In order to answer an essay question on any poem, it is essential that you understand what it is about. This section includes:
- The poem in a nutshell
- An explanation of the poem, line-by-line
- A commentary of each of these lines, outlining Casey's intention and message
'The Class Game' in a nutshell
'The Class Game' is a dramatic monologue addressed to an imagined middle-class listener. Casey’s title suggests that class differences are just a game; however, it’s a game that benefits people who see themselves as superior to the working class. Therefore, the poem challenges middle-class prejudice against the working class. The speaker compares her working-class identity with people who identify as middle class and gives examples illustrating her working-class background. These examples include the way she speaks, what she calls things, where she lives and her family’s occupations. The poem uses humour as well as criticism to convey the speaker’s anger and frustration, and ends with an assertion of her pride in her working-class heritage.
'The Class Game' breakdown
Lines 1–8
“How can you tell what class I’m from?
I can talk posh like some
With an ’Olly in me mouth
Down me nose, wear an ’at not a scarf
With me second-hand clothes.
So why do you always wince when you hear
Me say ‘Tara’ to me ‘Ma’ instead of ‘Bye Mummy
dear’?”
Explanation
- The speaker asks how the listener (or reader) can tell what class she’s from:
- This immediately introduces the theme of class as the poem’s focus
- The rhetorical question is repeated three times in the poem and works as a refrain, introducing examples of differences between working-class and middle-class people
- The speaker can behave like a middle-class person if she wants to:
- For instance, she can speak with a middle-class accent if she chooses:
- An “’Olly” is a marble, a small, glass ball, and speaking with one in your mouth would produce an accent that the speaker associates with being “posh”
- She can have an attitude of superiority towards other people
- She can dress like a middle-class person, with a hat instead of a scarf
- Her “second-hand clothes” reinforce her less affluent, working-class status
- The speaker’s next rhetorical question suggests that her working-class accent and dialect make middle-class listeners “wince” (screw up their faces) in discomfort
- She gives examples, juxtaposing them with how a middle-class person would speak:
- She says “Tara” instead of “’Bye” and calls her mother “Ma” instead of “Mummy dear”
- The use of diction in “Tara” and “me ‘Ma’” identifies the speaker as a working-class Liverpudlian
Casey's intention
- The poem opens confidently with a challenge to the listener/reader about their class prejudices:
- The personal pronoun “you” is direct and challenging
- It sets up an confrontational tone that characterises the class conflict addressed by the speaker
- The speaker conveys her working-class background in her diction throughout the poem:
- For example, by using “me” instead of “my”
- When the speaker claims that she could dress and speak like a middle-class person, she is implying that she chooses not to:
- Casey is also illustrating how people use self-presentation to play “the class game”
- The second rhetorical question challenges the attitudes of people who look down on working-class accents or diction:
- Juxtaposing “me ‘Ma’” with “Mummy dear” emphasises these class differences in a humorous way
- This suggests that all middle-class people speak with posh accents, say “Mummy dear” and wear hats
- Casey is humorously reflecting the judgemental attitudes she is challenging back onto those who hold them
Lines 8–13
“How can you tell what class I’m from?
’Cos we live in a corpy, not like some
In a pretty little semi, out Wirral way
And commute into Liverpool by train each day?
Or did I drop my unemployment card
Sitting on your patio (We have a yard)?”
Explanation
- The speaker repeats her challenging refrain, and offers more comparisons of working-class and middle-class stereotypes:
- These comparisons reflect middle-class prejudices about working-class people
- She lives in a “corpy” (a council house), rather than “a pretty little semi” (semi-detached house) in Wirral (a middle-class borough of Liverpool)
- The speaker’s rhetorical question about dropping her unemployment card refers to middle-class prejudice about working-class people being out of work
- The juxtaposition of “patio” and “yard” emphasises differences in diction, rather than real differences, because both words mean the same thing
Casey's intention
- Casey identifies and challenges further examples of class prejudice
- These include middle-class ideas that working-class people are all unemployed and live in council houses:
- The reference to housing also indicates the difference in income and wealth between the middle and working classes
- Middle-class people are likely to have higher incomes and be able to afford bigger houses in suburban areas
- The reference to her “unemployment card” also reflects the fact that middle-class people found it much easier to get work at the time Casey was writing
- Emphasising the different names people use for the same things (“patio” or “yard”) also draws attention to the absurdity of class prejudice:
- The prejudice isn’t about the things themselves, but about what they’re called by different classes
Lines 14–19
“How can you tell what class I’m from?
Have I a label on me head, and another on me bum?
Or is it because my hands are stained with toil?
Instead of soft lily-white with perfume and oil?
Don’t I crook me little finger when I drink me tea
Say toilet instead of bog when I want to pee?”
Explanation
- The speaker repeats her refrain, suggesting that people can’t tell what class she’s from because she has not got a label on her head or bum:
- Instead, they “read” her class through other details about her appearance and behaviour
- Her hands look like she does manual work (they are “stained with toil”) instead of being soft, white and perfumed, as hands that don’t do manual work might be
- She doesn’t raise her little finger when she drinks a cup of tea
- She says “bog” instead of “toilet” when she wants to “pee” (urinate)
Casey's intention
- Repeating the refrain draws attention to the real reasons middle-class people judge the speaker’s working-class status:
- The reference to having a label on her “head” or “bum” may be acknowledging the way people “label” others
- The references to “soft lily-white” hands and “crooking” her little finger to drink tea satirises middle-class snobbery:
- Using stereotypes like these once more reflects snobbish attitudes back onto those who hold them
- Casey uses terms like “bum”, “bog” and “pee” to shock and to challenge middle-class prejudices
Lines 20–26
“Why do you care what class I’m from?
Does it stick in your gullet like a sour plum?
Well, mate! A cleaner is me mother
A docker is me brother
Bread pudding is wet nelly
And me stomach is me belly
And I’m proud of the class that I come from.”
Explanation
- The refrain is changed slightly, from “How can you tell?” to “Why do you care?”:
- The speaker is implying that her working-class status is a problem for middle-class people
- She emphasises this by asking if her class irritates them like something unpleasant and difficult to accept (“Stick in your gullet (the throat) like a sour plum”)
- “Well, mate!” is an assertion of the speaker’s position and implies “whether you like it or not”
- The speaker presents her family’s occupations; her mother is a cleaner and her brother works on the docks (Liverpool is famous for its dockyards)
- She calls bread pudding “wet nelly” and her stomach her “belly”
- She ends with an assertion of pride in her working-class heritage
Casey's intention
- The change in the wording of the refrain to “Why do you care what class I’m from” implies that the speaker has encountered people who do care and have displayed class prejudice towards her
- The simile “like a sour plum” indicates the distaste people have shown her because of her class:
- Although her metaphor is humorous (she imagines someone choking because they’ve encountered a working-class person), there is genuine anger in this simile
- This is because class prejudice of the type Casey illustrates always disadvantages working-class people
- The aggressive tone of “Well, mate!” represents this anger
- The shortened phrases and line lengths at the end speed up the poem:
- This indicates the speaker’s anger at the prejudice she’s experienced
- The quick succession of symbols of her working-class background – her family’s jobs and her names for things – increases the defiance of her tone:
- Her blunt statements feel like a series of punches thrown in a fight
- The “knockout punch” is her assertion of class identity and pride
- The fact that the speaker needs to assert her pride in her class identity suggests that other people have tried to make her feel ashamed of it or used it to belittle her