Adrian Flynn's Burning Everest: Themes of Rejection and Bullying

‘Burning Everest’ a Critical evaluation
Show how the playwright Adrian Flynn, makes the audience aware of the difficulties which the character Jim has to overcome and how this influences our impression of his character.
‘Burning Everest’ is a play by Adrian Flynn where the main character has to overcome many challenging difficulties. As the play progresses the readers impressions of the main character changes. This essay will talk about how the playwright influences our thoughts of the main character and how he overcomes many challenges.
‘Burning Everest’ is a metaphorical play which discusses various themes such as rejection moving on and bullied at school. The three main characters are Jim, Miranda and Stubby each of these characters influence each other in different ways. Jim moves in with a new family after his Mum leaves him. This triggers his coping mechanism, a day dream of climbing Chomolungma the biggest mountain. We soon realise that this happens every time Jim is faced with a problem. As the play continues the audience’s first impression changes and we start to feel sorrier towards him.
‘Burning Everest’ explores many themes. One of the main themes is rejection. Jim is rejected by his mother Sharon several times and each time he reacts in the same. ‘Jim, I can’t look after you, I can’t.’ Here Jims Mum, Sharron, is telling him that she can’t cope with him anymore and that he needs to leave. Jim reacts by going into his coping mechanism, his day dream of climbing Chomolungma. ‘I’ll climb it, I will climb it.’ This tells us that Jim is focused on doing anything.
Another theme that Adrian Flynn writes about is Jim having to deal with bulling towards him especially from the teachers at school. This makes us feel more sympathetic for him. ‘Boil Him in oil and serve him with chips.’ This is one of the teachers from school expressing his anger towards him by saying abuse
The finally theme that Flynn writes about is moving on. This is when Jim has to deal with everything that happened with him and that’s going on around him. In the play there is a lot of moving on with life for example. ‘I and Matt are starting a family on our own.’ Jim reacts by turning angry and rejecting the rest of his of the world. Sharon moves to put her arm round Jim, he backs away. This is when Jim blocks out the world and goes into his day dream of climbing Chomolungma.
Jim reacts in certain ways to different to characters some them change our impression of him. His reactions are often linked to destructive behaviour. They are triggered by speech and actions from the characters. One of the main triggers is his Mum Sharon. ‘We all wish you and your mother got on’ this when the Wellends tells Jim the truth. He reacts by shouting at everyone and calls Mr Wellend crazy. ‘I might be stupid, but at least I’m not mad.’ This causes Mr Wellend to phone tony and take Jim back. Jim reacts by running away and telling his best friend to go away. ‘Go on clear of plastic man.’ This is when Jim tells his best friend stubby who has a plastic leg to go away.
Jim has to deal with lots of difficulties he manages to cope with these by going into his daydream of climbing of climbing Chomolungma. With every difficulty he has to deal with, the audience has to watch Jim struggle in his day dream. ‘I told you; I don’t want lumbering with someone else’s kid when we get married.’ Matt Sharon’s boyfriend is telling Jim that he is getting married to his Mum; this turns Jim’s life around when everything was going good. ‘Everything I wanted was going to be mines I could see it. The blizzard started with blinding fine snow that cut into my eyes and mouth. I couldn’t see anything any more. I was lost.’ This quote links to other one because it was going well with Jim then suddenly his life is turned upside down. This happens when the blizzard starts or when he finds out his mum is getting married in the other quote, this makes us feel more sympathetic towards him. At the end of the play Jim gets over his day dream when his life gets sorted out and he ends up burning his poster of mount Chomolungma as he doesn’t need his escape to his day dream.
In conclusion Adrian Flynn’s play ‘Burning Everest’ shows the main character as a stroppy teenager dealing with his grans death and how has to overcome many challenging difficulties. As the play progresses our opinion of the main character changes because we see that he is dealing with much more such as rejection and bullying. I liked the play because with every new scene you find out something else and how the story is almost realistic.