Consider Three Different Ways That Comedy Is Created in the First Scenes of Educating Rita

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Consider three different ways that comedy is created in the first scenes of ‘Educating Rita’. In scene two of Educating Rita, a bemused Frank opens the door of his office to find completely content Rita applying oil to the door handle and replies to his questioning look with ‘I was just oilin’ it for y’ .This is amusing and significant for the audience because it shows her struggle between everyday life and a life of education and knowledge. The door representing the barrier to which her culture and own society posses and the oil representing her, trying to find a way to break down that barrier. The amusement comes from the fact it’s very out of place to find a student bending down to fix the handle of a door in a university. This is important to the structure of the play as its presented early on in the second scene suggesting that there is room for her grow and adapt to the life of a educated woman. Imagery is also used to show amusement and create comedy ‘nah, just normal y’know... knives and fights’. The tone in which Rita says this is calm, almost too calm considering the situation. The imagery is very strong with ‘knives’ and ‘fights’ giving connotations of danger and violence. The comedy however is created with the fact that the violence is amusing because it’s the exact opposite of what you expect a school to be like. For example schools are meant to be a safe place for children to learn and become educated, and again her culture clashes with Franks as they are currently stood in a well educated university. The amusement is then aided when she adds ‘that’s just in the staff room’ creating again a very big difference between their cultures. Here we start to learn that this is everyday life for Rita and it begins to make sense why she behaves and talks like she does. Comedy is also created through the humour of Rita’s language and how she’s presented as a
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