ENGLISH
THEATRE OF 19th AND 20th CENTURIES GROUP A
SURNAME: Giarratana
NAME: Melania
JIMMY AND PETER: HOPES OF YOUTH,
BITTERNESS OF LIFE.
Jimmy and Peter are the main
characters of two different plays who have many things in common. Both belong
to the low working class. Both are introduced to us in their every day lives;
both are boisterous and aggressive; both are in their twenties.
Jimmy is married to an upper
class woman; Peter is in love with a married woman belonging to his same class.
Both have not satisfying lives.
Jimmy complains about the fact
that his weekends are always the same: reading papers, seeing his wife Alison ironing.
He says: “Trouble is you get used to
people". He cannot stand seeing Alison never talking and never reacting to
his provocations:
"Pousillanimous…I have
been married to this woman, this monument to non-attachment and suddenly I
discover that there is actually a word that sums her up". He always picks
on Alison's family and friends because of their "good manners and good f
ideas of upper-class". About Alison's brother, he says: “nothing is
more vague about Nigel than is knowledge…of life and ordinary human
beings…he really deserves some sort of decoration for it a medal
inscribed: For Vaguery in the Field".
Jimmy's cynism is disarming.
Peter, who works in a
restaurant kitchen, has a love relationship with Monique, who never confesses
to her husband that she has a love affair with Peter. He always controls her
for not flirting with other men: “Remember…I can see you in the
glass…No flirting… Cow! Disgusting cow! All the restaurant can see
you!” He has been working in that kitchen for three years and every day
he gets angrier because of the stress of the work and his love for Monique. He
has grappled with his workmate Gaston for foolish things. He always gets irritated:
“Peter always shouts more then the other and you can always hear
Peter…a few seconds later they were fighting”.
Jimmy and Peter have their
"good moments" too, Jimmy used to play funny games to Cliff, his
housemate, and Alison above all after having been disgusting. To Cliff: “He
gets more like a little mouse every day”. To Alison: “you are a
beautiful-eyed squirrel". Just once he apologizes for having made Alison's
arm get burned: I'm sorry…nearly four years of being in the same room
with you…I can't stop my sweat breaking out when I see you doing
something as ordinary as leaning over an ironing board" .
Peter, during the interlude,
starts talking about dreams; he tries to pull out personal dreams from his
work-mates' hearts, but he realizes that he is not the only one who is not able
to express his is own dreams. The others cannot express themselves because they
have probably never had the time or the chance of doing it, while he just gets
shy. There is one difference, between these two guys, which can be found nearly
at the end of the plays: Jimmy, who is first abandoned by his wife, seems not
to react; he just starts a love relationship with the best friend of Alison's,
doing exactly the same life he was doing before. When Alison comes back, he
accepts these changes as he was without power in his life. After he has been
behaving mad, nasty and as an
egoist, he just kisses and embraces his Alison.
Instead, Peter continues to fight until the end of the play, moment in which we
can see his hands covered with blood after having got mad for a foolish cause. Nevertheless,
Peter is also resigned at his fate.
We can realize that these two
guys are just young, intelligent, poor men who have no chances to redeem
themselves from their condition of poverty.
Neither love nor fights can
help them, because the society where they live does not allow them to get
better lives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
John Osborne. “Look back
in Anger'
Arnold Wesker. “The kitchen"
Auto-evaluation: Notable
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Melania Giarratana
megia@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press