paper no. 110

Assignment : Paper no :110

History of English Literature from 1900 to 2000.

∆ Personal Information: 

Name : Maya Batiya

Roll no : 18

Enrollment no :5108230003

Course : M.A.sem-2

Paper no :110

Paper code :22403

Paper name :History of English Literature from 1900 to 2000

Topic : Analyzing The Birthday Party by Harold Printer as a Comedy of manace. 

Submitted : Smt.S.B.Gardi, Department of English MKBU.

Email:mayajbatiya2003@gmail.com 

∆∆∆∆ Analyzing The Birthday Party by Harold Printer as a Comedy of manace. 

 ∆ Introduction :

The Birthday Party, drama in three acts by Harold Pinter, produced in 1958 and published in 1959. Pinter’s first full-length play established his trademark “comedy of menace,” in which a character is suddenly threatened by the vague horrors at large in the outside world. The action takes place entirely in a shabby rooming house where Stanley, a lazy young boarder, is shaken out of his false sense of security by the arrival of two mysterious men who proceed to “punish” him for crimes that remain unrevealed. A birthday party staged by Stanley’s landlady soon turns into an exhibition of violence and terror. Pinter’s comic vision of paranoia and isolation is reinforced by his use of dialogue, including frequent pauses, disjointed conversations, and non sequiturs.

∆ About Harold Printer :

Harold Pinter (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London) was an English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pinter’s first major staged success was The Caretaker, which, in 1960, began a run in London’s West End and won the playwright The Evening Standard Award. Along with The Birthday Party and The Homecoming (1965), The Caretaker established Pinter’s reputation as a major absurdist playwright, and, in the opinion of some commentators, his claim to being Britain’s most important dramatist since George Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara).

∆∆What is Comedy of Menace?

 Literal meaning of menace means person or thing likely to cause serious harm. Here we deeply understand thatwhat is the meaning of comedy of menace and how it is related with the play. Menace (a threat or the act of threatening) A ‘menace’ is something which threatens to cause harm, evil or injury; which doesn’t seem like a logical idea to fit with comedy.Violence and menace are mostly below the surface of the play. Mick moves swiftly and silently and is an unpredictable character.The playwright’s objective in mixing comedy & the threat of menace is to produce certain effects (like set up dramatic tension or make the audience think a character is a weaselbecause they are acting nice or funny, but planning to do something evil) or to conveycertain social or political ideas to the audience. The phrase comedy of menace as a standalone description inspires both positive and negative feelings. Title “comedy of menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind because comedy is generally something that makes people laugh. The word menace implies something threatening; this phraseinvolves laughing at an ominous situation.

 

∆ Analysis of Dramatic Techniques :

"The Birthday Party" by Harold Pinter is a seminal work that showcases many of his dramatic techniques. Here are some key elements:

1. Ambiguity and Uncertainty: Pinter uses ambiguity to create tension and unease throughout the play. The characters' identities and motivations are often unclear, leaving the audience questioning their intentions.

2. Power Dynamics: The play explores power struggles between characters, particularly between Goldberg and McCann, who exert control over the other characters through manipulation and intimidation.

3. Language and Dialogue: Pinter's dialogue is characterized by its naturalistic tone, yet it is laden with underlying meaning and subtext. Characters engage in seemingly mundane conversations that gradually reveal deeper tensions and conflicts.

4. Silence and Pauses: Pinter utilizes silence and pauses as powerful dramatic devices. They heighten the sense of unease and allow for the audience to reflect on the implications of the characters' words and actions.

5. Repetition: Repetition is used throughout the play to emphasize certain themes and motifs, such as the recurring mention of Stanley's birthday and the ominous phrase "Happy Birthday."

6. Setting and Atmosphere: The claustrophobic setting of the boarding house contributes to the sense of confinement and isolation experienced by the characters. The atmosphere is charged with suspense and menace, creating a palpable sense of dread.

7. Non-linear Narrative: Pinter employs a non-linear narrative structure, leaving gaps in the storyline and requiring the audience to piece together the events of the past. This adds to the sense of mystery and disorientation.

These techniques, among others, contribute to the unsettling and enigmatic nature of "The Birthday Party," making it a quintessential example of Pinter's unique dramatic style.

∆ Characters Analysis :

1.Petey

Petey Boles is the owner of the rundown boarding house in which the play takes place. He is 60 years old and married to Meg. Petey works a deckchair attendant at an unspecified seaside resort near his home on the shores of England.

As the play continues, Petey’s character is revealed to be more astute. He realizes that Goldberg and McCann are more insidious than they seem, and probably knows of his wife and Stanley's strange relationship. While Petey seems to know quite a lot more than he lets on, he ultimately reveals that he will do little to compromise the comfortable, delusional existence he shares with Meg.

2.Meg

Meg Boles is a kind woman who helps run the boardinghouse. She is sixty years old and married to Petey in a seemingly childless marriage. Absentminded and simplistic, Meg often asks repetitive questions and constantly requires attention. While she does carry on a sexually-tinged relationship with Stanley, Meg lives a rather humdrum life that allows her to maintain certain delusions about her attractiveness and popularity, delusions which she works hard to protect even as the play goes to darker places.

3.Goldberg

Nat Goldberg, also called “Simey” and “Benny,” is a Jewish gentleman who works for an unnamed "organization" that has employed him to take Stanley away from the boardinghouse. He is defined by his outwardly polite and suave demeanor, which stands in stark contrast to that of his associate McCann. However, he ultimately reveals an angry, violent streak beneath this suave demeanor.

Goldberg's problems seem to be connected to his past - he is nostalgic about family, and waxes poetic about the old days. To what extent these delusions explain and/or feed his anger and violence are left to the reader's imagination.

4.McCann

Dermot McCann is an Irish member of an unnamed "organization" that has hired him to take Stanley away from the boardinghouse. Unlike Goldberg, who uses words and charm to his advantage, McCann is a paragon of bodily aggression. He lacks much social skill, and is something of a simpleton.

5.Lulu

A young woman in her twenties, Lulu is an acquaintance of Meg’s and a visitor to the boardinghouse. She is childish and flirtatious, and though she seems initially interested in Stanley, she is easily attracted to Goldberg's charms. Her girlish qualities become ironically unsettling after she is sexually assaulted.

6.Stanley

Stanley Webber is ostensibly the protagonist of the play. He is the only boarder at the Boles's boardinghouse, and is initially defined by laziness, unkemptness, and smug cruelty towards Meg. The many details of his past are never confirmed - he might be a musician, might have been famous, etc. - although there is a sense that he has sins unatoned for. His aggressive depression transitions into a nervous breakdown when Goldberg and McCann arrive, until he is nothing but a bumbling idiot in Act III.

∆ Themes and symbolism :

1.Absurdity

As in many absurdist works, The Birthday Party is full of disjointed information that defies efforts to distinguish between reality and illusion. For example, despite the presentation of personal information on Stanley and his two persecutors, who or what they really are remains a mystery. Goldberg, in particular, provides all sorts of information about his background, but he offers only oblique clues as to why he has intruded upon Stanley’s life.

What has Stanley done to deserve persecution? The facts of his past are so unclear that his claim to be a pianist may even be false. The Birthday Party influences the audience to doubt anything with certainty, which as it does in Kafka’s work, intensifies the dreadful angst experienced by the protagonist. This effect is achieved through truncated dialogue, by Pinter’s deliberate failure to provide conclusive or consistent information, and by his use of ambiguity and nonsense.

2. Alienation and Loneliness

Stanley has isolated himself from society, with only the vaguest of explanations offered as to why. What is clear is that he has “dropped out” of everyday life. He is the sole lodger in the Boles’ boarding house. He has forgone any efforts to make himself presentable, remaining depressed and sullen, half-dressed, unkempt, and unwilling to leave the womb-like comfort of his rundown digs.

4.Apathy and Passivity

Although anger and even violence break through Stanley’s apathy at key moments, he generally appears to have given up on life. His apathy is apparent in his slovenliness. He remains unshaven, unwashed, and half dressed. He is unwilling to venture out, although he talks about dreams. He is, as Lulu says, “a bit of a washout.”

In mood shifts that turn him suddenly aggressive, Stanley resists his tormentors, Goldberg and McCann, just as he sporadically lashes out at Meg. After the first interrogation conducted by his inquisitors, he kicks Goldberg in the stomach and threatens to hit McCann with a chair, and during the party he tries to choke Meg and, possibly, to rape Lulu. But at the end he is passive and docile, no longer able to resist, no longer even able to voice objections to his fate. He slumps off in the company of his two persecutors, who may or may not be his executioners. 

5.Doubt and Ambiguity

In the sense that it conveys doubt and ambiguity, The Birthday Party is built on words that confuse more often than they clarify. Things that the audience or reader thinks are revealed by one snatch of dialogue may be contradicted or rendered illogical in the next, making it impossible to separate allegations from truth and fact from fiction. Even the most mundane issues are cloaked in doubt—questions for which there should be simple yes or no answers. Is it really Stanley’s birthday, as Meg claims, or is it not, as Stanley insists? Has Meg really heard Stanley play the piano, as she claims, or has Stanley’s situation made that an impossibility? Is he, in fact, even a pianist?

6.Guilt and Innocence

Although Goldberg and McCann’s verbal assaults on Stanley defy any easy interpretation, it is clear that Stanley is somehow vulnerable, that their accusations do wound him, and that there is guilt to expose and sins to expiate. Still, until the arrival of Goldberg and McCann, Stanley’s self-imposed exile in the rooming house, though depressing, at least offers a modicum of security. He seems docile initially, only flaring up at Meg, whose motherly affection he finds suffocating. His dread is dormant until he learns that two strangers may arrive on the scene. They ignite his inner fear, offering some sort of retribution for Stanley’s real or imagined crimes which, in their bizarre tribunal, run the gamut of crimes against humanity. Goldberg and McCann are hardly avenging angels, however. Although outwardly warm and engaging, Goldberg is perfectly willing to defile innocence. He not only seduces Lulu, he takes her on a journey into debauchery. It is such contradictions that obscure the intruders’ true identities.

7.Language and Meaning

A concern of absurdists is their belief that language, rather than facilitate, may prevent genuine human communication. Meaning is more likely to be conveyed not by what is being said but by its subtext, what is left unsaid or the manner in which it is said. With Pinter’s work in particular, words tend to mask the authentic self, while silence threatens to expose it and make it vulnerable. Pinter’s characters seem to dread silence.

In The Birthday Party words are used in non-communicative ways. For example, there are the inane exchanges between Meg and Petey, who, when they are alone, really have little or nothing to say to each other. They live in the ashes of their marriage, a condition they will not face. They evade the truth by mouthing empty and routine phrases that confirm only self-evident and insignificant facts. Their small talk both begins and ends the play.

8.Rites of Passage

Although it may be argued that interpreting the basic action of The Birthday Party as a rite of passage is very tenuous, some critics view Stanley as a symbol of the alienated artist who must be socially reintegrated. In this schema, Goldberg and McCann represent, respectively, the Judaic and Christian strains that impose on modern society, their “organization,” various obligations. In this scheme, described by Martin Esslin in Pinter, “Stanley is the artist who society claims back from a comfortable, bohemian, ‘opt-out’ existence.” The ritual of reintegration involves both the second-act initiation, the birthday party, and the third-act investiture, the dressing of Stanley in the habit or “uniform of respectable, bourgeois gentility.”

There is also the second initiation, that of Lulu into sexual depravity, but this rite of passage is wholly secret and occurs offstage. It is one that also contributes an ironic comment on the other, for it is the fatherly Goldberg who is the ritual’s high priest. The implication is that although society tries to redeem its outcasts, it also corrupts and violates its members.

9.Violence and Cruelty

At various points in the play, aggression gives way to verbal cruelty or physical violence, both actual and implied. Stanley is abusive towards Meg, whom he enjoys tormenting. During the party, he even tries to throttle her. Still, most of the threatened violence is directed at Stanley. Goldberg and McCann represent power that Stanley can not effectively resist, although at first he tries. He attempts to remain uncooperative, and he even kicks Goldberg in the stomach; but he is really no match for the two men. After their abusive interrogation, when the party starts, they ritually disarm Stanley, breaking his glasses and controlling his behavior. Unlike Stanley’s violence, evident in his manic drum beating, choking of Meg, and aborted rape of Lulu, the violence of Goldberg and McCann is either merely threatened or is exercised offstage, as in the sexual abuse of Lulu. That they can achieve their aims with little more than veiled threats makes them a very sinister pair.

∆∆Symbols :

1.The Boarding House

The entire play is set in the living room of Meg and Petey Boles’s boarding house, which is located in an English seaside resort town. The boarding house is important both as a setting and as a symbol of the identity crisis several of the characters will undergo during the course of the play: It is a strange, isolated space that is seemingly arrested in time for its tenants. Although there are certainly other rooms in the house (located offstage and mentioned frequently), the living room is claustrophobic and suffocating, with only a small window near the back door.

The house is a contradiction; while the surrounding sea and the beach are vast and open, the house remains insular and even potentially oppressive. The three inhabitants follow an endlessly repetitive cycle of daily life, in which only Petey seems to venture outside to work and socialize. Meg leaves only for shopping, and aside from briefly ducking outside to avoid Goldberg and McCann, Stanley doesn’t leave the house for the duration of the play until he is taken out at the end.

∆ Conclusion :

One cannot, and probably should not, write about Pinter without facing his similarity to Kafka and his acknowledged indebtedness to him.¹ In the course of telling stories which are apparently objective and up to a point even pretend to be realistic, both writers tap subjective concerns, many of which go back to infancy. Both deal with experiences which at first glance seem commonplace, even paltry, but which turn out to be battles for high stakes, sanity, for example, or sometimes life itself. Both share a conviction that the essential aspects of experience are ambiguous if not unknowable, yet both write simply and lucidly.

Thank you.. ☺🍁🍂

 

Words :2893

Images :4

References :

“The Birthday Party.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/The-Birthday-Party-play-by-Pinte . Accessed 9 Apr. 2024.

Pinter, H., Asked by Sofianna C #1214223 Answered by Aslan on 2/15/2022 6:43 PM, #1214223, S. C., Asked by Sofianna C #1214223 Answered by Aslan on 2/15/2022 6:18 PM, Asked by Layla H #989256 Answered by Aslan on 3/10/2020 7:37 PM, & #989256, L. H. (n.d.). The Birthday Party characters. GradeSaver. https://www.gradesaver.com/the-birthday-party/study-guide/character-list

https://www.supersummary.com/the-birthday-party/symbols-and-motifs /