IB English Paper 2 Example Essay – Accidental Death and Kitchen

How and to what effect are different moral values conveyed in two works you have studied?

Moral values describe deciding what actions or beliefs are correct and incorrect, just and unjust, thereby ascribing the labels of being either moral or immoral. Yet morality is subjective and in flux, influenced by time, place, culture and individual experience. Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen (1988) and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) tackle moral values in diverging ways, with Fo being far more explicit in his vision of morality, and Yoshimoto favouring a more subjective and implicit manner of exploring moral values. Fo, translated by Basden into a modern British context, aims not only at police brutality but also at the wider corrupted systems that protect and perpetuate injustice, such as the press, the judiciary, the government, and the church. Yoshimoto, however, favours a “baby doll feminist” aesthetic that rejects explicit feminist messaging in favour of centring its female protagonist as a means of combating patriarchal oppression. This essay will explore symbolism and motifs used to convey moral messages, narrative techniques including breaking the fourth wall and perspective, and ambiguous or cyclical endings to reinforce their moral outlooks.

Both Accidental Death of an Anarchist (ADOA) and Yoshimoto’s Kitchen use recurring motifs to highlight their respective moral messages, though Fo’s symbolism is often confronting, whereas Yoshimoto’s is more subtle and nurturing. In ADOA, symbols such as the window, the body cam, and the cup of tea work to expose systemic corruption within the police force and underscore the impossibility of reform. The “window” functions as a potent symbol of omnipresent truth and a reminder of the violence inflicted by authority. Through the Maniac’s repeated action of reopening it, the audience is invited to witness the unveiling of institutional lies and abuses. His manipulation of the space— “moving the furniture around”—further reflects his power to reshape the narrative and expose immorality. The body cam, a modern addition in Basden’s 2023 adaptation, is another symbol typically associated with transparency and police accountability; here, it is ironically repurposed by the Maniac to reveal injustice, inverting its intended function. Meanwhile, the motif of the cup of tea, introduced by Basden as a distinctly British cultural reference, ties present-day police complacency to Britain’s colonial past. Its association with civility is undercut by its placement alongside references to “colonial heroes” and brutality, suggesting a historical continuity of moral failure hidden beneath everyday rituals. These motifs cohere around Fo’s radical moral message that the police force is fundamentally broken and “cannot and will not” be reformed from within—it must be dismantled entirely.

In contrast, Kitchen uses quieter, more introspective motifs to explore how individuals respond to personal grief and trauma rather than institutional violence. Yet the motif of a kitchen does likewise have a political message aimed at challenging the status quo, much like Fo. Kitchens are used as a motif to represent a site of strength, creativity, and self-expression. Yoshimoto thus takes a typically feminine setting, often associated with female oppression and domesticity, and subverts the reader’s expectations of what a woman may think and feel in this location. For example, Mikage states that she loves a dirty kitchen with “vegetable droppings” and an “oil-spattered gas burner”. This could be read as a metaphor for accepting the messiness of life, much like Eriko’s advice that we ought to go through life in “muddled cheerfulness”. We also see Kitchens as a site of healing when Mikage is desperately unhappy after seeing a grandmother on the bus, which reminds her of her own deceased grandmother, yet as a result of seeing a kitchen, she goes from “the darkest despair” to feeling “wonderful”. This juxtaposition and rapid mood change reveal Yoshimoto’s moral message that happiness and healing can be found in the messiness of life. Indeed, Yoshimoto pays little mind to the stereotype of the housewife confined to the kitchen in servitude to her husband and family. This is a key aspect of “baby doll” feminism that refuses traditionally feminist narratives of oppression in favour of a happy and hopeful story of female agency. Thus, the moral message of female empowerment is not conveyed through subjecting the female protagonist to a series of attacks or explicit discussion of patriarchal oppression, but instead by repurposing sites of oppression to sites of female agency. Perhaps Yoshimoto is making a moral statement that defining women according to how they are oppressed is not liberating, and uplifting women instead is more likely to inspire change in its female readers by offering them a role model such as Mikage. Ultimately, each author uses motifs not simply for aesthetic texture but as essential tools for articulating their distinct but equally urgent moral visions—Fo’s call for radical systemic overhaul, and Yoshimoto’s quiet assertion that in the aftermath of loss, meaning can be salvaged through personal acts of care.

These symbolic environments gain further complexity through the narrative lenses that shape them, as both works explore how morality is filtered—and sometimes distorted—through the perspective of their narrators. Mikage is arguably an unreliable narrator while the Maniac, ironically, is perhaps the more trustworthy narrator of the two. Yoshimoto’s use of a first-person narrator may unintentionally create moral blind spots, limiting the reader’s understanding to only what Mikage knows or chooses to reveal. This is particularly evident in Yoshimoto’s portrayal of transgender identity. When describing Eriko and Chika, Mikage’s limited empathy undermines their gender identity through phrases like “she’s a man” or “she (so to speak).” The use of present tense here suggests that Eriko is still, in the present, a man. Yoshimoto may be not only revealing her own biases but also inviting readers to adopt these problematic moral perspectives without critical examination unconsciously. This potentially transphobic perspective is further evident when first meeting Eriko: here, Yoshimoto encourages the reader to focus first on Eriko’s physical appearance, using a semantic field of otherworldly beauty with phrases such as ‘incredibly beautiful’, ‘hair like silk’, and the ‘deep sparkle’ of her eyes. This may not seem to be problematic at first glance but then consider that Eriko also wears ‘dramatic makeup’, a ‘red dress’, ‘high heels’ and undertakes ‘night work’, thus coding her as both hyperfeminine but also promiscuous. Yoshimoto thereby aligns Eriko with the worn stereotype of transgender women as sex workers without ever exploring why Eriko has chosen this profession – is she able to get other work? Has her gender identity made it difficult for her to be accepted into a more mainstream job in the homogenous society of 1980s Japan? As a reader limited to only Mikage’s first-person narrative perspective (who never asks these questions), we are left with a shallow impression of Eriko that is largely formed by these transphobic stereotypes. Therefore, Yoshimoto’s message about the importance of centring the female experience and dismantling gender stereotypes seems limited only to cisgender women. Thus, her moral message of acceptance falls short when considering her transgender characters.

By contrast, Fo’s ADOA employs the Maniac as a metatheatrical narrator who directly challenges the audience’s moral complacency. This unconventional narrative technique makes him paradoxically more morally trustworthy to the audience, though he is untrustworthy within the play’s world. By presenting real-world statistics and facts—such as “one CCTV camera for every eleven people” or the claim that use of force “jumped by eighty percent”—he builds moral credibility and compels the audience to critically examine institutional power and injustice. His truth-telling serves as an explicit moral confrontation, starkly contrasting with Mikage’s subjective filtering. Furthermore, although plays do not conventionally have narrators in the same manner as a novel, the Maniac does function as a narrator for the audience, particularly through his breaking of the fourth wall to address them directly and guide them through the events of the play. For example, the play opens with the Maniac “waving” at the audience, immediately unsettling them by creating a feeling of being seen, and unable to hide in the darkness of the theatre as normal. Throughout the play the Maniac directly addresses them, referring to speaking louder for “the cheap seats”, encouraging them to “use the facilities” during the interval, throwing “sweets” into the crowds to mimic a pantomime and ending the play with “turning to the audience” to ask them a question: “Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?” This continual breaking of the fourth wall both alienates the audience from the fiction of the play, helping them to see that this fiction is very much rooted in their everyday reality, but also invites them to engage with the political messaging by directing questions towards them. Unlike Kitchen, Fo never allows his audience to forget that this play is merely a construct to reveal an objective truth: police brutality kills innocent people and their crimes go unpunished. Thus, the use of Brechtian theatre here effectively maintains his audience’s collusion in the events of both the play and their real world. His moral message is clear: if you know the evils of the world and take no action, you are complicit.

As the texts move towards resolution, the ambiguity of their endings continues to reflect their moral worldviews, with Fo urging ongoing resistance and Yoshimoto offering solace in self-determined recovery. In ADOA, the ending is notably ambiguous: the audience is left uncertain about the outcome of the new inquiry and whether the police officers will accept the blame. Additionally, the fate of the Maniac remains unclear after he jumps out the window. The play’s circular structure, encapsulated by the line “Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?” as another inquiry begins again, reinforces this ambiguity. The use of this question in the final lines of the play, alongside the collective pronoun “we”, suggests that the issues in the play are ones that society as a whole must reckon with: an answer must be given to the question and it is the audience’s job to supply it. This unresolved ending forces the audience to remain active rather than passive, compelling them to construct the moral message of the text themselves. By refusing to provide catharsis, the play ensures that a grain of anger remains: there is no clear resolution. This reflects the ongoing real-world issues of police brutality and the ineffectiveness of superficial reforms, emphasizing the moral value of accountability and the need for continued vigilance. In many ways, this echoes the Maniac’s earlier words that Britain lives in a state of an “eternal fucking enquiry”. The taboo language serves to reveal the Maniac’s frustration with a system that never changes and while the phrase may at first seem to be hyperbolic, the play’s conclusion reveals it is merely factual. The police officers and the state use inquiries as a tool to distract and pacify without ever committing to true change or taking accountability for their immoral actions. Therefore, as the play ends as it began, the audience comes to realise that they too are trapped in a never-ending cycle of brutality and injustice.

In contrast, Kitchen presents a different kind of ambiguity in its conclusion. The romantic pairing between Mikage and Yuichi is left unresolved, as Mikage mentions the happiness she has found “with or without Yuichi.” Despite this, the novel concludes on a far more comforting and unambiguous note than ADOA. The ending is filled with comforting kitchen imagery, using a semantic field of heat with words like “warm,” “steaming,” and “boiling.” This warm ending conforms to a more typical “happily ever after” conclusion than ADOA, albeit without a clear “prince” or romantic resolution. Instead, the resolution focuses on healing and personal growth, implicitly shunning patriarchal gender standards that define women in relation to men. This suggests that the true moral value lies in the ability to heal from grief and find joy in life’s “muddled cheerfulness.” Yet the moral message in the ending may come with the reversal of gender roles, in which Yoshimoto reverses the knight in shining armour trope found in fairytales to have Mikage instead save her male counterpart. For example, in the final scenes of the novel, Mikage rushes to Yuichi in the middle of the night and “jump[s]”, “launch[es]”, “[hangs] from a roof” as she tries to climb into the building he is staying in. Through the extensive use of active verbs, Yoshimoto once again challenges the stereotype of women as passive victims, portraying Mikage as a hero who saves Yuichi. Therefore, although the future of their romantic relationship may be ambiguous, what is not ambiguous is Yoshimoto’s moral message that women are capable of being active in their own lives and of healing from the pain that life will inevitably hand to us.

In conclusion, both texts reveal different facets of oppression— ADOA exposes systemic, institutional violence explicitly and demands political action, while Kitchen explores personal and gendered experiences of oppression implicitly, offering hope through intimate connection and female agency. Together, these works broaden the understanding of moral values by showing how literature can challenge injustice both through direct political critique and through nuanced, subjective storytelling that inspires empathy and change on a personal level. This dual approach enriches the audience’s engagement with moral questions about power, identity, and resistance.

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