Page 340 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama
Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes
Unit 31: Roots: Detailed Analysis of the Text

CONTENTS

Objectives
Introduction

31.1 Analysis of the Text

31.2 Summary
31.3 Keywords

31.4 Review Questions
31.5 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Describe the summary of the play Roots;
• Describe the summary of all the three acts of the play Roots;
• Illustrate the analysis of play Roots.

Introduction

In Roots, Arnold Wesker gives us a bickering, baffled, sometimes belligerent, always believable
family of farm workers in the north of England. His achievement here is to show the Bryants
simultaneously as individuals, as a family and as victims of an economic and social system far
beyond their comprehension. The catalyst is Beatie, the youngest daughter, who has been living in
London with her lover, a Socialist intellectual. She has returned home for two weeks, bursting with
the notions of uplift that her Ronnie, who sounds slightly Shavian, has been pouring into her. In
London, she has been an ignorant farm girl; at home, she tries to be a force for enlightenment,
arguing with her hidebound brother-in-law, Jimmy, about the rights of labor and trying to get her
mother to appreciate classical music. This unit elaborates the text of the play in detail from from
Act I to Act III. More emphasis is given on the detailed analysis of the text in all the Acts.

31.1 Analysis of the Text

The play opens at a rather ramshackle house in Norfolk where there is no water laid on, nor electricity,
nor gas. Everything rambles and the furniture is cheap and old. If it is untidy it is because there is a
child in the house and there are few amenities, so that the mother is too over-worked to take much
care.
An assortment of clobber lies around: papers and washing, coats and basins, a tin wash-tub with
shirts and underwear to be cleaned, tilly lamps and primus stoves. Washing hangs on a line in the
room. It is September.

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