3.2.1.2The text at a glance
Mrs Johnstone, a poor Liverpool mother expecting twins she cannot afford, gives one to her wealthy employer Mrs Lyons. Mickey and Edward meet by chance as children and become blood brothers. Their lives diverge: Edward goes to university, Mickey to a factory, then prison and antidepressants. Mickey confronts Edward with a gun and both are shot dead.
Written in the early 1980s. Liverpool was suffering severe unemployment as manufacturing collapsed, and the gap between those with opportunity and those without was widening sharply.
- the Narrator
- a figure who addresses the audience directly and returns throughout with the same warning
- superstition
- the folk beliefs Mrs Lyons exploits, and which the play uses to suggest inevitability
- dramatic irony
- the audience knowing from the opening that both twins die
3.2.1.2Characters
Mrs Johnstone is given songs that provide an interior voice the dialogue alone would not allow. She is denied any real choice at the moment of decision, which shapes how the audience judges her.
Mickey and Edward speak almost identically as children and diverge steadily in dialect and register, so the class difference becomes audible.
Mrs Lyons has wealth without security, and her deterioration runs opposite to Mrs Johnstone's endurance.
3.2.1.2Themes
Class is the only variable in the play's design: two identical boys, opposite outcomes. Superstition offers a supernatural explanation for what the play shows to be entirely social, and the Narrator's refrain keeps that fatalism in the foreground. Violence is rehearsed in the children's games long before it arrives.
Common mistake
Accepting the Narrator's account of fate at face value. The play supplies a complete social explanation, and the tension between the two readings is the point.
3.2.1.2The writer's methods
The parallel structure follows both boys simultaneously so every comparison is forced. Songs return in altered form to mark the passage of time, and the recurring Marilyn Monroe motif tracks Mrs Johnstone from youth to exhaustion. The upbeat music of the first half makes the darkening of the second more marked.
Worked example
Answer:
- Two identical boys, one variable: class
- The children's games rehearse the ending
- Songs give Mrs Johnstone an interior voice
- The Narrator's fatalism competes with a social explanation
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 2, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and two essay questions are offered on your text and you answer one; no extract is printed, so quotations must come from memory. Allow about 45 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.
Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.