Comedy of Menace in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party Instructor: Basaad Maher Mhayyal

م بسعاد ماهر محيل

doi:10.36473/ujhss.v1i7.981

Abstract

Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1957) clearly portrays the condition of modern man where there is a real communication failure among the characters. Through this play, Pinter tries his best to reflect this fact. He uses a lot of pauses and silences, i.e., the usage of language is no more significant to modern man. Pinter considers silence to be more powerful than the words themselves. That’s why long and short pauses can be seen throughout all Pinter’s plays. Modern man has been living in a state of alienation. All the characters are isolated by their own desire not to communicate with each other and to lock themselves away from the world. They are unable to express their feelings. Therefore modern man has buried himself in life just like the character of )Stanley( in this play who has buried himself in the boarding house in an attempt to be away from his own society after being rejected as a pianist by the people of that society. The play deals with human deterioration and the process of death. The disaster in the play does not lie in the idea of death, but in the more terrible state of being dead in life, as in )Stanley(’s case, who hides himself in a room ceasing all his relationships with life outside. This paper deals with Harold Pinter as a well-known British playwright who has his own unique style that is called Pinteresque, his language, and how he uses silences and pauses in his play The Birthday Party. It consists of an abstract, Pinter’s comedy of menace, his play The Birthday Party, and a conclusion

Highlights

Modern man has been living in a state of alienation
This paper deals with Harold Pinter as a well-known British playwright who has his own unique style that is called Pinteresque, his language, and how he uses silences and pauses in his play The Birthday Party
Pinter is known for his so-called comedies of menace which humorously portray people trying to communicate as they respond to an invasion or threat of an invasion of their lives. His drama was first considered as a variation of absurd theatre, but later it was considered as comedy of menace. (URL:http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559080/Pinter_Harold_htm) The term „comedy of menace‟ best describes the early plays of Harold Pinter

Summary

Comedy of Menace and Pinteresque

Pinter is known for his so-called comedies of menace which humorously portray people trying to communicate as they respond to an invasion or threat of an invasion of their lives. (URL:http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559080/Pinter_Harold_htm) The term „comedy of menace‟ best describes the early plays of Harold Pinter These plays include that the world outside is threatening; the circumstances look ordinary, but there is a generalized, undefined horror setting beneath the action. (URL:http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/412869/harold_pinter_leading_english_dramati st.html) Ifor Evans, an author, believes that Pinteresque is those situations when language is used without interacting, when one misunderstanding leads on to another, when no one quite listens to what anyone else is saying He adds that it is part of Pinter‟s achievement that he had enabled his readers to categorize each failure of communication with new understanding, and possibly, new sympathy; Pinter focused on problems of communication; on how far a small group of people can convey anything to each other, whether by words or pregnant silences or gesture. The meaning of the dialogue can be grasped only if the public is capable to add to the words, the pauses and the silences, and undertones. (Matuz, 1984, p.378)

Language and Use of Silences and Pauses

Conclusion