Brian Friels “Philadelphia here I come!” explores Human failures. Discuss.
(Colum Roche- 5C)
Friels “Philadelphia here I come!” portrays an outstanding outlook on life in Ireland during the early 20th century. Throughout the play he deals with many themes, the main one being human failure. Almost every character in the play has dealt with some sort of failure. Each character has disappointment in some shape or form. Gar has failed in his relationship with his father and in his relationship with Katie Doogan. Gar and his failed relationship with his father is not the only failure in the play. The play is packed full of failure from front to back. Master Boyle, the teacher is an alcoholic and resorts to telling fictional stories of him being offered a teaching post in Boston, he adds to the theme escapist fantasy. Friels uses techniques of to portray the above themes. He uses the Flashback technique, Stream of consciousness, Comedy ands Buffoonery, The two Gars and the reference to Burkes French revolution. All of these help to explore human failure in the play.
The main issue in the play is Gars relationship with his father. Throughout the play we get a real idea of how Gar feels about his Father S.B. From the start of the play we see both public and private refer to S.B. as screwballs. We immediately see that there is an animosity between Gar and his father. Gar hates his father for many reasons but his relationship with him has a potential to be a love hate relationship, but neither Gar nor S.B. has the courage to reveal their true feelings for each other. Instead the relationship was let build up for 25 years, like a pressure cooker – Gar finally making the decision to get away from it and move to Philadelphia. The dilemma that arises from Gar moving to Philadelphia is that he will never be able to have a proper life there as he has so much built up feelings deep down that he will not be content until the feelings are gone. Its one of the plays...