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MY ANALYSIS OF DES: LOOKING AT EXAMPLES FROM BOND PLAYS
He [Man] walks among the sleepers — the brick in one hand, the towel trailing from
the other — searching as if he were lost. He sits down in the middle of the sleepers.
Man When Iwas asailor one day I said I’ll take my son to sea. Show him the world.
The good. The bad. The violence that destroys it. (Looks at the sleepers.) If it was
different we’d be friends. Take care of you. Treat you as mine. So much to learn
before we know ourselves. (He has begun to cradle the brick and stroke it.) Lately
my sickness has been worse. I shan’t survive. A few more days then dead. (Hums
a few notes.) My son my son... (Stops.) Time!
Suddenly he twists to the side — flaring the towel - falls on Donna — smothers her
— kills her with a blow of the brick.
Man Hgn."
The power of this moment lies in the glimpse the audience gets of the Mans
humanity. He has been brutally murdering children so far, and suddenly
we can see that actually he is doing it to take revenge for his son. His need
to serve justice to his murdered son is acted out as a revenge on those who
he believes are responsible. This vengeance is keeping him alive. There is
a powerful contradiction between the viciousness of the Man’s action of
killing and the moment of humanness that he is showing, as he explains and
hums. His sentence ‘so much to learn before we know ourselves’ suggests that
he is able to identify with the murderer he has become, and this situation has
brought himself to a new understanding of himself as a father. The humanity
of the moment becomes even more apparent because of the Man’s costume.
The white face and long coat which becomes longer according to the stage
direction after the man kills a child, also resonate the macabre quality of
the role. Seeing the human side of the monster makes the moment extreme
as well.
The DE is created by two contrasting actions the Man does with the brick:
he first cradles it as a child, and even hums a few notes. The brick-child receives
the value of the Man’s son, when he say ‘my son my son’; a few moments later
he is using the same brick to crack the skull of another child. The sudden
change in the use of the object makes the contradiction underlying the Man’s
understanding of fatherhood as vengeance tangible not only on an intellectual
level, but also as a felt impact. It is possible to understand why he is doing
what he is doing, but it is also possible to see its atrociousness.
This moment is pivotal in the play because it investigates the problem
that is examined again and again through the drama. Bond himself links
this moment to a mob of adults attacking the van carrying the two children
who murdered the two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 in Liverpool. Bond says
that the “play is not about the murder of the boy but about the attitude of
431 Ibid., 48.
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