British Novelist Alan Sillitoe

Sillitoe was born on March 4, 1928 in Nottingham. He was the second of five children born to Sylvina and Christopher Sillitoe, who was a tannery laborer. Both the time and social circumstance of the novelist's birth are now seen as of major importance in his later development as a writer. He was born shortly after the great economic depression when England was reduced to a subsistence economy. It was a time of high unemployment, and existence for the Sillitoes was very difficult and would later be depicted in Sillitoe's Key to the Door. the experience of living in poverty left an indelible imprint on the novelist's mind and his art (Penner 13-14).

Sillitoe left school at age 14 to help his family. This was during World War II, and the boy went to work n a bicycle plant and then escaped the tedium of fact

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attain personal identity in what seems to be an increasingly impersonal world (Penner 23). The title story of the collection is considered a masterpiece of short fiction and tells the story of a race in a boys reformatory that becomes a battle between subjection and independence. Colin is the adolescent boy who works to win the race until he comes to see that the race was created to flaunt the reformatory's rehabilitation program to the governors of the region. The boy would gain social acceptance by winning, but he loses intentionally to retain his self-respect (Matuz 385). Sillitoe's first novel shows another set of strengths, though his short stories would always be seen as his strongest fiction. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning follows the life and loves of Arthur Seaton, a bored young factory worker. He makes a good wage, has sexual adventures, and enjoys wild weekends with his cronies at the neighborhood pub. He sees the class system as essentially unfair, and he refused to be worn down by it. He does not embrace a wholly destructive lifestyle, however, in that he also takes fishing excursions and retreats to the countryside (Matuz 385). The novel was written in Majorca between 1954 and 1957. Critic John Dennis Hur
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1524
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)