Analyse Ways Essay

The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto has phoebe bird main themes or concerns. They are History and Memory, Power and Control, Heroism and Relationships and War and Atrocities. John Misto explores both these ideas enchantment telling the story of Bridie and Shelias reunion fifty old age after they last saw each other.The calculate is to the highest degree the histories of the women and the nurses that were enwrapped of the Nipponese during World War Two their individual histories and joint paroxysm. The stories of these women were n eer made official and on that point is no government recognition of their engross and few, if both, official records. These aggravatorful memories are not part of any official history and this is made clear in the tactical manoeuvre. The British didnt require anyone to know or so us. Theyd meet lost prestige if pot found out how women of the Empire had lived in the war. So for the sake for faggot and Country, they burned out diaries. Ever y last one. Shelia, film Thirteen.Misto makes it clear in the course of the lead that the memories of the women are accurate. The oral stories from these fictional characters have pose over them the factual images to confirm and extrapolate the stories of the women. The visual images of the thin, starving commonwealth are very strong and clear to an audience, for spokesperson, Scene Seven opens with a photo of some women POWs emaciated, haggard and impoverished.This is shown while Bridie explains how thin Sheila and herself got while at the Japanese camps, The lightest I got was exactly five stone The visual images show exactly what the women are talking rough and add to the sense of theatre around the play. They heighten the audiences actualizeing of the enormity of the issue.There is use of background sounds throughout the play, for example in Scene Five when Bridie explains what happened on Radji Beach on Banka Island there is sounds of machine gun fire and cries of women on the soundtrack. The dues ex machine nitty-gritty of these amplified sounds further highlights the theme of memories and history, linking both the action and the memories of the two women on constitute.The Shoe-Horn Sonata explores federal agency bloods at a number of levels. The most obvious indicant play on stage occurs between the interviewer and the women he is interviewing. This force out play has an indeterminate moment in which the women are uncertain as whether Rick has overheard a private conversation in Scene Ten. This is also explained in the stage directions Bridie and Shelia look up, startled. Then they both realise they are wearing underage microphones. They both wonder whether every word has been overheard Rick also has the power to choose what questions to ask, and what to edit out of his documentary film.On another level we can see the role of power between the prison guards and prisoners. The guards horror their power physic exclusivelyy, sexually and e motionally and many seemed to enjoy the pain they inflicted. delineate Larrys comment in Scene Eight, Plenty of room in the graveyard for her is typical of the cruelty the guards exhibit. The prisoners had little filling but to cooperate and be humiliated and abused, this in turn had a large physiological effect on both women.This is shown when Shelia explains that she still has nightmares about Lipstick Larry in Scene Ten haunted Every night when I fall asleep, Lipstick Larrys waiting. He calls to me and I go to him and no one can change that. Not even you.The Japanese predominate the women in every aspect they even made them bow to the Japanese flag every morning. In Scene Nine, the two characters are reminded of this power by the presence of the Japanese flag that is being projected on the back screen. It doesnt move and dominates the stage a continuing monitoring device of how the women lived their lives in the camp and the power and control that continues to affect them. This emphasises to the audience that how horrible the camps really were for the women and how they continue to affect them today, fifty years on.Mistos play revolves around the torpedoic deeds and relationships that are up held by the women during the war. The heroic deeds were acts of physical courage of the highest order. For Sheila, the supreme sacrifice of sell her body to the Japanese in order to obtain the necessary drugs for her superstars survival is all the more poignant as we understand the cultural andsocial background that she had come from.Misto focuses on the unsung heros of the war, for example the Australia nurse that washed the bed pans of the women on the personal manner to Belalau. It was the bravest act I have ever seen. She didnt get a medal for it butall of us loved for of that (Sheila) The stories of the two women are expanding the conventional view of heroism to include acts of sacrifice beyond sincere physical courage.The Shoe-Horn Sonata shows clearly that relationships are able to survive the high-riskest of times. The relationship of Bridie and Shelia survives not only the horror of the prisoner of war camps but also the pain of their reunion decades after the war. Misto uses a variety of theatrical techniques to convey this relationship to the audience and show that survival and growth are features of the relationship.Misto gives evidence of how tough times were in the camps with a combination of dialogue and screen images being used to illustrate what had happened to these people, for example, the slides of the women POWs at the open of Scene Seven. These slides portray the starving bodies, rough conditions and brutality yet through all this the relationship gets stronger.The music played throughout the play symbolises the stage at which Bridie and Sheilas relationship is. For example, Scene Ten closes with Anne Sheltons Ill crack alone displaying to the audience that at this point in the play Bridie and Sheilas relationsh ip is at its most fragile point because the truth about Sheilas sacrifice has just been revealed.The play highlights the horrors of war particularly for women and civilians. The wretched way in which human beings treat fellow human beings in a wartime situation is not restricted to the Japanese, but seen to be underlying to war itself. The atrocities are seen to have affected both womens lives ever after. For example Bridies fear of the Japanese people in David Jones.What is particularly significant for these women is the requirement to keep smiling (Scene Nine) and to repress the memories. For these women the memories of the atrocities are tinged with criminality and shame. In some respects this amount to an even worse barbarousness to plague the lives of these women after the war.The humour used by Misto in the play, derives not only from the way in which the women used the power of the human whole step to laugh at adversity, but also from the way in which the playwrigh t has juxtaposed those moments of recounting of comic events with the horrors of the memories of the reality. The light and dark in this play allows us to be both horrified and entertained. As in any great tragedy, the comic allows not simply relief from the pain, but overhaul us to question the reasons for the horror.John Misto believes that the women victims of this defeat of the British deserve to have their stories told and their sufferings recognised by a wide audience. Having talked to real survivors he wrote the play in the hope that more people would be exposed to their suffering and above all to their courage.The dialogue, music, the sound effects and the projected images work together to shape the audiences response and to tell the powerful story of the womens memories, in the buff vulnerability, strong relationships and heroism.