Away Michael Gow Analysis

‘Personal growth and reconciliation through love are the predominant concerns in Away’

In the play Away personal growth and reconciliation through love are the predominant concerns that have been represented throughout the play. Personal growth through love is evident in the characters of Coral and Roy and reconciliation through love is evident in the characters of Vic and Harry. Gow uses techniques such as symbols, music and lighting to show how personal growth and reconciliation is shown through love.

Personal growth is a major theme in Away. Coral at the beginning of the play is shown to be not coping with the death of her son. In Act 4 scene 3 Tom writes a play about letting go and growing. Throughout this play we see how Coral begins to accept her son’s death. In addition to the acceptance of her
Gwen is represented to the audience as a bitter, controlling judgmental, bossy woman. Throughout the play, Gow softens our attitudes towards Gwen various scenes of humour and anecdotes. However by the end of the play Gwen has shown personal growth through love. Act 4 is a powerful scene because Vic and Harry tell Jim and Gwen about Tom’s illness, through this scene we can see how Gwen has grown personally as she shows some emotion towards Vic and Harry that she wouldn’t normally show at the beginning of the play. Gwen continually relied on ‘Bex’ when times got tough and she couldn’t handle the situation. Through her personal through Gwen can hardly swallow the drug and is beginning to sort out conflict with her loved ones. This scene is juxtaposed to pervious scenes where Gwen walks away from problems or makes up excuses for them. Through her personal growth due to love Gwen has learnt to accept the life she is living and to be grateful that she isn’t going through what Harry and Vic are going through with their son