Childhood: Mickey and Eddie Meet
When the Twins First Meet
The scene where Mickey and Eddie meet as seven-year-olds is one of the most important in the play. Russell presents them as instant friends — they share sweets, play games, and instinctively like each other. They even become “blood brothers” by pricking their fingers and mixing blood. The dramatic irony is devastating: the audience knows they are real brothers, but they do not. This innocent ritual foreshadows the blood that will be spilled at the play’s end.
Russell uses the children’s friendship to make a powerful point about class. At seven years old, Mickey and Eddie see no barriers between them. They like each other for who they are, not for what they have. It is only the adult world — represented by Mrs Lyons and the social system — that separates them. Russell suggests that class division is not natural but socially constructed.
When Mickey and Eddie first meet as children, they become instant friends despite their different backgrounds. Russell uses their innocence to argue that class barriers are not natural — they are imposed by adults and society. The children’s blood brother ritual is dramatically ironic: they are already real brothers, and the blood imagery foreshadows their deaths.
Language and Class in Childhood
Even at seven, the twins speak differently. Mickey uses working-class Liverpool dialect — “Gis a sweet”, “the bogey man”, slang and contractions. Eddie uses Standard English with a wider vocabulary — “marvellous”, “smashing”, formal phrasing. The contrast is comic but significant: their language marks them out as belonging to different classes even before they understand what class means.
Russell uses Eddie’s fascination with Mickey’s language for humour. Eddie is delighted by swear words he has never heard and wants to learn Mickey’s rough vocabulary. Conversely, Mickey is impressed by Eddie’s confidence and knowledge. Each boy envies what the other has — a pattern that will intensify with devastating consequences as they grow up.
The children play cowboys, Indians, and war games. These games are harmless at seven, but Russell uses them as foreshadowing. The toy guns they wave around as children become real guns in the final scene. The game of “playing dead” becomes actual death. Russell structures the play so that the joy of childhood is always shadowed by the tragedy the audience knows is coming.
Linda joins their games as a confident, fearless girl — in the park scene with the stolen gun she is the only one of the three to hit the target. She becomes the link between Mickey and Eddie, and her presence creates the love triangle that later contributes to the tragedy. Even in childhood, Russell plants every seed of the adult conflict.
Mrs Lyons’ Fear and Separation
When Mrs Lyons discovers that Eddie has been playing with Mickey, she is horrified. She immediately recognises the threat — not to Eddie’s safety, but to her secret. She rounds on Eddie for behaving “like a horrible little boy” like Mickey’s crowd, and forbids the friendship. When this fails, she persuades Mr Lyons to move the family to a wealthier neighbourhood. Russell shows that class separation is actively maintained by the middle class: it does not happen naturally but requires constant enforcement.
Mrs Johnstone, by contrast, is warm towards Eddie when he visits. She gives him sweets and treats him kindly, even though she knows he is the son she gave away. The contrast reinforces Russell’s characterisation: working-class generosity versus middle-class protectiveness.
Mrs Lyons actively enforces class separation by forbidding Eddie’s friendship with Mickey and moving the family away. Russell shows that the class divide is not natural — it has to be maintained by those who benefit from it. The middle class must work to keep the working class at a distance.
Russell presents childhood as the only period when the twins are equal. Before society imposes its categories, Mickey and Eddie are simply two boys who enjoy the same games, share sweets, and want to be friends. Russell’s political argument is that class is an artificial construction: if two genetically identical children can be best friends across the class divide, then the system that separates them is the problem, not the people.
The dramatic irony of the blood brother ritual intensifies this point. The twins have to perform a ritual to become brothers — not knowing they already are. Russell uses this to suggest that social bonds are arbitrary: real biological connection means nothing in a class-divided society, while a childhood game is treated as sacred.
The Narrator’s Warnings
Throughout the childhood scenes, the Narrator interjects with ominous warnings: “the devil’s got your number” and references to the price that must be paid. These interruptions prevent the audience from fully enjoying the children’s happiness. Russell uses the Narrator to create a sense of inevitability — the audience is constantly reminded that this story ends in death, no matter how joyful the present moment seems.
The Narrator’s ambiguity is deliberate. He could be the voice of fate, the voice of society, or even the voice of Russell himself. His function is to keep the audience questioning: is this tragedy caused by superstition, by class, or by both?