Malloy knows that if he gave Chrissie a real job then he would have to pay tax and it’s not worth his while. It would mean so much to Chrissie because he wants to go home and have dirt on his hands and not have to hide it from anybody.
The next time we see Chrissie and Malloy, Chrissie tell it to him straight. He says, “I want a proper job. This is no use to me”. Then Malloy tells him “Isn’t this better than no job at all”. Chrissie is still determined and says “I know I’m losing you money over this but I’d rather be legit on a lot less money. I wanna be a workingman again. I wanna go home at night with dirt on my hands and not have to hide it from anyone”. This is a change in character in Chrissie because he would usually react with a sarcastic comment, but here we see that he can’t hide the pain anymore. Bleasdale believes that Chrissie has lost his pride because of unemployment. This is the reason he doesn’t reply with a sarcastic comment. He has to say something serious because it is hurting him so much being unemployed. He is being exploited because he has debts to pay and when he talks to Snowy, he tells him he has to forget about being exploited. He says this because he needs the money.
Malloy will still not give Chrissie a job and when he says “Frig off, Malloy, I don’t need charity. Give it to Oxfam. I used to be soft y’know noted for it. But not anymore. I’ve had it up to here”. Chrissie is saying that he will not be pushed around anymore. We also see it when Snowy (one of Chrissie’s friends) dies, Malloy offers Chrissie a REAL job, so that he will not get done by the police for employing people illegally. Chrissie turns down Malloy’s offer because he would be betraying his political beliefs. His personality is also changing again. Before he would be jumping at the chance to have a real job, but because of the circumstances he turns down Malloy.
The second character I am going to be analysing is Yosser Hughes. Yosser is affected by unemployment in a completely different way compared to Chrissie. Where Chrissie hides his pain with sarcastic comments and humour, Yosser starts to lose his mind, and everything else along with that, his children, his house, his whole life. We learn in the first scene that he cares about his children immensely but as the play goes on we see he get over protective of them. He feels everyone is trying to take them off him.
Yosser has a number of habits, like saying his name to everyone he meets, saying he could do every job and head butting. He is obsessed with his name because he is proud of who he is. He wants everyone to know who he is. And the one thing unemployment can’t take from him is his identity. But in the end of the play he hardly says his name, this is because he does not want it anymore. This is a form of dramatic irony.
We see this head butting when he is trying to get a cell for the night, after his children have been taken from him. He smashes a window and an alarm goes off and shortly after two policemen arrives. They start to arrest the wrong person when Yosser tries to tell them it was actually him that broke the window. Then the policeman tells him, not very nicely, to “ Do me a favour-piss off”. Then Yosser replies “ But…but…but…but…but…”. The policeman then tells Yosser “ don’t but me, alright “. Ironically Yosser takes this the wrong way and head butts the policeman. This is one of many puns in the two plays.
Yosser uses sandcastles as a metaphor for confronting his failures in life, because everything Yosser has done in his life always ends in failure. Yosser says to the Wino “ When I was little…. when I was. There was so much to look forward to. Then. In the…. In the fifties. When I was little. I built sandcastles”. He used sandcastles because he says everything in his life has been ruined in the end, just like a sandcastle, would be washed up or tramped on.
In the last scene, when he is being taken to the police station, he decides he has nothing to live for and that everyone has taken something from him and now its his turn to take something away. By this he meant his own life. But the ironic thing is he can’t even do this right. The policemen chased him and when they saw he was trying to kill himself, one of them said, “ Let the basted die”. Then shortly after the other policeman says “ Nah”. The only reason he says this is because before Yosser ran off they had radioed in and said they had two passengers. If they only got back with one they would have a lot of paper work to fill in and they just couldn’t be bothered. When they ‘help’ Yosser they lay him on the ground and start hitting him and beating on him. They do this even when he is o.k.
Yosser then shouts “No” several times. This shows that he doesn’t want to stay alive. He is becoming de-humanized because in the end he is like a creature flopping about in the mud. This is what unemployment has doe to him. It is also ironic that his nightmare was in the same pond that he tries to kill himself in.
I am now going to analyse the use of humour. He (Bleasdale) thought that unemployment was mad because us, the taxpayers, have to pay unemployed people for being unemployed. I will start with the pun from Yossers story, where he visits the priest. Yosser finally asks for help. Yosser tells the priest “I’m desperate father” and the priest replies, “Just call me, Dan”. And then Yosser then says, “I’m desperate Dan”. I feel Alan Bleasdale uses this pun to make everyone laugh then realise what madness unemployment is causing.
I am now gong to write about the filming of the B.B.C. productions. Philip Sarille tried to make it look more like a documentary than a programme, because in the D.O.E office when the camera follows someone it keeps moving up and down as if there is someone following them. He also made the camera like a first person mode when Yosser is talking to his children and they look up at him you see it in the children’s view. Serille used make up to full effect when Yosser looks almost de-humanized just after the policemen pull him out of the water. Also in the D.O.E. office you can hear everyone talking and moving about and this also adds to the effect that it is more like a documentary. Serille doesn’t decide to make the background noises quieter like they might in films or soap operas. He keeps them as loud as they normally would be this is to give it the effect of a documentary . I think all the actors were well suited to their parts, especially Yosser (Bernard Hill) because he coped well and made it look and feel like I was watching a real person going through the motions.
I know how bad unemployment is and how it can effect people. I think that Alan Bleasdale has put his views across very well because he made me laugh at the ‘desperate Dan’ pun and then realise how much help Yosser needed. But I feel that he tried to say that everyone on the dole is unhappy and would rather work for his or her money but I feel this is not true because there are some lazy people that would rather get money for doing nothing.
