Martin in Maydays

Martin Glass in David Edgar's Maydays undergoes a series of changes over the course of the play. His character changes can be examined on two fronts: his family background and his friends.

First, Martin's family has a significant effect on his character. His middle class family had lost much of its influence and presteige prior to his birth (26). Very conscious of his background, Martin feels unsure of himself. Throughout his conversation with Jeremy on pages 26 and 27, I am reminded of Steven Daedelus in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in that both characters entertain radical thoughts and harbor resentment at their families for losing their estates, and they feel the need "to forge their destinies" (113). In this latter way, Martin never changes, though he grows more accepting of his place in society.

Martin's goal of resisting the bomb after the "dustbowl" of 1945 (Hiroshima & Nagasaki) is tempered only by his friends, particularly Jeremy, who unknowingly contributed to Martin's radicalism because of news coverage of his speech in I.1. Showing his naïvety, Martin wishes that he were "a red at Trinity ... who'd been to Spain" (33).

Not too long thereafter, however, Martin moderates, declaring himself "not ... a joiner" (40) of the "prosiac" (39) Socialist Vanguard in which he tried to participate as little as possible, saying tersly, "I agree," "Go on," etc. Nonetheless, he eventually joins as the fire of improving the common man's lot is rekindled in his mind (60). He eventually assumes a major role, yet Martin's character is such that he refuses to take "more positions than the Kama Sutra" as the party line changes (82). Eventually, he is kicked out of the SV, and what he had previously rejected, he now embraces. Literally, this change is represented in his treatment of the 6th paperboy (compare 77 to 80). As he later explains, he "caught a cold on a parade ground" (88). In other words, Martin is less accepting of the 'festival ideology' of socialism. Moreover, he rejects "isms" (112), the Communist ideology in general (98), the "illusions of the working class" (93), infamous Cambodian communist Pol Pot (143), and the "nihilist(ic)" (122) idea of the New Jerusalem (139). No longer an idealist, Martin points out how the British left has stunted the progress of the working class. Martin thus completes his transformation into a conservative.

In short, Martin Glass in Edgar's Maydays begins dogmatically socialistic, but he eventually moderates and becomes a moderate conservative. The factors influencing this change include his family and friends, especially ex-Communist Jeremy.