“Education? It’s asking questions all the time” Proletarian Revolution in Arnold Wesker’s Roots

“Education? It’s asking questions all the time” Proletarian Revolution in Arnold Wesker’s Roots

Dr Natasha W. Vashisht

St.Stephen’s College

Delhi University

In terms of his role among the defining generation of

the 1950s in Britain, Arnold Wesker along with dramatists

such as John Osborne and Harold Pinter was influential in

holding the baton against the vacuity of drawing room

theatre, replacing it with a more visceral working class

model. Wesker’s special contribution to the British theatre

lies in dramatizing the working class participation in the

socialist movement of Britain. The working class people had

neither appeared before the British audience, nor talked

about politics and protest. Wesker came closer than any

other English dramatist to demonstrating that social realism

was not a doctrinaire but an exceptionally potent means of

conveying a rather rational theatrical emotion. Wesker’s

utopian dream of a happy human brotherhood founded on

egalitarian ethics sharply contradicted the post-war

disenchanted scenario. Compared to the political commitment

of Brecht, Osborne, Miller and Sartre, Wesker’s political

1

beliefs are rather sheltered. Commenting on his plays,

Stephen Daldry who directed the revival of his play The

Kitchen in 1994 iterates that “his plays are an obvious

expression of left-wing ideas and dreams and hopes, but he

is never for the moment dogmatic, and more in that Royal

Court tradition of liberal humanism.”

(www.educationguardian.co.in).

Interestingly, Wesker refuses to be labeled. He

rejected the various tags that emerged in the late 1950s –

Angry Young Men, Theatre of cruelty, Theatre of the absurd,

Kitchen-sink-dramatist et al – since they would give a

stagnant image of his work. On the contrary, he views

himself as a free spirit and explains the versatile and

enduring quality of his plays by the fact that he lets his

“material dictate its own inherent style.” Further, he

feels that the epithet ‘political plays’ is rather unhelpful

for understanding a play as “theatre of the absurd” or

“theatre of cruelty”. Such labels merely cripple the

perception of the audience and enable academics to

“compartmentalize the phenomenon of art and choke it with

theories gasping to be rejigged whenever another wave of

innovative artists emerges…. what matters is the quality of

the content, whether the writer is being honest and

perceptive about it, and whether it touches emotions or

intellect or both at a profound

level.”(www.arts.guardian.co.uk). Wesker’s Jewish roots and

2

experiences along with a humanist-socialist belief is the

driving force behind his poetics. John Russell Taylor

observes: “It is difficult to separate the plays from the

man, to look at the plays as works of art rather than as

sermons preached by Wesker’s mouthpieces.” (147).

The social realism of Wesker’s early plays was greatly

admired as it brought a markedly fresh content to the

British stage. The cadences of speech and rhythms of the

working class characters as manifested in the portrayal of

Jewish working class life; the nature of socialism and the

cultural poverty of the proletariat were distinctly at odds

with the accents and attitudes of the upper-middle classes

who had hitherto dominated the British stage. His first

play, Chicken Soup with Barley (1958) was an honest account of

the impact of the Communist movement on a Jewish East End

family like his own, Roots (1959) revolved around the

enlightenment of a Norfolk girl and I’m Talking about Jerusalem

(1960) dealt with an experiment in rural living. Wesker’s

credentials as a politically engaged writer were

consolidated by The Kitchen (1961), a realistic evocation of

life in a restaurant kitchen and Chips with Everything (1962), an

autobiographical narrative that drew heavily on his national

service in the RAF. Commenting on the success of his early

plays, Harold Hobson in The Times in 1962 wrote: “This is the

left-wing drama’s first real breakthrough, the first anti-

establishment play of which the establishment has cause to

3

be afraid. This is something to be discussed and re-

discussed, admired and feared.”

(www.educationguardian.co.uk)

Wesker feels that the underprivileged can create a

visible identity for themselves with the help of education

and exposure to art. Herein lies the utopian aspect of his

drama that distinguishes him from the other new wave

dramatists as well as from other socialists. Wesker has

dedicated his art to the task of teaching, enlightening and

enabling the masses to share his enthusiasm for culture. The

issue he grapples with especially in the Trilogy is pointed –

how to make the proletariat aware? How to bring culture to

them? Wesker believed that this could be achieved by writing

plays for the proletariat and executing his personal

convictions through organizations such as Centre 42.

Established in 1962, Centre 42 was a cultural

organization that sought to provide a platform to all those

artists who wanted to make contact with a larger and more

popular audience. The endeavor was to create a permanent

home of all the arts acting as a reservoir of talent.

Evidently, its rationale was to provide a platform that

would act as a pool of creative and professional talent,

thereby making arts more broadly acceptable. Along with

writers such as Shelagh Delaney, Doris Lessing, John McGrath

and Bernard Kops, Wesker wished to bring the artist and

public together without the intrusion of an intimidating

4

organization. Charles Marowitz rightly observed that, this

establishment was fashioned “as a weapon with which to

combat the forces that were merchandizing and vulgarizing

art in Britain (21).” Another critic commenting on Wesker’s

socialist endeavor opined that his enterprise promises to be

at least an “instructive experiment in mass culture

(Thompson 7-8).” Through Centre 42, Wesker simultaneously

attacked the British cultured classes to whom such projects

appeared audacious.

A common yarn weaves Wesker’s dramas: How can the

ordinary man in a modern mechanized and consumerist set-up

survive and fulfill himself? His plays try to understand the

polemics of modern man’s, particularly the working class

man’s struggle to comprehend himself in society. Wesker

believes that this fulfillment is possible only in a

socialist society. Though Wesker professes to be a socialist

artist, he can be described as such only in liberal terms.

A socialist writer generally calls for a proletarian

revolution for doing away with economic disparity in

society. But Wesker takes an original and innovative

approach to the problem and calls for a proletarian cultural

revolution among the working class through education and

exposure to art. According to his view, it is only by making

the passive mass of the proletariat better educated that an

authentic revolution would be brought about in Britain.

Wesker, here, is different from the orthodox Marxists in his

5

approach to the working class problems and perhaps has more

faith in the power of human brotherhood or the socialist-

humanist doctrine to affect change. Wesker himself pointed

out that the Trilogy deals with different theories of

socialism. Chicken Soup with Barley “handles the Communist

aspect,” Roots concerns itself with the personal aspect, and

I’m talking about Jerusalem “is a sort of study in a William

Morris kind of socialism.” (qtd in Ribalow 35)

Roots, however doesn’t seem to be overtly concerned

with the personal aspect of Socialism but education in the

broader sense. Education then is the fundamental subject

matter of the play as it helps to suggest the lack of it as

symbolized by the intransigent conservatism in the mind of

the country folk, their compliance, and their refusal to

awaken to new sights and sounds, new ideas, new feelings. It

seems as though all that matters to the country folk is an

inert acceptance of whatever is being thrust upon them by

mass entertainment and consumerism. Wesker says in the

preface to the Trilogy that, “I am one with these people: it

is only that I am annoyed, with them and myself

(www.contemporarywriters.com).” His annoyance is at the lack

of a worthwhile aspiration in his characters, or at their

own unwillingness to imagine a better life and realize their

utopian dreams. Wesker says that a number of themes bind the

Trilogy together. At one level, it documents the progress of a

family; at another level, it is a play about human

6

relationships; on a third and most important level, “it is a

story of people moved by political ideas in a particular

social time.” (qtd. in Harold Ribalow 35)

Roots then, clearly expresses Wesker’s consternation

over the indifference of the working class towards

ameliorating their lot and finding a voice. However, Wesker

feels that the accountability for their apathy lies not

merely with these people and he indicts other members of

society as well. Bernard Levin has pointed out:

The villain in Roots is the society that treads these

people into the dirt and then affects to despise them

when some of it gets into their clothes and won’t brush

off. It is, of course, a fiercely political play,

despite its very few overtly political references: Mr.

Wesker, I take it is a Socialist, not because he thinks

that the working class people are the best in the land,

but because he does not. The play, after all, is called

Roots. . . If the roots are poisoned, the plant will not

flower: if the plant flowers, there must be healthy

roots below. (2)

Wesker speaks up stridently for these hesitant farm

labourers realizing the fact that they are capable of

intelligence, learning, comprehending their social

conditions only if they are educated properly and exposed to

culture. Laurence Kitchen has made a pertinent point about

Roots by saying that “Instead of luxuriating in outworn

7

proletarian gestures of protest, it faces up the fact that

ignorance, not poverty is the enemy now to be grappled with

in Britain (Kitchen 113)”. The play is a satire on the

culture of consumerism which is a by product of the

complacency inherent in the attitudes of the working class

due to the policy of liberalization The play can then be an

invective on the brutalization of man by mass culture in its

depiction of the self-realization of its protagonist Beatie

Bryant. She establishes her identity not through

revolutionary acts, but in discovering her potential and in

her power of expressing herself by asking questions. For

Wesker, education of the working class is an important

aspect of Socialism. Through Beatie Bryant and her boyfriend

Ronnie Kahn (who never appears in the course of the play)

Wesker experiments with the education of the Bryant family.

Despite his refusal to be pigeonholed as a proponent of

the Kitchen-sink-drama, Roots clearly seems to champion it in

its naturalist setting ( Beatie Bryant cooks, cleans,

teaches her mother about high culture, and even takes a

bath). Ronnie Kahn, her boyfriend, never appears in the play

but his presence is felt strongly through Beatie Bryant who

is madly in love with him and is constantly quoting him and

parroting his socialist stance to her family. Beatie returns

from London to her family in Norfolk and awaits the arrival

of Ronnie whom she plans to introduce to her family before

they get married. Ronnie is an intellectual and an idealist

8

who tries to make Beatie develop an interest in her

surroundings and forces her to think on her own; to not only

have an independent opinion but voice it too. The paradox

revolves around Beatie’s lack of fluency with the language

when she muses, “An English girl born and bred and I

couldn’t talk the language – except for to buy food and

clothes (16)” and Ronnie’s fluency with the same symbolized

in particular through the lines, “Language is words . . .

its bridges, so that you can safely get from one place to

the other (16).”

Beatie returns to Norfolk and tries to teach the same

socialist doctrine to her family. Her family members

however, reified and inarticulate are content to live amidst

the dirt and squalor. She tries to talk to them incessantly

of Ronnie and his ideals about the importance of culture and

socialism. But she fails to make an impact on their minds.

Her relatives have neither any political and social

consciousness nor any desire to systematize their own lives.

They accept the status quo without asking any questions.

Through their intransigence and apparent ennui Wesker shows

“how difficult it is to awaken the farm labourer to the

wider world, to classical books, to great music, to politics

(Ribalow 43).”

The theme of education is logically brought to the

forefront through the juxtaposition of the cultural life of

the Bryant family with the yardstick of what Ronnie has

9

taught Beatie – books versus comics, art versus

entertainment, discussion versus mindless chatter and

rational activity versus mental stagnation. The conflict

between the binary oppositions is brought out structurally

through series of flashbacks. These flashbacks make Ronnie

come alive in the present and in a way foreshadow Beatie’s

future enlightenment.

The essential variance is made manifest when Beatie

goes to the house of her sister Jenny and brother-in-law

Jimmy. There, she instinctively picks up a comic and

reminisces how riled Ronnie would get when she used to read

the comics he brought for his nephews. Annoyed, he would ask

“Christ woman, what can they give you that you can be so

absorbed (14).” In her stubbornness, Beatie used to get a

copy of Manchester Guardian, sit with it wide open with a comic

behind it. This defiant act would once again provoke a

retort from Ronnie:

RONNIE. Playing an instrument is fun, painting is fun,

reading a book is fun, talking with

friends is fun – but a comic? A comic for a young

woman of twenty-two?. (14-15)

Jimmy, on the other hand scoffs at the people who enjoy

books, painting, classical music. Ironically, When Beatie

asks Jimmy whether he is aware of the Minister of Parliament

for their constituency; he lashes out at her thereby

10

expressing the working class’s resistance towards attempting

to restructure their condition.

JIMMY. You got a boy who’s educated an’ that he’s

taught you a lot may be. But don’t you come pushing

ideas across at us – we’re all right as we are. You

can come when you like an’ welcome but don’t bring

no discussion of politics in the house wi’ you’

cause that’ll only cause trouble. I’m telling you.

(19-20)

This makes Beatie acknowledge that she too has an

analogous quality in her. Ronnie who likes to discuss

everything encourages Beatie to ask questions. But Beatie

awkwardly admits, “I’m like mother, I’m stubborn (20).”

Heredity and environment threaten to eclipse Ronnie’s

instruction. She guiltily remembers how Ronnie would get

angry at her: “Why don’t you ask me woman, for God’s sake

why don’t you ask me? (21).” But ironically, it is not that

Beatie does not want to ask questions, she does not know how

to ask as yet.

In the second act, she lashes out at her mother for not

exposing her to art and culture, for not giving her any

ideas. She say’s to her mother, “What kind of life did you

give me? . . . You did not open one door for me. . . . Did

you care what job I took up or whether I learned things? You

didn’t even think it was necessary (53).” The pathos deepens

11

when her mother hardened by custom is incapable of

comprehending Beatie’s frustration.

MRS BRYANT. I fed you, I clothed you, I took you out to

the sea. What more do you want. We’re only country

folk you know. We en’t got no big things here you

know. (53)

In the same scene, the opposition between art and

entertainment continues when Mrs. Bryant asks her what makes

a pop-song third-rate and a classical song first-rate,

Beatie, again venerates Ronnie’s ideas by quoting the way he

would answer the same question to her.

RONNIE. Give yourself time woman. Time, you can’t

learn how to live overnight . . . Talk and look and

listen and think and ask questions. (41)

When Mrs. Bryant switches off the classical song

playing on the Radio, Beatie explosively vents her

irritation and in doing so becomes the spokesperson for the

working class.

BEATIE. Mother I could kill you when you do that. No

wonder I don’t know anything about anything. I

never knowed anything about the news because you

always switched off after the headlines. I never

read any good books because there weren’t any in

the house. I never heard anything but dance music

because you always turned off the classics. I can’t

12

ever speak English proper because you never talked

about anything important. (53)

Maybe Beatie is trying to explain to her family that

questioning one’s own behavior and making an effort are the

means to improve one’s life. Perhaps she’s trying to posit

Wesker’s own beliefs that the working class does not have

any roots; that they merely devour what is presented by the

radio and televisions and third rate newspapers that show

chic and trendy pictures instead of political news. But

ironically, these pop singers and actors so bereft of a

timeless appeal will top the charts only for a short time

and soon be relegated to the forgotten lists. On the

contrary, works of art sustain themselves even today due to

their enduring appeal.

In his essay, ‘Art – Therapy or Experience,’ Wesker

points out, that art is a serious activity and not simply a

hobby. He insists that the people of England need to look to

art to “fill in” their leisure hours:

To associate the need for art with the increase of

leisure is false; the difference is

the real and important one because it affects our

approach. You don’t read, go to

theatres and listen to music because you’re bored or

because there’s nothing to do

– this reduces art to a mere makeshift. You read books

out of a burning human

13

need to share another man’s thoughts and experiences,

out of a compelling curiosity for the story he has to

tell; You listen to music because without it your

spirit must dry and shrivel; music is a release, a

stimulant, a need – like a blast of fresh air – not a

mere noise to fill the silence between bored bites of

food. (47)

Wesker as a “committed artist” (qtd. in Ribalow, 145)

believes that arts are the means through which men are given

the chance to comprehend the marvelous nature and the

complexity of their lives. This conviction is reiterated in

the same essay where he says that, “the artist’s work is a

battlefield where ideas are fought and values affirmed.”

(47)

The climax of Roots comes when Ronnie’s anticipated

arrival fails to occur. Beatie has already invited her close

relatives home to introduce them to her lover. The family

receives a letter from Ronnie that says that he was breaking

off his engagement with Beatie. Mrs. Bryant reads out the

letter aloud.

RONNIE. If I were a healthy human being it might have

been all right. But most of us intellectuals are

pretty sick and neurotic – as you have often

observed – and we could not build a world even if

we were given the reins of government – not yet any

rate . . . (68)

14

Benumbed, Beatie finds herself in an ambivalent state.

She is in a catch 22 situation, as she has assimilated

neither Ronnie’s Humanist-Socialist ideals nor has she cast

off the narrowness of the Bryant’s way of looking at things.

At this juncture, instead of receiving the support of her

family, she gets a resounding slap from her mother and

subsequently spurned by her relatives. Her mother

sarcastically says, “Go on – you say you know something we

don’t, so you do the talking. Talk – go on, talk gal (71).”

At this moment of intense pressure Beatie ventilates.

Yes, she does not speak in Ronnie’s plagiarized clichés: she

has a voice, an opinion of her own. The dramatic curtain

falls on her discovery of her mind and she confesses to her

mother.

BEATIE. You are right – the apple does not fall far

from the tree, do it? You’re right, I’m like you.

Stubborn, empty, with no tools for nothing. I got

no roots in nothing. (71)

This in fact proves to be a blessing - in - disguise

for Beatie and foregrounds her discovery of expression.

Suddenly Beatie realizes that she is now doing her own

thinking. “I’m not quoting any more,” she announces

victoriously. Literally undergoing a symbolic rebirth, she

exults: “I’m beginning on my own two feet – I am beginning

(74).”

15

It may as well be deduced at this juncture that the

title of the play is deceptive. When one talks of one’s

roots in the conventional sense, one thinks of an enriching

family tradition replete with culture and respect for the

past. But in this play the Bryant family has nothing that

Beatie can be proud of. They are disassociated from the

system that they work for and rather than belonging to a

community, the Bryant’s drift wherever the tide beyond their

control takes them. The romantic conceptions about the

country people is debunked and exposed as a sham by

emphasizing upon the alienating circumstances of the

twentieth-century agricultural world. They have become

misfits in the agricultural world and the play might have

been called “Roots” as the characters have none.

At the same time, the play could also be seen as a

quest for finding one’s roots as is manifested through the

theme of education wherein Beatie finally begins to ask

questions, voices an individual opinion thereby successfully

finding her “roots”. Thus, it’s evident that Beatie’s growth

more or less controls the play’s internal structuring. In

fact, “it is on the effectiveness of Beatie Bryant that the

play stands or falls. She is shocked by Ronnie’s defection

into awareness and articulacy (Hinchliffe 93).” She realizes

that the desire to procrastinate amongst the farm labourers

is their own “bloody fault” because “they take the easiest

way out.”

16

Wesker, here, seems to be giving a constructive

suggestion for elevating the lot of the working class

people, instead of simply directing his diatribe against the

Establishment. Beatie is transformed. She discovers her

latent powers, as well as becomes an ambassador of the

working class. The unearthing of her power of expression may

as well be taken as Wesker’s predilection towards the hope

that the working class may one day find their own language

to demand a culture of their own in which they can be socio-

active instead of simply being reticent. Wesker muses that

it is only by making the static mass of the proletariat

better educated and exposed to culture that a real

revolution would be brought about in Britain. Education

would give them an awareness of their lives; awaken them to

the value of refinement of cultured living. It is not only

the Trade Union Movement that ensures Socialism in a

country. It is the dissemination of knowledge and education

that would equip them to lead a distinguished and

sophisticated life.

Wesker’s debate is that Socialism does not merely

denote an equitable distribution of the fruits of culture.

Socialism according to Ronnie is, “living, it’s singing,

it’s dancing, it’s being interested in what go on around

you, its being concerned about people and the world around

you (55).” Sarah Kahn in Chicken Soup despite being

disillusioned with the failure of the communist movement

17

stoically refuses to lose sight of the socialist ideal. For

her socialism is “a way of life.” She questions Ronnie:

SARAH. If the electrician who comes to mend my fuse

blows it instead, so should

I stop having electricity? I should cut

off my light? Socialism is my light,

can you understand that? . . . I’m a

simple person, Ronnie, and I’ve got

to have light and love.(73-74)

Sarah, like Wesker, is not concerned with economic

analysis but with moral imperatives. Moreover, one could not

bring Socialism to a country by making speeches, but perhaps

one could pass it to someone who was near you as is believed

by Wesker in the guise of Ronnie in the play. Ronnie’s

thinking becomes Beatie’s own and at the conclusion of the

play, we see her using the language fluently. Her thoughts

and ideas combine in a cohesive concurrence with language

and words.

Interpreting the play from a contemporary standpoint, I

do feel that Roots was not aimed at chastising a special

group, i.e., the working class. Maybe Wesker also wanted to

caution the educated class not to take advantage of the

ignorance and complacency of the uneducated classes, and

rather help them recognize the use of education like Ronnie

did for Beatie. After all, it was Ronnie who awakened in her

18

an insatiable thirst for knowledge and in doing so saved her

from the “fire” of ignorance.

Indeed, the play is relevant today too in its endeavour

to show that people can change classes, or step over the

boundaries of their educational limits. Unfortunately, most

people want to get out but do not know how; so it’s a kind

of a vicious circle. If the parents do not break out of it,

the children will not be able to break out of it either.

This wall between the classes can be broken down. If the

less educated class wishes to begin the movement, the

educated class has to reach out and extend their hand and

help them cross the wall. Maybe after some time the “wall

will get smaller and smaller. People need to learn that the

wall is existent only in their heads and it is not difficult

to surpass this wall once the non-collaborative process of

questioning begins.”(www.gs.cidsnet.de)

Wesker has always believed that through art we may be

able to understand and to some extent change social

injustices, thereby giving some semblance of meaning to

life. He says in his essay ‘The Secret Reins’ he says that,

“I would give anything to be able to convince myself that as

an artist I can do no more than ply my craft and trust that

the little ripples that my pebble has caused will grow in

ever-widening circles.” (4)

Beatie, for instance knows that she cannot bear having

these uneducated roots and succeeds in breaking out from the

19

dull and dreary confines of her class. She realizes that art

and education has the potential to stir the human spirit.

But one person’s realization of maturity and fruition is

really not the advent of a utopian society. But yes, it can

be called a beginning as each and every voice matters.

Wesker’s socialist ideas are tellingly espoused by Ronnie’s

mother Sarah Kahn in Chicken Soup with Barley, wherein she tells

Ronnie, “If you don’t care you’ll die.” No matter what the

obstacles, no matter what the disillusionments, one should

still care enough for others in order to make a difference

in their lives. A little love and care offered by Ronnie to

Beatie has been responsible for her enlightenment. It is

possible that in time Beatie too might “save someone from

the fire” as Ronnie has done. Thus, Beatie who discovers the

intrinsic difference between being impassive and dynamic,

consuming and contributing stands tall at the end of the

play, articulate at last.

WORKS CITED

Marowitz, Charles. “Oh Mother, Is it worth it?” Theatre Arts.

May, 1962.

Thompson, Dennis. “British Experiment in Art for the

Masses”, New Republic. Nov., 1964.

20

Levin, Bernard. ‘Introduction’, Roots. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books ltd., 1959.

Wesker, Arnold. Roots. Chandigarh: Arun Publishing House,

2004.

Wesker, Arnold. ‘Art – Therapy of Experience’, Views No. 4.

London: Spring, 1964.

Wesker, Arnold. ‘The Secret Reins’, Encounter. London, 1962.

Laurence, Kitchen. Mid-Century Drama. London: Faber and Faber,

1960.

Ribalow, Harold. Arnold Wesker, Twaynes English Author Series. New

York: Twayne Publishers, 1965.

Hinchliffe, Arnold. British Theatre: 1950-70. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell, 1974.

‘Contemporary Writers: Arnold Wesker.’ 23 February, 06

<http://www.contemporarywriters.com >

‘Arnold Wesker: The smaller picture.’ 30 April, 07

<http://arts.guardian.co.uk>

‘Literary Encyclopedia: Arnold Wesker.’ 30 April, 07

<http://www.litencye.com.>

‘Education – it’s asking questions all the time.’ 23

February, 06

<http//www.gs.cidsnet.de/englisch-online>

21