İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEB İYATI ANAB İLİM DALI İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEB İYATI BİLİM DALI A STYLISTIC APPROACH TO DAVID LODGE’S PLAYS: HOME TRUTHS AND THE… [600733]

T.C.
SELÇUK ÜN İVERSİTESİ
SOSYAL B İLİMLER ENST İTÜSÜ
İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEB İYATI ANAB İLİM DALI
İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEB İYATI BİLİM DALI

A STYLISTIC APPROACH TO DAVID LODGE’S
PLAYS: HOME TRUTHS AND THE WRITING GAME

YÜKSEK L İSANS TEZ İ

DANIȘMAN
Yard. Doç. Dr. A. GÜLBÜN ONUR

HAZIRLAYAN
GÜNAY ALLAHVERD İ

Konya-2011

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ……………………………………………………………………………..ii
ÖZET …………………………………………………………………………………………………………ii i
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………………………..iv INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………………..1
CHAPTER I – David Lodge………………………………………………………………………..3
1.1. The Life of David Lodge ……………………………………………………………….3
1.2. His Place in Post-War British Literature ………………………………………….4

CHAPTER II – What is Stylistics?………………………………………………………………7
2.1. Definition of Stylistics …………………………………………………………………..7
2.2. Significance of Stylistic Appro aches to the Literary Works ………………9

CHAPTER III – Home Truths ……………………………………………………………………13
3.1. A Structuralist Approach to the Author Images ……………………………..13
3.1.1. Adrian Ludlow………………………………………………………………..13
3.1.2. Samuel Sharp ………………………………………………………………….21
3.1.3. Fanny Tarrant………………………………………………………………….41

CHAPTER IV – The Writing Game ……………………………………………………………50
4.1. A Structuralist Approach to the Author Images …………………………….50
4.1.1. Leo Rafkin ………………………………………………………………………..50
4.1.2. Maude Lockett …………………………………………………………………..56
4.1.3. Penny Sewell……………………………………………………………………..61
4.1.4. Simon St Clair……………………………………………………………………64
CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………………………67
WORKS CITED …………………………………………………………………………………………..71

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratit ude to my supervisor, Assist. Prof. Dr.
Gülbün ONUR.
I am also indebted to my family for their endle ss love, support and
encouragement in the preparation of this study . Without their everlasting help this
study would not be emerged.

iii

ÖZET

Çağdaș İngiliz edebiyat ının önemli yazar ve ele știrmenlerinden biri olan David
Lodge, günümüze kadar sadece iki oyun kaleme alm ıștır. Yazar ın ilk oyunu olan The
Writing Game ilk kez 12 May ıs 1990 y ılında Birmingham Repertuar Tiyatrosu’nda
sahnelenmi știr. Yazar ın diğer oyunu olan Home Truths ise ilk kez 13 Șubat 1998
yılında Birmingham Repertuar Tiyatrosu’nda sahnelenmi știr. Bu çal ıșma Leech ve
Short’un Biçembilimsel Yakla șım’ı önderliğinde, her iki oyunda yazar imgelerinin
diyaloglardaki kulland ıklar ı dili analiz etmeyi amaçlar.

Bu çal ıșma boyunca David Lodge’un hayat ı ve savaș sonras ı Britanya’daki
önemine de ğinilecektir. Biçembilimsel Yakla șım’ın tan ımı ve edebi eserlere
Biçembilimsel Yakla șım’ın önemi üzerinde durulacakt ır. Dahas ı Home Truths ve The
Writing Game adl ı oyunlar bu yakla șımla detayl ı bir șekilde incelenecektir. Son
olarak yazar ın dil kullan ımı üzerine ayr ıntılı bir analiz de ğerlendirmesi yap ılıp,
sonuç bir yarg ıya var ılacakt ır.

iv

ABSTRACT

David Lodge one of the mo st significant man of letters in contemporary
English literature has written tw o plays until 2011. His first play The Writing Game
was first performed at the Birmingha m Repertory Theatre on 12 May 1990. His
second play Home Truths was first performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
on 13 February 1998. This study is based on a stylistic approach to David Lodge’s
plays: Home Truths and The Writing Game , in the light of Leech and Short’s
categories of stylistic approach. The two plays are analyzed through dialogues which
include the author images because they asse rt that linguistic desc ription and critical
interpretation are distinct and complementary.
Throughout this study, the life of Davi d Lodge and his place in post-war
Britain are highlighted as a background in formation. In the following, the scope of
stylistics and the significance of stylistic ap proaches to the literary texts are given in
order to understand the play s better. Furthermore, the stylistic approaches to Home
Truths and The Writing Game are explained in detail. As a conclusion, the results
obtained through this study are represen ted and discussed by emphasizing the
messages the playwright wants to co nvey to his reader via his language.

v

INTRODUCTION
David Lodge one of the mo st significant man of letters in contemporary
English literature has written two pl ays until 2011. As Lodge states in the
introduction part of Home Truths (1999) “When writing for the stage (something I
have attempted only twice to date) I start with a situation which I have experienced,
but which is selected primarily because it lends itself to being enacted (rather than
narrated) by a small number of characters, in a few segments of ‘real time’, and in
the same place. I am aware that this is a very conservative concept of the theatrical,
but as a relative beginn er in this form I find it useful to work within the constraints of
the well-made play (vii)
His first play The Writing Game was first performed at the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre on 12 May 1990. As L odge explains (1999) “In my first, The
Writing Game , the situation with which I started was a short residential creative
writing course, which one of th e characters compares to ‘a pressure cooker’. (vii)
His second play Home Truths was first performed at the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre on 13 Fe bruary 1998. Lodge says that (1999) “In my new play,
Home Truths , which also focuses on professiona l writers, it is the journalistic
interview. Two interviews are featured in the play: one provokes another, with
unpredictable consequences for all concerned.” (vii)
In this thesis, it is aimed to apprec iate both of the plays through stylistic
approach. In general aspect , stylistics helps explore the relationship between the
language and meaning. Besides, there are so many examples of prose and poetry
appreciations studied through stylistic appro ach. However, not so much attention has
been paid to the stylistic analysis of a dramatic text in the twentieth-century.
Culperer, Short and Verdonk (1998) suggested one of the reason of it as “the spoken
conversation has for many centuries been commonly seen as a debased and unstable
form of language, and thus with all their affinities with speech, were liable to be
undervalued” (3)

vi

Hence, this study is based on a stylisti c approach to David Lodge’s plays:
Home Truths and The Writing Game , in the light of Leech and Short’s categories of
stylistic approach. The two plays are an alyzed through dialogues which include the
author images because they assert th at linguistic description and critical
interpretation are distinct and complementary.
Throughout this study, the life of Davi d Lodge and his place in post-war
Britain are highlighted as background information. In the following, the scope of
stylistics and the significance of stylistic ap proaches to the literary texts are given in
order to understand the play s better. Furthermore, the stylistic approaches to Home
Truths and The Writing Game are explained in detail. As a conclusion, the results
obtained through this study are represen ted and discussed by emphasizing the
messages the playwright wants to co nvey to his reader via his language.

1

CHAPTER I : DAVID LODGE
1.1. The Life of David Lodge
Born in South London, Lodge was the onl y child of William Frederick Lodge,
a dance band musician, a nd Rosalie Marie Murphy Lodge , an Irish-Belgian Roman
Catholic. Lodge was in London with his pare nts during the Nazi blitz of 1940, but for
most of World War II he and his mother liv ed in the countryside. At age ten he was
enrolled in St. Joseph's Academy, a Cat holic grammar school in Blackheath. There
Lodge cultivated an in tense interest in the Catholic faith, which would later become a
cornerstone of his fiction. As part of th e first generation of English children to
receive free secondary schooling in Engla nd, Lodge graduated from St. Joseph's in
1952 and matriculated at University Colle ge, London, where he earned a B.A. in
English with honors in 1955. After completin g two years of national service, he
returned to University College to finish his graduate work in English literature,
concentrating on Catholic fiction in th e years since the Oxford movement.
In 1959 Lodge completed his degree and married Mary Frances Jacob, a fellow
English student. The next year he published his first work, The Picturegoers. In
1960, Lodge accepted a one-year post teaching literature at the University of
Birmingham, and the next year he was appointed to a tenure-track position as
assistant lecturer. He rose through the acad emic ranks becoming Professor of Modern
English Literature in 1976. His years at Bi rmingham were interrupted by a 1969-70
visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkel ey. Besides writing
satiric reviews for a local repertory comp any during his early years in Birmingham,
Lodge also turned to critical work, publishing Language of Fiction, which became
one of the most widely read of all contemporary books about the novel. Lodge followed this success with a series of jour nal articles and books of criticism that
established him as one of the most respec ted literary theorist s in England. His books
Graham Greene (1966) and Evelyn Waugh (1971) were written for the Columbia
Essays on Modern Writers series. At th e suggestion of his friend and fellow
academic Malcolm Bradbury, Lodge decided in the early 1960s to write a comic

2

novel, and in this ge nre, beginning with The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965),
Lodge found his true voice. Lodge has r eceived numerous honors for his fiction,
including the Hawthornden Prize and Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize for Changing
Places, the Whitbread Book of the Year award for How Far Can You Go? (1980),
and the Sunday Express Book of the Year award for Nice Work. Both Small World
and Nice Work were short-listed for the prestigious Booker Pr ize. Lodge was elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1976. He retired from the University of
Birmingham in 1987 to concentrate on writ ing. He has since c ontinued to produce
notable works of criticism and several wo rks for television, including an adaptation
of Nice Work that aired in 1989 and won the R oyal Television Society's award for
best drama serial and a Silver Nymph at the 1990 International Te levision Festival in
Monte Carlo.
1.2. His Place in Post-War British Literature
As Martin states (1999) to appraise the overall work of a living writer,
especially one as active as David Lodge has continued to be even after four decades,
is difficult and risky. Even so, given his considerable accomplishments to date, it
seems appropriate to review them, to sugge st what other directions his work may
take, and to speculate about how he might be regarded in the future. With fifteen
novels to date, an equal number of critic al works, occasional essays, hundreds of
reviews, critical anthologies, several scr eenplay adaptations, and two professionally
produced plays to his credit, David Lodge can look back on a distinguished and
varied career. He has contributed singularly to literary and cultural life, especially in
Britain but really th roughout the English speaking worl d and even farther, if one
considers the broader audi ence that translation has found for his works.(165)
Lodge’s writings have been translated in to more than twenty languages, several
of which contain a body of criticism and commentary on his work corresponding to
that in English. His novels have achieved best-seller status in Italy, France, and
Germany. In December 1997 he was recognized by the French Ministry of Culture
by being made a Chevalier dams I’Ordre de s Arts et Letters at a ceremony at the

3

Institut Français in London. Most of the se veral awards given his novels in Britain
have been noted, the most recent being the short-listing of Therapy for the 1996
Commonwealth Writers Prize.
For over twenty years Lodge’s novels have been best-sellers in Britain. Thus
the Guardian ranked Nice Work 29th among its “fastsellers” for 1989, with almost
300,000 paperback copies sold, while in 199 2 the Great Britain sales figures for
Paradise News exceeded those of the latest Colin Dexter release and of every other
title published by Penguin that year and came near those for books by Ken Follett
and Joanna Trollope. While Lodge’s popularity in the U.S. has never approached this level, a source of some concern to him, his books are in steady demand here, as
evidenced by several of his titles being stocked regularly by American bookstores of
any appreciable size, and not just on the Ea st and West coasts. Where he is known in
Great Britain as simply a “popular novelist” , the designation of “literary novelist”
American critics and readers have given him suggests a more limited though
substantial popularity, though th is may also reflect diffe rences between the two
reading cultures.
Lodge’s worldwide reputation seems to have resulted from certain qualities in
his writing. It rests, of cour se, on the supreme wit evident in the hilarious situations
of his novels and the energe tic pace and telling specificity with which they are
narrated, as well as in exchanges between char acters. But it rests, too, on his ability
not only to write serious fic tion but to make serious use of the amusing and absurd
materials he develops in his comic novels, to shift at appropriate points in his
narratives to a serious, even moral tone.
It is in terms of the broad topics of sex and religion that such concerns have
been addressed in his novels, and it is for his treatment of these topics that his fiction
is likely to be read in the future – both as a thoughtful sociological record of late
twentieth century society and behavior an d as a frequently amusing but sometimes
deeply moving consideration of human problems hardly unique to our time.

4

Lodge has said that the ultimate incentive for writing is the chance to “defy
death” by leaving behind “some trace of oneself, however slight”. In a time when
books and reading face increasing competition from newer forms of entertainment,
he has managed to reach a large and loyal audience and to give them a special kind
of pleasure and meaning – and there is no ev idence of either his productivity or the
reading public’s responsiveness to his work letting up. When tradition of every kind,
including the literary, is being increasin gly ignored or tossed away unthinkingly,
Lodge remains a voice, in his creative writing as well as in his criticism, that insists
on the indispensability of the past and the need for acknowledging continuity even as
society and artistic fashi ons change. (Martin,1999: 166)
Although he is still negotiating between novel writing and the writing of scripts
and plays, there is every indication that e ach of these activities will be reinforcing
and enhancing the others for some time to come. While his legacy is already a rich
one, his recent work suggests that it wi ll expand and even find new forms and
directions. For those who have found Davi d Lodge entertaining and worthwhile, and
for those who will be discovering him in the future, this is good news indeed.(Martin,
1999:167)

5

CHAPTER II : WHAT IS STYLISTICS?
2.1. Definition of Stylistics
Stylistics focuses on explaining the rela tion between the structure of language
and the artistic function in a written work. In stylistic an alyses, linguists affirm a set
of linguistic categories and stylistic f eatures which are more or less accepted
knowledge to those who have a basic acquaintance with the workings of the
language. Almost every writer selects expres sions in his/her works and organizes the
structures as s/he intends to. That is to say, all writers and all texts have their
individual characteristics. T hus, the characteristics of a la nguage in a text will not
necessarily be important in another text by the same or a different author (Leech &
Short, 1981: 74). Every analysis of style is an attempt to find the artistic principles
underlying a writer’s choice of language including special lin guistic categories. Since
all writers have their peculiar way of expre ssing their thoughts and feelings, all texts,
both literary and non-literary, have their authors’ own distinctive stylistic features.
Hence, all literary works incl ude distinctive qualities; they have distinctive language
and distinctive mixtures of words. By nature, the analysis and evaluation of style
involve examination of a writer’s choice of words, of figures of speech, of his
sentences, and of the structure of his paragraphs.
Generally, ‘stylistics’ is the study of st yle and ‘the linguistic study of different
styles is called sty listics’ (Chapman, 1973: 13). Stylistics studies markers of a text in
the analysis of the style of a writer. Literary texts are mainly the subject matter of
stylistic analyses; so, stylistics can be re garded as ‘the study of literary discourse
from a linguistic orientation’ (Widdowson, 1975: 3). Furthermore, stylistics is the
study which associates the techniques of li nguistics to the interp retation of literary
texts. It provides concrete examples with data for the presentation of literary facts. Robey (1982), defines stylistics as ‘the bran ch of literary studies that concentrates on
the linguistic form of a text’ ( 54). Besides, it aims at rela ting the subjects of literary
texts with the disciplines of the time a nd mediates between linguistic aspects and

6

literary interpretation. Leech & Short (1981) ex plain this fact as follows: There is a
cyclic motion whereby linguistic observati on stimulates or modifi es literary insight,
and whereby literary insight in its turn stim ulates further lingui stic observation (13).
Stylistic analyses include not only the study of style but also the study of how
meanings and effects are created by literary texts. Stylistics, the linguistic study of
different styles, tries to desc ribe what use is made of language and it explores how
readers interact with the language of mainly literary texts in order to explain how
they are affected by texts in the reading pr ocess. In many respects, stylistics is text-
centered. The objective of most stylistic studies is not si mply to describe the formal
features of texts for their own sake, but to show their functional significance for the
interpretation of the text. H. G. Widdow son (1975) points out that intuition is an
important factor in stylistic analysis and ‘stylistics’ is the study of literary discourse
from a linguistic orientation. For him, sty listic analysis mediates between language
and literature (78).
Stylistics examines how readers interact with the language of literary texts in
order to explain how readers understand, and are affected by texts when they read
them and it enables the reader to identify the distinguishing features of a literary text
‘and to specify the generic and structural subdivisions of literature’ (Bradford, 1997:
xi). Bradford explains this ai m of stylistics as: Stylistics can tell us how to name the
constituent parts of a literary text and enab le us to document thei r operations, but in
doing so it must draw upon the terminol ogy and methodology of disciplines which
focus upon language in the real world.
The general goal of most stylistic studie s is to show the functional significance
of formal characteristics of texts for the sa ke of interpretation and to relate literary
effects to linguistic ‘causes’ in releva nce to the whole work (Wales, 1990: 438).
There has been a connection between stylis tics and literature because the main
concern in stylistic analys is is deriving insights abou t linguistic structure and
function in order to understand a literary text. According to Short (2006), the main
aim of stylistics is to answer the questi ons of how readers understand the style of

7

literary texts and how literary texts affect their mind with a fictional world (2). This
combination of text analysis and readers interaction is explained as: In trying to
combine text analysis and reader inference stylistics tries hard to be as detailed,
systematic and analytically precise as it can in its various forms of analysis, so that
the basis for interpretative statements is laid out as clearly as possible for all to see. This general approach is uncom fortable, of course, as it la ys the analyst more open to
attack than more abstract and less explicit approaches to textual discussion. (Short,
2006: 4)
2.2. Significance of Stylistic Approaches to the Literary Works
The aim of stylistics is not to explai n everything in textual analyses or
reactions of readers; on the contrary, it involves an abil ity to explain the intuitive
agreement on texts by presenting the relati ons of texts with pe rsonal, social and
historical contexts. In the process of understanding a lite rary or non-literary text,
stylistics gives the readers ‘something to do’ when their feelings are not accurate
(Short, 2006: 2). It is not wrong to claim that the aim of stylistics is to present
objective techniques of descrip tion and interpretation by replacing the subjectivity of
texts, and thus, they tend to derive a m eaning from the context of the stylistic
activities.
Stylistics, shortly, helps the reader to de velop a set of stylis tic tools of their
own, which can be applied to any text. According to Short (2006), stylistics, in
general, pushes the reader s, critics and students to be more analytical in
understanding the linguis tic structure of texts and interp retation; helps them to think
precisely about the linguistic structure of texts and the cognitive processes involved
in understanding them (2).
Stylistics is, thus, concerned with relating linguistic facts (linguistic
descriptions) to meaning (interpretation) e xplicitly and in a detailed way to provide
evidence for and against particular interpretations of texts. Raymond Chapman (1973) summarizes the aim of stylistic study as : If one value of stylistic study is to be
raised above others, it is it s value in revealing the rich complexity of language. It

8

reminds us that in linguistic behavior so many choices intrude between a stimulus
and its response that though a scientific stylistician will explain as many choices as
he can in terms of situation and context, s/ he feels himself in no danger of being left
without a residue of the unpr edictable large enough to ju stify a concept of ‘free
choice’ or ‘creativity’ in language. (242-3)
Leech & Short try to explain stylistics as a way of describing ‘what use is made
of language’ and they focus on stylistic analysis as follo ws: the explanation of the
relation between language and artistic functio n with certain literar y criteria from the
texts.
In stylistics there is more than one method of analysis of a literary text;
however, in this thesis, the linguistic categor ies of Leech and Short are used to draw
a stylistic outline of the plays. The linguistic categories of Leech and Short (1981:
75) are placed under four general headings and this categorization has the purpose of
showing how linguistic analysis can be used in analyzing the literary style of a text.
The first category in Leech and Short’s styl istic categorization is the analysis of
lexical categories, the focus is on the ge neral choice of words indicating their
grammatical relationships since lexical form relates to the meaning and syntactic function of the words in a literary wor k. Lexical categories include the writer’s
choice of words and their meanings. The emphasis is on general words such as
nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. The lexical form of language relates to the meaning and the syntactic function of the words. In this cate gory, generally the
vocabulary study focuses on whether the vocabul ary is simple or complex; formal or
colloquial; descriptive or evaluative; whether the text contains idiomatic phrases, and
if so, with what kind of dialect; whether there is any use of rare or specialized
vocabulary; whether there are compound nouns or suffixes; and to what semantic
fields they belong to. The study of nouns i ndicates whether the nouns are abstract or
concrete; whether they occur frequently referring to events, perceptions, moral
qualities or social qualities; and what us e is made of collective nouns and proper
names. In the analysis of adjectives, the ma in concern is on the frequency of adverbs;

9

what kinds of attribute adjectives they refe r to; whether the adjectives are restrictive
or not; and attributive or predicative. As for the study of verbs, the focus is on
whether the verbs carry an important meani ng in the content; whether they are stative
or dynamic; whether they are transitive or intransitive; and factive or non-factive.
Finally, in the study of adve rbs, the frequency, function and the significant use of
adverbs are to be analyzed. U nder this category, it is considered that both the choice
of words from the language (lexical ch oice) and grammatical choices in the
combination of these words to make up sentences are essential. Moreover, the
analysis is based on whether the nouns occu rring frequently refer to any kind of
perception or meaning or if the verbs, adj ectives or adverbs carry an important part
of meaning within the plot.
The second category in Leech and Short’s stylistic categorization is the
analysis of grammatical categories present th e general features of sentence structures.
In the analysis of grammatical categories; sentence types, sentence complexity,
clause types, clause stru ctures, noun phrases and verb phrases are explored. The
discussion focuses on the use of sentences: anticip ating, asking questions,
commands, exclamations, minor sentence type s and parenthetic structure. In the
study of sentence complexity, the focus is on the complex or simple structure of
sentences; the average sentence lengths; de pendent and independent clauses; and the
importance of complexity in sentences. Th e grammatical categories are studied in
terms of clauses, which are traditionally called participial, gerund and infinitive
constructions. While analyzing the clause structure, whether there is anything
significant about clause elem ents; whether there is a sp ecial ordering and whether
there are special kinds of clau se constructions oc cur are to be answered. The analysis
of the use of the noun phrases includes the complexity of the use of nouns,
coordination between nouns and listing of ad jectives. At last, the study of verb
phrases indicates the use of tenses and its significance in the text. Within the
grammatical category, certain stylistic featur es such as syntax that deals with the
grouping of the forms into phrases and the ar rangement of the phrases are essential.

10

The third category in Leech and Short’s st ylistic categorization is the analysis
of figures of speech. In this category figur es of rhetoric and syntax are included.
Simile, irony and metaphor are the basic figur es to be examined in a text. As for
grammatical and lexical schemes, the fo cus is on parallelism and repetitions; on
whether there are any cases of formal and st ructural repetition; and on the rhetorical
effect of the climaxes and anticlimaxes. In the analysis of phonological schemes, the
main concern is about the phonological patterns of rhyme, alliteration, and
assonance; the use of vowel and consona nt sounds; and interaction of phonological
features with meaning. Finally, in the study of tropes, one can obs erve the violations
and departures from the linguistic code ; deviant lexical collocations; semantic
(symbol, irony, image and simile), synt actic, phonological or graphological
deviations.
The last category in Leech and Short’s styl istic categorization is the analysis of
context and cohesion. As Leech and Shor t state (1981) ‘Under cohesion ways in
which one part of a text is linked to anothe r are considered: for example, the ways in
which sentences are connected. This is the internal organization of the text. Under
context we consider the external relations of a text or a part of a text, seeing it as a
discourse presupposing a social relation betw een its participants (author and reader,
character and character, etc.) and a shar ing by participants of knowledge and
assumptions.’ (79) The text is analyzed wh ether it contains l ogical or other links
between sentences such as coordinating conj unctions, or linking a dverbials and it is
also studied to determine whether it tends to rely on implicit connections of meaning.
Besides, it is examined to find out ho w cross-reference is made by pronouns ( she, it,
they, etc .) by substitute forms ( do, so, etc .) or ellipsis and whether there is avoidance
of repetition by a descriptive phrase. Finally, it is looked for repetition of words in a
text which reinforces the meaning connectio ns. In the context category the focus is
on the writer and the reader. In this an alysis, it is looked for whether the writer
addresses the reader direc tly or through the words or thoughts of some fictional
character. Moreover, addresser-addressee rela tionship is examined by linguistic clues
such as first person pronouns I, me, my, mine and it is questioned whether character

11

words/thoughts are given by direct speech or indirect speech. At last, it is searched
for whether there is a significant change of style according to who is supposedly
speaking or thinking the words on the page.

CHAPTER III – HOME TRUTHS
3.1. A Structuralist Approach to the Author Images
3.1.1. Adrian Ludlow
A spacious modernised cottage in Sussex. The interior of the ground floor
has been modified to make an open-plan living-room with dining area
(stage right) and sitting area (stage left) with armchair, sofa, coffee table
and chaise-longue . Kitchen off dining area, with door… Furnishings and
decor are comfortable, lived-in, not opulent, suggestive of literary and
artistic occupants. There are a number of modern ceramic objects –
plates, bowls, vases and suchlike – on display, which look as if they are
the work of the same person . (Lodge, 1999: 1)

The opening scene of the play shows us th at the interior design of the house
is comfortable and it also gives us the cl ue that the people who live in are modern
people. Besides, the words ‘literary and ar tistic’ make us aware that the residents
are intellectuals.

ELEANOR, a good-looking woman of about fifty, wearing a dressing-
gown over a nightdress, is sitting on the sofa, evidently having finished
her breakfast, reading the news section of the Sunday Gazette… (1)

We are introduced to the character ‘E leanor’ who is having finished her
breakfast and reading newspapers on a Sunday morning.

ADRIAN, who is about the same age as ELEANOR , also wearing a
dressing-gown over pyjamas, is seated at the table, inspecting various
packets of cereals, reading the small print on them carefully . (1)

12

We are now introduced to Adrian who is a semi-retired author in his
fifties. He is married to Eleanor and they have two sons who have flown from the
nest. Even though he is a semi-retired author , he is still publish ing anthologies but
stopped writing fiction. He and Eleanor k eep the reason of his giving up writing
as a secret until Fanny talks with Eleanor.

Adrian : Did you know that cornflakes are eighty-four per cent
carbohydrates, of which eight per cent are sugars? (Lodge,1999: 1)

Adrian attributes a question to Eleanor. He chooses to ask the question in a
simple past tense ‘Did you..’ instead of simple present tense ‘Do you…’ as if Eleanor
had to know the ingredients of cornflakes before. He prepares himself a breakfast,
but he tries to choose food with less sugar. He takes care of himself but Eleanor does
not mind it at all.

Adrian: All-bran is only forty-six per cent carbohydrates, but eighteen per
cent of them are sugars. Is eighteen per cent of forty-six better or worse
than eight per cent of eighty-four? (2)

He is still scrutinising the packets and asking questions to his wife, but again
receives no reply. He wants his wife to c hoose one of the cornflakes. We understand
that Eleanor is busy with something else.

Adrian: Shredded Wheat seems to be the best bet. Sixty- seven per cent
carbohydrates of which less than one per cent are sugars. And no salt.
(Beat) I suppose that’s why it doesn’t taste of anything much. (2)

Finally Adrian finds the best thing to eat. He is still talking to himself. He uses
the words ‘sugar’ and ‘salt’ together. They symbolize their re lationship. He says
‘Shredded Wheat contains no salt that’s why it doesn’t taste of anything much.’
Negative words such as; no salt, does not, anything much give us that there is lack of

13

communication between them. Before he utte rs his last sentence, there is a ‘beat
sound’ which emphasizes this lack of comm unication better. This was the third time
Adrian spoke and got no reply.

Adrian: What are you so engrossed in?
Eleanor: ‘Top People’s Holiday Reading’.
Adrian: I trust Tony Blair has taken Ivanhoe with him to Tuscany.
Eleanor: He doesn’t seem to be a contributor. (2)

Adrian again starts with question a nd he chooses to ask ‘What are you so
engrossed in?’ instead of ‘What are you bus y with?’. He thinks that Eleanor is
reading something much more interesting and this time he gets the answer but no
details are given. He wants to continue the conversation but Eleanor gives short
replies as if she is saying ‘Do not disturb me.’ Adrian is mocking with Eleanor while
he is saying that ‘I trust Tony Blair ha s taken Ivanhoe with him to Tuscany.’ But
Eleanor is serious when she says ‘He doesn’t seem to be a contribu tor.’ It is notable
that she chose to say ‘He doesn’t seem to be a contributor’ instead of ‘No, he hasn’t
taken Ivanhoe with him to Tuscany.’ The former reply to Adrian’s question is a
reckless reply and as if she is saying ‘Do not blame Tony Blair.’

Adrian: Anything else of interest in the cultural pages?
Eleanor: A new British film is causing a stir in America. It’s about male
strippers in Sheffield.
Adrian: I can’t see it catching on here. (2)

Adrian wants to discover her interest a nd again starts with a question but he
omits using ‘Is there’ and star ts with ‘anything else of…’ he wants to ask something
interesting for Eleanor not for himself si nce she is so engrossed in reading the
newspaper. While replying, Eleanor omits us ing ‘There is’ but ‘a new…’ it seems

14

that she does not want to talk or give any details. However, Adrian wants to
continue his speech and he comments on th e film in a typical negative way by not
being able to imagine that the film coul d be popular in Britain. Again Eleanor does
not pay any attention to his answer.

ELEANOR puts down the Gazette Review and picks up the news section
of the Sunday Sentinel.
Adrian: What’s the front page news?
Eleanor: All boring. Mostly about Diana’s holiday with Dodi Fayed.
Adrian: But it was last Sunday, too.
Eleanor: It’s the ultimate silly season story. One of the tabloids has paid a
quarter of a million for pictures of them kissing on his yacht.
Adrian: You could get a quite good Picasso for that. (3)

The name of the newspaper ‘ Sunday Sentinel’ is deliberately chosen by David
Lodge and the word ‘sentinel’ means ‘gua rd, watch’ because the news is about
Princess Diana and her private life. Lodge here criticizes the paparazzi media
culture. The word ‘ last’ which is written in italics and the adverb ‘too’ at the end tell
us that they have both read the same stor y before. Even though they firstly preferred
to read cultural pages they could not ta ke themselves away from reading the
paparazzi news. Eleanor finds this story ‘silly’ but she goes on reading the details
and learns that one of the newspapers paid lots of money for th e picture of Princess
Diana and Dodi Fayed’s kissi ng. There is a /u/ sound and it echoes a su rprise in
Adrian’s utterance as he uses the words ‘ you’ ‘could’ ‘good’. Af ter Adrian’s getting
surprised by this news we see El eanor’s turn taking in her shocking.

ELEANOR ’s eyes widen as she glances at the foot of the page .
Eleanor: Good God!
Adrian : What’s the matter?
Eleanor: I don’t believe it.

15

She drops the news section and searches through the pile of unread
newspaper sections . (3)

This is the first time we see that Eleanor is giving a serious reaction with her
exclamation. On the contrary it is Adrian’s turn to be calm. He asks ‘What’s the
matter?’ instead of ‘What happened?’ as if he does not care or already knows what
she is surprised about. However, Eleanor does not respond and continues to be
surprised’.

Adrian : What has happened to cause this amazement, he asked himself.
Has Jeffrey Archer renounced his peer age? Has Richard Branson travelled
on one of his own trains? Has ─
Eleanor : It says there’s an interview with Sam in the Sentinel Review. By
Fanny Tarrant.
Adrian : Oh, yes.
Eleanor (looks at him in surprise ) You knew about it?
Adrian : Well, sort of.
Eleanor : But we haven’t been in touch with Sam for weeks. Months.
Adrian : The Tarrant woman called me up about it. (4)

It is the first time Adrian talks to hi mself. He is wonderi ng about the things
that can surprise Eleanor but in fact he is thinking about people who are rich and
popular in England. These people cannot cause amazement for Eleanor but for
Adrian they do. However, Eleanor interr upts Adrian’s speech and clarifies this
amazement’s reason. Eleanor says ‘… there’s an interview with Sam in the Sentinel
Review. By Fanny Tarrant’ As we reader s we are introduced to new names by
Eleanor. We understand that Sam is an important pe rson for her. Here the
punctuation mark full stop divides the w hole sentence into tw o by leaving the
second part the name alone for an emphasi s to attract the attention on Fanny Tarrant.

16

‘. By Fanny Tarrant’ expresses that Fanny Ta rrant is a person who has a notorious
significance. At first we assume that Fanny Tarrant is a journalis t. David Lodge uses
surname ‘tarrant’ and it echoes ‘tyrant’. We may conclude that Fanny Tarrant is a
tyrant journalist. In the former dialogue s we can see Adrian’s efforts but now
Eleanor starts to ask questions a nd Adrian gives short replies.

Eleanor : What did she want?
Adrian : Background about Sam.
Eleanor : I hope you didn’t give her any.
Adrian : I told her I wouldn’t discuss my oldest friend behind his back.
Eleanor : I should think not, especially with Fanny Tarrant. She eats men
like Sam for breakfast. ( She pulls the Sentinel Review from the pile .)
ADRIAN looks at a spoonful of Shredded Wheat halfway to his mouth.
Adrian : Well, there’s not a lot of sugar in Sam.
ELEANOR riffles through paper. (5)

Eleanor continues to ask questions. Wh en she says ‘I hope.., I should think
not…’ she implies that she does not tr ust her husband Adrian. The adverb that
Eleanor uses ‘especially with’ directs the attention to th e harshness of Fanny
Tarrant. While Eleanor is saying ‘she eats men like Sam for breakfast’, Lodge puts
the sentence into action with the stage direction and Adrian’s aversion to Sam is
immediately felt with the sugar image he uses for Sam.

Adrian : Well, he did ask for it, one might say.
Eleanor : You’re not very sympathetic to your best friend.
Adrian : I said ‘oldest friend’.
Eleanor : Who’s your best friend, then?
Adrian (thinks ): You are.
Eleanor : Apart from me.

17

Adrian (thinks ): I don’t think I’ve got one. Sadly, it’s not a concept that
belongs to middle age.
Sound off off a car’s tyres on gravel drive . (7)

Eleanor continues reading Sa m’s interview and thinks that he is going to be
shocked when he sees the article. She pities him. However, Adrian thinks that Sam
deserved these harsh comments because he asked for it. Eleanor is against his idea
and she tells that ‘He should show some sympathy to his best friend.’ We can
assume that Eleanor sees Sam as their or her ‘best friend’, but Adrian warns her
about Sam’s being his best friend. To him, Sam is not a best but an oldest friend.
Adrian’s aversion is again felt by readers. After Adrian’s warning, Eleanor asks
about his best friend. Adrian’s reply is ‘Y ou are.’. he does not give this reply
immediately, he thinks a while. This answer may improve their communication.
Lodge here uses the short and effective answer to give a chance to this couple to
improve their communication but as usual Eleanor does not mind at all and she
wonders about his other ‘best’ friends. Adri an again thinks a while , his answer is ‘I
don’t think I’ve got one.’ With these word s/this sentence he emphasizes the sentence
‘You are.’ We can assume that Adrian is crying out Eleanor ‘You are the one for
me’ unfortunately she does not hear him. Ad rian’s answer consists of two sentences
and his second sentence starting with ‘Sad ly, it’s not a concept that belongs to
middle age.’ means that we could be ‘best friends’ if he had been younger, but now he cannot find a person to substitute her place. Lodge in the deep meaning of the
text very economically with his word c hoice expresses the inner world of Adrian
through his construction of sentences and the sound of Sam’s entrance is an
interruption for this sensitive atmosphere.

Eleanor : Who can that be?
ADRIAN goes to the window and peers out .
Adrian (calmly ): It’s Sam.
Eleanor (not believing him ): Ha, ha.
Adrian : Is he not the owner of a green Range Rover, registration number
SAM ı ?

18

ELEANOR goes to the window , still holding the newspaper , and looks
out. Sound off of a car door slamming shut .
Eleanor : My God, it is Sam.
ELEANOR makes for the door , stops, turns back and thrusts the
newspaper into ADRIAN’s hand.
Eleanor : Here, hide this.
Adrian : Why?
Doorbell chimes off.
Eleanor : He may not have seen it yet. Hide all the newspapers.
Adrian : Where?
Eleanor : Anywhere?
ELEANOR goes into hall and turns towards front door . ADRIAN looks
around, slides paper under cushion on sofa. Sound of ELEANOR
unbolting front door and greeting SAM. (8)

Their speech is interrupted by a car sound. While Eleanor is asking ‘Who can
that be?’ she is in a wonder, but Adrian is calm and he says that ‘It’s Sam’. Lodge
here uses the stage directi on ‘not believing him’ puts em phasis to Eleanor’s distrust
for Adrian. From the former dialogues we saw her distrust for him and it still
continues. When Adrian says ‘Is he not the owner of a green Range Rover,
registration number SAM ı?’ she again does not believe him and goes to the window
to see it with her eyes and here graphol ogy is used to mention about Sam’s showing
off. Eleanor says ‘My God, it is Sam.’ Here we can see her being surprised but the
verb ‘ is’ which is written in italics confirms Adrian’s sentence ‘It’s Sam.’ The stage
direction is created by her five motion shots which illustrate her panic and the
rhythm of the stage direction is also ma intained with the /s/ sound and then she
wants Adrian to hide the newspaper but Adrian asks ‘Why?’ she does not wish Sam
to see this vicious article about himself. We feel he r sympathy for him and with
panic she welcomes Sam.

19

3.1.2. Samuel Sharp
Sam is a screen writer and Hollywood has opened its gates to him. A new
author character Sam is included into with an interruption of his showing off style
Adrian’s and Eleanor’s world. David Lodge chooses to give information about him
in the middle of Act One si nce he is being included to their home as an outsider.
Although Eleanor is in panic to welcome him, Adrian is so calm. Lodge here uses
her sympathy and his antipat hy in a well-balanced way.
We are informed about Sam with these two sentences in the stage direction;
‘SAM is about the same age as ADRIAN, but shorter, and dresses younger in smart
casual clothes. He is carrying a folded copy of the Sunday Sentinel Review.’ apart
from the words used to describe him we are informed by Adrian’s and Eleanor’s utterances as well. ‘green Range rover, Ral ph Lauren Jacket’ means that he is a rich
man and he likes the extravag ant life style. From Fanny Ta rrant’s point of view Sam
finds himself irresistible and he has a complex about his physical appearance.
Such comparative adjectives ‘shorter and younger’ underline a competition
among the oldest friends. They are at the same age, however, Adrian is taller than
Sam. On the other hand, Sam dresses younger than Adrian. Although Adrian is a
half-retired author, Sam is st ill producing new scenarios.

Eleanor (to ADRIAN): Adrian, it’s Sam.
Adrian (pretends surprise ): Sam! What brings you here?
Sam: I’m flying to LA this morning, from Gatwick. Thought I’d drop in
on my way.
Eleanor : What a lovely surprise. Have you had breakfast?
Sam: As much as I could stomach.
Eleanor : Would you like some coffee?
Sam: Thanks, that would be nice.
Eleanor (picks up coffee pot ): I’ll make a fresh pot.
Sam: No, don’t bother. That will do fine. ( Holds up Sentinel Review )
Have you seen this? (9)

20

Eleanor and Adrian act well as if they ar e surprised. Especiall y, Adrian tries to
seem happy to see Sam at their home. Eleanor offers him to have breakfast and then
she offers Sam to drink coffee. Eleanor want s to make ‘a fresh pot’ as if she wants
to add some refreshment to her life and expresses her excitement. Sam is holding
Sentinel Review and asks them whether they have seen it or not.

Eleanor : What is it?
Sam: Today’s Sentinel. Did you read what that bitch Fanny Tarrant has
written about me? ( He sits down on the sofa, feels the newspaper under
the cushion, and pulls it out ) I see you have.
Eleanor : I glanced at it.
Sam (to ADRIAN): Did you?
Adrian : Ellie read out some bits to me.
SAM looks reproachfully at ELEANOR. She hands him a cup of coffee .
Eleanor : Just the beginning.
Sam: Well, it doesn’t get any better. (10)

Eleanor pretends not to have any know ledge about Sentinel Review but Sam
finds it immediately under th e cushion. ‘Glance, some bits , just the beginning’ these
words imply that they know about the whol e story but they do not want to say the
truth in order not to hurt Sam. Especiall y, Eleanor feels sorry about him and Adrian
joins this game. When Sam is there, Adrian calls Eleanor as ‘Ellie’ in a more sincere
loving tone.

Lodge starts to use parallelism when Sa m is included into play. ‘Sam looks
reproachfully at Eleanor’ we can assume from this stage direction that he is upset
about Eleanor’s reading this article to Adrian. ‘She hands him a cup of coffee.’
However, Eleanor hands him with a cup of coffee as if she is saying that ‘I am
sorry.’ So she gives a reaction to his sadne ss. On the other hand; when Adrian asks
about low-sugar marmalade, whereas she cuts his speech and replies that they have
run out and Adrian shakes his head reproachfully.

21

Both men made same movements to di fferent things however only Sam got
the reaction from Eleanor. The same paralle lism is seen with the images ‘breakfast
and coffee’. Before Sam came to thei r home Adrian was having breakfast and
drinking his coffee. Neverthe less, Eleanor did not mind him and she did not even
ask him to prepare breakfast or coffee for him. On the contrary when Sam came in
she immediately offered him to have breakfast or to drink coffee.

Adrian : How do you feel about it?
Sam: I feel as if I’ve been shat on from a great height by a bilious bird of
prey.
Adrian : That’s rather good. Did you just think of it?
Sam: It’s a quotation.
Adrian : Is it? From what?
Sam: From my last series but one.
Adrian : Oh. (10)

Adrian wonders his oldest friend’s f eeling about the interview that he has
made with Fanny Tarrant. Sam’s reply is ve ry notable since the words ‘shat, bilious,
bird of prey’ are suitable for Sam’s style for Fanny Tarrant. Adrian is interested in
the poetic side of the utterance but he did not know that this sentence belongs to one
of Sam’ latest books. We sens e that Adrian is not interested in reading Sam’s works
and therefore is unaware of the quotation that he uses.

Sam: That was work. Just because you ’ve backed out of the limelight,
Adrian, you needn’t feel superior to those of us who still have to hang in
there.
Adrian : ‘Hang in there’? I’m afraid you r speech has been corrupted by
these meetings in Hollywood, Sam. Sam: I’ve got particularly important one on Tuesday. I hope to God they
don’t take the Sunday Schadenfreude at the studio.
Adrian : You can be sure someone will send it to them.
Sam: Thanks for cheering me up.

22

Adrian : It’s the world we live in, Sam. Or, rather, the world you live in.
Sam: What world is that?
Adrian : A world dominated by the media. The culture of gossip. (12)

The words ‘out of limelight, superior, hang in there’ show Sam’s arrogance.
Since Eleanor leaves the stage, these tw o men are having a si ncere conversation.
Adrian thinks that Sam’s speech is under the influence of Hollywood, in fact he
thinks that his soul has been corrupted by that environment. However, Sam sees this
kind of life as ‘particularly important’. Ad rian is talking about realities and these
realities do not relieve his feelings Sam. Adrian tries to persuade Sam about these
realities but he still insi sts not to accept them by sayi ng ‘What world is that?’
Adrian’s reply seems as Lodge’s criticism for the media.

Sam: The culture of envy, you mean. There are people in this country
who simply hate success. If you work hard, make a name, make some
money, they’ll do everything in their power to do you down.
Adrian : But you put yourself in their power, by agreeing to be
interviewed by the likes of Fanny Tarrant.
Sam: It’s easy to preach when you’ve never been asked.
Adrian : I have been asked.
Sam (surprised ): What, by Fanny Tarrant? (ADRIAN nods ) When?
Adrian : A few weeks ago.
Sam: And what did you say?
Adrian : I said, no thanks.
Sam: Why did she want to interview you?
Adrian : I’m not a completely forgotten writer, you know.
Sam: Of course not, I didn’t mean…
Adrian : The Hideaway is a set text at ‘A’ level. (13)

This speech shows how Sam thinks about media. Adrian thinks very different
from him. Sam is shocked when he hears that Fanny Tarrant also wants to interview
with Adrian. He has a degrading attitude towards Adrian. The words ‘completely,
you know’ show us Adrian’s feelings, he wa nts to prove that he is not totally

23

forgotten. Sam is still going on talking with a degrading tone. Adrian stands as if he
has to prove himself and he uses thes e words ‘A text level, hook, oh I see’

Sam: But I doubt if Fanny Tarrant was proposing to hang her interview
with you on the Paragon Book of Cricket Writing . That was your most
recent anthology, wasn’t it?
Adrian : No, it was Wills and Testaments… I don’t know why she wanted
to interview me. It was just an aside. She actually called to ask me some
questions about you.
Sam: I hope you didn’t tell her anything.
Adrian : Of course not.
Sam: Well, somebody did. Somebody told her that … ( Stops )
Adrian : Wear a toupee? (SAM looks accusingly at him ) It wasn’t me!
Sam: If I could get my hands on her now, I’d strangle the bitch.
Adrian : Why allow yourself to get so angry? That’s exactly what she
wants. Deny her the satisfaction. Laugh it off.
Sam: You wouldn’t say that if you’d read the whole thing.
Adrian : Let me have a look. (14)

Sam does not know about the latest an thology of Adrian. As a boastful
character he does not want to believe that Fanny Tarrant wanted to interview Adrian
as well. Triple dots show how Adrian’s works are unimportant for Sam and this
hurts Adrian. With these words ‘why, aside, actually, ‘ we can conclude that he is
not sure of himself and ‘ you’ which is written in italics means that it was Sam who
deserved to be interviewed because he is the popular one. However, Sam does not
believe Adrian as Eleanor. He accuses hi m (Adrian) for his speech with Fanny
Tarrant about himself. Adrian is in th e mood of proving himself as he says ‘Of
course not, it wasn’t me!’ As mentione d before Sam has physical complex about
himself, he does not want anybody to know that he wears a toupee. It is his secret.
Sam shows his hatred to Fanny Tarrant again with his such words ‘strangle, bitch’.
Adrian tries to calm him down but this is not possible because wh at is mentioned in
the rest of the article.

24

ADRIAN takes the paper, which is already folded back at the appropriate
page, from SAM and begins to read silently. After a few moments he
sniggers .
Adrian : She’s quite witty, isn’t she?
Sam: D’you think so?
Adrian (continues to scan article ): What’s she like?
Sam: Fanciable but frigid. Good legs. I never got a proper look at her tits,
she kept her jacket on.
Adrian : I meant, what social type?
Sam: Oh… Essex girl with attitude. Went to Basildon Comprehensive and
read English at Cambridge. She calls herself a post-feminist.
Adrian : So she does. ( Reads ) ‘Samuel Sharp said, “I never did understand
that word.” I said it meant that I’d assimilated feminism without being
obsessed by it. He said, with a roguish smile, “Oh, then I’m a post-
feminist too.” I said that the treatment of women in his screenplays made
that hard to believe. He bridled somewhat, and said, “What do you
mean?” I said that I’d been looking at videos of all his TV films and
series, and without exception they a ll featured scenes in which women
were naked and men were clothed. The striptease joint in The Bottom
Line, the artist’s studio in Brush Stroke , the operating theatre in Fever
Chart , the Peeping Tom scene in Happy Returns , the rape scene in
Shooting the Rapids , the slave-market scene in Dr Livingstone, I
Presume .’ (To SAM) She certainly did her homework, didn’t she?
Sam: She’s picking out one tiny component of my work and blowing it up
out of all proportion.
Adrian (reads ): ‘And his latest film, Darkness , which he directed
himself— ‘ ( To SAM) Is that wise, directing yourself?
Sam: Who understands my work better?

In the stage direction we see that Adrian ‘sniggers’ when he reads the rest of
the article. This ‘sniggering’ makes us feel that Adrian gets pleasure from Fanny
Tarrant’s words and finds her witty. He is wondering about her so cial type when he
asks ‘What’s she like?’ but Sam immediatel y answers her physical appearance. That
gives us clue about his character we understand that he does not mind Fanny
Tarrant’s thoughts, education et c. But he is interested in her tits, legs and so on.
Lodge gives these details to make us belie ve Fanny Tarrant’s words/interview about
Sam is realistic. In fact, she wrote the tr uths but nothing else. Sam is angry because
he did not expect to face the realities about himself so clearly. Fanny Tarrant ,who
calls herself as a post-feminist, catches the scenes in which women are naked and
men are clothed. Adrian confirms this w ith his sentence ‘She certainly did her

25

homework, didn’t she? Sam thinks that she is exaggerating in fact we sense that she
is not.

ADRIAN stares at SAM for a moment, lost for words, then continues
reading aloud.
Adrian : ‘… there’s a long scene in which a young woman walks around
her apartment naked, preparing a meal for a man who’s fully clothed.’
Sam: But that’s because she thinks the guy is blind!
Adrian (reads ): ‘ “But that’s because she thinks he’s blind!” Samuel
Sharp exclaimed. As if that made it all right. I said, “But we know he isn’t
blind. Doesn’t that just intensify the voyeuristic thrill? Isn’t it the
schoolboy fantasy of being invisible in the girls’ locker room? Aren’t you
exploiting the actors to achieve the end?”’
Sam: You see what I mean. It’s sheer undiluted malice.
SAM stretches out his hand for the paper . ADRIAN holds on to it.
Adrian : ‘He said, “Actors may have to bare their bums occasionally. I
bare my soul every time I put finger to keyboard.”’ ( To SAM) Did you
really say that? Sam (defensively ): Possibly. But the rest is a tissue of lies and distortions.
I’m going to write a letter to the paper. Adrian : Write it, by all mans, but don’t post it.
Sam: Why not?
Adrian : You’ll only make yourself look weak.
Sam: I’ve got to do something.
Adrian (thinks ): You could put Fanny Tarrant into your next television
series, thinly disguised as a raving nymphomaniac. Sam: It would never get past the lawyers.
Adrian : You’ll just have to grin and bear it, then.
Sam: It would be more effective if the counter- attack came from
somebody else… Pause . SAM looks thoughtfully at ADRIAN. (17)

As Adrian reads the article, we lear n Sam’s background information. We learn
that he likes to use sexual scenes in his films. Although he does not accept the whole
interview, we understand that he said so me utterances that makes him angry now.
He wants to write a letter to the newspape r but Adrian does not like this idea. He

26

thinks that writing this letter will make Sam seem weak. However, Sam wants to
take revenge from Fanny Tarrant. Adrian gi ves him some ideas, but he does not like
them. From the beginning of the play this is first time we see stage direction
‘Pause’. This pause means that Sam will want from Adrian a big favor for himself.

Adrian : You want me to write a letter to the Sentinel ?
Sam: No, I’ve got a better idea. Suppose you agree to be interviewed by
Fanny Tarrant…
Adrian : Sounds like a very bad idea to me.
Sam: Remember how we hoaxed that reporter from the local rag in sixty-
eight? During the great sit-in? Adrian : How could I forget? ( Quotes ) ‘The Student Revolutionary
Council demands appointment of prof essors by democratically elected
committees representing all sections of the university.’ Sam (reminding ADRIAN): ‘Including porters, tea-ladies and cleaning
staff.’
Adrian : ‘We demand student self-assessment instead of exams.’
Sam: ‘Double beds for students cohabiting in University residences.’
Adrian : ‘Smoking of marijuana to be permitted in tutorials.’
Sam: And he wrote it all down like a lamb and went away and they
printed it all over the front page of the Post.
They laugh reminiscently .

It seems that Sam is persuading Adrian by remembering old times. Lodge here
depicts us ‘Flower Children’ times in the si xties. These both friends rebelled against
university rules and wanted some freedom. However, they have very different life
conditions now. Adrian’s penny drops after they laugh.

Adrian (penny drops ): You’re not suggesting that I try to hoax Fanny
Tarrant?
Sam: Why not?
Adrian : Pretend to be a wife-beating paedophile drug addict, you mean?
And hope she’d be silly enough to print it? Sam: Well, it needn’t be quite as lurid as that.
Adrian : This woman isn’t a provincial cub reporter, Sam. It wouldn’t
work.

27

Sam (regretfully ): No, you’re probably right. (He thinks) Hang about…
suppose you give her a straight interview, but use the opportunity to write
a piss-take profile of her, for one of the other papers?
Adrian : What?
Sam: We wouldn’t have any trouble placing it. There are lots of people
who would like to see Fanny Tarrant taken down a peg or two. I know
someone on the Chronicle who’d jump at it.
Adrian : Sam— (19)

Adrian thinks to attract Fanny Tarrant’s attention you need to be a drug addict
or you need to beat your wi fe. Here it seems that he is not sure of himself/his
authorship. Sam’s utterances remind us Adri an’s sentence ‘This is the world we live
in.’ Sam said that this is the culture of envy and if you make a name, some money,
the others will do everything to put you dow n. Now he is trying to do everything to
put Fanny Tarrant down. He himself proves that he is the part of this culture/chain.
Sam’s word ‘take down a peg’ for Fanny Tarrant contains aggressiv ity and violence.

Sam: Turn the tables on the bitch! Interview her when she thinks she’s
interviewing you! Ding into her background. Find out what makes her
tick. Why the envy? Why the malice? Lay it all out. Give her some of her own medicine.
Adrian : Wouldn’t she be suspicious if I rang her up and said I’d changed
my mind?
Sam: You have no idea how arrogant these people are. They think the
whole world is just longing to be interviewed by them.
Adrian : That wasn’t the impression I gave her.
Sam: Then we’ll get someone else to ring her up for you… your agent!
The perfect alibi: you mentioned her invitation casually to him and he
talked you into doing it.
Adrian : Of course Geoffrey would love to see my name in the papers
again, but— Sam: There you are! You could do a wo nderful piece. Weave in all that
stuff about the culture of gossip. You’d enjoy it. Adrian : There’s just one drawback to your scheme. (19)

28

The things about Fanny Tarrant that Sa m says, recall us hi s character. He
wants to expose everything about her in fact we see that he himself creates the envy
and the malice and for his purposes he uses Ad rian. Adrian is not sure of this idea.
Of course it will be good to see his name in the newspapers but he thinks about
drawbacks. Sam’s utterance at the end is interesting ‘You’d enjoy it’. He means that
Adrian will enjoy while he is exposing all the things about her. Sam wants Adrian to
be the part of this culture of envy.

Sam: What’s that?
Adrian : I’d get stitched up by Fanny Tarrant in the process.
Pause.
Sam: Not necessarily.
Adrian : No?
Sam: No… She isn’t always bitchy.
Adrian : Isn’t she? I thought you couldn’t remember whether you’d read
her stuff.
Sam: I saw a nice piece by her once, about somebody. Who was it?
Adrian : Mother Teresa?
Sam: God, no, she was vicious about Mother Teresa…
Adrian (surprised ): Mother Teresa gave her an interview?
Sam: No, that was one of her Diary co lumns… She can’t bear the thought
of somebody being genuinely good and seriously famous. Adrian : Well, that would leave me in the clear, certainly.
Sam: Look, these people dare not write knocking copy all the time,
otherwise nobody would ever speak to them. Ever now and again they do
a sympathetic interview just to keep the pot boiling. I bet she’s got you lined up as her next Mr Nice Guy.
Adrian : Did you hope to fill that slot yourself?
This seems to be a shrewd guess. (21)

We see that Adrian is convinced by Sam that Fanny Tarrant is a vicious
reporter. She is jeal ous about famous people but now Sam says that she has some

29

good interviews. Adrian does not believe that because he is we ll-convinced by him.
He is mocking when he says ‘M other Teresa’. In fact it is interesting that he uses the
image of Mother Teresa. He wants to show the difference Mother Teresa is on the
good side, Fanny Tarrant is on the bad side. Sa m thinks that these kind of reporters
sometimes write better things to keep th e pot boiling and the next Mr Nice Guy is
Adrian for her.

Eleanor (to Adrian): Fanny Tarrant wants to interview you?
Adrian : She mentioned it when she rang me up about Sam.
Sam: The idea is—
Eleanor (to Adrian): But why?
Adrian : I don’t know. She was probably just buttering me up.
Sam: The idea is, you see—
Adrian : Sam’s idea is—
Sam: The idea is, Adrian agrees to be interviewed in order to write a
satirical profile of Fanny Tarrant – unknown to her, of course. (Eleanor
looks at Adrian. He shakes his head) I like it more the more I think about
it. It could be the start of a whole new genre. The worms turn. The artists
fight back. Christ knows it’s time. These young arseholes have had it all their way for too long. Why should we always have to grit our teeth and
take it like good sports? Why shouldn’t we hand it out for a change?
Artits of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our Queensberry rules. (22)

Eleanor is shocked when she hears th at Fanny Tarrant wants to interview
Adrian. Adrian is making the extreme self-c riticism of himself while he is saying
‘She was probably just buttering me up.’. th is is the first time in the play a
character’s speech act is interrupted. Sa m cannot start his speech because of
Eleanor’s question. Sam is goi ng on talking about his plans in a theatrical way. He is
getting excited when the subject is Fanny Tarrant. Sam’s sentences are short and
contains excitement. His sentences are provok ing Adrian. However, it seems that he
exaggerated this subject a lot. When El eanor hears Sam’s words she understands
that Sam is exaggerating and she warns hi m by saying ‘Don’t be silly, Sam.’. When

30

it is deeply analyzed it can be seen that El eanor talks little but w ith short striking to
the point.

Eleanor : Sam, why get so upset? It’s only a silly little article, by a silly
little journalist.
Sam: But everybody I know will read it. At this very moment sniggers are
rising like sacrificial smoke from a thousand breakfast tables all across
London and the Home Counties.
SAM picks up a pottery jug .
Sam: This is nice. Did you make it?
Eleanor : Yes.
Sam: Very nice… Is it for sale?
Eleanor : Not to you, Sam. If you like it, have it as a present.
Sam: No way. Would a hundred be fair?
Eleanor : Far too much.
Sam: I’ll give you seventy-five. ( He takes out cheque book and writes
cheque )
Eleanor : That’s very generous. I am se lling the odd piece now, actually.
It’s very satisfying. (23)

Eleanor tries to calm down Sam but he is in a bad mood because he thinks that
everybody will read this article. At the begi nning of the play we are informed about
Eleanor’s being a ceramic artist and this is the first time that we are given an
evidence about it. Sam wants to buy a piece from Eleanor, in fact he thinks that he
can buy everything with his money. Art for money? Or art for pleasure? This is
criticized here. At last, El eanor sells the odd piece of he r work and it means that
nobody will understand her odd piece but Sam does with his money.

Sam: Ellie, tell me, am I really such a shit as that bitch makes out?
Eleanor (pretends to take thought ): Well…
Sam: All right, so I’m a bit vain. But I have every reason to be. Three
BAFTAs, two Royal Television Society Awards, one Emmy, one Silver
Nymph—
Eleanor : Silver Nymph?

31

Sam: From the Monte Carlo Tv Festival, they give you a silver nymph.
One Golden Turd from Luxembourg – at least, that’s what it looked like.
Here. ( Gives ELEANOR the cheque )
Eleanor : Thank you, Sam. (24)

When Sam calls Eleanor as ‘Ellie’ we see his sincerity. He trusts her thoughts
and that’s why he asks about his personality. She thinks a while and says ‘Well…’
these triple dots imply that Fanny Ta rrant somehow has caught the truths.

Sam: And now I’m writing real movies, maybe I’ll win an Oscar.
Eleanor : What’s your film about?
Sam: Florence Nightingale.
Eleanor : What do you know about Florence Nightingale?
Sam: More than the producers, which is the main thing. Actually there is
a script already. They want me to do a rewrite.
Eleanor : Will it have a nude scene?
Sam: You may mock, Ellie. But I shall get paid three hundred thousand
dollars for a month’s work. And have a house with pool in Beverly Hills
to do it in.
Eleanor : Goodness! (24)

Lodge here wants us to see the di fference between a good writer and a bad
writer. Sam himself confesses that he knows much more than the producers.
Eleanor’s suspicion is raised again. Sam starts with flattering himself as always.
‘More’ is a comparative which indicates his self-confidence and the ‘s’ in
‘producers’ includes a plural which emphasi zes his own praise. When he ends his
sentence with ‘the main thing’ a third pr aise for himself is accomplished. The main
truth comes in the second and third sentence.

Sam: I’m busy and lonely. And, well…
Eleanor : What?
Sam: It’s hard to say it, Ellie, but, frankly, it embarrasses me to meet
Adrian now. You remember what it was like in the old days. He was
writing his novels, I was writing my plays. We used to swap stories about

32

how our work was going. Now I come here and babble on about my
projects and he has sod-all to say in return. It’s like serving at tennis to an
opponent with no arms.
Eleanor : He doesn’t mind. (25)

This dialogue can be likened to a ‘conf ession’. Up to now all we have said
about Sam comes out from Sam’s own mouth. He confesses that he is lonely, the
subordinate clause ‘and’ whic h is written in italics empha sizes his loneliness. Triple
dots at the end of the sentence means that he has a lot of things which are difficult to
mention. In his next utterance he uses f our commas which make his speech slower
because these are very hard things for Sam to speak about. In this speech we see his
longing for the past. He hims elf summarizes what he has done to Adrian by coming
their home. The simile that he uses at the end of his paragraph shows us how he
thinks about Adrian and somehow it can be felt that Sam pities Adrian. Eleanor , as
if she is in counter attack, supports Adrian by saying ‘He doesn’t mind.’

Sam: Well, I mind. It makes me seem… boastful.
Eleanor (ironically ): Surely not, Sam. (25)

We hear the word ‘boastful’ from Sam’s mouth for the first time and triple
dots reinforce his thoughts, it is difficult for him to admit that he is boastful. Eleanor
in one sentence replies ironically. Th e usage of comma after ‘Surely not,’
emphasizes that or confirms that Sam is a boastful person. In fact, yes he admits that
he is boastful but he does not hing to change this situation, so it is his choice to be
boastful, to have money, to be celebrity a nd of course to be lonely. He is conscious
about all of these things.

Sam: He’s stagnating. You are both stagnating.
Eleanor : No we’re not. I have my ceramics. Adrian has his anthologies.
(25)

33

It seems as if Sam made Eleanor disa ppointed. She does not have the desire/
fancy for Sam like at the beginning of the scene. According to Sam, life style of
Adrian and Eleanor is boring. However, Eleanor is against this idea, she shows her
objection with her three sentences. Subject pronoun ‘we’ and the verb ‘have’ make
it more clear that they both have importa nt things to do. Unlike Sam, they have
something in their life to keep them busy and together.

Sam: If you married to me, you would be in them, not just reading them.
Eleanor : This morning that doesn’t seem such an inviting prospect. (26)

Sam’s utterance which is in second cond itional form, illustrates his dreams or
longings about the past and now. He is dreaming marriage with Eleanor and a busy
life such as being in news papers. Eleanor’s reply remi nds Sam that this is not
possible and the excuse is Fanny Tarrant’s ar ticle but we know that she implies her
marriage with Adrian.

Pause.
Sam: Why has Adrian stopped writing?
Eleanor : He’s just stopped writing fiction. Sort of retired from it.
Sam: I don’t believe that. Writers don’t retire. No one gives it up
voluntarily.
Eleanor : He still writes non-fiction.
Sam: You mean those anthologies? That’s scissors-and-paste work.
Eleanor : They have introductions.
Sam: Yes, they have introductions. Ellie, for Christ’s sake, Adrian
Ludlow was the white hope of the English novel once!
Eleanor : Yes, well, that was a long time ago… Sam, I don’t like
discussing Adrian with you like this, behind his back. (27)

The usage of stage direction ‘Pause.’ is a way to ask the question ‘Why has
he stopped writing?’. The punctuation is not eworthy in his sentence. Two commas
and an exclamation mark help his words to come out easily. The adverb ‘once’ at

34

the end of the sentence means Adrian is not the white hope anymore. Four commas
in Eleanor’s sentence mean that she hesitate s talking and she mentions it with these
words ‘ I don’t like discussing Adrian with you like this..’

SAM moves closer to ELEANOR and attempts to put his arm round her
waist.
Sam (half-jokingly ): If we were lovers it would seem more natural.
ELEANOR gracefully evades his embrace .
Eleanor : Are you trying to get even with Laura?
Sam: Laura’s history. It was a mistake from the beginning.
Eleanor : I always thought you were too old for her—
Sam: No, she was too young for me. But you’re right. I need a mature
woman.
Eleanor : You should have stuck with Georgina.
Sam: Georgina should have stuck with me, you mean. I wonder if it was
Georgina told that bitch about my— ( Stops in mid-sentence )
Eleanor : Toupee? (SAM looks piqued ) Sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to tease
you.
ELEANOR gives SAM a conciliatory kiss on the cheek. He takes hold of her and
gives her a kiss on the lips. ELEANOR half-responds, then breaks away .
Eleanor : No, Sam..
Sam: Why not?
Eleanor : You’re just using me to salve your wounded ego.
Sam: No I’m not.
Eleanor : No other woman being available on a Sunday morning.
Sam: Ellie, not a day goes by but I don’t wish you’d married me instead
of Adrian.
Eleanor : Liar.
Sam: It’s true.
Eleanor : Adrian asked me, you didn’t.
Sam: But he cheated. We didn’t believe in marriage in those days,
remember?
Eleanor : I try not to.
Sam: We were going to start a commune.
Eleanor : Hah! Some commune it would have been with two writers in it.
Sam: But Adrian saw that secretly you yearned for the old bourgeois
certainties. I bet he even went down on his knees, didn’t he?
Eleanor (vehemently ): Sam, I don’t want to talk about it.

35

The conversation seems to have suddenly taken a turn SAM hadn’t
anticipated.
Eleanor : You know why. (27-8)

This dialogue between Sam and Eleanor is important since it recalls us their
past and regret. Sam’s gestures and moveme nts are coherent with his sentence ‘If we
were lovers..’ and second c onditional is deliberately pu t here to emphasize the
dreams of Sam about Eleanor. However, he overlooks a point. He behaves how he
feels at that moment, he does not care a bout how Eleanor feels. In this dialogue
Eleanor seems a little bit fragile because of Sam’s ex relationships. Long dashes in
that dialogue help characters to stop. This pause means that they have something to
say more but they do not want to conti nue. Eleanor wonders about Sam’s private
life. She is asking questions but the answers are very interesting. Sam’s
megalomania is going on. We see an emotiona l affair between them. It is seen that
Sam does not want to talk about his toup ee. When Eleanor hurts his heart, she
immediately gives him a kiss. The stage dire ction ‘on the cheek’ means that this is
not a sexual or desirable but a naive ki ss like a child. However, Sam acts bravely
and gives her a kiss on the lips. The words ‘conciliatory, half-responds, breaks
away’ in the stage direction show us how Eleanor is fragile and there is something
make her stop and we know that something is Adrian.
In the next dialogue between them negative words ‘no, not’ are repeated
nearly ten times. This negativity tells us th at Eleanor is married, Sam is their oldest
friend so kissing each other is morally wrong. Besides, they talk about the past and
Sam is confessing his regret that she did not marry to him but Eleanor accuses Sam
that he did not ask her to marry. They were flower children and they did not believe
in old bourgeois rules. However, as a woman Eleanor wanted to be proposed
marriage. Sam has his own excuses and he was so free that he did not believe in
marriage those days. With one sentence she immediately refuses to talk about old
days. She is very harsh while she is mentioning this.

36

Adrian : My sales are not bad, actually. The Hideaway is—
Sam: An ‘A’ level set text. Yes, you said. But that’s not going to make
you rich, Adrian. Nor is another Paragon Book of Boring Crap. What you
need is a telly serial, and a tie-in paperback reissue. I tell you what: I’ll put The Hideaway up to the BBC for serialization.
Adrian : They turned it down years ago.
Sam: Yes, but this time I’d be offering to do the script.
Adrian : You could have offered before now.
Sam: Well, I suppose I could’ve, but, you know how it is. I’ve been so
busy…
Adrian : Sam, you don’t have to try and bribe me. (31)

Adrian’s sentences give us a clue about his confidence. ‘My sales are not bad,
actually. The Hideaway is—‘ the usage of comma mean s that Adrian has questions
in his mind and he has to pause somewhere and the adverb ‘actua lly’ is used at the
end of the sentence instead of at the begi nning because it shows us how he is not
sure of himself. The Hideaway his best known work is written in italics and it
functions as a hiding place for him. He al ways feels himself constrained to remind
everbody that it is an ‘A’ level set text. According to Sam, the value of a text is
unimportant what important is to be ri ch by writing telly serials. David Lodge
criticizes media culture by utilizing Sam’s words. Are telly serials and ‘A’ level set
text equal? Or how can an ‘A’ level set text be unimpor tant? These are the questions
instatly arise on our minds. Lodge shows us how telly serials are popular and how
they make their writers very rich. Moreover, it is felt that these telly serials do not
have aesthetic values. You just watch and forget. You do not ask, feel, go deep etc.
There is no aesthetic pleasure in these serials.

Sam: I must dash, Ellie. Sorry about the juice. ( To ADRIAN) I’ll phone
Peter Reeves at the Chronicle and tell him to get in touch with you. I’ll
see myself out. Ciao.
SAM goes out .
Eleanor : Do what?
ADRIAN smiles blandly, but does not reply . SAM reappears in the
doorway .

37

Sam (to ADRIAN): The thing is, to find her weak point, her Achilles
heel, her guilty secret.
Adrian : Perhaps she hasn’t got one.
Sam: Everybody’s got one.
Pause. This remark seems to have more implications, or applications,
than SAM intended.
Sam (to ELEANOR): Well… ’Bye, Ellie. I’ll collect the pot when I get
back.
Eleanor : Sam!
Sam: Sorry, must rush.
He goes. Sound of front door slamming. (32)

The subject pronoun ‘I’ is repeated three times in the first utterance of Sam
and that refers to Sam’s megalomania whic h means that he has got what he wants
that’s why he is in a hurry. After the word ‘dash’ in the beginning of his speech, the
four sentences are uttered to illustrate that he really has to rush. The phrasal verb
that he uses at the end ‘ I’ll see myself out explains that he wants nobody to usher
him out because he is delighted with Adrian’s decision and immediately wants to
get away from there. His last word ‘ Ciao ’ is an important wa y of saying goodbye to
someone who you expect to see again soon. He chose this word since he knows that
he will come back for the news about Fanny Tarrant. Eleanor repeats the question
‘Do what?’ as if she did not understand that Adrian accepted the idea of Sam,
perhaps she wants to hear it from Adria n. When Sam appears again, he shows how
he is delighted and wants to degrade Fa nny Tarrant with the help of Adrian. The
sentence that he utters ‘The thing is, to find her weak point, her Achilles heel, her
guilty secret.’ can be likened to a speech which is being sermonized in front of
crowded audience.
The usage of punctuation (three commas) in this sentence helps him to say
what he wants one by one and it affects or tries to provoke the lis teners especially
Adrian. Adrian’s reply to this fervent sp eech is very interes ting. With his answer
‘Perhaps she hasn’t got one’ implies that somehow he is convinced about Fanny
Tarrant’s journalism, whereas Sam’s senten ce ‘Everybody’s got one .’ is his typical
sarcastic tone which wants to find fau lt in everyone. Indeed, Lodge gives these

38

details in the stage direc tion. After everybody hears Sam’s utterance, there comes a
‘pause’. This pause urges the three of them to think deeply. In the stage direction it
says ‘This remark seems to have more implications, or applications, than Sam
intended.’ Word choice is successfully done here. The nouns (remark, implicaiton,
applicaiton) and the verbs (seem, intend) ar e coherent with each other. His utterance
hints Adrian and Eleanor. Afterwards, Sam is the first person to talk. He turns to
Eleanor and says ‘Well…’Bye, Ellie. I’ll coll ect the pot when I ge t back.’ The triple
dot means he has more to say but he does not go on. The apostrophe omits the word
‘good’ instead of ‘goodbye’ he just utters ‘’By e, Ellie’ he wants at that moment to
utter everything shorter, he is in a rush. Th e last sentence of hi m is a reference to
‘Ciao’ and it repeats that ‘He will come back.’ The apology word ‘sorry’ is used twice in Sam’s sentences. He apologizes from Eleanor that he is leaving and he is
conscious of the fact that sh e will be upset. When he first enters the scene, the door
slamming is heard and when he leaves the same slamming is repeated, as he enters
and gets out their life with a sound effect is significant. He interferes in to their life
unexpectedly and disturbs them.

The structuralist approach to Samuel Sharp’s authorship assists us to
determine his character. When we go deep through with his words, we come across
a boastful, selfish man who has complexes wi thin himself. The usage of adjectives
in his utterances such as ‘famous, busy, perfect’ are coherent with his boastful
character. Sam is so arrogant that he does not have any questions about himself on
his mind. It is just once when we see Sam and Eleanor talking about his personality
and he utters the word ‘boastful’ for hi mself. Moreover, the subject pronoun ‘I’ is
repeated several times while Sam is speak ing. It is a general conception that the
subject pronoun ‘I’ is a reference to being selfish and va in as we see in his character.
From the play it is underst ood that Sam is angry with Fanny Tarrant because he does
not agree with her utterances about him in the interview, in other words he cannot
bear criticism. It could easily be seen with the usage of adjectives such as ‘vicious,
weak, guilty’ and the verbs such as ‘get hands on her, strangle’ that he hates her.

39

Sam’s provocation and exaggeration can be se en in the usage of phrasal verbs and
idioms as ‘turn the tables on the bitch, dig into her background, the artists fight
back, etc’ It is understood that he desi res to take revenge from Fanny Tarrant. The
utilization of punctuation is provided by triple dot and commas. Triple dot is
repeated fifteen times in Sam’s sentences. When it comes after the exclamation ‘Oh
and well’ it gives time to Sam to think about what he is going to say. If it comes at
the end, we understand that th ere is more to say but Sam does not prefer to continue.
The usage of comma helps to separate se ntences into shorter phases and make us
comprehend the deeper meaning clearly while it also functions in his sentences for
persuasion.
Generally, second conditional and simple past tense are used when he is
talking with Eleanor. This demonstrates us that he is longing for past and he has
regrets. It can be concluded that Samuel Sharp character is chosen deliberately to
illustrate the differentiation between a good a nd a bad writer, and this is made by
cohesion between his speech and his character. Lodge catches the cohesion
ingeniously. While reading, you immediately shape his character in your mind. At
last but not least, Sam character is put into the play to criticize hollow Hollywood
writers who are given thousa nds of dollars and houses with swimming pools to write
something. For Lodge, such an engaged au thorship cannot be considered as
successful and free.

3.1.3. Fanny Tarrant

FANNY a good-looking young woman in her late twenties, smartly
dressed, carrying a slimline leather briefcase. She speaks with an accent
that might be described as ‘educated Estuary’ . (36)

40

Fanny Tarrant who is a journalist wa nts to interview Adrian who she
admired in her adolescence so she co mes his home with questions such as
‘Why did he stop writing fiction after a successful book The Hideaway ?’

Fanny : Was that your wife who drove out of the gate as my taxi was
trying to get in?
Adrian : In a white Peugeot?
Fanny : Yes.
Adrian : Yes. She’s gone to visit her niece in East Grinstead.
Fanny : Pity. I was hoping to meet her.
Adrian : That was what she wanted to avoid.
Fanny : Oh, why is that?
Adrian : She reads your articles. Won’t you sit down? (ADRIAN gestures
to a chair . FANNY sits down ) She particularly remembers the one about
that art historian – Sir somebody double-barrelled.
Fanny : Sir Robert Digby-Sisson.
Adrian : That’s the chap. You commen ted adversely on Lady Digby-
Sisson’s fingernails.
Fanny : Does your wife bite her fingernails?
Adrian : No, she just didn’t want to risk appearing in your article in some
similarly disparaging aside.
Fanny : It sounds as if she doesn’t approve of your doing this interview.
Adrian : No, she doesn’t.
FANNY opens her briefcase and takes out a small Sony audio cassette
recorder which she places on a coffee table . (36)

Instead of starting th e conversation with ‘H ello/Hi’, Fanny Tarrant
immediately asks the question ‘Was that your wife who drove out of the gate as my
taxi was trying to get in?’. It can be said that starting with an interrogative form is
coherent with her occupation and she can be very specifi c to the point to get the
result. Besides, her question has details in it. She could have asked ‘Was your wife
leaving?’ but she preferred to ask it in a specific way. The questi on ‘that your wife?’
keeps the intention in itself as Fanny asks this question in this way because it could
be another woman who was driving out and that would be brilliant news for her

41

interview, and the next clause ‘as my taxi wa s trying to getting in’ is uttered as if she
does not want to miss even a subtle point.
After she hears that Eleanor has gone to visit her niece, she utters ‘Pity. I was
hoping to meet her.’Her desire to see El eanor is shown with a direct reaction
exhibited in a single emotional word ‘P ity’ and Fanny this time wants to know the
reason in a question form ‘Oh, why is that ?’. The exclamation ‘Oh’ does not sound
that she is surprised a lot and the question ‘why is that?’ seems as if she is seeking
something more. Nevertheless, Adrian’s sent ence is striking, he utters ‘That’s the
chap. You commented adversely on Lady Digby- Sisson’s fingernails.’. First sentence
openly states Fanny was interviewing but th e second sentence is a harsh criticism on
her style because her duty is to comment about Sir Robert Digby-Sisson not about
his wife. Furthermore, to comment about his wife’s fingernails is a detailed info
which can be counted as an attack for thei r private life. However, Fanny seems as if
she does not care about Adrian’s criticism, she instantly asks ‘Does your wife bite
her fingernails?’ as if she wants to catch something se cret about her and her last
sentence ‘It sounds as if she doesn’t appr ove of your doing this interview’ signifies
the point that Fanny Tarrant as a journalis t would not shoulder this criticism but
passes the buck to Adrian.

Fanny : You don’t mind if I record the interview?
Adrian : Not at all. As long as you don’t mind my recording it too.
Fanny : By all means. ( She checks that her tape-recorder has a cassette in
it and switches it on ) D’you want to set up your tape-recorder?
Adrian (gestures to hi-fi system ): It’ already on. It has a very sensitive
microphone. Voice-activated. I hope yours is as good. I tend to move
about when I talk.
Fanny : It’s state-of-the art. Why do you want to record our conversation?
Adrian : To settle any disputes that might arise about what I said.
Fanny : Fair enough. ( She takes a notebook and ballpoint pen out of her
briefcase, and looks round the room ) This is nice. Have you been here
long?
Adrian : It used to be our weekend retreat, but it was smaller then. When
we decided to move out of London, we bought the adjoining cottage and
knocked through the party wall.

42

FANNY makes shorthand notes on the furnishings etc. (38)

Fanny is going on her interview carefull y. Her sentences ar e in interrogative
forms. The sentence ‘You don’t mind if I reco rd the interview?’ is uttered after she
puts the tape-recorder on the table and it means that it does not matter what answer
Adrian gives to this questi on, she will record their convers ation. In this dialogue after
she speaks, we see her movements by the he lp of stage directions. Here the stage
directions signify that she is diligent about her job and doe s not want to miss a point.

Fanny : I was brought up as a Catholic, but I haven’t been to church for
years.
Adrian : How did you lose your faith?
Fanny : Look, this is going to take a very long time if you keep asking me
questions.
Adrian (smiles sweetly ): I’ve got all day.
Beat.
Fanny : All right. So have I. But what about Mrs Ludlow?
Adrian : She won’t be back till this evening. (40)

This dialogue between Fanny and Adrian seems to reflect Lodge’s own ideas
about religion because he declares himsel f as an agnostic-Catholic. His characters
Fanny and Adrian are Christians but they do not carry out what religious doctrines
tell them. Adrian asks to Fanny ‘How di d you lose your faith?’ , his question which
is formed in simple past tense shows us th at Adrian lost his faith, too, and he wants
to find out the deepest secret s of Fanny Tarrant. Her reply ‘Look, this is going to take
a very long time if you keep asking me questions.’ is a kind of resentment. She starts
her sentence with the exclamation ‘Look,’ which means that she does not like being
asked questions and the usage of comma af ter the word ‘Look’ sounds more of a
warning to him to collect the attention be fore everything gets more confused The
next sentence that is formed in first c onditional demonstrates th at she wants to do
her own occupation which means asking quest ions and getting answers. The object
pronoun ‘ me’ which is written in italics emphasizes that Fanny Tarrant is the

43

journalist and it is her duty to ask questi ons not Adrian’s, so what Adrian does is
opposite to the course of interview rules. Adrian’s gesture ‘ smiles sweetly’ means
that he will go on asking questions to her a nd he reinforces it w ith his sentence ‘I’ve
got all day.’ This is the second time the ‘ Beat’ sound is heard in the play. The first
one was heard when Adrian and Eleanor were talking. At that time especially Adrian
had the attention on the ‘ Beat’ sound could not let him get the reaction from Eleanor
but now the situation has changed and this sound emphasizes Adri an’s sentence ‘I’ve
got all day.’ And it is felt that something strange is going to happen, so this sound
seems as if a foreshadowing. At this time Adrian gets a positive reaction from Fanny
and she does not oppose to his sentence, she even approves via her sentence ‘All
right. So have I.’. The expression ‘So have I’ makes us feel that she will go where
Adrian takes her and she is no t ignoring him as his wife . However, her last sentence
‘But what about Mrs Ludlow?’ which is again an interroga tive form carries a serious
tone with the form of address to the na me ‘Mrs Ludlow’ .Instead of saying ‘your
wife’ she prefers to utter the name ‘Mrs Ludlow’ and it is understood that Eleanor
seems to be as an interfering person for th em. Finally, Adrian’s reply is healing and
he says ‘She won’t be back till this ev ening.’ , such a confirmation completes his
sentence ‘I’ve got all day.

Adrian : Yes. But why take so many pictures of the same face?
Fanny : To find the one that tells you most about the subject. People’s
expressions are always changing, but so subtly and so fast that you don’t
know what you’ve captured until you develop the film. That’s why
photographs are more revealing than real life.

Definite article ‘the’ is repeated twic e in Fanny’s long response that comes in
two sentences. The first sentence shows th at how much she is conscientious at her
job as if she wants to do everything ideally. In the second sentence the intensifier ‘so’
is used two times with emphasis at the beginning & end with ‘but’ and ‘and’, her
being alert all the time is implied. She m eans people cannot be trusted with the word
‘always’. She summarizes her intention clea rly by using the right vocabulary ‘find’
and ‘tell’. One has to capture two vital mo ments that summarize everything. In real

44

life one is lost. Fanny’s criticism is a bitt er one. People are always acting and it is
hard to catch the truth.

Adrian : And interviews, are they more revealing than real life?
Fanny : Interviews are real life. Mine are, anyway.
Adrian : Oh, come!
Fanny : I invent nothing. That’s why I use this. ( She indicates the tape-
recorder )
Adrian : But you won’t report everything I say, will you? You’ll leave out
the less interesting bits.
Fanny : Obviously. Otherwise it would be far too long and very boring to
read.
Adrian : But you falsify a conversation if you leave out any part of it: the
dull bits, the hesitant bits, the repetitions, the silences.
Fanny : There haven’t been any silences.
Adrian : There will be.
Pause. (42)

Adrian goes on asking questions and his crucial question comes in stage. He
wants Fanny to compare an interview and real life. The verb to be ‘ are’ in Fanny’s
reply in italics is like su pport for her own interviews that they are not more revealing
but they are actually real life. The possessi ve pronoun ‘mine’ which is uttered at the
beginning of her second sentence tries to pe rsuade Adrian that she is a professional
and a little bit high-flown. Until this time Fanny has used the conjunction ‘That’s
why’ three times which means that she has to explain her sentences. She wants to be
considered as innocent while she is u ttering ‘I invent not hing.’ Besides, the
demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ stands as an ellipsis for the tape recorder which is
written in the stage direction for he r movement. Again she mentions about
technology and she thinks that what tape-record er records is equivalent with the real
life. With the sentence ‘But you won’t report everything I say, will you? You’ll leave
out the less interesting bits.’ formed in tag question, Adrian wants Fanny to admit
what he asks. The word ‘ everything ’ is written in italics because it refers to real life
and real life has everything in it such as ‘less interesting bits’. The adverb

45

‘obviously’ used at the begi nning is a reference to the honesty of Fanny because she
immediately accepts that she will leave out le ss interesting bits from the interview.
The intensifiers ‘far,too,ve ry’ are utilized to make one understand how Fanny thinks
about an interview and the adjectives ‘long,boring’ show that she will cut out some
parts of the interview. In Adrian’s sent ence ‘But you falsify a conversation if you
leave out any part of it:’ zero conditional is used due to explaining a general rule
about a conversation and colon (: ) is given for an explication. In the explanation part
definite article ‘the’ is repeated four times to determine the parts of a conversation.
The words ‘dull, hesitant, repetition, silenc e’ are reference to a real conversation. In
Adrian’s sentence comma is used four times in order to give small pauses and it
means that real life is not always enjoyable, sometimes it can be boring. Moreover, it
has dullness, hesitation, repetition and silence. The structure of Adrian’s sentence is
all coherent with his schema about real li fe and the interview. Fanny opposes his idea
by saying ‘There haven’t been any silences.’ . she utilizes from present perfect tense
here to prove that her interviews are al l smooth. However, Adrian’s last sentence
which is formed in future tense objects he r utterance and it is supported by the stage
direction with a ‘ Pause. ’ It is noteworthy to sa y that Lodge uses a ‘ Pause ’ here to
back up Adrian’s idea and we can assume that Adrian sometimes expresses Lodge’s
own ideas.

Fanny : All right. I concede the point.
Adrian : What point?
Fanny : That the interview is not pure, unmediated reality.
Adrian : No indeed! It’s a game.
Fanny : A game?
Adrian : A game for two players. The ques tion is, what are the rules, and
how does one win? Or lose, as the case may be.
…
Fanny : Actually, I don’t see it as a game . The interview, I mean. I see it
as a transaction. A barter. The interv iewer gets copy. The interviewee gets
publicity. (43)

46

Fanny starts her sentence with the expr ession ‘All right.’ which means that the
next sentence will include an ‘admission’. Thus, she says ‘I concede the point’, she
accepts Adrian’s point but unwillingly.Then she utters ‘That the interview is not
pure, unmediated reality.’ The adjectives ‘ pure,unmediated’ which are references to
reality so she confesses that an interview is artificial. With these two adjectives a
contrast between artificial interview and unmediated reality is created. However,
Adrian declares interview as a game in this dialogue. In fact, Lodge writes his
thoughts about interview in the introduction part of Home Truths and he says:

The interview is an inherently dramatic, necessarily dialogic encounter
between two people, though it may involve others. It can have many
subtexts, and be driven by a variety of motives. It can be a transaction, a
seduction, a game, a struggle, a collusion, a confession – or perhaps all
these things in turn . (Lodge, 1997:vii)

Hereby, a parallelism can be seen with Adrian’s and Lodge’s ideas. Lodge
expresses that an interview can have subt exts and driven by a variety of motives
which emphasize Adrian’s idea that you cannot leave out even less interesting bits
from an interview. They both suppos e that an interview is a game.
The last paragraph ,which is utte red by Fanny, is c onstructed upon six
sentences. She starts with the adverb ‘Act ually,’ because she will affirm another idea
and the comma helps her to gather her id eas systematically. The object pronoun ‘it’
is an ellipsis for the noun ‘the interview’ and it is explained by Fanny in the next
sentence ‘The interview, I mean’. Indefinite article ‘a’ is repeated three times since
she is in an effort to expl ain her ideas clearly and she doe s not want a point to remain
unexplained. The verb ‘get’ refers to ‘t ransaction, barter’. Hence, Fanny Tarrant’s
thoughts about an interview reflect Lodge’s own ideas, too. He us es his style very

47

cleverly that both of the characters think di fferent things but they all project Lodge’s
own schema.

Fanny : You see, your fiction meant a great deal to me once.
Adrian : Really?
Fanny : I read The Hideaway when I was fifteen. It was the first time a
modern novel really excited me. I still think it’s the best treatment of
adolescence in post-war British fiction.
Adrian : Well, thank you. Thank you very much. It’s an ‘A’ level set text,
you know. (44)

Finally, Fanny explains why she wants to interview Adrian. Her sentence ‘You
see, your fiction meant a great deal to me once.’ is constructed in simple past tense
and the word ‘once’ emphasizes the utterance related to the past and it means that his
fiction does not mean a great deal to her a nymore. Her praise ‘a great deal’ that she
uses shows how much pleasure she got from his fiction. Then Fanny states that she
read his book The Hideaway when she was fifteen. The verb ‘excited’ is coherent
with the expression ‘a great deal’ in respect to getting pl easure. She uses the adverb
‘really’ to mention the truth about her feeli ngs. Her next utterance ‘I still think it’s
the best treatment of adolescence in post-war British fiction’ is a praise for Adrian
and Fanny completing her sentence with post-war British fiction is that The
Hideaway was the best treatment for Fanny once. The phrases ‘modern novel, post-
war British fiction’ places Adrian’s author ship into the highest rank and ‘the best
treatment of adolescence’ refers that how Adrian was successful about writing his
book especially on teenagers. Her two sentence s come in past tense but the latter one
is in present tense which refers to the fact that The Hideaway still keeps its place.
This is the first time Adrian hears such a praise, due to that shock he thanks
twice and the quantifier ‘very much’ shows how he is deli ghted. His next sentence
again shows that he is in an effort to prove himself.

48

While Fanny is interviewing Adrian, he o ffers her to have sauna together. He
claims that after sauna everything will be diffe rent. He thinks that there will be no set
questions, no disguises. Hence, Fanny accepts it and they have sauna together.
Afterwards, Eleanor comes to their home and sees that Adrian is looking Fanny’s
tattoo and they are wearing bathrobes. She is very surprised and Ad rian tries to make
her believe that nothing happened. They just had the sauna in the dark. When Adrian
and Fanny go to change their clothes, Elea nor pushes the play button of Adrian’s
cassette player which is still on. She hears that Adrian told about their past which
means Fanny has learnt that Eleanor slept both Adrian and Sam. She takes offence
and at the same time gets angry so much that after Fanny change s her clothes she all
tells the secret of Adrian why he has st opped writing. To lear n something new and
interesting Fanny leaves their home. At the end of the play Sam, Eleanor and Adrian
are waiting for the Sunday Sentinel which Adrian has his interview with Fanny. At
that time Fanny comes to their home and give s the news that Prin cess Diana is dead.
They all shocked except Sam. With the feeling of pity and fear Fanny apologizes
from Adrian, however he does not approve. Fanny says that Diana is dead, now she
cannot be criticized anymore and she feels remorse for th e piece about Adrian. After
she leaves, Adrian and Eleanor are affected by Diana’s death and he thinks that all
country is in national catharsis.
The character Adrian mostly reflects Lodge’s own thoughts and helps him to
criticize the relationship like Adrian and El eanor have. Fanny Tarr ant character is put
into play to show how vicious the press can be. Furthermore, Eleanor also represents
the corruption of relationships in the mode rn world as she shops behind her husband.
The character Sam helps us to differentia te a good writer and a bad writer. All the
characters have presented their roles su ccessfully by the use of simple language.

49

CHAPTER IV – THE WRITING GAME
4.1. A Structuralist Approach to the Author Images
4.1.1. Leo Rafkin
LEO is about fifty, American-Jewish, quite handsome in a grizzled,
furrowed way. He looks somewhat depressed and apprehensive.
(Lodge, 1991: 1)

Leo Rafkin is an author and at the same time lecturer at a university. He is
invited to this barn which is converted to accommodate a short residential course in
creative writing. There he w ill meet other writers and th ey will be together with
amateur writers .He is introduced into th e play by the stage direction above. His
identity is as an American-Jewish and it can be concluded that British-American
authors argument which is Lodge’s usual argument in his play s and novels will be
discussed by this character. The adjectives that describe him ‘handsome, grizzled’
emphasize his being a good-looki ng man. However, the other adjectives th at describe
him ‘furrowed, depressed, apprehensive’ show us that there is something unpleasant
related to him. In fact, he seems that he is not delighted being in that barn/course.

Leo (projects voice): So what do you do then, Jeremy?
Jeremy : I usually go to Morocco. I sit in the sun and write poetry.
Leo: You’re a poet, huh? As well as running this place?
Jeremy : Well, I have published a slim volume or two… I could show you
some of my work if you’re interested.
JEREMY takes a slim volume from the bookshelf .
Leo: I don’t know anything about poetry. I don’t really understand why
people go on writing the stuff. Nobody reads it anymore, except other
poets. ( Comes to doorway ) I don’t mean to be personal.
JEREMY conceals his book behind his back .

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Jeremy : Oh, point taken! The audience is minuscule. But I suppose one
goes on because one is obsessed with the music of language.
Leo: Music?
Jeremy : Sounds, rhythms, cadences.
Leo: Well, you can get those things into prose.
Jeremy : Oh yes, I agree, absolutely. Your short stories – they’re just like
poems, I always think.
Leo: I hope not.
Jeremy : I mean –
Leo (smiles faintly ): Sure, I know what you mean, Jeremy. (3)

Leo instantly starts to ask questions to get to know Jeremy better. When he
hears that Jeremy is a poet, he reacts as if he does not believe in him and with a
degrading tone he asks ‘You’re a poet, huh ? As well as running th is place?’, both
questions have a degrading t one. It is understood that be ing a poet is a handicap for
running this place or vice versa. Also, the phrase ‘this place’ shows that Leo Rafkin
is not happy with the situation and it seems as if he does not want to be there.
Jeremy is happy to meet such an author and he wants to show his published poetry
volume to Leo, ‘Well, I have published a slim volume or two… I could show you
some of my work if you’re interested.’ Th e usage of triple dot refers to Jeremy’s
doubt on how Leo would react. And also, if clause indicates his thoughtfullness that
he does not want to bo re his guest. On the other hand, Le o’s reply which is structured
upon four sentences show his rudeness. Th ree of his sentences begin with the
negative form of simple pr esent tense ‘I don’t…’ and the following begins with
‘Nobody…’. All of these negative sentences em phasize that he does not want to be
there but he behaves as if he is forced to be there.
The sentence ‘I don’t know anything about poetry.’ signifies that he does not
want any questions or comments about poetry. He utters this sentence as if he wants
to say ‘I hate poetry.’. In the second se ntence ‘I don’t really understand why people
go on writing the stuff.’ the word ‘people’ is generalized in fact he implies about
Jeremy but he chooses to use ‘people’ to ge neralize his idea. The word ‘the stuff’ is a
substitution for poetry and it is uttered in a t one as if poetry is not an important genre

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for Leo. He claims that nobody reads poems anymore and after the comma he says
‘except other poets’ and his reaction becomes obvious with his direct short sentence
at the start .Leo again generalizes his id ea by saying ‘other poets’ and comma
functions to emphasize his ne gativity and to generalize. His second sentence is a
comment on his reaction. He questions the genre (poetry) and with his final word
‘stuff’ degrades it. At last, he states ‘I don’t mean to be personal’ as if he is saying
‘What I said is not related with you Jeremy’ , however we know that it is vice versa.
‘I don’t mean to be personal’ means ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ but it is too late after
all these words uttered and it is seen from th e stage direction that Jeremy conceals his
book behind his back. After such a reacti on, he does not have encouragement to
show his slim volume to Leo.
Jeremy’s utterance ‘Oh, point taken!’ c onfirms the given st age direction with
his concealing book behind his back. He doe s not agree with Leo’s ideas but he
avoids showing his book. His second sentence ‘The audience is minuscule.’ states
that he understands Leo’s thought which is very general according to Leo poetry
appreciations are unimportant. Jeremy con tinues to defend his point with ‘But I
suppose one goes on because one is obsessed with the music of language.’ here the
pronoun ‘one’ is Jeremy himself under the pressure of Leo he omits the ‘I’ pronoun
in his sentence and substitutes it ‘one’ beca use he hesitates. The verb ‘suppose’ is
used for his hesitation as we ll. Instead of ‘suppose’ he c ould have used ‘think’ which
sharply shows his ideas. The word ‘ music ’ is written in italics since Jeremy wants to
emphasize it. To him, poetry means music in language. When it is deeply analyzed
the words ‘poetry, music, obsess’ in dicates that Jeremy is somehow a
sensitive/romantic person. He can see and f eel the depth in li terature which gives
him pleasure. On the contrary, Leo displays a harsh personality with his degrading
tone. His questioning ‘Music?’ states as if he has not heard it before, and Jeremy
explains it with ‘sounds, rhythms, caden ces.’. It is understood that Jeremy
appreciates sounds, ryhthms a nd cadences in a literary wo rk. On the other hand, Leo
objects to his idea by saying ‘Well, you can ge t those things into prose.’ Leo calls
sounds, ryhthms, cadences as ‘those things’ as if they are trivial for him and as a

52

prose writer he claims that they can be got through prose. Jeremy is in the mood of
accepting everything what he says. When he sees Leo’s objection he immediately
utters ‘Oh, yes, I agree, absolutely. Your short stories – they’re just like poems. I
always think.’ Jeremy is in a slimy manne r. He does not want to hurt his guest’s
feelings and wants to praise him as an author. Leo again objects to his idea and
Jeremy wants to explain by saying ‘I mean – ’. Leo’s reply ‘Sure, I know what you
mean, Jeremy.’ shows his self-confidence. The adverb ‘sure’ refers to himself that he
has the capacity of what Jeremy says.

Jeremy : After our founder. Aubrey Wheatcroft.
Leo: Who was he?
Jeremy : A rather idealistic minor poet with a private income. He left all
his money to endow this place. He believed that there are untapped
reserves of creativity in everyone, which can be released in the right
environment.
Leo: You mean, like stone floors and birds in the eaves?
Jeremy : Well, yes, he did specify a rural setting. But the social situation is
more important. Bringing together people who want to be writers with
people who are writers, in an isolated farmhouse, for four or five days.
Having them eat together, work together, relax together. Readings, workshops, tutorials, in formal discussions. It has to have a stimulating
effect. It’s like a pressure cooker.
A pause, while LEO ponders this metaphor. He puts down his coffee. (9)

For Jeremy, their founder was a rather idealistic minor poet with a private
income. The adjective ‘idea listic’ goes parallel with pe ople who get pleasure from
literature/poetry and the adjective ‘mino r’ goes parallel with people who are not
scornful but are contended w ith art. The phrase ‘with a pr ivate income’ indicates that
he did not earn much but sa tisfied with it. As we look at the statement those words
are also coherent with Jeremy’s current si tuation. From the founder’s features we are
introduced to Jeremy’s characteristics. Jere my’s last sentence seems to be a criticism
for Leo, he says ‘He believed that there are untapped reserves of creativity in
everyone, which can be released in the right environment.’ The phrase ‘the reserves
of creativity’ described as ‘u ntapped’ which is coherent wi th the verb ‘release’, so

53

the founder Aubrey Wheatcroft believed in everyone. On the contrary, Leo is very
far away from this thought. It is understood from his reply that ‘You mean, like stone
floors and birds in the eaves?’ his degrad ing tone is getting increased. Jeremy’s
utterance ‘environment’ finds its answer in Leo’s sentence as ‘stone floors and birds
in the eaves’ thus it is understood that according to Leo everyone cannot have
creativity for writing, but he utters it in a scornful way. Jeremy does not oppose to
what Leo says. For his scornful question as an answer starts with ‘Well, yes, he did
specify a rural setting.’ However he know s that Leo did not mention about ‘rural
setting’. Jeremy’s utterance ‘social situation’ is a criticism for Leo who seems not to
be happy there and also in his sentence ‘Bringing together peopl e who want to be
writers with people who are writers’ the auxiliary verb ‘ are’ written in italics is a
reference to Leo. Jeremy while stating this sentence ‘Having them eat together, work together, relax together’ as if talks about a ‘commune life’ a nd the repetitions of
word ‘together’ emphasize this and then he says ‘It has to have a stimulating effect.
It’s like a pressure cooker.’ The modal verb ‘has to’ used as if he himself felt that
stimulating effect before. His metaphor ‘pre ssure cooker’ is so strange that there
comes ‘a pause’ and this leads Leo to ponder.
Another significant scene in the play which highlights Leo’s character is
analyzed.
Leo: As you probably know, I’m spending six months in England,
working on a book.
Maude : No, I didn’t know.
Leo: It was in the Guardian.
Maude : Ah. We take The Times and the Independent.
Leo: I’m on leave from my University. I have a Guggenheim.
Maude (hint of mockery ): Congratulations.
Leo: I’m writing a novel about the end of World War Two in Europe.
Maude : Ambitious.
Leo: It is. (14)

Leo is a kind of author who wants to be pr aised. He thinks that he is so famous
that everbody has to know/recognize him. Hi s sentences above show his arrogant

54

side. He starts his sentence with a doubtful t one using ‘probably’ but the next word is
‘know’ which conceals the doubt emphasizes hi s arrogant side. The usage of comma
helps him to regularize what he thinks. Ho wever, Maude’s reply shows that she did
not have any idea about his book. Leo want s to emphasize his former sentence and
utters ‘It was in the Guardian’ the name of the newspaper is written in italics and has
the meaning of ‘How could you not see this news?’. Then she tells that she does not
read the Guardian but she takes the Ti mes and the Independe nt. Her sentences
indicate that she has a mocking tone becau se she gives opposite answers to what he
says. Leo insists on proving himself and he continues to give information about him,
he says ‘I’m on leave from my University. I have a G uggenheim’ the expression ‘on
leave’ signifies that he is free. With th e stage direction Maude ’s gesture ‘hint of
mockery’ indicates she does not care about him, his book or hir retirement or his
award and in fact she does not ask questi ons she just gives short replies to his
statements which indicate her recklessness. Again without Maude’s
questions/interest he goes on uttering his sent ences as if he wants to show off ‘I’m
writing a novel about the end of World War Two in Europe’ he gives info about his
current situation. The noun ‘World War Two’ is a reference to his Jewish side and he
wants to write about it. Maude’s reply is again very short, she utters ‘Ambitious.’
And nothing more. Her mocking tone continue s but Leo does not see it. At last, he
confirms the adjective ‘ambitious’ with hi s words ‘it is’ because he is sure of
himself.

Jeremy : He won’t be here for long, anyway. The next day is the last one.
Final efforts by the students, then an early dinner and afterwards they read
from their work. It’s a kind of rite de passage. It usually turns into a party
with everybody getting rather tired an d emotional. The course disperses
next morning, after breakfast.
Leo: Well, that’s something to look forward to.
Maude : Oh, don’t be such a misery!
Leo (startled ): What?
Maude : If you want to go, for God’s sake go! I’d rather teach the whole
course myself, than have you moaning and whingeing for the next four
days.
A pause.

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Leo: I said I’ll stay, and I’ll stay. (18)

In the above dialogues it is seen that Jeremy is eager to bring together real
writers and people who want to be writers. The sentences he utters are coherent with
the former sentences he uttered about the f ounder of this writing course. He is getting
pleasure out of all of these events. On the contrary, Leo is not so happy, he says
‘Well, that’s something to look forward to ’ Maude shows her react ion to his sentence
and utters ‘Oh, don’t be such a misery!’ wi th this reaction it ca n be concluded that
Maude is not a diffident woman. She can tell her ideas ba rely and in that case Leo is
startled because he does not e xpect such a reaction from her. Maude replies ‘If you
want to go, for God’s sake go! I’d rather teach the whole course myself, than have
you moaning and whingeing for the next four days’ Her sentence involves a treat for
Leo. The first sentence is harsh for a man like Leo who wants to be praised all the
time. The expression ‘for God’s sake’ st rengthens her reaction and leaves no open
gates. The second sentence is a kind of pref erence and it indicates that she is a strong
woman because she dares to take on he r own the whole course. The reflexive
pronoun ‘myself’ is a sign for her being strong that she can do everything on her own
and she is in no need of another person. The verbs ‘moaning, whingeing’ are deliberately chosen for Leo. It seems that Maude sees him as a cry-baby. The stage
direction gives ‘a pause’ then everybody is s ilent and Leo is trying to digest what he
has heard. Finally he says, ‘I said I’ll sta y, and I’ll stay’ the expression ‘I said’ means
that he is not influenced by Maude’s sent ences. He expresses his promise twice to
emphasize it.

4.1.2. Maude Lockett
Maude Lockett, who is a best-seller writers of nine books, is a good-looking,
confident woman in her forties. In the play the stage direction states that she is
dressed casually but expensively. The adve rbs ‘casually and expensively’ indicate
that she is not an ill-bred woman however sh e is elegant. Besides, she is married and

56

has children. So, being married and ha ving children do not shade her successful
career.

The amplified voice of HENRY LOCKETT ( a middle-aged Oxford don )
is heard from the answerphone. The actors on stage speak over his
monologue.
Henry’s Voice : Oh, hallo, er, this is Henry Lockett for Maude Lockett…
Maude : Henry!
Henry’s Voice : Er, Maude, I’ve lost my, that is to say I can’t seem to find
my cufflinks, I mean I can’t find a pair that match, and, er, there’s a
College Feast tonight and, er, I sh ould feel rather a prat with odd
cufflinks…
Jeremy : You can pick it up and speak to him, you know.
Maude : No, I don’t want to. I think this a retrograde step, Jeremy, ı come
here to get away from domestic concerns. (19)

In the play we have never seen Henry hims elf, he is in the play just with his
voice. He calls for Maude his wife and when he calls he interrupts the speech acts.
However, as mentioned in the stage di rection the actors on stage speak over his
monologue. Here it creates disturbance which is a reference to Maude ’s life. She is in
this barn now because she wants to get away from domestic concerns.
In Henry’s speech ‘I’ is repeated five times that is to say Henry is a self-
centered man and does not care about Maude. He does not think that she is in a
course and he can disturb her. The subject ‘clifflinks’ are so trivial reasons to call his
wife. The sound ‘er’ is repeated twice as if he cannot tell where he wants to go. He
does not want to seem ‘prat’ in a ‘College Feast’, so tiny things are important for
Henry to seem intelligent. And also comma is used nine times in his speech. That
means he is speaking with pauses as if he cannot his mind while speaking. Then Jeremy utters that Maude can pick up the receiver and speak to him, however, her reply reflects why she comes to that old barn. She says ‘No, I don’t want to. I think this a retrograde step, Jeremy, ı come here to get away fr om domestic concerns.’ Her
first sentence explains why she is there indeed. She uses his name ‘Jeremy’ in the middle of her sentence which refers to her sincerity while she is speaking. The verbs

57

‘come, get away from’ contradict each othe r and this contradiction shows us that
Maude wants to take a breath. She prefers ge tting away from home and comes to this
barn. The expressions ‘domestic concerns’ and ‘retrograde step’ reflect us how she
thinks about her family life. She knows th at if she answers th e phone, everything will
be the same again. She is in this course because she wants to do something
professional not domestic.

Maude (smiles,drinks ): Geronimo, then. I’m glad you decided to stay.
I’ve admired your work for ages.
Leo: Including Wise Virgins and Other Stories ?
Maude (evasively ): That was your first book, wasn’t it?
Leo: You didn’t like it so much when you reviewed it for the Spectator .
Maude : Oh, that was a very long time ago. I’m surprised you remember
it.
Leo: I remember all my reviews.
Maude : Goodness, I hardly bother to read mine.
Leo: I never believe writers who say that.
MAUDE looks as if she is going to take offence, but backs off.
Maude : Well, Henry reads them for me. He only shows me the nice ones.
Leo: My wife – my last wife – only showed me the bad ones. She used to
go to the library and photocopy them especially. That’s how I saw your
review.
Maude (laughs uncertainly ): I can’t imagine I said anything really nasty
about The Wise Virgin.
Leo: Wise Virgins . You said, ‘Mr Rafkin polishes his style, the better to
see in it the reflection of his own ego.’
Maude : Did I? You know, you really shouldn’t attach so much
importance to what critics say.
Leo: That’s easy for you to say. You’re a best-seller. (24)

Maude changes when she drinks alcohol because she seemed unaware of Leo’s
works in the former speech but now she is saying that ‘I’ve admired your work for
ages.’ She is inconsistent. She knows that Leo likes to be pr aised, that’s why the

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expressions ‘I’m glad, I’ve admired’ are c oherent with the situation. The expression
‘for ages’ seems a lit tle bit exaggerated when we look at her former utterances. In
fact, the stage direction ‘eva sively’ confirms what’s written above and she asks ‘That
was your first book, wasn’t it?’ the tag question is used here to be admitted by Leo.
Instead of answering in ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ Le o utters ‘You didn’t like it so much when
you reviewed it for the Spectator ’. The object pronouns ‘it’ are repeated twice and
seems as if he trivializes his work in fr ont of her. The phrase ‘You didn’t like it so
much’ is uttered in a way as if Maude is glorified by him.
Maude’s astonishment is seen from th e exclamation that she uses at the
beginning of her sentence It is clear from th e clause ‘I’m surprised’. The adverb of
time ‘ a very long time ago’ is in harmony with the expressi on ‘for ages’ as if she is
following every work of Leo. The verb ‘r emember’ indicates that Maude does not
remember what she wrote or she just seems like she does. She wants to be seemed as
‘cool’. Leo replies ‘I remember all my reviews.’ The noun ‘all’ involves the good
and the bad ones at the same time, and also ‘my reviews’ is a reference to his self-
confidence. This time Maude shows her ar rogance with the se ntence ‘Goodness, I
hardly bother to r ead mine.’ The exclamations su ch as ‘oh, goodness ’ used in her
sentences reflect a feminine tone, and th e usage of adverb ‘hardly’ which means
‘almost not’ does not seem persuasive a nd the possessive pronoun ‘mine’ refers to
her reviews. Since her sentence is not so persuasive, Leo replies as ‘I never believe
writers who say that’ however, in the stage dire ction it is seen that Maude looks as if
she is going to take offence, but backs off. ‘taking offence’ is again a reflection of
her feminine approach.
The preposition and object pronoun ‘for me’ in her utterance signifies her
acting like a princess ‘Well, Henry reads them for me. He only shows me the nice
ones’ and with this sentence she is just s howing off. Her husband Henry seems as if a
manservant that does everyt hing for his lady. On the cont rary, Leo expresses that
‘My wife – my last wife – only showed me the bad ones. She used to go to the library and photocopy them especially. That’s how I saw your review.’ The usages of
dashes illustrates he does not want to be misunderstood by Maude that he is still

59

married. The words ‘last wife, bad ones’ ar e coherent with each other and it shows
that they did not get along well that’s why they got divorced.
Leo: You intrigued me. That photograph on your dust jackets – with the
Mona Lisa smile. The amazing number of books you’ve written. The sales
figures in the Bookseller . Beauty, fertility, and money. An irresistible
combination.
Maude : The resistance seems to be all on my side. Goodnight. ( She
moves towards the bedroom door. )
Leo: And then I read the books.
MAUDE stops, turns .
Maude : I do hope you’re not going to pay me any insincere compliments.
Leo: Your heroines are all sleeping be auties, aren’t they? Passionate but
unfulfilled women, half-longing, half-fearing to be awakened.
Maude : And you thought you would play Prince Charming?
Leo: We could play Beauty and the Beast if you prefer.
Maude : Goodnight. (29)

Leo’s speech is structures upon five sent ences. The verb ‘intri gue’ is given at
the beginning of his speech and then th e reasons why she intrigued him will be
explained. The determiner ‘that’ at the begi nning of second senten ce implies he has a
photograph of her in his mind and it also he lps us to visualize that photo, too. The
clause ‘with the Mona Lisa smile’ is sepa rated by a dash which means that Leo is
really affected from that photograph. Th e Mona Lisa smile i ndicates blurry and
ambiguous smile which impressed Leo profoundly. After he describes the ‘physical
appearance’, the turn is now on ‘quantity’ a nd he mentions it with the expression ‘the
amazing number of books’ and the next sent ence is about ‘money’ which we can
conlude from the expression ‘the sales figur es’. His fourth sentence is a summary of
this sequence. The word ‘beau ty’ is coherent with her phys ical appearance, the word
‘fertility’ is coherent with her number of books and the last word ‘money’ is parallel
with the expression of the sales figures. Th erefore, he calls the total of them ‘an
irresistable combination’. Maude does not seem to be persuaded by this speech
which she calls it ‘the resistance’. And th en, Leo utters the st riking sentence ‘And
then I read the books’ after all these compli ments he wants to sa y that ‘I appreciate
your books’ and this makes Maude stops, she utters ‘I do hope you’re not going to

60

pay me any insincere compliments’ here the adjective ‘insincere’is used to prevent
him to utter a word about her books. Besides, Leo utters ‘Your heroines are all
sleeping beauties, aren’t they? Passiona te but unfulfilled women, half-longing, half-
fearing to be awakened.’ His tag question shows that he knows the truth but he wants
Maude to confirm it. The adjectives ‘s leeping, passionate, unfulfilled, half-longing,
half-fearing’ are references for her charac ters but at the same time they reflect
Maude’s own character, too.
Maude’s reply indicates that she is getting angry ‘A nd you thought you would
play Prince Charming?’ and her tone is furi ous at the same time mocking. They both
choose their words from fairy tales. The verb ‘play’ shows the levity and Leo’s reply
comes ‘We could play Beauty and the Beas t if you prefer.’ He also has a mocking
tone and here the verb ‘play’ refers to Leo’s desire to have sex with Maude.

4.1.3. Penny Sewell

She is a young woman, who might be in her late twenties or early thirties.
She has big eyes and long fair hair. She wears a simple summer dress and
carries a floppy sunhat. She has a transparent sincerity of manner which sometimes seems like naivety, and speaks with a perceptible Welsh
accent. (30-1)

Penny Sewell is a young primary school teacher who enrolled this course. The
words that describe her ‘simple, transparent, sincerity, naivety’ show she is the most
naive person in that course. Even though she has a writing talent, her tutor Leo does
not like what she writes.

Penny : Lights and Shadows . That’s the provisional title of the novel.
Leo (frowns ): I think I read that one.
LEO reaches for the pile of manuscripts, and shifts through them. He
pulls out one.

61

Leo: You’re Penny Sewell, right?
Penny : Yes.
Leo: Yeah. The privilege fell to me. Lights and Shadows .
Penny : What do you think of that as a title? Or perhaps you don’t think
titles are important?
Leo: Oh, I think they’re very important – to the writer. I always tell my
students back home, the title should remind you what your story is
supposed to be about. (32)

She uses the word ‘provisional’ for her novel’s title that she can change it in
the future so she has a hope to go on writing. But the stage direction for Leo ‘frowns’
shows how he is prejudiced against amat eur writers and his sentence ‘Yeah. The
privilege fell to me. Lights and Shadows .’ The choice of words indicate a mocking
tone. Penny’s question ‘What do you think of th at as a title?’ illust rates that she gives
importance to writing even from beginning to end and Leo’s reply seems as if
Lodge’s own thought. In his criticism Art of Fiction (1992) it becomes obvious that
Lodge wrote the same things which Leo utte red : The title of a novel is part of the
text – the first part of it, in fact, that we encounter – and therefore has considerable
power to attract and condition the reader’s attention. For the novelist, choosing a title
may be an important part of the creative pr ocess, bringing into sharper focus what the
novel is supposed to be about. (193-4)

Penny : Well, Lights and Shadows does that for me, I think.
Leo: Yeah, it’s OK. It’s about the best thing in here. After the title there’s
a steady decline.
Penny (crestfallen ): You don’t like it?
Leo: Did you expect me to?
Penny : I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never shown my work to
anyone before. What’s wrong with it?
Leo: Well, it isn’t very interesting, and the style is derivative.
Penny : Derivative?
Leo: From Virginia Woolf, chiefly.
Penny (submissively ): Yes, I do like Virginia Woolf.
Leo (reads ): ‘Was this all there was, then , all there was to life, her life
anyway, she thought, peeling the potatoes at the sink, and looking out

62

through the kitchen window at the small square of lawn, where the toys
abandoned by Ben and Jessica lay scattered like the remnants of some
horrible accident, a car cras h, touched poignantly by the golden beams of
the sun that was setting like an inflam ed eye behind the red roofs of the
neighbouring houses.’ ( Looks up ) If the sun is inflamed, which means red,
would the sunbeams be golden?
Penny : No, of course not. How stupid of me.
Leo: It comes from over-using the pathetic fallacy.
Penny : What’s that?
Leo: Making the external world reflect metaphorically the emotions of the
perceiver.
Penny : Oh.
Leo: Like ‘touched poignan tly’ and ‘inflamed eye’.
Penny : But apart from that…
Leo: There isn’t much apart from that, is there? The whole chapter is
saturated in the pathetic fallacy.
Penny : You don’t think I should persevere with it?
Leo: I don’t see that it’s likely to get any better. Do you?
LEO holds out the manuscript. Pause.
Penny (quietly ): No, I’m sure you’re right. (33)

Penny as a curious student ask questions to Leo but her f acial expressions
immediately changes when she hears someth ing bad or good because of her naivity,
as we see in the stage direction ‘crestfalle n’. She asks ‘You don’t like it?’ and Leo’s
scornful reply comes ‘Did you expect me to?’. Penny’s answer again shows her
sincerity and she frankly says ‘I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never shown my
work to anyone before. What’s wrong with it?’ the phrases ‘I di dn’t know, I’ve never
shown, what is wrong’ include depressive mode of her.
Leo does not find her work interesting a nd adds ‘the style is derivative’ Penny
immediately says ‘Derivative?’ and it means shortly ‘from whom?’ Leo replies ‘From Virginia Woolf, chiefly.’ After that her gesture again changes and she
instantly accepts that she lik es Virginia Woolf. Then Leo reads a part from Penny’s
novel and catches a subtle logic error and an accusation is made by her over-using
the pathetic fallacy. Here he uses a ja rgon which Penny cannot understand and that’s
why she asks ‘What’s that?’. Leo explai ns to her but she does not seem to

63

understand. She wants to oppose by saying ‘But apart from that…’ Triple dot implies
she has lots of things to say which are interrupted by Leo’s utterance ‘There isn’t
much apart from that, is there? The whole ch apter is saturated in the pathetic fallacy.’
The phrase ‘the whole chapter’ shows that he is just concentrated on pathetic fallacy
that’s why he just sees them. Penny waits for some encouragement ‘You don’t think
I should persevere it?’. His la st sentence makes her desperate and the stage direction
‘quietly’ emphasizes her despair.

4.1.4. Simon St Clair

SIMON is in his early thirties, dressed in loose, trendy, all-black cotton
clothes, and has an expensively style haircut. He is good-looking in a
slightly Mephistophelian way.

Simon is another author character of the pl ay. He is also invited to the barn and
also knows the avenue before. However, Leo does not like him because years ago
Simon interviewed and wrote unpleasant things about him. In the stage direction the
words ‘all-black and Mephistophelian’ are coherent with each other and they
describe the evil/bad side of Simon. Th e adjectives ‘loose, trendy, expensively’
indicate that he is a rich man.

SIMON returns to the table. His hand hovers teasingly over the keyboard,
fingers moving in the air .
Simon : I daresay it’s only a matter of time before writing is fully
automated in the States. ( To LEO) Or can you already buy software that
actually writes the stuff for you? Li ke a programme for writing the Great
American Novel. What would it be called…? ‘MEGAWRITER’, perhaps.
Leo: Very witty.
Simon : ‘WANKSTAR’ for Penthouse stories.
Maude : Shut up, Simon.
Simon : And, of course, for the ever-popular story of Jewish hangups
about sex and the Holocaust – ‘SOFTSOAP’.

64

Leo: You asshole! Have you been reading my manuscript…? (70)

In the stage direction Simon’s move ments ‘hovers teas ingly and fingers
moving in the air’ evoke the thought of hi s being homosexual. Simon creates tension
while the three of them are talking and he annoys Leo by mocking with his American
side. He mocks with the great technology of America that even authors do not write
their stuff but a programme or a machine does this for them. The words which are
written in capital letters emphasize that Si mon wants to increase the tension. Hence,
the words that described him above ‘all-black, Mephistophel ian’ confirm his bad side
that he always wants to annoy others, especially Leo.

Simon : You’re very quiet, Leo. What did you think of my story?
LEO drains his glass, snatches bottle from SIMON and pours himself a
generous measure. He thrusts the bottle back into SIMON’s hand .
Leo: I thought it was horseshit.
Simon : Ah. You wouldn’t be a teeny-weeny bit biased, would you?
Leo: I admit that it had a certain documentary interest.
Simon : Yes?
Leo: As a glimpse of the rotting corpse of English literary life.
Simon : A lurid image. How much do you know about English literary
life?
Leo: You only have to go to a few publisher’s parties, read the book pages
in the newspapers, to understand how it works. The log-rolling, the back-
scratching, the back-biting.
Simon : Of course, you don’t get any of that sort of thing in New York, do
you?
Leo: I don’t live in New York, It’s a bigger country – writers are more
spread out. The trouble with England is that it’s too damned small. Everybody has his hand in someone else’s pocket and his nose in someone else’s asshole. And another – (87)

The object pronoun ‘ you’ which is written in italics shows in fact Simon does
not care about Leo’s thoughts he is just as king to create a tens ion again. Leo does not
answer immediately, the stage directions indicate that he prepares himself for a

65

debate. Leo shows his anger with word ‘hor seshit’ and Simon’s tag question signifies
that he is still mocking with Leo. As Bruce K. Martin states this dialogues is based
on ‘the Anglo-American dimension of th e ongoing debate between Leo and Simon’
(Martin, 1999: 138) Leo claims that as an author you have to grovel to the publishers
and Simon’s tag question emphasizes that this is the same in America, too. However,
Leo’s utterance implies that it can be the same and he finds England too small which
refers to their encounter ing in that barn/course.
Afterwards, Maude has intercourse w ith Simon, too, which leads Leo into
jealousy. However, she expresses she is not sure that Simon re ally likes women.
Then Penny brings her outlines to Leo which he finds ‘very good’. Penny utters
through the end of the play that the auth ors live to write which seems Lodge’s
criticism the world he lives in. At the end Maude finds Leo tr ying to delete all
outlines from his computer and she tries out to stop him. Finally, Leo says that he has
a great idea for a play, hence, the characters all realize that they are the pieces of a
game.
Lodge in this play creates the author imag es to project the pr ocess of ‘writing’.
By the help of language used in the play we see that how hard ‘the writing’ is. The
distinguished feature of all au thors in the play, they all want to be praised except
amateur ones like Penny. Lodge also composes the Anglo-American debate between
Leo and Simon which he was inspired from his America years.

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CONCLUSION
In the first chapter of this study, the life of David Lodge and his place in
post-war British literature are given to fulfill a background information to understand
Home Truths and The Writing Game better. In the second chapter the scope of
stylistics is examined and then the significan ce of stylistic approach to the literary
works is stated in the light of Leech and Short’s stylistic categor ization. When come
to the third chapter, the play Home Truths is analyzed by employing Leech and
Short’s categories of stylistic approach based on the important dialogues of the
author images. Besides, in the fourth chapter the same approach is obtained in the
play The Writing Game.
Language is a powerful way to expr ess oneself. Lodge cr eated authors in
both of the plays, which we expect them to use the langu age more professionally, to
express his own ideas in a dynamic way. Howeve r, it is seen that the authors have no
more differences from common/ordinary people. Moreover, Lodge aims voicing by
those characters to show this fact accurately. In Home Truths when we look at the
relationship between Adrian and Sam, the use of language is given directly to
underline that there is no true friendship in the twentieth century. There is not even
an intellectual battle of words between th em which is presented by a direct language
but not a redundant one.
Lodge also illustrates that there is no true love while he is composing the relationship between Eleanor and Adrian. This realistic point of view is emphasized
by the use of simple language in the play. Despite the fact that Eleanor is not an
author, she is put into the play to highlig ht the author images. In fact, she is the
desired one by both of the men and with this situation Lodge attaches the importance
to the corruption of relations hips in the modern world.

67

The correlation between the press and the authors is also considered as an
important issue in Home Truths . In this manner, Fanny Tarrant character is created.
According to her, one gets pleasure when s/he reads something vicious about the
other in the newspaper and in addition to th is one feels sorry. So, feeling both of the
emotions existence is in th e nature of a man. However, Lodge criticizes this thought
with pessimism in his pla y. Princess Diana’s death as a popular figure lays emphasis
on this criticism at the end of the play.

Hereby, David Lodge cr eates a harmony in the play to convey his opinions
via author images. The corruption, pessimi sm and realism are displayed throughout
the structuralist approach to the play. In th e light of lexical, gr ammatical, figures of
speech and context/cohesion categorizations it is obtained that the language used in
the play is plain and comprehensible. Since it is a dramatic text, the stage directions
are also taken into account in the analysis. They assist us to visualiz e the scenes
better. While starting the play Home Truths , there is a definition of ‘home truths’
as a wounding mention of a person’s wea kness (Shorter Oxford Dictionary). As
stated in the definition, the play points out the weaknesses of the authors which is
analyzed through a study of language of the major dialogues in the plays.
In The Writing Game the practice of writing is sc rutinized as as ‘game’. A
seventieth century barn converted into a writing course opens its gates to the
professional and amateur writers. This at mosphere reminds us a ‘carnivalesque’
atmosphere which leads to a dynamic pattern that differs from Home Truths .
Therefore, a dynamic tempo is comprehe nded throughout the play. We are always
aware that David Lodge does not want to conceal himself behind the characters he
created. As in Home Truths the author images are not so much different even though
they present themselves as different.

68

In this play jealous y among writers is harshly criticized. Leo is jealous of
Maude because she is a best-seller novelist. Penny who is the most naive character of
the play utters her words that seem to reflect Lodge’s criticism ‘…There’s a sort of
jealousy between you all the time. When Maude did her repeat reading, I was
watching you, and during your reading I was watching Maude, and last night when
Simon was reading I was watching both of you. I noticed that whenever the rest of us
laughed at something in the reading, th e other one or two of you looked unhappy.
The most you could do was to force a thin smile. It was as if you begrudged each
other the tiniest success…’ (Lodge, 1999: 112) Hence, the jealousy among them is
given by the language directly. Besides, in both of the plays th e language difference between female
and male authors is not observed. Both female and male authors use the simple language that we can easily achieve. In fact, in both of the plays female authors trap
male authors such as Fanny Tarrant’s intervie w with Sam and Adrian and in return of
this they start to take revenge.
The relationships betw een authors are also criticized since they show us
how moral values are corrupted. As a ma rried woman, Maude, has intercourses both
with Leo and Simon. Lodge, thus, emphasizes that the author imag es in the play are
far away from ‘naivety’ because they ar e different and even dangerous people who
create intrigue. Furt hermore, again with Penny’s utterances Lodge conveys what he
wants to say ‘…It seems to me that write rs are a bit like sharks… I read somewhere
that sharks never sleep and never stop moving. They have to keep swimming, and
eating, otherwise they would get waterlogged and drown. It seems to that writers are
like that. They have to keep moving, devouri ng experience, turning it into writing, or
they would cease to be recognized, praised, respected – and that would be death for
them. They don’t write to live, they live to write…’ (Lodge, 1991: 112)

69

To sum up, language is the essential feature in both of the plays, and the
stylistic approach to a dramatic text demonstrates the influence of language and its
similarity with everyday inte raction. The language the author images use reflect their
true intentions, and the structuralist appr oach helps the reader to find the hidden
masks beyond the words. When the reader restricts a drama text only between lines,
it is not easy to perceive the real aim of the playwright and also the message s/he
wants to give. However, the structuralist approach provi des a true understanding for
assessing how language is accessed by dram atists to concentrate on the human
relationships and how those relations hips are shaped by dialogues.
To supply a broader appreciation of Lodge ’s plays Leech and Short’s stylistic
categorization is used. Beside s, several examples of di alogues taken from the plays
are used to illustrate different points and to create daily verbal interaction by the
author images. As well as several novels , criticisms and so on David Lodge shows
his mastership through Home Truths and The Writing Game by the help of language.

70

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