Introduction
Alan Bennett was born 1934 in Leeds.
Raised in a deep faith. His family belonged to the working class.
Mainly known from the parody of an Anglican vicar’s sermon.
In 1968 began play writing including the satirical comedies, darker plays such as The Old Country and finally the most famous- Talking Heads. “Playing Sandwiches” (part of this play) is about Wilfred- man in the elderly.
This play is a monologue (mono- single, logue-voice).
Thanks to Alan Bennett started to manipulate our feelings against Wilfred; we can not say at the beginning that this man is a pedophile.
Our feelings about Wilfred change during the play reading.
There is the moment in which we begin to like him but later he says something that changes our feelings for him.
2nd section
Wilfred is the only character we can see. So we know just his side of things.
Sometimes when Wilfred looks straight into the Camera, we have an impression that he looks on us and speaks to us. This creates some kind of friendship. It helps us to imagine that the man treat us like friends because he share his thoughts.
Wilfred tells the story of ordinary, everyday things like conversation with Janet or boss. Thing like that makes us see him as a normal person, not someone to fear.
Wilfred seems to care about the welfare of the visitors to the park. He . A man begins to exchange what they can found in the park- “a shoe; some tights; sick; dog muck”. We do not notice at first that he seems preoccupied with the ‘kiddies’.
He is a good worker “was my work unsatisfactory? He said, ‘Far from it, the place has never been so tidy. […] Because you’re a good worker, Wilfred, you really are. Possible that the man was a good employee just to keep the work in which he could to stay close to ‘kiddies’.
Wilfred is a married with Janet. This thing makes us begin to trust him more. If he has a wife, it can't be anything wrong with him because Janet did leave him.
Wilfred is a friendly to the people he meets and gets on with his work
Colleagues “’Think of it as a labour of love, Mr. Paterson’ parlane said. ‘The present one’s the music-lover.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The earl of Harewood. Father married the old Princess Royal ’”. He is nice for the new friends make us think That Wilfred is normal friendly person and we started to trust him more.
3RD SECTION
In this play Alan Bennett give us lot of hints as to Wilfred’s character.
Man draws too much attention to little girls, how they acting („clapping Her hands and lifting Her leg […] The kiddy come and stood by my knee[…] the kiddy laughed and put her hand on my leg”).
Another strange thing that it is returned to my attention was the recollection of words Janet”I don’t want to have to be flitting again”. It sounded as the couple conducted a dozen times for some reason. As if fleeing from something.
It was intriguing to Wilfred lied about his surname, it was very strange. So in that stage I was sure that, it was something wrong with him.
My fears were confirmed that he pedophile after I read how he took Samantha in the bushes.
This makes me angry what he trying to blame for everything Samantha “she knew what she was doing. She must have known what she was doing”.
The irony was that the man thinks leave back used condoms in the park behind the disgusting but he can not see that what he is doing to children is even worse.
4th section
Even after we find out that he is a pedophile, we have still reason to feel some sort of sympathy for him, despite the fact that we instinctively want to hate him for what he did.
The reason why we feel in that way is that he feels sorry for what he done “Over Nidderdale Moors. A reservoir. That would be the place. Nobody there at all”.
Wilfred has been beaten up with shopping bags because someone caught him in bushes with Samantha. It was natural and I think he gats what he deserve.
Wilfred is mistreated by other prisoners. Everyone knows that pedophiles are badly treated in prison. Even bad people can not tolerate such behavior-paedophile - especially when they imagine that something similar could happen to their children.
Wilfred’s wife standing by him “Janet’s been. Usual tack.” Stupid thing was that she blames for everything mothers. She thinks that is their fault because they can’t look after their children.
CONCLUSION
Alan Bennett has created a Wilfred in way easy to make us like him. This is quite difficult after what he did. This example makes us realize that life is not black and white, also has a lot of shades of gray. The situations are not easy and clean as we thought.
The author after the presentation of Wilfred in this light allows us to not see in him just a monster and criminal but also human.
aniadiadora