Education

SIVE

  • Some characters are well educated e.g. the doctor, priest, nuns & the schoolmaster

  • At the start of the play, Sive is aiming for a similar path (to finish her education)

  • “Poetry and verses” - Sive (when Thomasheen and Seán Dóta come to the Glavin house and Thomasheen asks Sive what she is studying)

  • Other characters did not recieve similar opportunities

  • Mena resents Sive for this. She was working at Sive’s age

  • “Why should that young rip be sent to a convent every day instead of being out earning with a farmer. Good money going on her because her fool of a mother begged on the death-bed to educate her” - Mena

  • Thomasheen Seán Rua left school early and is illiterate as a result (evident when he asks Mike to read the letter Liam wrote to Sive)

  • “I had no time for schoolin’ when I was a boy. Read it now an’ don’t be makin’ trouble for yourself” - Thomasheen when Mike tells him to read the letter himself

  • Religion was a privilege and viewed as a luxury. Women’s education was undervalued and they were expected to take on more domestic roles instead


KNIVES OUT

  • Most characters are very intelligent and more than likely well educated

  • Harlan is a wealthy and successful crime author

  • “Big fan. Big… His plots, like something like ‘A Thousand Knives’ with the - I don’t want to spoil it but - the cow and the shotgun, like where do you come up with that?” - Trooper Wagner when interviewing Walt in an early scene

  • Linda is a well educated, self-made business woman

  • “It’s my company” - Linda (corrects Lieutenant Elliot when he asks if her and Richard work for a real estate firm)

  • Harlan pays for Meg, Joni’s daughter’s college

  • “You know, Dad’s paying for her crypto-Marxist, postdeconstructural feminist poetry theory whatever major, she could’ve stuck around for the cake” - Linda when Meg leaves early from Harlan’s party

  • Marta is a fully qualified nurse who is privately emplyed by Harlan

  • “I don’t work for a VNA. Harlan hired me directly.” - Marta when being interviewed by the detectives


COLDER THAN HERE

  • Education only plays a minor role

  • Very minimal references to education

  • Myra mentions that Jenna learned to smoke when she was in school

  • “You learned to smoke in a graveyard, didn’t you? You and that boy from the comprehensive” - Myra

  • References to Alec being a chartered surveyor (he must have attended college)

  • “Bloody pipes banging woke me. ‘Marry a chartered surveyor,’ they said, ‘least your house’ll always be sound’.” - Myra

  • Education is seen as a normal part of modern upbringing. It is expected that most characters will complete their education