Discuss how Irwin and Posner’s relationship is presented in this exchange
Irwin begins with an interrogative, almost as if he is the teacher and Posner is still his student. “familiar?” refers to the past which suggests Irwin is still hung up on the past. However in opposition to this, the fact that Irwin didn’t know which university Posner went to, even after how hard he worked the boys, shows how detached Irwin is from his past with the boys. “What happened at oxford?” “Cambridge”. It is significant that Posner got into his chosen university by dismally following Irwin’s system of thinking outside the box when it comes to examinations. Posner ends up writing about the holocaust, as a Jew, with a sense of detachment. Posner goes against his better judgement and denies his heritage all to impress some examiners. Irwin in no way acknowledges that this was down to him.
In this scene we are made to feel sorry for Posner. He didn’t get through Cambridge and he is in such a bad place he begs Irwin for a story on what happened between him and Dakin. This is quite unusual as all throughout the play, Posner is one of the more comic characters. Posner always seems to be mocking himself in order to ease his pain, "I'm a Jew. I'm small. I'm homosexual. And I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked." However when we come to this scene in the play, the moment is no longer funny but tragic and going back to that scene after learning about Posner’s future it is an accurate foreshadowing of Posner’s life.
“All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left”. Posner explains to Irwin how once he got to Cambridge he felt he could not go on even after all the hard work he put in. Posner in this scene is almost a reflection of Bennet himself. Bennett attended a public school and got into Oxford with others who came from private schools and wealthy families and so Bennett felt a lot more pressure to excel just like Posner explains to Irwin.
Even though the play was written in 2004, Bennett still kept the stigma surrounding homosexuality at the time throughout the play. Four of the characters had homosexual predilections and three of them suffered tragic fates. Hector dies in a motorcycle accident from which Irwin is crippled and Posner becomes the loneliest, most troubled of all the boys.
The point about the interrogative shows good skills at linking terminology to how meaning is made. There are no more terms used throughout this response which limits you to the bottom marking band, however good your ideas are, so ensure you learn and apply more terms. The kind of question we are writing a the moment gives no marks for context but when we move onto section B, those ideas will be worth marks.
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