Saved (Modern Classics)

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But what Bond exposes in Saved is our capacity to deny the violence in human nature – the kind of violence Bond saw evidence of in Coventry just a few years ago, when he heard a parent say to a child: "If you don't shut up, I'll kill you. We also witness individuals who are incapable or uncomprehending of their responsibilities even in the aftermath of atrocious, violent deeds.

Harry tells Len that Len's problem is that he didn't get to fight in World War II : "Yer never got yer man", i. In the wake of the baby’s death, the value systems of various characters are exposed, and the depictions are grim. But, although that scene is still painful to watch, Bond's skill lies in showing how violence permeates domestic life: Pam and Len gradually turn into a scratchily abusive couple who seem destined to become like Pam's parents who use ostentatious silence as a form of marital revenge. It's telling that Holmes, who first encountered Saved in a student production when he was 17, has no recollection of witnessing the baby's death.This reading of the play corresponds with how Len reacts to the child’s death, for instance when Mary says, “I feel sorry for ‘er about the kid” (Bond 88) and Len responds, “One a them things. Bond depicts Fred as a man who indulges his primitive side, just like Pete when he also participates in a child’s death in the incident with the bus (Bond 28). Doing a gendered reading forty-plus years after the initial production draws the misogyny of Bond’s creation into stark relief.

Violence may be viewed similarly to Mary’s comments on sex because as Freud informs us, “men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment” (24). Liberty has undergone restrictions through the evolution of civilization, and justice demands that these restrictions shall apply to all. January 1st arrives amid lingering holiday indulgence, often leaving us with hangovers and half-hearted promises of change. The complexity of Len’s response to the attack helps shift one’s focus to the prospects of the next generation. Maybe it isn’t perfect, but living out has been a staple of Oxford student life for decades, and it’s one of the only similarities it has to the typical student experience at any other university.Freud asserts that one vital component of culture is “the ways in which social relations, the relations of one man to another, are regulated, all that has to do with him as a neighbour, a source of help, a sexual object to others, a member of a family or of a state” (17). Neither Fred nor the audience can really understand why Len should be friends with the man who has stolen his lover from him. Interestingly, he may not even be aware of how this mechanism of the super-ego keeps his actions so restricted. Bond directs us to look to his play as a comment on a whole society where violence is a litmus test for dysfunction.