What we learn about Irene’s life, is that she is lonely and lacks friendship, family and in general overall support. When Irene goes to prison she begins to find happiness. This is because she forms friendships and a support network from those who seem genuinely interested in her and are not paid to take that interest, unlike all the professionals who were sent in previously to provide support. This appears some what ironic, as prison is supposed to isolate you from the community but Irene has found a sense of freedom and belonging from it. This helps us understand Bennett’s ideas as it makes us think about our society today and if prison is really better than living in the outside world as an elderly citizen. If this is the case we have to question where community is going wrong.
Bennett gradually reveals information about Irene to keep the reader interested and intrigued in order to read on. At the beginning of the play, Bennett doesn’t reveal too much information about Irene, so we don’t actually realise how much Irene does depend on writing and the seriousness of her letters. We don’t know the full story about the ‘kiddie’ until the climax of the play. Irene made us think the kiddie was being mistreated by her comments, such as when she refers to the kiddie as ‘thin little thing, bruise on its arm’ and ‘I keep wondering about that kiddie’ ‘every single night the parents go off’. This makes the audience think, that the parents are neglecting the child. On the other side, Irene jumps to conclusions and she could just be exaggerating.
Irene is very lonely, we know this because of her comments like, ‘its been a real friend’ (referring to her pen). This lets us know that she has no friends apart from her pen. The climax of the play is when the police visit to talk about the letter she sent about the child.
The use of language and punctuation makes the tension increase; they use the repition of key words and phrases such as letters, kiddie and keep the peace. Another way they make the discussion heated is the short sentences, the tension keeps increasing until the conversation comes to a sudden stop where we find out the child has had leukaemia and died.
The use of humour brings variety to the play, which in turn keeps the readers interested. It also helps to lighten up the mood because the issues Irene has been getting herself into are becoming more serious. Irene contradicts herself a lot and doesn’t even realise it, such as when she writes to the queen and states there was dog dirt right outside of Buckingham palace. She then gets a letter back apologising profusely and she too sends a letter back thanking him. However when he sent a letter thanking her for her letter, Irene sends a letter back again saying there was no need for another letter, and was this an appropriate use of public resources? Consequently he does not reply. When Irene realises he didn’t send him another letter back she gets herself all worked up and just remarks’ typical’ as if it was him that was out of order. This makes the audience think that she doesn’t know herself and yet we do.
Bennett uses Irene to bring other characters into the play through reported speech, which creates variety to the play. One of the characters that Irene talks about is ‘the vicar’, Bennett describes the vicar very briefly, yet you still get a vivid image of what you think he would look like. Bennett does this by using short descriptive comments, such as ‘a young fellow in a collar and tie’. Bennett also uses this technique to describe other characters, for example the social worker. He uses lots of little descriptions that are effective in imaging images, like ‘shocking finger nails’, ‘ginger hair’ and ‘a hole in her tights the size of a fifty pence piece’. Irene portrays these characters through her own personal opinions and views however through the audiences view, we could portray these individuals completely differently.
