A major theme in Our Day Out is the lack of education and opportunity for young people in the inner city. Using scenes from the play, show how Willy Russell makes the audience aware of this theme.

A major theme in ‘Our Day Out’ is the lack of education and opportunity for young people in the inner city. Using scenes from the play, show how Willy Russell makes the audience aware of this theme.

Introduction.

The play that I am writing about is called ‘Our Day Out’ and it was written by Willy Russell. The main theme of the play is to tell the reader what life was like for people (mainly children) in Liverpool in the 1970s and what their education was like. During the 1970s 100 000 jobs were lost in Liverpool because the docks had been closed and all of the factories were closing down. The unemployment went up, the streets got dirty, there was no money in education and the only thing that the kids could do was play on the streets and get into trouble.

I think that this is like the play by Willy Russell because all the factories were closing down, the docks had been closed and there was rubbish all over the streets. It’s also the same because all the kids had given up on life and their teachers had given up on them ever getting a job.

The play is about under achieving children who have been given the chance to go on a trip to Conwy Castle in Wales. Their teacher knows that there is no hope for them and they don’t want to learn anything. She is also a soft teacher so the headmaster decides to send a strict teacher along with her. As well as the castle they also went to the zoo, the beach and the funfair.

Part 1: Carol at the school gates.

Carol’s use of language shows how there is a lack of education and opportunity in ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Part 1: Carol at the school gates.

Carol’s use of language shows how there is a lack of education and opportunity in Liverpool at this time by the way that she says words like “ Agh, ey, wanna, t’, and goin’ ”. She also repeats words and pauses a lot. This shows that she might live in a rough background where people use abbreviations, slag a lot and have poor communication skills. Carol is suppose to be funny because she acts like she is smart and a normal person when she knows that she’s not and this makes her sound even more pathetic. It is also because she agrees with Les when he says ‘There all backwards round here’ and she always asks stupid questions. Carol is fooling her self about living in a nice place because she has no basic skills to get a job and buy a house in.

Part 2: At the zoo.

When Ronson is stood at the bear pit he is trying to say that even though the bear was brought up in captivity would it think about a better life and trying to escape to it. The bears and the progress class are similar because:

A dramatic device is a word or a sentence that has a lot of tension in it. Carol is a good example of how deprived these pupils are because she doesn’t know where anywhere is apart from anywhere in Liverpool, there are no jobs for them, they don’t get taught much, they have poor communication skills and they use a lot of slang. Willy Russell uses Ronson in a similar way to show that the progress class would behave differently given the chance.

Part 3: Use of stage directions- at the children’s zoo.

Willy Russell’s stage directions are different to many others because he adds more description and he puts in a lot more information into it e.g. ‘Ronson answers by picking up the rabbit and gently stroking it. Carol reaches over to join him but he pulls it close to him protectively.’ The way that Ronson and Carol act in the children’s zoo suggests that they don’t have there own pets in Liverpool because there parents can’t afford it and they don’t think they will be looked after properly. They way that they look after the pets in the zoo suggest that if they were given the opportunity they can look after it.

Part 4: On the cliff.

This is the most dramatic scene in the play because both Briggs and Carol are on the top of a very high cliff top, Briggs is very angry with Carol, Carol is very depressed and wants to jump of the cliff and Briggs moves ‘slowly’ towards Carol and she moves closer to the edge of the cliff. Briggs changes from his miserable character to a happy one because he is pleased that Carol is safe he hugs her and decides not to shout. It is important that the audience believes that Briggs has changed and that things could get better for the progress group because if they don’t then they will wonder why he is laughing, joking and having fun at the fair. We are meant to feel let down and sad at the end because there were a lot of good pictures on the film including some of Briggs smiling and having fun instead of being miserable and instead of developing the pictures like he promised he over-exposed them and screwed them up. Willy Russell shows his audience that a day out didn’t solve anything because at the end of it th photos were ruined and Brigs still ignored Carol.

Jonathon Worsley Page