Identifying Literary and Linguistic techniques

Discuss how Irwin and Posner’s relationship is presented in this exchange:

By not introducing Posner at the start of the scene as the ‘man’, Bennett allows the audience to make assumptions about who the mysterious speaker could be; this also causes a dramatic effect at the end of the scene when Posner’s identity is finally revealed. However, somehow the audience is able to depict (or at least speculate) that Posner is in fact, the man; this could be because he sets the agenda towards Irwin’s liking of Dakin- ‘I didn’t write anything about you and Dakin’. Throughout the play, we have been told of Posner’s love for him, and because the ‘man’ brought up the topic of Dakin this could also suggest his jealousy of Irwin’s infatuation for his crush.

By Irwin using the elevated/ Latinate lexis ‘meretricious’, he is trying to belittle or at least prove that he still has authority over Posner. It shows his advanced knowledge and power, and the scene shows that even five years in to the future Irwin still treats Posner as one of his students, as someone beneath him. Posner adds to this explanation, by asking Irwin what the word means and this suggests Posner may still see Irwin as having authority over him too. When explaining the word to Posner, Irwin is very flippant and doesn’t elaborate like a teacher would - ‘eye-catching, showy; false.’ Because of his use of asyndetic listing this shows that he could expand but he doesn’t have time or he just doesn’t care about helping Posner, he just wants to show off his well-developed vocabulary and hint that he is somehow better than Posner. This displays Irwin’s selfish and rude side to his personality, as well as his over sized ego and need to be the best. Later on in the scene, Posner asks Irwin to call him ‘David’ instead of his previous name, but Irwin shows no respect for what Posner wants and instead tries again to prove his authority by saying ‘I never called you David. I called you Posner. I’ll put Posner.’ This again shows Irwin's disregard for who Posner has grown up to be and that he doesn’t care if Posner has changed, he will always treat him like a child rather than the adult he has become.

Posner opens up the topic of Dakin and Irwin's ‘relationship’ between each other, and he uses an ellipsis in the sentence ‘he liked you… didn’t he?’ to show his anticipation or just realisation of what the answer most likely is. We can gather from the subtext that he uses this pause in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable truth, because he knows that he’s going to get hurt by the answer. Posner wants confirmation, as he has used an interrogative, but in a sense he doesn’t really want to know in fear of getting hurt. Previously in the scene he had used the declarative ‘you liked him.’ Which means that he had used his intuition to analyse the situation and come up with that statement, and he is basically in other words saying that it was obvious to the bystanders that Irwin liked Dakin. He must have been paying attention to all of the looks and exchanges in class between Dakin and Irwin, so there must be some truth in his words because his jealousy had made him look at both of them more closely. This part of the scene shows that the two characters aren’t really close, Posner is just curious and inquisitive about Irwin.