Blood Brothers (Grades 9–1) York Notes

Willy shows many different kinds of love in the play. There’s love between parents and children, for instance. The love between Mickey and Edward is more like friendship, but both of them love Linda. This makes her really important, because both boys love her and this causes the tragedy.

First of all, Linda and Mickey are friends, because they are from the same background. This is shown by them playing in the street together near the start. Linda saves Mickey from Sammy throwing something at Mickey. ‘I stopped it with the bin lid.’ This shows her love for Mickey. She protects Mickey when the other children are bullying him, and this also shows love, because she stands up for him, but Mickey finds it hard to show love back to her, he still shows he likes her and this is shown when he says, ‘She’s a girl but she’s all right.’

In the 1960s, relationships were stricter. You had to get married, and girls and boys wouldn’t usually play together. Still, Linda, Mickey and Edward become friends, so that shows they are unusual.

Later, Mickey and Linda start going out, because they’ve liked each other such a long time but because Mickey couldn’t tell her, she didn’t know it. But then they go out and end up getting married, because Linda gets pregnant. This shows love, but also, maybe they shouldn’t have got hitched because it was only because of the baby, cos in the 1960s, you couldn’t have a baby without being married. So perhaps they are getting married for the wrong reasons.

This is also shown because Linda and Edward start having an affair, even though this is wrong. This would have been seen as bad, as people back then were more religious. This shows how strong their love is, as Edward wouldn’t want to do anything wrong, but still he sees Linda. He puts her before his friendship with Mickey. But also the play shows they should have been together, really. Linda says to Edward, ‘I suppose I always … loved you, in a way’. Then Edward asks her, ‘marry me’. But it’s too late, as she’s already married Mickey.

If Linda had married Edward, he would have been able to take care of her better than Mickey. She does love him, they just couldn’t say it because of Edward and Mickey being friends, and also she loves Mickey, so it’s really complicated. This is because they are in a love triangle and don’t know how to deal with it, all three characters make wrong decisions, and no one ends up happy.

This is what makes the play a tragedy, because everyone ends up with the wrong person. In the end, it’s because of Linda that Edward and Mickey kill each other, showing how dangerous love is when it happens in the wrong way, because it has the power to kill people, and to make them do crazy things. This is because love stories don’t always have a happy ending, they can also be tragic, like in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. This is why both of the main characters die for love in the end, and Linda is left alone.