LOOT: McLeavy

Question 1

McLEAVY as MATERIALISTIC
1. “Is the fur genuine?”
-> + Fay’s Opportunistic Nature - FUNERAL SETTING!

Answer 1

1.
-> Misguided in his placement of concern…
-> Therefore societies obsession with the material is comical and farcical in its nature.
- Reference to 60’s American Consumerism
Obsession -> materialistic British society: (FAY:
“Thirty-three and a third” - bargaining/advertising
speech -> vs. horrible action of stripping and burying
a dead body, storing loot from robbery in her coffin).
CONTEXT
Farce:
- The audience laugh at jokes in which they themselves/society are the subjects, eg. “Have they had a merger?” -> mocking ignorance of British society, and blind faith in establishment.

Question 2

McLEAVY as MISGUIDED
1. (HAL) “They almost came to blows over the pronunciation”
2. “My wife isn’t in her grave.”

• Edna Welthorpe -type characters get mocked -> exactly the kind of critics/people who walked out of Loot (British Needlework etc.).

Answer 2

1.
-> Veneer of concealed violence.
-> Pedantic, engrossed.
- Much like not only Orton’s own father, but the
general British public -> misplacement of concern,
naïve and obsessed with their own worlds - “Wake
up”… and smell the corruption in society.
- “As a good citizen I ignore the stories which bring
officialdom into disrepute”
-> Excessiveness (eg. “catastrophe) - mocked:
- Comedic plosives in “the blooms are breathtaking”
2. Ignorance - she’s in a wardrobe… anarchic, farcical events.

Question 3

McLEAVY as a VICTIM/POWERLESS:
1. (FAY) “You’ve a weak heart”
2. (McL) “Oh, Sacred Heaven” / (T) “…“not bad language”
3. (T) “a most dangerous criminal.”
4. “(a last wail)”

Answer 3

1. She takes control over his feelings -> complete power/manipulation.
2. Victim of skewed/corrupt morals.
3. Highlighting the ease with which language (especially when coming from someone with power, despite how corrupt or undeserving they may be) can label people/impact supposed fact/truth.
4. Childish, intense feeling of his personal suffering:
   -> eg. “Strewn with the injured and dying. Blood, glass.”
   
   • Dramatic, poetic, over-descriptive -> self indulgent.