“you won’t tell anyone about this, Mrs. Johnstone, because if you do, you will kill them”
This forces Mrs. Johnstone to be sworn to secrecy, because she thinks that if she tells anyone about what happened, she will kill them. This would never really happen, but because Mrs. Johnstone believes in superstition she is too frightened to say anything.
Another ‘shoes upon the table’ superstition comes when Mrs. Lyons is having a conversation with Mr. Lyons about moving house. ‘Mr. Lyons places the shoes on the table’ and in the next scene Mickey, Linda and Edward get caught by a policeman when they are about to throw stones at a window.
The next showing of superstition occurs when Mrs. Lyons is in her new house in the country. Mrs. Lyons looks at a lone magpie.
“It’s a magpie, never look at one magpie”
When Edward says this, Mrs. Lyons remarks by saying it’s just a silly superstition. However in the next scene we find out that the Johnstone family are moving very close to where the Lyons family have just moved. As Mrs. Lyons moved to get away from the Johnstone family it seems that Mrs. Johnstone looking at the lone magpie caused bad luck for her.
Right at the end of the play Mrs. Johnstone tells Mickey that Edward is his twin brother.
“Don’t shoot Eddie. He’s your brother.”
This breaks the superstition that Mrs. Lyons told Mrs. Johnstone about. Even though Mrs. Lyons made it up, it comes true. Mickey shoots Edward and the police shoot Mickey.
Chance is behind all the events which I have mentioned so far. Apart from the shooting, none of the superstitions have anything to do with the event that followed. The shooting did not even have a real superstition there. One reason for the deaths of Mickey and Edward was their love lives with Linda. Is it chance that they were both in love with her. In fact the main reason why Mickey wanted to kill Edward is because he had stolen Linda from him.
“Just one thing I had left, Eddie - Linda - an, I wanted to keep her.”
It is also chance that Mickey’s brother is an extremely bad role model.
“I wish I was our Sammy… He’s got two worms and a catapult… Y’ wanna see him spit.. He wees straight through the letter box.”
This behavior sends Mickey on the wrong track. Chance also occurs when Mickey does not know if the gun he shoots Edward with is loaded.
The Narrator also tells us that class could be blamed for the deaths of Mickey and Edward. Mickey is raised in a working class family and Edward is raised in a middle class family. The first showing of class making them different is their names. In the play Michael is called Mickey whereas Edward stays the same. When Mickey meets him, he wants to call him Eddie.
“D’ they call y’ Eddie?”
“No.”
“Well I will.”
Class is also shown with the language Mickey and Edward use. Mickey uses a lot of slang such as “y’, yeh, and ya”’. Edward speaks much better English (his monologue on page 80).
Another situation which separates the two classes is when the policeman comes round to speak to each family. With Mrs. Johnstone he often seems to refer back to other times when her children have been causing trouble, putting her under pressure.
“I warned you last time, didn’t I.”
With Mr. And Mrs. Lyons the policeman blames the event on working class kids that Edward was with.
“Make sure he keeps with his own kind, Mr. Lyons.”
This comment also persuades the Lyons’ to move. If this event did not take place, the Lyons’ may not have moved. This could have kept Mickey and Edward together and not have forced the down the path of their class.
There is also a large difference in the schools they go to. Edward goes to a all boys boarding school however Mickey goes to the local comprehensive. From there Edward goes onto university and gets a good job which is well paid. Mickey has to go straight into a poorly paid packaging job. He then goes to prison and gets hooked on painkillers.
Both of the boys started off very similar to each other but started to grow apart from where they were towards the class they had been brought up in.
Most of the superstition related events are purely down to chance. With the shooting Mickey would have killed Edward anyway, it did not matter that Mrs. Johnstone admitted that Edward and Mickey were twins. How could the Johnstone family move because Mrs. Lyons looked at a magpie. Why would a extra baby suddenly appear because their was a pair of shoes on a table. It is genetically impossible.
It does seem like the story had a large amount of bad luck for everyone compared to the amount of good luck. There are many ifs and buts to consider, such as whether the gun was loaded to if only Mrs. Johnstone had a single child instead of twins.
I think that the case for blaming the deaths of Mickey and Edward on class is much better. Edward is able to get a good education just because his parents can afford to pay for a good school. People like the policeman treated him differently because he came from a working class family. The working class tracks were set on a downhill course for Mickey, in contrast Edward was given a much easier start to life.
Overall it seems like class can be partly blamed for the deaths of Mickey and Edward. None of the signs of class differentiating them were directly assisted with the deaths of Mickey and Edward but they would not have died if they had been brought up in the same standard of living. Instead of blaming superstition though we should blame chance instead. Without a doubt bad luck contributed to the deaths of Mickey and Edward. The toast always seemed to land butter side down for them both.
