Willis Hall places the Japanese solider to expose core issues. By denying him eligible dialogue and making him appear innocent, the English soldiers torment themselves with what to do with him. If they harbour him back to head quarters they will be risking their lives but if they don’t the reality is they will have to kill him because he would leek important information to the Japanese army if they were to capture the group. They could tie him up but if he weren’t found he would suffer an unpleasant, undeserving death. The decision is made more difficult by the fact that the solider is friendly, genuine and civil to the group. The group is in a majority of cases young and inexperienced and when the younger members find out he is to be assassinated, they heavily question the morality of the situation and want to do what is right (not killing the Japanese solider) weather it interferes with their survival or not. A fight breaks out over which Johnston; a corporal suggests to Private Macleish that the Japanese solider has stolen the ‘British army fags’, by looting from a dead British solider. But Bamforth had given the solider the cigarettes however Mcleish who was questioning the killing of the solider to save the group used this incidence to come to a conclusion of what to do to the ‘Jap’ – Kill him! Even though he knew this was a poor and false excuse. The Japanese solider was killed but the decision to do so was not taken lightly. Sergeant Mitchem’s job was to kill the solider but he this was made more difficult by the fact that the solider was very similar to himself. He clearly shows he doesn’t want the job as he offers it to other people
‘If you want to do that Jock, have my job right away.’
He also illustrates that he has exhausted other possibilities regards getting rid of the solider. This adds to the evidence that the group know what they have to make a decision that shouldn’t really have to be made. By denying the Japanese solider of dialogue and portraying him to have similar values and feelings as the group (In his wallet he has a picture of his family as do most of the group), Willis Hall has made the soldiers have to talk through and fight to enable them to come to a conclusion of what to do. This is how the first core issue has surfaced.
Prejudice is the second core issue I am going to write about.
Prejudice arises regularly in the second act. However it is not as severe as the first issue, for example the language that is used is ‘Jock bints’ and ‘dim scotch nit’ which of course is a general comment used to humiliate a person when someone is angry used in abundance. An example of this in the play that I will use is when Macleish and Mitchem were disagreeing with each other over what to do with the Japanese solider, Mitchem looses his temper and calls Macleish ‘Jock’ where as before he had referred to him as Mac. In the act the second issue is really exposed when the soldiers launch into an argument. They automatically speak with a prejudiced tongue if they feel threatened or they feel they are loosing the argument. This is how Willis Hall brings out the second issue. (When emotions are high)
Furthermore The Long, The Short and The tall explores issues that other wartime plays didn’t touch on. Previous plays would be very clear-cut in which they would portray everyone to have true military morals and honours, suggesting that the war was ‘just’ in every case. Which it wasn’t and Willis Hall shows this well in his play. I think this is because he has had true military experience in the Far East and he is trying to give the public an idea of what war is really like. In other words he is not afraid to write about war’s underlying issues!
In conclusion, Willis Hall brings out the core issues of the play by using the Japanese solider to almost trigger the group into debates and confrontations about the core issues. It’s a clever way of presenting and exposing core issues, as it isn’t patronising. This is because he uses comedy and shows different emotions.
