Educating Rita

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3) Referring to two scenes from ‘Educating Rita’ show how Willy Russell creates a change in Rita

       Russell wrote this play in the mid 80’s; therefore the typical conventions can confuse the reader, as they do not appeal to modern audience. There are two main characters in the whole play. Frank her tutor, and Rita the student. This play is about Rita, a married woman, trying to achieve a better life for her. Going to an Open University has turned her life around. She is willing to lose everything for an enhanced standard of living.

       Russell uses the characters speech to create a change in Rita’s character. He is the play writer so therefore there must be a reason for why he did this; maybe to show how important education is for people of this day, and it is not just the men that have to work and get the degrees, women should also have this right because they are capable of doing so. As Rita’s character becomes more educated, her dialect changes because she feels that she wants to fit in with all the other educated students. In Act 1 Scene 2 her dialect is very strong Liverpoolian, her tone is very rude, and it shows that she does not know how to behave with educated people. An example of Rita’s rudeness is “What am I? What?” As this was the first question Frank asked Rita I assumed she would have been more polite to make a good first day impression; but we learn further on in the play that because Rita was herself, the bubbly loud personality, Frank was motivated to teach her and he wanted her to do well. Also a second point about Rita’s speech is that on the first day of her tutorial, she swears! Using words like “tits”, “fuckin”, and “fucked”, as a reader I would have expected Frank to say no for tutoring her. In my opinion using swear words on a first day at university are wrong and it shows that your parents have not taught you many manners on how to speak in public. Russell makes his character do this to create a certain effect on his reader. It may however change the audience’s opinions of the character but Russell does this because later on in the play she changes and becomes a new woman.

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       However, in Act 2 Scene 1, Rita is a whole new person. After coming back from summer school she is extremely pleased to see Frank. We notice a big change in Rita’s character, new clothes, new accent, and new thoughts about literature. Maybe Russell created Rita’s character to be very rude and abrupt in the A1S1 so that this change would seem to be very dramatic. Rita seems to be more confident within her and happier that she understands literature better and getting everything right. “…cos you know I’m dead familiar with Chekhov now.” Rita’s character describes ...

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