ENGL 314 Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Rita Joe, Social Alienation, Joual
Document Summary
The stage directions at the end of the play describe the idea that her death; murder by the murders works in both a literal and symbolic manner. At the end of the play we see a conflict between two kinds of cultural traditions attempting to claim this victim in different contexts. The priest comes to claim her as a christian martyr but the first nation people reject this. George ryga revises her death to symbolise her as a kind of "political martyr. " The alienation that rita suffers is a social alienation; being cut off from a sense of community and identity. Born in 1942, in what was once a working-class neighbourhood of the city. In his dramas "the main" is a symbolic street, he wrote a lot about working-class families often set in 50"s and 60"s rather than in the time he was writting. His characters spoke in a working-class montreal dialect (joual).
