y’ know he’s right behind y’, he’s starin’ through your
windows, he’s creeping down the hall.”
This verse in the song suggests that the devil is getting closer and closer to Mrs Johnstone and one day he is going to catch her. This is the only song that the narrator sings in the play which is suggesting that the narrator may just be the devil. The play is also a tragedy as two twins grow p not knowing each other and then both die on the day that they find out that they are twins.
The narrator (Willy Russel) is a brechtian narrator this comes from a 20th century playwright Bertoid Brecht. Brecht said that you should go and se a play just for entertainment you should be made to think, so if he was to tell you what was going to happen in the play at the beginning then you should be able to watch it more judgementally. The opening speech of the narrator in Blood Brothers is somewhat similar to the chorus speech at the start of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare tells us at the very start that his two main characters are star crossed lovers (their fate was told in the stars) and that they couldn’t avoid their fate/destiny. The narrator in Blood Brothers suggests something similar.
Blood Brothers is a play about inevitability and the narrator is a personification of fate. The narrator takes on many roles in this play which all move things towards the great tragedy at the end. He starts of as a milkman telling us how Mrs Johnstone has no money and she is pregnant. He is then a Gynaecologist and tells us that Mrs Johnstone is going to have twins. He then becomes a bus conductor and shows us how because of a background of poverty it is leading to crime, then he is a teacher who suspends the twins causing them to meet again and finally he is the rifle range man and he shows us that Linda is torn between them (stuck in the middle).
The narrator also has other roles, he tells us about the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters, he does this quite a lot with Mickey, Edward and Linda between pages 14-18.
“Mickey makes his way outside. He is fed up.”
Pg 15
Another example of the narrator doing this is also on pg15:
“Mickey sits, bored, looking at the ants on the pavement.”
This is just one of many jobs that the narrator takes on. The narrator also has one final role and that is to be Willy Russel’s mouthpiece. Willy Russel makes a comment at the end of the play which tells us what the play is about:
“. . . .what we, the English, have come to know as class.”
Willy Russel is trying to tell us that the play has been about the different classes in society. Working class, middle class and upper class. This play shows how a child brought up in middle class turns out to be like and what a child brought up in working class turns out to be like.
I think that the narrator is very important in this play and it is the narrator that keeps the play going, he is the glue which holds the play together. I think the play would be a lot worse/different if the narrator was not included in it. I think that the narrators most important role in the play was the different jobs he took on (e.g- Gynaecologist) these jobs move the play to wards the tragedy at the end of the play.
