Style
Caryl Churchill’s main concerns when writing this play was the idea of self. She takes this idea of identity and challenges it with this story. If you were to find out that you were simply a clone then you’re not a unique person, but one of many, just a number. This story from a subjective position, though we are privy to most of what is going on, we are always with Salter. So when Bernard (B1) was with Bernard (B2) we did not know what was happening. The world of the play is moderately comprehensible, we can understand everything that happens but some things elude us. Why are the clones so drastically different from one another? The events of the play happen in a fairly linear manner, there are some events in the past that are brought up through conversation, but we are not taken back. The characters are “fully textured human beings, with ideas, feelings, personalities, passions, and foibles” that are very similar to our own, making the characters very lifelike. The setting is set to imitate real life, simply two chairs and perhaps a table. The play is representational, the audience is never interacting with the play itself, only observing.
Read more about this topic: A Number
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it. He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)