Educating Rita Essay

1386 Words6 Pages
MODULE C: ‘Into the World’ TEXTS: Educating Rita- Willy Russell An Education- Nick Hornby ‘The Door’- Miroslav Holub Significant experiences in people’s lives provide opportunities for growth and development. Going ‘into the world’ means moving from familiar experiences to new horizons. When going from familiar experiences to new ones, obstacles are usually overcome before being totally successful. Individuals might be given advice and guided through the transformation to reaching new horizons. Great rewards and opportunities also come about while going through the process of growth and development. This is significantly demonstrated in the texts ‘Educating Rita’ by Willy Russell, ‘An Education’ by Nick Hornby and the poem ‘The Door’ by Miroslav Holub. Rita, the street-wise, fast-talking, main character of Educating Rita, embarks on an Open University course because she wants more out of her life. She is discontented- “out of step” with her husband, family and friends- and wants to learn “everything”, hoping that an education will allow her to move into a different world, one where she has some “choice” about the direction of her life. This links to the film ‘An Education’ where David is describing Jenny, “Isn’t it wonderful to find someone who wants to find out new things”. The difficulties of Rita’s moving into the world are immediately obvious to the audience in the first scene, act one. The stuck door is a metaphor for the effort required to make a change. Rita’s quest for education begins with a physical difficulty to overcome and continues with her being challenged by emotional difficulties. Rita is uncomfortable in the first scene because she is in unfamiliar situation. Her discomfort is revealed by her talking fast, swearing and moving about the room commenting on its contents, rather than sitting down and allowing Frank to interview her. It is clearly
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