My essay is on the screen play “Shirley Valentine” written by Willy Russell. It was written in 1983 and first shown in cinemas 1989. Willy Russell seemed to have partly based this film on his life as Shirley who, like himself left school with no qualifications. The character of Shirley Valentine is a house wife who is frustrated with her life. Willy Russell was once a ladies’ hairdresser which helped him to understand women like Shirley. My essay will explain how Willy Russell uses many clever techniques to get the audiences sympathy for Shirley.
The opening credits of “Shirley Valentine” are pencil drawings coloured with blue and grey watery colours, which illustrates her doing house work. This shows that she isn’t very social and she has a miserable and boring life.
I would describe the soundtrack to the screenplay as melancholy and reflective on the past. The lyrics also tell me I am going to feel sorry for Shirley as it includes lines like “the girl who use to be me, she could fly, she was free.” And “and I feel she’s been gone so long.” This implies that she used to have a good enjoyable life but that now it has gone.
From the opening credits I can tell that she is very isolated and forlorn. This illustrates that she has a very wretched, lonesome, and domestic life. This it supported by the imagery and the music.
In his screen play Willy Russell makes use of two main techniques which allow the reader to learn more about his central character, Shirley.
Firstly as she reminisces. Flash backs are used to show us events from her school days and early married life, as well as more recent events. One example of a flash back is when we see her in school in assembly “oh Shirley please put your hand down you couldn’t po...
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...of his main character from the very beginning of his screenplay by making Shirley kind and good humoured. She is a kind woman like when she gives her husbands’ dinner to her neighbours’ bloodhound even though she knows she would be scolded for it later. “Come on Clay it’s your birthday.” As far as we know Shirley has spent her life looking after her husband and her children and neglecting herself. Even though it doesn’t work very well Shirley always tries to make jokes. All of these are put in to make us like her and support her.
Overall Willy Russell uses many clever techniques to get our sympathy for Shirley. All the techniques Willy Russell uses were to make us feel like her friend and support her all the way through the changes she makes. When she changes the audience support her. Willy Russell succeeds to encourage the audience to feel sympathy for Shirley.
She shows the true culture of her family’s life and how they act. Artistically, this frame includes lots of detail and is realistic. Behind the doors and windows is a blank, only shaded area. The conversation between the two sides shows the ignorance of her parents. While the child looks angry and seems to have looked everywhere (with the draws being opened already). This shows that the family does have transparency and doesn’t constantly cover-up the truth.
She uses this literary technique to represent ideas or qualities through symbols. In the short story “The Possibility Of Evil” the recurring idea of the piece are Miss.Strangeworth’s roses. Miss Strangeworth is said to be an elegant old lady with pretty dimples. She is easily recognizable with her “dainty walk and her rustling skirts”. We can associate Miss Strangeworth with her roses because of her looks and characteristics. Miss Strangeworth symbolizes a rose because, like a rose she is elegant and beautiful but behind that she masks a petty and spiteful spirit representing the roses thorns. Another example of symbolism in Shirley Jackson’s stories is the short story “The Lottery”. As in the title the story is about a annual lottery that goes on every year and the person who draws the paper with a black dot wins. However you do not want to win because if you do you are greeted with a gnarly surprise of being stoned to death. The symbolism in the story is the slip of paper which represents death. When it is revealed that Mrs. Hutchinson was the one with the black dot she knew she was the annual victim of the lottery. She screams to the crowd “it isn't fair,it isn't right” but Mrs.Hutchinson knows her fate has been decided. Shirley Jackson uses symbolism in both stories so us readers can find the true meaning behind her
Shapes are the first symbols that can be seen throughout the story. For example, the black box, and the town square are square shape. A square represents Shirley states, “the people of the village began to gather in the square.” Circles are also shown in the stool and in the white paper. Shirley Jackson wrote, “it had a black spot on it.”
How Willy Russell Uses Dramatic Devices to Allow the Audience to See Many Different Sides of Shirley Valentine's Personality
The relationship between male and females within literary works can be expressed in a variety of different ways. Often times, gender roles are solidified to present the man as a dominant and overpowering figure, where the woman is seen as nurturing and are many times objectified due to this nature. In “Poof”, the reader is presented with an example of a woman who is ‘too accepting’ and ‘too giving’ to her male spouse, where as in “Good and Gone”, a male protagonist shatters the dominating nature of the standardized gender roles by loving a woman based off of common interest, not based off of submissive nature. Comparing these two protagonists of both plays, the writers, EP3C and Lynn Nottage, present a duality of dramatic effects by either
A few months after Shirley’s Jackson death, her husband(Stanley Edgar Hyman) published her short story, “The Possibility of Evil.” Stanley also published “The Magic of Shirley Jackson”, a posthumous collection of short stories Shirley never published. In 1968, Stanley published another posthumous “Come Along With Me”, containing Shirley’s 16 short stories, 3 essays, and an unfinished novel “Come Along With Me”. Later in 1998, two of Shirley Jackson’s children finished and published “Just an Ordinary Day”, a collection of Shirley’s uncollected short
Shirley Valentine, a story about a middle-aged house-wife whose life couldn’t be more mundane; she has no one but the wall to talk to. Shirley Valentine, written by Willy Russell, is one of his most famous screenplays. This essay will look at how Russell invites the audience to sympathise with Shirley through his use of language, ideas and themes, the effects of dramatic devices and characters in the play.
The Ways in Which Willy Russell Develops the Characters of Rita and Frank in his Play Educating Rita
To the urban lifestyle of growing up in the ghettos and the hardships. She depicts the usages of drugs, gang, crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and mostly how it effects the community. But also shows how the outside violence comes into the home and can devastate the natural order of the household.
In the short story “The Possibility Of Evil” Shirley Jackson uses several symbols to tell her story about Miss Strangeworth. One symbol she uses is the letters that she writes to different people. Letters are suppose to be good, but she uses them for evil. She uses the letters to criticize people and make them feel bad. She walks in the night and mails it to them so they don’t notice that she is the one causing the problems. Another symbol she uses are the roses. She would use the roses so people would think that she is a nice old lady. People around the neighborhood thought that she was a good old lady. The roses meant everything to her, and she tourists would stop and enjoy them. It bothered her that people want to
Throughout the play, Willy can be seen as a failure. When he looks back on all his past decisions, he can only blame himself for his failures as a father, provider, and as a salesman (Abbotson 43). Slowly, Willy unintentionally reveals to us his moral limitations that frustrates him which hold him back from achieving the good father figure and a successful business man, showing us a sense of failure (Moss 46). For instance, even though Willy wants so badly to be successful, he wants to bring back the love and respect that he has lost from his family, showing us that in the process of wanting to be successful he failed to keep his family in mind (Centola On-line). This can be shown when Willy is talking to Ben and he says, “He’ll call you a coward…and a damned fool” (Miller 100-101). Willy responds in a frightful manner because he doesn’t want his family, es...
Symbolism is found in many place within the story. Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to communicate through picture with the readers. In the story there is a black wooden box that is well known to the villagers. In the black box there were two slips of paper one was white and the other was black. The box is a connection to their tradition in the village. “ Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general
Shirley’s character emits the voice of a struggling young mother, she had her children robbed from her by the Australian authorities who wrongly exploited a biological bond between a mother and child, yet she maintained her hopes and dreams by knitting annually to represent the years she spent separated from her children to numb the excruciating pain of losing them “I had to leave the shop .After all these years of getting used to it, it still hurts.”(pg19). She clung onto the clothes as her beacon of hope to reunite with her daughter for there was no trace of her son Lionel. She was sometimes over come by lack of hope “they say time heals –but that’s a load of bullshit- if you’ll pardon my language.”(pg35). She felt this way because time wouldn’t heal the emotional scars and wounds the white authorities left behind for her to unsuccessfully mend she is the clearest symbol of the stolen generations because she suffered constant emotional pain at the loss of her loved ones. Shirley was possibly a victim of abuse because the very existence of her children could be the result of rape, to some degree she expressed empathy towards Ruby, a victim of abuse who Shirle...
Because of his position as a traveling salesman, Willy never controls the parameters of his interaction with other people. He calls upon customers and must depend upon their willingness to see him in order to make a living. Willy's affair with The Woman is only partially motivated by a need for sexual fulfillme...
Willy is a multi-faceted character which Miller has portrayed a deep problem with sociological and psychological causes and done so with disturbing reality. In another time or another place Willy might have been successful and kept his Sanity, but as he grew up, society's values changed and he was left out in the cold. His foolish pride, bad judgment and his disloyalty are also at fault for his tragic end and the fact that he did not die the death of a salesman.