Educating Rita

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How does Wiley Russell present the development of Frank and Rita in ‘Educating Rita’?

Educating Rita is a book written by Wiley Russell. It is about two people; Frank and Rita. These two people are almost totally opposite. Rita is a 20ish young woman from north England and Frank is a fairly elder citizen around about 50ish who’s still mentally in the 1980’s with a pretty much mellow life. Frank is an alcoholic and has started teaching at the Open University for the extra cash. Rita is a hairdresser; she has become tired of her job and wanted to explore her life fully.

The book starts with Frank on the phone presumably to his wife or girlfriend. From Frank’s conversation we can see that Frank is a person who really couldn’t care if his life was in danger, also with the dialect he uses over the phone it gives us a impression that Frank would rather be in the pub than spend time with the person he was peaking with, just as he finishes his conversation he goes towards his bookcase and behind the books he pulls out a alcoholic drink. This is we can tell from there onwards that frank is an alcoholic. Shortly after Rita is introduced, Rita has to push her way through. This can be seen as franks life, he is always trying to block his self from others and trying to seclude himself. As Rita says “the poor sod on the other side won’t be able to get in. And’ you won’t be able to get out”.

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This is a shock to Frank as he finds himself with a middle class young woman who speaks her mind, is ruthless and terribly honest. Though Rita too is shocked to find that she has been accepted into the Open University, but with her shock she says “ I don’t suppose they would have done it f it’d been a proper university” from this we can tell that Rita feels she is not good enough to have gone to a real university.

As we reach mid way in the book Frank has opened up a bit he is ...

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