day Out” concentrates mainly on stereotyping for humorous effects whereas “A Kestrel For A Knave” uses it to get across serious issues like the damaging, negative effects stereotyping has on peoples lives and how discriminating against the poor keeps them poor because they don’t get treated with respect so no one can be bothered to teach them the skills they need to start a better life.
