Educating Rita Essay examples -- Education Educating Rita Willy Russel

Educating Rita The play Educating Rita, only has two characters, Frank and Rita, Rita wants to learn literacy, and Frank is her tutor. The play is set in the 1970's, when there was not a lot of unemployment, and there was plenty of money. Although Rita has everything she needs, she is dis-satisfied with her life, she wants something more. Rita feels that there is no meaning to life, and she wants to find one. The characters Rita and Frank are two totally different people, Rita is uneducated and common, whereas Frank is educated and well spoken. I found the play has no specific genre, I found it came under realist, with the issues it covers like divorce, I found it came under comedy, because it made you laugh in places, and I thought it also came under drama. Frank has a serious drinking habit; we are first introduced to this at the beginning of the play, when Frank, "pulls out a pile of books to reveal a bottle of whisky." This shows the audience that he his trying to hide his habit because perhaps he feels it is wrong, or perhaps he doesn't want to get caught drinking at work. Rita's first reaction to this habit was "y' wanna be careful with that stuff, it kills y' brain cells." This shows the audience that she might be a person who jokes a lot, but if she says it in a serious way, then it shows that she doesn't really like drinking, or that she is concerned for Frank, in case he throws his life away. In the rest of the play Frank is nearly always drunk, he is always pouring himself a drink. In act 2 scene 5 Rita has read Franks poems, "are you sober? Are you?" This question suggests that Frank was drunk a lot and Rita wanted to speak to him when he wasn't. We discover the type of relat... ...Ritas. So there may be a lot of confusion between them in the future. When Rita and Frank have finished confusing each other over Ritas name, Rita notices an erotic painting on the wall, "its very erotic isn't it?" This shows Rita sees it in a different view than Frank because he doesn't/didn't see it as erotic. This might symbolise the fact that they are from different lifestyles, or that they may not always see things in the same perspective. Overall I think the first three pages introduce the audience quite well to the main themes, it introduces Frank as an obvious alcoholic and Rita as an uneducated woman. It shows they both have different views and may find it difficult to see each other's at times. After reading the play, I found it was a good laugh, it made me understand a bit more about the two different cultures and inspired me to learn.