Abstract
IN ACT II OF HAROLD PINTER'S THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, Stanley Webber comes face to face with the two men whose arrival at the Boles' rooming house he had anticipated with so much dread. When he first confronts the chief intruder's bullyboy, McCann, he finds the surly Irishman seated at a table carefully tearing a sheet of newspaper into five equal strips. During the muted sparring match that follows, Webber twice picks up a strip of the paper and McCann menacingly tells him (using the same words both times), "Mind that." Obviously, mind it we must; symbolically or otherwise, it's got to have a point. However, the next time McCann tears up a sheet his boss, Goldberg, notices him and comments authoritatively: "Why do you do that all the time? It's childish, it's pointless. It's without a solitary point." Just as obviously, we have been conned.
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