Saved (Modern Classics)

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Sanderson identifies just one group of individuals who break this trend, and these are “moral rebels … those who show moral courage generally feel good about themselves.

Yes, he fully meets the criteria of a bystander but in addition we learn that this does not make him a bad person, that subconscious factors influence his decision not to intervene during the attack, and ultimately, that a normally altruistic person may fail to help at the most crucial moment even with the most vulnerable of victims. But, clearly, she wants to keep the relationship on a purely physical level, whereas Len’s desires are almost entirely the opposite; his questions show that he wants to get to know her mind probably more than her body. On the other hand, it is Len’s loyalty and his sense of community that the play emphasizes as his strengths. Costa spoke with Tony Selby who played the role of Fred in the original production of Saved and who gave the following interpretation of the play – “Saved is about ignoring young life.

For example, he shows the scarcity of good careers and the abundance of dead-end jobs for London’s young, but he simultaneously highlights parenting skills in this specific community which are often sub-standard to the point of being dangerous. Bond depicts dysregulation: neighbour attacks neighbour when no one is looking, Len fails to provide help to a child in need, Mary and Harry fail to properly raise Pam, and Pam serves as a sexual object for multiple men. It’s widely believed that this particular work played a decisive role in the battle against stage censorship, because of its thematic power and skilful writing and construction; yet the censor’s demands, had they been met, would have reduced the play to an emasculated wreck – a mere series of unconnected scenes without any “bite”. The three young men were trying to get to grips with a troubling scene in which they lark about with a baby in its pram, poking it, pulling off its nappy, goading each other until they stone it to death. One manner of interpreting Bond’s assertion that an attack on human values is a show of human value, is to look at the violence of the play.

She starts to show signs of caring for him, by offering to knit him a jumper – providing he pays for the wool.The clue seems to rest in the ‘we’ of the first section of the quote, interpretable as the conformist force of society which is then set against the individual who obeys or rebels. By placing the stoning scene relatively early in the play, before the interval, Bond forces his audiences to appreciate the extent to which they collude in the devaluation of humanity. The second contains Bond’s philosophy of violence and acts as a complement to the play, which itself is an attempt to explain the nature of violence through the power of drama. Sanderson explains how “moral rebels … have relatively little concern about fitting in with the crowd and are not afraid to speak up in support of their beliefs and values” (217). If Len is a living example of turning the other cheek, then this is relevant to his position as the hero of the play.