Anticipating the text

Family rituals

Activity

On page 86, the Chorus says: 'The family that eats together / Will not eat each other'.

What traditions or rituals are special for your family? Perhaps you all eat an evening meal together, or maybe you all have Sunday lunch as a family? Perhaps you all go to the cinema together at the weekend? Do you have ways of doing things, like delegating the chores, or deciding who uses the bathroom first in the morning, that all the family knows and follows?

• Talk about the things you do regularly which you think could be regarded as traditions.
  
  How much do you like them? Do you think they are sensible and fair? Do some of them irritate and frustrate you?
  
  Share your ideas with the rest of the group.
  
  
• Look again at the stage directions as the family come on stage at the beginning of the play (page 86). Clove carries Mermer on her back and Gregor carries Grimm. Why do you think the characters do this? What purpose could it have? What could such a tradition teach Clove and Gregor? What does it suggest about how old age is seen in the Shepherds' society?