Rooster's Wood Play Analysis

Teya Hutchison 1802
“In conventional comedies the green world is a place of refuge. How far would you say that Rooster’s Wood, by contrast, is a place full of danger, violence and cruelty?”
Northrop Frye has argued that the ‘green world’ of comedy operates as a temporary place of freedom from a dangerous outside world. For Johnny Byron, his woodland kingdom represents liberty and release from the restrictions of an over-inhibited and conformist ‘real world’, but this lack of respect for civilisation does not come without a comeuppance. In some ways Rooster’s Wood is a fully functional ‘green world’, meeting many of the criteria that the comedic trope employs regarding nature, freedom and magical tendencies. Although it can also easily be argued that the area is more a source trouble and pain for the characters of Jerusalem, and Johnny himself, than it is a place of liberty.
It is easy to label Rooster’s Wood as a place of danger and violence due to the occurrences that take place throughout the play, especially when we look at the dramatic ending. The vast examples of
Without him and his home, the characters like The Professor, Lee, Ginger, Pea, Phaedra and Tanya would be suffering the discouraging lives that their suppressive town supplies. All that Johnny does is continuously aim to provide the people around him with a non-judgemental place where they can feel free to behave as they wish without being made to feel anything but worthwhile, and mostly this is what ‘Rooster’s Wood’ gives. Also, as Northrop Frye has observed: “even the green world suffers from confusion and at times even discord”, so it is only expected that the characters must suffer some hardship within their perfect