Post by The Thought Police (admin) on Mar 18, 2016 9:42:26 GMT -5
Extract 3
Nora and Cassie’s dialogue (pages 25–28)
Daddies scene (pages 31–32)
The scene begins with a short dialogue, an interchange between Marie and Cassie and then Cassie’s speech, followed by Marie’s reference to the pigeons.
1. Outline the event which has preceded this.
This scene is about the men in the women’s lives. IT shows them remembering back to times when the men were either alive or out of their jail cells.
Nora: ‘Something to be grateful for Marie, we’ve a lot to weigh us down, the two of us; one man dead and the other in a prison cell. A lot to weep over.
Cassie: And here’s me never stopped dancing since they took mine away.
NOTE: Cassie is actually happy that her husband is in jail. Cassie’s husband was abusive and unpleasant. Nora’s comment illustrates that a significant amount of trouble has happened in their lives and they have a lot to cope with.
2. Referring to Marie’s speech ‘I just bring him … your daddy can see us’, show what is revealed about her character.
Marie idolises her husband Michael in this scene. She sees him as a ‘good man’ and a brave man’. Marie encourages her son to remember his father in this positive way. She herself also only remembers the positive parts. The stage directions (getting dreamy). This shows Marie is over-exaggerating her memories and remembering them in a more positive way than they actually were.
3. How do Nora and Cassie react to what Marie has said? What do their reactions tell us about them?
The Stage Directions ‘Cassie does not respond’ highlights that Cassie does not share Marie’s picture of Michael. Cassie knows that Michael was not the ‘good man’ that Marie thinks because Cassie had an affair with Michael.
4. Referring to Cassie’s speech, show what is revealed about the relationship between Cassie and her father.
Cassie’s problems make her wish that ‘I was out of this place!’ She desires to escape.
Cassie’s relationship with her own father was also excellent. She loves her father and believes that he was a good man. Similarly to Marie, Cassie can only see the good things about her father and is not prepared to face up to the bad. Cassie’s father was the only person who ‘said I was special’. This now means that Cassie is chasing this feeling from every man that she meets. She defends her father. She blames her mother for provoking her father by giving him an egg when he didn’t want one. This is a very poor reason and shows Cassie is trying to find any reason to not blame her father.
She disagrees with Nora that ‘He had a temper when he had a drink in him.’
Cassie believes it was only ‘if he was pushed’, meaning that her mother pushed him.
5. Referring to this extract and another part of the play explore how the women’s relationship with each other is tested.
Commonality
Extract
Rest of Play
Which characters? Nora, Cassie and Marie
What tests their relationship/emotions?
- Cassie and Nora argue when they are at the club and Cassie is not wearing her bra and is dancing provocatively (page 37-39)
o Nora disapproves of Cassie ‘There’s only one Bold girl here, Cassie Ryan, an she’s broadcasting it to the world’
o Nora ‘And you with your man inside’
o Nora: ‘You’re sitting here bare-breasted in front of the whole town’
- Cassie vs Marie at the end of the play (page 67-73)
o Cassie: They are all the same
o Marie: No
o Cassie: no, not Michael. (Sarcastically). Wasn’t he just the perfect man, the perfect saint of a man.
o Marie: He was a good man!
o Cassie: Good!? He was a lying worm like every one of them!
o Cassie: We were both lying to you for years!
o Marie: Hell isn’t deep enough for you Cassie Ryan.
- Cassie and Nora when Cassie chooses to leave (page 61-67)
Nora and Cassie’s dialogue (pages 25–28)
Daddies scene (pages 31–32)
The scene begins with a short dialogue, an interchange between Marie and Cassie and then Cassie’s speech, followed by Marie’s reference to the pigeons.
1. Outline the event which has preceded this.
This scene is about the men in the women’s lives. IT shows them remembering back to times when the men were either alive or out of their jail cells.
Nora: ‘Something to be grateful for Marie, we’ve a lot to weigh us down, the two of us; one man dead and the other in a prison cell. A lot to weep over.
Cassie: And here’s me never stopped dancing since they took mine away.
NOTE: Cassie is actually happy that her husband is in jail. Cassie’s husband was abusive and unpleasant. Nora’s comment illustrates that a significant amount of trouble has happened in their lives and they have a lot to cope with.
2. Referring to Marie’s speech ‘I just bring him … your daddy can see us’, show what is revealed about her character.
Marie idolises her husband Michael in this scene. She sees him as a ‘good man’ and a brave man’. Marie encourages her son to remember his father in this positive way. She herself also only remembers the positive parts. The stage directions (getting dreamy). This shows Marie is over-exaggerating her memories and remembering them in a more positive way than they actually were.
3. How do Nora and Cassie react to what Marie has said? What do their reactions tell us about them?
The Stage Directions ‘Cassie does not respond’ highlights that Cassie does not share Marie’s picture of Michael. Cassie knows that Michael was not the ‘good man’ that Marie thinks because Cassie had an affair with Michael.
4. Referring to Cassie’s speech, show what is revealed about the relationship between Cassie and her father.
Cassie’s problems make her wish that ‘I was out of this place!’ She desires to escape.
Cassie’s relationship with her own father was also excellent. She loves her father and believes that he was a good man. Similarly to Marie, Cassie can only see the good things about her father and is not prepared to face up to the bad. Cassie’s father was the only person who ‘said I was special’. This now means that Cassie is chasing this feeling from every man that she meets. She defends her father. She blames her mother for provoking her father by giving him an egg when he didn’t want one. This is a very poor reason and shows Cassie is trying to find any reason to not blame her father.
She disagrees with Nora that ‘He had a temper when he had a drink in him.’
Cassie believes it was only ‘if he was pushed’, meaning that her mother pushed him.
5. Referring to this extract and another part of the play explore how the women’s relationship with each other is tested.
Commonality
Extract
Rest of Play
Which characters? Nora, Cassie and Marie
What tests their relationship/emotions?
- Cassie and Nora argue when they are at the club and Cassie is not wearing her bra and is dancing provocatively (page 37-39)
o Nora disapproves of Cassie ‘There’s only one Bold girl here, Cassie Ryan, an she’s broadcasting it to the world’
o Nora ‘And you with your man inside’
o Nora: ‘You’re sitting here bare-breasted in front of the whole town’
- Cassie vs Marie at the end of the play (page 67-73)
o Cassie: They are all the same
o Marie: No
o Cassie: no, not Michael. (Sarcastically). Wasn’t he just the perfect man, the perfect saint of a man.
o Marie: He was a good man!
o Cassie: Good!? He was a lying worm like every one of them!
o Cassie: We were both lying to you for years!
o Marie: Hell isn’t deep enough for you Cassie Ryan.
- Cassie and Nora when Cassie chooses to leave (page 61-67)