Compare the Harp in the South to Billy Elliot
People depend on each other in impoverished communities. They depend on words of acceptance and rejection in the sameness of daily routine; that the people and the things that were there yesterday will still be there tomorrow. They depend on love being the same drunken love so they always know what to expect; they depend on having to struggle for enough money to live to keep their dreams under control; they depend on nosey neighbours to keep them up with the gossip. They depend on everything being the same, as difference can’t be trusted, and doesn’t belong. It is the safe way of life in both the poor mining town of Everington, and the back streets of Surry Hills. Throughout this essay I will be comparing and contrasting the differences and similarities between the families in the film Billy Elliot and the novel The Harp in the South.
The Elliots and the Darcy’s were poor.
The Darcy’s lived in the oldest, ugliest house on Plymouth Street, where they were charged an exorbitant rent for a rundown, ratty, gas smelling, slum house (Park 1948). Mumma has learned to accept Hughie will never stop drinking the wages and so she stops wishing for more. Mumma’s grief at Thady’s disappearance over ten years ago has not dissipated, stealing what little joy she may have found in the dreariness of everyday life. “Mumma had never given up hope. She often stood at the gates of boys schools, looking and looking” (Park 1948, p. 2). Possibly grief is her escape from the reality, giving her a ‘real’ reason to be sad. It is evident that Mumma always goes without for her family in that her clothes have holes and she has no shoes of her own; this is the lot of women and while she hopes for more for her daughters Roie and Dolour, she expects their lives will be the same repetitive weariness. Roie and Charlie talked of things they knew would never come: “You won’t always be tired. We’ll get out of this, have a lovely house, and a garden… some day” (Park 1948, p. 218).They gave
The Elliots and the Darcy’s were poor.
The Darcy’s lived in the oldest, ugliest house on Plymouth Street, where they were charged an exorbitant rent for a rundown, ratty, gas smelling, slum house (Park 1948). Mumma has learned to accept Hughie will never stop drinking the wages and so she stops wishing for more. Mumma’s grief at Thady’s disappearance over ten years ago has not dissipated, stealing what little joy she may have found in the dreariness of everyday life. “Mumma had never given up hope. She often stood at the gates of boys schools, looking and looking” (Park 1948, p. 2). Possibly grief is her escape from the reality, giving her a ‘real’ reason to be sad. It is evident that Mumma always goes without for her family in that her clothes have holes and she has no shoes of her own; this is the lot of women and while she hopes for more for her daughters Roie and Dolour, she expects their lives will be the same repetitive weariness. Roie and Charlie talked of things they knew would never come: “You won’t always be tired. We’ll get out of this, have a lovely house, and a garden… some day” (Park 1948, p. 218).They gave