Education of the republic of uzbekistan andizhan state university named after zakhiriddin mukhammad babur

Depiction of the life of novel Saturday Night and Sunday by Sillitoe

The novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is split into two unequal parts: the bulk of the book, Saturday Night, and the much smaller second part, Sunday Morning.

Saturday Night
Saturday Night begins in a working man's club in Nottingham. Arthur Seaton is 22 years old, and enjoying a night out with Brenda, the wife of a colleague at work. Challenged to a drinking contest, Arthur defeats "Loudmouth" before falling down the stairs drunk. Brenda takes him home with her and they spend the night together. Arthur enjoys breakfast with Brenda before her husband Jack gets home from a weekend at the races.
Arthur works at a lathe at a bicycle factory with his friend Jack. Arthur keeps his mind occupied during the mundane and repetitive work through a mental collage of imagined fantasies, and memories of the past. He earns a good wage of 14 pounds a week, and Robboe, his superior, fears he may get in trouble for letting Arthur earn so much. Soon Arthur hears the news that Jack has been switched to nights, which pleases Arthur as he can now spend more time with Jack's wife. At the same time, Arthur carries on with Brenda's sister Winnie.
During another night out at the pub, Arthur meets Doreen, a young unmarried girl with whom he begins a relatively innocent courtship — all the while keeping Brenda and Winnie a secret. However, although Jack is oblivious to his wife's infidelity, Winnie's husband Bill catches on — and Arthur's actions catch up with him when Bill and an accomplice jump Arthur one night, leaving him beaten and bed-ridden for days.
Sunday Morning
Sunday Morning follows the course of events after Arthur's assault. When Doreen comes to check up on him, Arthur finally comes clean about his affairs with Brenda and Winnie. Doreen stays in a relationship with Arthur despite his dishonesty; Brenda and Winnie disappear from the story. By the end of the novel, Arthur and Doreen have made plans to marry. [10]

Alan Sillitoe’s first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, first published in 1958 rather burst into that territory which came to be described, in literature and especially in theatre, as that of ‘The Angry Young Man’ Playwrights such as Wesker and Osborne were writing about working class experience in a way which celebrated and showed the vigour of a kind of angry, cynical awareness of class politics, and how the establishment worked to grind down the working class.

Sillitoe himself, who died in 2010, had left school at 14, and failed to get into a grammar school – despite the fact that as the adult man would prove, he was fiercely intelligent, with a ferociously enquiring mind, and deeply thinking.
Saturday Night and Sunday morning is the story of a deeply flawed, often unlikeable, mendacious young man of extreme charm and more self-reflective depth than his heavily boozing, serially philandering and enjoying of fisticuffs would indicate. Arthur Seaton, 21, works in a bicycle factory (as did Sillitoe himself, aged 14, and his father before him). He both hates and despises the daily grind of the factory, and prides himself on his manual skills – and the ability to outwit the bosses and the time-and-motion-study piecework rate organisers. He has a good friendship with an older man working in the same factory. Nonetheless despite the odd twinge of guilt, his friendship does not prevent him from having a passionate affair with his colleague’s wife. Nor does that passionate affair prevent him from simultaneously embarking on another affair with a second married woman, and risking the safety and reputation of the two women, who know each other, and have a theoretical loyalty to each other. The women, Seaton, and the husbands all exist within a close knit community. To add to the complexity, Seaton also plays around with a young unmarried woman hoping to catch a husband. As well as charm, Arthur has that much to be admired prospect – at this point, a steady job, and his skills at the lathe are netting good results, on piecework.
Womanising, heavy drinking and a keen sense for sharp dressing fashion are Arthur’s passions. Sillitoe shows that his antihero, despite the fact that he prefers to settle disagreements with his fists and workman’s boots, has a sharply analytic mind. In fact, he muses in an almost existential way on what the point of it all is. Arthur not only loves danger, and excitement, and womanising, but there is a side to him which has passion for something more quiet – days spent solo, fishing by the riverside: a pastime naturally giving the space for reflection.
On one level this book can be said to chart a journey from wild rebellion towards an acceptance of, in the end, accommodating and settling into accepting family life, marriage and parenting.
At times, in this first novel, Sillitoe does labour some of his imagery a little overmuch – fishing, swimming with and against the stream etc. are metaphors which hold a multiplicity of possibilities, and I did feel that by his second outing, the wonderful novella The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, he was trusting his reader, and himself, much more, and paring back. [11]
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning became of course an iconic Karel Reisz film, launching the bruised, powerfully sexual young Albert Finney on his road to stardom, a perfect casting for Arthur Seaton. Although Sillitoe himself wrote the screen adaptation for that 1960 film, it is perfectly obvious, from the quality of the writing in the novel, that he did not write the book FOR the film, with ‘this would make a brilliant (and money-earning) film, as his objective. Something I sadly feel is rather different now – there are writers (and many are not very good!) clearly writing with the idea of film, video and TV as their springboard, so that narrative, and often implausible narrative at that, becomes the driver, and operatic desire to shock the tool.
Sillitoe has character, multifaceted, at the heart of his novel. Arthur Seaton is powerfully and deeply realised, and thus becomes an archetype. Writing the archetype, and not the individual is what makes for two-dimensional writing, but if the writer, as Sillitoe does, makes the individual both unique and reflective of his cultural time and place, he will become fully rounded, as the complexity of his humanity is explored
Finney’s portrayal has all the dark, brooding quality of Seaton, Sillitoe’s book, whilst that is very powerfully there, also has savage humour, a cruel celebration of some kind of ability to laugh and self-mock. Perhaps there was a desire to launch Finney as Britain’s answer to Brando. Reading the book I have been more aware of Arthur’s mocking, self mocking laughter – less obviously bitter, more biting and mordant in how the writer shapes things
The fifties was a period in which writers for the first time voiced the clash between middle class and working class values that had started with the industrial and hence economic fluctuations which structured the new hierarchical order of the communities. Due to their dependence on the work opportunities afforded by the ruling layer of society, it was the working class who suffered. Their complaints were largely directed against the unjust treatment they received from the middle class which was bound to traditionally arranged social and political establishments.
In this social turbulence, men1 both young and adult, had a more privileged position than did the women who also had to go through a process of socio-economic change. The effect of this socio-economic change was stronger on the working class men because they had always more chance to be employed than the women and; had already started to adopt new attitudes both in the workplace and in the domestic environment as early as World War I. [12]
As Stanley Atherton points out, "... For centuries, Englishmen have been particularly aware of hierarchical patterns in their society". The world wars and their effects on the social status increased this awareness. Certain values relating to gender roles, youth education, marriage and sex together with social and individual approaches to these values, took new shapes. As it was the labouring class which had suffered most from the economic inequality, the projection of those values especially on the younger generation of the proletariat was more obvious than it had been among the middle class. Thus, "the economic deprivation of working classes" was evaluated as an unavoidable social reality. This reality, in general, constructed their way of looking at life. It brought a perspective radically different from that of the middle class. It included many aspects from tightly knit family-life to their conventionality, from their non-political solidarity to their ambitious attitude to education, from their dull fatalism to their attitudes towards drinking, gambling, and sex, from their views on politics and religion to their mildly hedonistic outlook.
This set of working class attitudes originated from the fact that the middle class and the aristocracy, whom Richard Hoggart classifies as "them" in The Uses of Literacy, had held certain social positions as bosses, politicians, policemen, teachers and civil servants. In opposition to the word "them" Hoggart uses the term "us", referring to the working classes themselves, and their power. Because of the economic changes that the working class was subjected to, particularly during the interwar period, the working class nourished a feeling of angry mistrust against "them". Actually, it was this mistrust and alienation which led to the basic values of "us". The economic and industrial situation after the Second World War years brought new job opportunities and this increased the demand for labour. Owing to this sudden demand, the working class was relatively better paid and more comfortable than it had been after the First World War. Still, what was essential was that the middle class was closer to the career and promotion opportunities, whereas life had no vertical acceleration for working class families. Hence, social stratification was quite fixed for the working class man. Life was slow moving and based on physical pleasures like drinking, eating, sex and sports. When the world out of their own enclosed sphere needed them, they were theoretically ready to serve "them". Undoubtedly there was a clash between "them" and "us" but from the middle class and capitalist perspective, it was an undeniable fact that these two opposing classes which radically divide, indeed classify, the social structure into two, as capital and labour, had needed each other for many years.
Although there are certain significant attitudes which determine and express working class identity, it is still rather difficult to find strict stereotypes for working class culture since the social consciousness belonging to both the middle and the working class has a fluidity. Also identity is made up of a variety of factors of which class is just one. This fluid tendency can even move from "deferential" to "proletarian traditionalism" or vice versa, that is, there might be a fluidity from middle class values, which are mostly obedient to the ruling layer of society, towards the rebellious working class values or the other way round. John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood deal with these slippery characteristics of the different layers of society by referring to the possibility of the reversal of what one might expect from middle and working class culture characteristics. As an example, they refer to and cite middle class movements towards collective means of self-advancement in the sixties, particularly in the form of trade-union organisation, whereas the working class focused on life at home. E.P. Thompson too emphasises this idea of fluidity and regards it as an unavoidable social reality which renders the determination of two distinct classes almost impossible. Class happens when men start to share the same interests as a result of common experiences which differ from those of the other men with different experiences, but this does not mean that there are strict divisions between these interest groups in terms of value judgements. For Thompson it is history which shapes the formation of the class concept through progress. Class can therefore only appear through shared experiences and established social institutions; but, in addition to this the working class was able to preserve its traditionalism and its values through different periods of time. For the working class, the inter-war and post-war years were affluent years; for this reason, they were not unwilling to adopt the new technical developments and luxuries. That is to say, although working class people were cautious enough to keep their norms alive, they enjoyed the penetration of the capitalist enlightenment into their detached lives. But the social institutions and experiences continued to exist to remind the public of the class they basically belonged to. [13]
The sharing of a set of values, beyond the pleasure-seeking carpe diem attitude of the working class, reinforced a sense of community and class solidarity among this group. But as Richard Hoggart emphasises, this is not a very self conscious sense of community" if it were, it would bring about political alignment and action. However, it arose mainly from the habit of living close together and being members of the same group for a whole lifetime. In addition to the quite general reasons, another contributing factor is the feeling of security and stability. The sense of belonging to a certain group or community, which does not change radically, offers a sense of reassurance for an individual. Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, as can be understood from their dialogue published as "Working Class Attitudes" in New Left Review, agree upon many aspects related to working class tradition. They both insist that it must be preserved; Hoggart suggests that ".. prosperity, (due to the post-war industrial revival among the working classes) does seem likely to weaken that sense of solidarity which had its origin in a feeling of common need and could be reinforced by living together in a large industrial district." If one thinks about youth culture it may be easier to see that new forces are more influential and dominant among the young people, despite the fact that old attitudes still remain in circulation. This phenomenon can be thought of as relevant to Raymond Williams' model of the classification of the cultural elements as "dominant", "emergent" and "residual" . Within this scheme, residual elements of a culture are different from the dominant ones. Both are related to the past and always active in the cultural process as an "effective element of the present". Certain experiences which cannot he lived in the sphere of the dominant culture are practised on "the basis of the residue". Dominant culture includes the values, practices and experiences which belong to the essence of community and are shared by the majority. Williams gives "organised religion" and "the idea of rural community" as examples of "predominantly residual" concepts. On the other hand, the emergent elements are those which are created continually as new relationships, values and meanings. If one looks to youth and also to working class culture, one can see that the post-war prosperity did not spread new experiences and values homogeneously through young working class culture, rather some old values were shared with the "parent culture" or, the culture as a whole, of which the youth culture was a part. Youth cultures are regarded as belonging to the emergent sub-cultural category. They are most of the time analysed in terms of their relation to the dominant culture. Working class youth might have conflicts with the dominant values of the parent culture, but nevertheless for both, class was seen "as being gradually, but inexorably, eroded as society's major structuring and dynamic factor". For both, the concept of class does not and can not bring any compromise to the middle and working class values, although it has gradually wasted away as a concept. Where the young and adult in the working class culture come to an agreement is in the recognition that such a concept structures society and functions as a dynamic element in this structure. [14]
In this dynamism gender plays an important role, and if one considers gender, what is really striking is the fact that, although more women went out to work during and after the Second World War, this did not bring about a change in working class values which have always been represented as much closer to masculinity and brought to mind the position of man as wage earner or bread-winner, earning a living to feed his family or contribute to the salary of his parents. The developments in labour in terms of gender paralleled the developments in youth culture. There was an affinity, moreover, between 'masculinity' and 'youth culture', because the young boys were liable to be more reactive and expressive than the young girls against the oppressive treatment of the ruling class. For this reason, from the culture and gender based perspectives, it is not possible to exclude the masculine youth culture, which has always been open to new social influences and tended to be affected by social discomfort; further, the exponents of this culture have always been ready to react against the rules of "them".
The togetherness of the "young" and "the masculine" conveys a carefree attitude. Related to this attitude, living in an industrial area in a small town seems to produce a closer unit among workers than living in a large city.
This commentators have opined that men in such circumstances have an air of great self-respect. This is one of the most obvious characteristics of working class masculinity in the fifties and the sixties. It is important to distinguish between the identities of the working class during the inter-war and the post war period. In the former, the average British industrial worker was not well paid, and often out of work; this financial deprivation created a lot of troubles which upset the individual and kept going the attitude of mistrust and hostility towards "them". Even in the post-war period the strong memory of pre-war days conditioned the outlook of many of the workers. The relatively well off worker of the fifties and the sixties still remained suspicious of, and biased against, the middle class and its values. Unlike his immediate predecessors in the past, he was not particularly anxious about losing his job and 'he [could) no longer say honestly that he [was) a member of an unprivileged class".
The impact of new developments and utilities in the quality of labour was minored in social change, particularly the change in working class culture due to the economic forces which had already begun in the inter-war period. The Second World War and the post-war situation intensified changes that had begun to appear before the Second World War. What was unsettled in terms of working class unity was the concept of a "working class family within a defensive class culture. What was disturbed was a concrete set of relations, a network of knowledge, things, experiences ..." This is actually the internal side of the situation, that is, the changes happening in society caused the archetypal family to become more isolated, and the relationship among the family members took on a different dimension. It can be said that this situation indicated the shrinkage from extended to nuclear family life. Nonetheless, the working class family did not lose its identity but preserved it in constantly altering social circumstances. Most especially the hopelessness, the frustration and the irresponsibility which became apparent after the Second World War, mostly in working class male behaviour, affected the way they lived and the relationships they built. Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, makes one feel that the integrity of the family is there, it still exists, but the monotony and the issues appearing within this monotony. as formerly mentioned above, namely hopelessness, frustration and irresponsibility add new perspectives to their appreciation of tire and the family concept during the post-war period. [15]
Alan Sillitoe is a writer who depicts this social reality in his novels and short stories. The protagonists in his early novels in particular, fall into the category of dissent. Alan Sillitoe himself followed the pattern of working class life. He left school when he was fourteen and started to work in a factory. He was aware of the discrepancy between the two classes when he was very young. After he was promoted and became the operator of a stand-up drill, he quarrelled with the foreman about the rate he was paid for his work. He left and was able to persuade some of his mates, to leave their jobs with him.This rebellious spirit helped him to portray familiar spirits in his works, which quite emphatically reveal to what extent literature can mirror the social experience Actually, Alan Sillitoe owes his reputation to those realistic stories in which he also sheds light on the ethical perspectives, attitudes and overall characteristics of working class life. His novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the one that projects these characteristics most particularly.

7.