Characteristics Of Each Person In The Play Billy The Liar Essay Example

motivation for liking Billy comes solely from the desire to make it to a higher position within the social structure.

On the other hand Billy's passion for Rita comes from her easiness to seduce and animal passion in response. However the problem with this specific case is the motivation is only skin deep, Rita is consistently criticising Billy's actions with remarks such as "Tell me you're not cross...Put another record on we've heard that one before" and has no respect for his parents which is the opposite to Barbara and her wishful wants to be accepted into the fisher house hold.

Billy almost uses Barbara as a sport as well as a challenge, he does this by telling her the most outrageous lies and making her believe them to be reality. This contributes to the failure between Billy and Barbara. In short, Barbara is extremely gullible and too old fashioned in this new-formed generation evolving from the population. On other numerous occasions Billy tries to 'liven' Barbara up making an effort to implement his challenge. Such examples of his efforts are his useless 'passion pills' and the Devonshire cottage, another ploy to liberate her idealistic 'sex after marriage' concepts. Barbara sees Billy as someone to share her old-fashioned dreams, she is more passive in the relationship but maintains control over her uneventful 'sex life' using oranges as a defence mechanism to kill Billy's adventurous mood.

Liz, once again is separated from the other two because of Billy's genuine love for her, the remarkable thing about their relationship is that they are attracted to each other for the same reason. They are part of the new-formed generation rising above

their elders [despite his lack of vocation Billy can still be considered part of this movement]. Interestingly Billy receives a lot of criticism from his parents and piers over his choices [Liz is considered undesirable by most of his friends and acquaintances] yet he still is not put off by this factor: Rita maintains control throughout this relationship by her use of crude expressions and clich�s picked up from regular visits with friendly American airmen. "Ooh! Look what's crawled out of the cheese."Many of these terms are in response to Billy's childish lying, unable to deceive Rita who can pick them out with a casual ease. The reason for her apparent effortlessness is due to her streetwise quality unbeknown to the other two allowing her to pick up Billy's deceiving lingo and replying with sarcasm or criticism.

"Pull the other one its got bells on it."The only way Billy manages to control Rita is by using a physical response to calm her vocal harassment. Due to his lack of control Billy is usually defending himself from Rita's judgements which regularly include Billy's own family [Rita shows a definite lack of respect for her elders coming from a poor and uneducated background]Billy likes to dominate the relationship with Barbara because of its unique context. He usually fails as Barbara whips out her famous oranges as defence mechanism used to passively distort Billy's plans. This situation is very dissimilar to the one faced by Rita because of the unbalanced sway of domination. This places the relationship once again at opposite ends of the field.

Liz manages to keep Billy in tact using visual expressions rather than verbal jargon, common to

Rita characteristics. In this situation Billy is ultimately more dominant within the affair but Liz still has to use sufficient of persuasion to keep Billy motivated. Billy's liking for Rita comes solely from her animal passion and ease to seduce. Because she comes from a poor, un-educated background her attitude to sex and marriage are not very advanced. She uses her lack of knowledge and understanding to her advantage gaining materialistic items such as the long anticipated ring.

She will stoop as low as it takes to gain such items and this level even stretches to Billy's own friends.Barbara once more is completely the reverse of Rita coming from an old fashioned, well brought up family she has her own contrasting values, which are strictly abided to in all cases throughout the play. Kissing is only just permissible in Barbara's outlook on life and anything else is off limits until bound in holy matrimony. Barbara also is the kind of girl who will never cheat or go out with numerous men the opposite of Billy who has spread his bets and monopolised half the girls in his town.

She is quite surprised and confused when she realises what Billy has accomplished during the period of their relationship. "Have you been untrue to me Billy? I've got to know."Once more, Liz is the 'middle man' because of her median views. She is not Virgo intactica nevertheless she doesn't use her views to her advantage or to gain materialist objects like Rita. On the other hand she would never wait to find a husband to discreetly have a child when no one is looking, views common to Barbara's puritan beliefs. Despite

her loss of virginity she is happy to "make babies - lots of them" with Billy after a small amount of urging and influential advice.

The relationship between Rita and Billy is undoubtedly going to end extremely quickly. The reason for this short-lived affair is down to the grounds that the motivation in tact between the two characters is only skin deep. Its point was only for each individual's personal gain and not for the couple as a whole.The same fateful end is imminent for Barbara and her idealistic, old-fashioned relationship.

The reason for this well-chosen ending is that the context for the whole relationship was to be a form of entertainment or sport providing Billy a gateway to pass on all his troubles created by work and his other relationship with Rita.Liz yet again is separated from the other two. Seeing as she was the only one Billy really cherished, it is most likely that this couple will unite themselves as part of the new-formed generation.