FIRSTP

COMPARATIVE PAPER ABOUT ARNOLD WESKER’S THE KITCHEN AND EDWARD BOND’S SAVED

This paper is going to compare and contrast two authors and two of their plays. These authors are Arnold Wesker and Edward Bond, two really important English playwrights. Both Arnold Wesker and Edward Bond were born in London in the 1930’s. Although they have differences in their lives, the fact of belonging to the same period make readers find big resemblances between their works.

Both Wesker and Bond left school when they were young (15-16) and they started to work. Wesker saved money and after many years went back to studies and joined the London School of Film Technique, while Bond devoted his time to work until he started writing at the age of 32, with the play Saved (1965) . As we can deduce from their opinion or characters and themes expressed in their plays, Wesker and Bond came from working class families, who lived with all the consequences of a post-World War (II) period and suffered during most of their youth the environment of this war.

Due to their similar characteristics their first works have many linking points. In this case, we are going to refer to The Kitchen (1956), by Arnold Wesker, and Saved (1965) by Edward Bond. One of this similarities is for example the topics plays are about. Both plays talk about common situations in a certain way. The Kitchen is a perfect reflection of how life is in a busy restaurant. The story starts in the morning and only describes one day of life there. The writer describes a really stressful situation, mainly when there is a meal and all waitresses order food, which can be a comparison to the outside life. During the 60's society was still getting over the war and therefore people felt vulnerable. They could not even think about changing their lifestyles because they did not have life beyond their jobs. The depression of the society of the time has a reflection on people and this is shown in both stories, where the characters have no dreams, no values, nothing to fight for... Workers think in a point how their lives would be if there was no kitchen.

In Saved is represented also daily life. Work, problems, convivence, love, social differences, hipocresy... and how the characters react to some situations and how they survive doing things that probably they do not want to do.

Convivence is an important point in both plays. In The Kitchen because they spend most f the day together and also working and in Saved because convivence shows lots of problems mostly because of Pam and her hate towards Len.

About social differences we can observe that in The Kitchen we can see this difference between workers and clients, when workers cook for them as if they were below them, and also between workers and the tramp that asks for food, because workers in this case could consider themselves fortunate of having money and food. . In Saved we have an example of this when Mary (Pam's mother) goes to parties with upper-society-class women.

This fact can be also related to the hipocresy because she intend to be what she is not and she can not be.

Although it is also about daily life, Saved has some different features, for example the big amount of violence. First, when Edward Bond wrote it, was censured by Lord Chamberlain (official censor of British theatre) who thought it was obscene, violent, ... This was due to a really violent scene and some alusions to sex that in that period of time were really scandalous. This violent scene describe how Frank and his friends start to play with the baby and urinate and stone him to death. This scene made me tremble because it is horrible how the author describes it and how your mind imagines something that you do not want to see. The author with this scene wants to show that society in that period had no values, unreasoned violence was common probably because of the impotence people felt when they realised that their lives could not be changed.

In conclusion we can extract some points in common with the authors as their similar view and critics of the society they live in, their objective to make readers see that everybody could be replaced in those years because no one was so important because of its acts. Most people live to work and can not think about changing their lives because of the lack of stability in their jobs. This, therefore, represents how both authors represented in their works how the people of the time were desperate, hopeless with their lives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_bond

http://www.arnoldwesker.com/biography/short.htm Last update:3rd August 2005

1- The Kitchen, Arnold Wesker, Photocopied source, (Servei de Reprografia de la Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de València)

2- Saved, Edward Bond. Photocopied source, (Servei de Reprografia de la Facultat

de Filologia, Universitat de València)

http://www.benchtheatre.org.uk/plays0304/saved.html

http://www.amrep.org/articles/3_3a/bond.html updated March 19, 2005

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Aina García Coll
Universitat de València Press
aigari@alumni.uv.es