How does Willy Russell Convey Social and Cultural Background in 'Our Day Out'?

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Chloe Rogers

Social and Cultural Background in ‘Our Day Out’

Willy Russell has written many plays over the last thirty years, but there is one feature that is common to all of them: the issue of social and cultural background. This is the situation of the characters; their surroundings; their class; the society in which they are brought up, and the culture of that society. It is this that can lead to the behaviour, feelings, opinions and general outlook of the characters. Russell explores the effects that society and culture can have on people in all his plays, but in none is it so poignant as in ‘Our Day Out’, the story of what happens when Mrs Kay takes her Progress class out of inner-city Liverpool on a school trip to Conwy Castle, Wales.

Throughout ‘Our Day Out’ the issue of social and cultural background is ever-present, but it is discussed and conveyed in many different forms; the colloquial dialect Russell uses; the symbolism that is featured; the behaviour and attitudes of the children; the way that people react to these children, and the insights we get into their family lives.

 

Willy Russell himself said that he writes for the theatre because ‘it’s concerned with the spoken rather than the written word’. In ‘Our Day Out’ we see the importance of the spoken word through the language that the children use. Having grown up and taught at a Comprehensive school in Liverpool, Russell knows the Liverpudlian dialect perfectly, and he uses his knowledge to give a truly representative feel to the play. The children use words such as ‘agh’ey’, ‘ooer’, and ‘nott’n’, and the authentic language that the children use help to make the play feel more real. Because Russell writes the words as they would be spoken in a Liverpudlian accent, we can’t help but speak in a Liverpudlian accent when reading the play, and this again adds to the authenticity. The children also use slang words. For example, they refer to the Corporation as ‘The Corpy’, bonfire night as ‘bommy night’, and cigarettes as ‘ciggies’.   In any society, the colloquial dialect is an essential part of the culture, and the use of it in ‘Our Day Out’ forcefully conveys to the audience the essence of the background of these children.

Symbolism plays a significant part in ‘Our Day Out’, because it gives Russell the opportunity to display how the children feel about their hopeless situations, without having to state it in the text or put it in the dialogue. This is important because the children don’t necessarily know how they feel, or if they do they can’t express it, so to put it in the dialogue would be inconsistent with their characters. If Russell had put it in the stage directions it would not be experienced to its full impact when people see the play on television or on the stage. Russell also probably didn’t want to be so explicit; some things, such as the knowledge of the hopelessness of the children’s situations and the destitution they are facing, are more poignant and affecting when implied through some form of symbolism rather than directly stated.

The two most obvious symbols in the play are the analogies of the bear in the pit at the zoo and the goldfish in the bag Carol wins at the fair. In the first case the bear represents the children, and the pit represents Liverpool. The children are trapped in this place that they can’t escape from, and the sad fact is, society doesn’t want them to escape. Russell said, ‘Whilst the working classes are accused of being philistines, there is a general attempt in this country to withhold culture from them’. Mrs Kay echoes this sentiment when she tells Mr Briggs that he ‘won’t educate them (the children) because nobody wants them educating’. The bear is trapped in the pit because of an outside force, in this case, humans. He hasn’t actually done anything wrong but he is persecuted all the same, just for being a bear. In the bear’s case this is reasonable because we know that bear’s are dangerous, but in the children’s it isn’t. They are kept in their ‘pit’ due to no fault of their own, and have it impressed upon them that it is. Carol tells Mrs Kay, ‘Couldn’t have nothin’ like this (the sea, fields and castle) round our way’ and when Mrs Kay asks why not, she says, ‘Cos we’d only wreck it, wouldn’t we?…That’s why we never have nothin’ nice round our way- cos we’d just smash it up.’ The stigma surrounding the working-class was maybe born out of myth, but if someone expects you to behave in a certain way, you begin to. These children have been brought up with people expecting them to shoplift and destroy things, so now they do, and that just increases the prejudice towards them. The vicious cycle of the self-fulfilling prophecy continues. After the discovery of the bear, the ensuing conversation is plainly related to the children’s situation. Ronson declares that he thinks keeping the bear in the pit is ‘cruel’ and Briggs replies that it’s not cruel ‘if it’s treated well’ and that ‘it was born in captivity so it won’t know any other sort of life.’ Ronson thinks it does, and then another girl says, ‘it was born in a cage an’ it’s lived all its life in a pit, well, it won’t know nothin’ else so it won’t want nothin’ else’. Ronson argues that  ‘It kills them (people) cos they’re cruel to it. They keep it in a pit so when it gets out it’s bound to be mad an’ wanna kill people.’ Ronson probably doesn’t realise as he’s saying this, how relevant it is to his situation. He goes on to say that ‘it must know about other ways of living, sir. Y’ know, free, like the way people have stopped it livin’. It only kills people cos it’s trapped an’ people are always stood lookin’ at it. If it was free it wouldn’t bother people at all.’ Andrews argues ‘Bears kill y’ cos it’s in them t’ kill y’.’  This whole dialogue is representative of the children, and parallels their situations, though the children are completely ignorant of this. This symbolism is very powerful because it really makes the audience consider the desperation of the children’s circumstances, and Ronson’s innocent compassion towards the bear is nothing short of endearing. We also see that Briggs’ attitude towards the bear is the same as towards the children; he doesn’t really credit them with any sort of idea of what they’re facing, only with ignorance.

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The second obvious metaphor is the goldfish in the bag. At the end of the play, when they have arrived back at school, Carol ‘walk(s) along the street with the goldfish in her grasp’. The goldfish is again signifying the children, and the bag in which it is contained, Liverpool. The goldfish is trapped, but here there is a new element. The plastic bag is not a pleasant environment for the goldfish, but if you take it out of that environment it will not be able to survive; it will die. This is obviously how Russell felt about the children, ...

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