Essay Questions

Why does Roy choose this play for the inmates to perform?

Roy is a highly histrionic and overly-dramatic person and so the concept of dramatic opera, with its highs, lows ahd intensity appeals to his sense of the theatrical that manifests itself in everyday life for him. However, he is also attracted to the play because he believes it will help him escape the depressing and mundane life of repetition he lives in the facility. He wants to recreate the picture that he has always had of an idyllic childhood filled with joy and love; this is a very idealistic picture that we discover Roy has invented rather than experienced

He states that he chose the play because he wants to recapture "lullabies sung to me by my beautiful mother" which is both ironic and incredibly sad; Roy was an orphan and never knew his mother, nor did he ever experience anything as loving as a caring guardian figure singing him a lullaby. The play appeals to Roy's creation of what his idyllic loving childhood was like rather than recreating his reality but it does perpetuate his dream of what he wanted his world to be.

Justin tells Lewis, " A madman is someone who arrives at a fancy dress party dressed in the Emperor's new clothes." How does this shed light on the differences between sanity and madness?

In the story of the Emperor's new clothes, the Emperor's sycophants tell the fanciful and overly-fashion conscious man that his new outfit is the most wonderful they have ever seen, but he is not actually wearing anything, and goes out naked. By making this comparison, Justin is alluding to the way in which a "madman" allows his madness to be fully on show; it's obvious because of his nakedness. This allusion develops to also show that sane people might also have elements of madness within them but they cover them, and in many cases, madness is simply situational.

The main example of this is Roy and Nick; Roy is grandiose which has no place in the institution. Nick is just as grandiose and has delusions of grandeur, believing that his moratorium and march are changing not just Australia but also the world. He is arrogant, perhaps more so than Roy, but is not locked up in a mental hospital. The allusion to the story of the Emperor's new clothes suggests that the only difference between madness and sanity is the way in which it is presented to the world.

Lewis' new job in the mental institution is ironic in his life; why is this?

Lewis, by his own admission, is a bit of a drifter without much direction. His constant job searches are motivated not by a sense of drive or ambition but by a need for money. It is luck and coincidence that he gets the job of theater director in the hospital, but it is also ironic because despite considering himself apart from the inmates - he is sane whilst they are mad - Lewis actually has madness in his ancestry. His grandmother was certified as insane and so he has the potential for hereditary mental illness in his family history. This makes Lewis the ideal bridge between the two worlds portrayed in the play; the world of the insane inmates and the world of the sane staff who work there.

This line is further blurred when Justin first meets Lewis and asks him what ward he is from. This also emphasizes that it is largely impossible to tell the difference between the sane and the insane when using superficial judgements.