Osborne's plays present characters who flail about somewhat violently but always futilely in a hopeless world. His heroes have moved beyond hope and have accepted the despair that has infected much of modern society. Archie Rice, in The Entertainer, is a characteristic Osborne hero driven towards despair by the modern spirit. He tries to keep alive an art of the past, vaudeville, but the sense of identity that was formerly necessary has been destroyed. Archie says, "We all had our own style, our own songs." But his father answers him, "They don't want real people any more." When the individual's identity and sense of purpose is gone, he is left with the incapacity to act. For this reason, Archie's spirit is essentially nihilistic…. Archie has given in to the malaise of the age, and is beyond the point of reasserting himself…. Archie's daughter Jean is the voice of the present who offers hope through social and moral commitment. She has taken part in a demonstration against the prime minister in Trafalgar Square, and thinks the answers to the world's problems lie in the personal sense of commitment. Osborne presents a sympathetic picture of Jean at the beginning of the play, but the strength of the "social salvage unit" comes to appear quite shoddy in contrast to Archie's open pessimism as the drama develops. (p. 27)