Research Information System
ASGRAD - Anglophone Studies Graduate Students Symposium, İzmir, Turkey, 15 December 2025 - 16 January 2026, pp.24, (Summary Text)
Being known as one of the prominent figures of political theatre in England,
Edward Bond reacted against the sources of ongoing political and social
problems in his plays. According to Bond, the major nuisance was violence
among people which was an outcome of the capitalist social structure. The
Western society in the 21st century, especially after the Second World War,
was highly shaped by capitalism, consumerism, and therefore, struggles
between the working class and the upper classes. Bond believed that the
structure of violence has changed together with the emergence of this new
“irrational” social organisation in which the gap between social classes has
widened in accordance with the growing demands of capitalism and
consumerism. As technology has been improved to meet the demands of this
society, the means and the scale of violence have changed, too. The
individual has become helpless against the continuing and growing violence.
In his dystopian trilogy, The War Plays, Bond portrayed how dangerous
capitalism and consumerism could be at the highest level for the individual.
Being set in a nuclear war period, the first play of the trilogy, Red, Black and
Ignorant, demonstrates the corruptness of the capitalist society and the
vulnerable position of the individual in it while the other two plays, The Tin
Can People and Great Peace illustrate a nuclear holocaust. Bond’s trilogy
presents social and political criticism in the form of dystopia, a genre that is
believed to be an efficacious means to criticise social and political issues.
Accordingly, this study aims to analyse Bond’s dystopian trilogy as a reaction
against the problems in social and political structures of the Western society
such as violence.