The Long and the Short and the Tall by Willas Hall Essay -- Long Short

The Long and the Short and the Tall by Willas HallThe play is set in the Malayan Jungle during the Japanese occur onSingapore in 1942. Seven British soldiers have different power due tothe ranking hierarchy and they have different attitudes to oneanother. serjeant Mitchem is the leader of the soldiers. He is aresponsible and good leader which is evident due to him stopping manyquarrels among his men and making decisions. For example, whenCorporal Johnston and Private Bamforth argon having an argument, Mitchemstops the argument by saying Right. Pack it in. Both of you. Next wehave Corporal Johnstone, who is second in power to Sergeant Mitchem. It is obvious that Johnstone does not have the respect that Mitchemhas. This is because Bamforth has many arguments with him and does notfollow his orders efficiently. One example of a quarrel between thetwo is when Johnstone tells Bamforth to Get your pack on Bamforth accordingly responds saying you going to inspect us, corp.? The nexthighest in the hierarchy is L/Corporal Macleish. He is a Scotsman andhas regular arguments with Bamforth. In one argument Bamforth calledMacleish a Scotch Haggis. Macleish responds telling Bamforth toWatch your mouth. However this only encourages Bamforth to continueby saying Aw, come off it, son. Where I come from its entirely a name.Then we have the four Privates. Private Whitaker operates the radioand is very shy. However, at the near end of the play Whitaker shootsthe Japanese soldier because he advanced on him. Private Evans is aWelshman and is just as pathetic as Whitaker. When Corporal Johnstonetells him to kill the prisoner as soon as he is captured using thebayonet of the gun, Evans steps back a... ...ho weinitially disliked at the beginning of the play, deliberateed out to be thesole form of morality inside the group of soldiers. Thus, we laterlearned to respect him and his defence of a person in a war situationwho greatly needed it. However, how do we fill in whether the Jap anesewill not treat the English prisoner in the same way that we treatedtheir prisoner. How interesting that Mitchem and Johnstone held backBamforth from stopping Whitaker killing the prisoner. This instrument thateven after all of Bamforths efforts, they still wanted to have theprisoner killed. Eventually, the unity of Sergeant Mitchems men isaffected because they all turn against Private Bamforth and thesoldier. If there was not the presence of the prisoner then thesoldiers would operate in their usual way with Bamforth rebelling andnot displaying any changes in his character.