Posner

Question 1

‘I’m a Jew. I’m small. I’m homosexual. And I live in Sheffield. I’m fucked.’ (Posner)

Answer 1

Posner is an outsider and is a representative of those who are not accepted by society. Minority.

Question 2

‘Because I was late growing up I am not included in this kind of conversation.’ (Posner about the boys excluding him)

Answer 2

This, again demonstrates how Posner is an outsider on the fringes of society. He is, not necessarily discriminated against, but treated as different.

Question 3

‘The difference is, I didn’t lose any relatives in the dissolution of the Monasteries.’ (Posner when talking about the Holocaust)

Answer 3

He’s Jewish, and the fact that he is not ready to put the holocaust ‘in context’ shows just how recent WW2 was. Anti-sematism still haunts the Jewish people. This again highlights how Posner is very much a minority on the fringes of society.

Question 4

‘Our eyes meet, looking at Dakin’ (Posner)

Answer 4

Posner is gay, and spends the majority of the play pining after Dakin. The way he does this is in a stereotypically ‘feminine’ manner.

Question 5

‘Of all of Hector’s boys… the only one who truly took everything to heart, remembers everything he was ever taught… he has long since stopped asking himself where it went wrong.’ (Mrs Lintott about Posner)

Answer 5

Posner ends up a sort of sad and lonely figure in the novel and seems to be unable to cope with the adult world. Perhaps he is undone by the inability to assert his own view or identity on something apart from a devotion / reliance upon the regard of others. (‘Keeps a scrapbook of the achievements of his one time classmates.’ pg108)

Question 6

‘He puts out his hand and for a minute it seems as if Posner will take it’ (Hector reaches his hand out to Posner)

Answer 6

Shows how Posner and Hector are connected- they both are gay and they both seem to live rather pitiful lives at the end of the play.