United Kingdom Magzines

Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party: a Comedy of Menace

The term
“comedy of menace” was first used by David Campton as a subtitle to his four
short plays The Lunatic view”. Now it signifies a kind of play in which a
character or more characters feel the menacing presence—actual or imaginary, of
some obscure and frightening force, power or personality. The dramatist
exploits this kind of menace as a source of comedy. Harold Pinter exploited the
possibilities of this kind of situation in his early plays like "The Room", "Birthday Party" and "A Slight Ache", where the both
the character/s and the audience face an atmosphere, apparently funny but actually
having suggestiveness of some impending threat from outside. Pinter himself
explained the situation thus: "more
often than not the speech only seems to be funny - the man in question is
actually fighting a battle for his life". He also said: Everything is funny until the horror of the
human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions
and self-deceptions, like Stanley’s dream of a world tour as a pianist, because
it is built out of pretence.” In fact the play Birthday Party is built
around the exchanges of words, which, though funny enough, contain hints that
suggest the impending doom lurking around to them. Meg’s situation as a
childless old woman who talks through repetitions may seem funny and odd, but
those cover up her unconscious desire to have son, a desire she tries to fulfil
through the mothering of Stanley and Petey. But Above all, Stanley’s staying in
a sea-side lodge, his shabby appearance combined with inconsistent words and
memorising may seem strange and invoke mild laughter but in reality he is
facing a crisis which he is himself not completely aware of.

Pinter creates
an atmosphere of menace through a variety of dramatic elements and techniques. First
of all, he lets situations fall from a light-hearted situation unexpectedly down
to one which is highly serious. For instance, while talking to Meg among other
things, he tells her about a wheel-barrow which will come to the house for some
body. Here we get a suggestion of impending death through the sudden reference
to coffin. Again, we see Meg offering Staley the gift of a drum as a compliment
to his supposed musical talent. But Stanley begins to beat it with such
savagery that the audience is left dumb-struck as to the real intention behind
this. This kind of abrupt explosion of violence is once again seen when Stanley
kicks at McCann. But more importantly, menace is presented through the fears
the characters feel but cannot spot. First of all, fear of weather is
introduced: the characters repeatedly enquire about weather, and this becomes
tangible once the audience understand that the lodge is situated on the coast of
a sea. Then Stanley tries to frighten Meg by prophesying the arrival of
wheel-barrow which, of course, does not come for her. On the other hand, on
hearing the visit of two strangers, Stanley feels a complex fear—first of all, the
fear of being driven away from the lodge which has become for him as
comfortable as his mother’s womb. A house represents security and comforts from
the hazards of the outside world but sadly it is impossible to sustain.
Goldberg and McCann is the embodiment of menace from a hostile outside world. We
also note that he stays in a lodge, which cannot be a substitute for home. Secondly,
Stanley faces the fear of being persecuted by the intruders. That is why he
expresses his desire to run away with Lulu, but is afraid of doing so in
reality.

With the
hosting of the birthday party, the play reaches its climax of menace. A
birthday party is expected to be a ritualistic celebration of one’s life, but
in the case of Stanley it turns out to be the greatest ordeal of life leading
to his complete mental derangement. The audience now understand the menace
turning real though in transformed forms. Stanley faces not only physical
assault but also a torrent of words, with the serious accusations like "He’s killed his wife" mingled
with trivial and ludicrous like "Why
do you pick your nose?". The persons who could have saved him are
either absent or drunk.

The play
ends with Stanley’s forced removal from the house by Goldberg and McCann who
leave a further note of unknown menace awaiting Stanley in near future. This
uncertain menace is further strengthened by Petey’s inability to communicate to
Meg what has exactly happened with Stanley. To conclude, it can be said that the
final impression of the play on the audience echoes Pinter’s own words: " In our present-day world, everything is
uncertain, there is no fixed point, we are surrounded by the unknown ... There
is a kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity (comedy)
go together."

Significance of the Title of Harold Pinter’s Play The Birthday Party

Unknown 15:55 Pinter

In
his essay “Structure, Sign, Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”, Derrida
demonstrated how a written text lacks structural coherence and organic unity
and how the text undermines its own assumptions and is thus divided against
itself. We come across almost an
artistic demonstration of the theory in The Birthday Party, which revolves
round a central event, namely “the birthday party” of the protagonist. In every culture, ‘birthday’ is treated as an important
event and is invested with meanings through certain rituals, which are
considered archetypal activities in the human culture in general. More
particularly, in western culture ‘birthday’ is looked upon as a sacred moment
in one’s life and this sacredness is generated from the memory of the greatest
religious event, namely the birth of the Babe, the Son of God. Christ’s birth
is significant not simply because it marks the Advent of the Redeemer as a
point in time, but structurally it marks the beginning of the process of
Redemption which is completed with Crucifixion, thereby redeeming mankind from
the Original Sin. In the Christian culture this has remained the
central event, in reference to which all other birthdays generate meaning
through the repeated performance of birthday-rites. But keeping in mind Derrida’s theorisation, we
can say in the context of Pinter’s play that the characters cannot locate any structure
in reference to which they can justify their actions and, of course, existence.
The reason is that everything is decentred.

From very beginning of the play we
are introduced to the peripheries of life. First of all, the setting is not at
home, but at a boarding house, which also faces the crisis of identity and recognition.
Then at the query of Meg, the landlady of house, the birth of a baby is
reported in the newspaper by her husband Petey who does not pay much attention
to it. But on the contrary, his wife—possibly because of having no offspring,
gets interested to the point of passing her judgement on the incident. In this
way the concept of birthday is itself seen to be deconstructed at the very
outset. Here the audience note an unconscious longing in Meg for possessing a
son, and in the absence of any actual one she uses her husband and Staley later
as surrogates who must behave as she wishes. In fact, she exploits her position
as a food-provider. This ordinary activity from daily life gathers a
ritualistic flavour if we relate her offering of fried bake to the birth of a
baby somewhere in the town and to her blackmailing of Stanley with the threat
of not giving him the breakfast in the case of his not following her command. Furthermore,
excessive repeated emphasis on food may lead the reader to look for meaning in
the Christian iconography.

With
the arrival of two strangers, the play hinges on uneasy uncertainties and with
the proposal of the strangers for holding a birthday party, it runs towards the
central theme in a way which defies the structure of a traditional drama. The
audience suspect, just like Stanley, the intention and feel the menace lurking
somewhere in the corners still not visible. A birthday party is basically a
communal activity intended for a gathering of individuals who come closer; but
in Pinter’s play when the party begins, we find individuals not only being
isolated from one another but also being disintegrated within themselves. The
hollowness of Stanley’s existence is emphasized in Meg’s birthday gift of a
drum for him, which he beats wildly in a desperate attempt perhaps to announce
his existence, an act which fails utterly because sounds connect nothing and
signify nothing. Under the impact of
liquor the characters forget their roles in society and engage themselves in activities
which may be called the explosion of their desires from id. Stanley also
undergoes a total transformation or dehumanization. He is physically assaulted
for his alleged attempt at raping Lulu by Golberg and McCann ironically enough
as Goldberg rapes Lulu later and McCann usurps Staley’s place while flirting
with Meg. In other words, he loses both Lulu and Meg to the strangers whose
persecution of Staley does not stop here and goes beyond the curtain.

Towards
the end of the drama, a new man is born out of Stanley’s old self, which was
purely a construct of loosely gathered memories. We find Stanley in new
appearance, well dressed and clean shaven; but he has undergone such inhuman
torture (which may amount to anything) that he is no more the person he had
been. In fact, he may be called dead-man-walking.

An Analysis of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

Unknown 06:18 Wordsworth

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Generally speaking, Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" has been seen in relation to many an aspect of his poetic career. First of all, it is said to be a historical record of the different stages of the growth of his poetic imagination, and that is why some view it as a miniature epic that anticipates his epical endeavour with "The Prelude", in both thematic and artistic designs. Tintern Abbey contains and expounds many of Wordsworth’s poetic and philosophical beliefs, which were intended to be the themes of his other poems like, “Recluse”, “The Excursion” and, of course, “The Prelude”. Again the poem is unusual in examining the composition of the landscape, like his contemporary artist of his country Constable, rather than expressing the spirit of the landscape—its topography, its arrangement of vegetation, its placement of the works of men and its colours and light and shade have been scrupulously described. These scenes ultimately become the “objective correlative” for his philosophy of that period. The procedure and kind of poem were determined by Coleridge’s influence, for “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight” were its immediate successors, with the 18^th century sublime odes in the farther background. But it must be admitted that "Tintern Abbey" has greater dimension and intricacy and a more various verbal conversation than Coleridge’s poems.

Wordsworth’s
Tintern Abbey inaugurated wonderfully the functional device, which he later
called “two consciousness”: a scene is revisited, and the remembered landscape,
“the picture of the mind” is superimposed on the picture before the eye. As the
two landscapes fail to match, they set a problem, “a sad perplexity”, which
compels the poet to the meditation. As Wordsworth now stands on the bank of the
river Wye, he comes to the final realization of his relation to Nature and of
his concept of the relation between man and Nature, in general, and above all
of his ontological standing, both as a human being and as a poet. That is why
he is found here thinking of nature not only as a painter, but as a philosopher
too. In his scheme of thought the human world is connected with the divine
world by the way of the world of Nature. In his Romantic vision the world of
man—pastoral forms and plots of cottage ground—merges and becomes one in the
spatial expansion with the world of Nature, which is finally connected with the
inorganic quite of the sky. The suggestion is made through an intensification
of the dominant aspect of the given landscape, its seclusion, which also
implies a deepening of the mood of seclusion in the poet’s mind. To Wordsworth,
the landscape of the Wye declares the unity of the universe. In this it appears
that his philosophy is essentially quietistic and almost like that propounded
in the Upanishdas . Again, in his indirect reference to the three planes of
being—the natural, the human and the divine—Wordsworth adumbrates the great
Romantic vision of cosmic unity. Thus Wordsworth also prepares the reader for
the similar progression of his attitudes to and understanding of Nature in his
own life.

Wordsworth
traces in this poem the history of his evolving attitude to Nature basically
for two reasons: on the surface, this is an autobiographical confession, and on
the higher level of thought he wants to give validity of experience to the kind
philosophical truths he seems to have found. This is, however, inextricably
related to the growth of his poetic career. It is found that in his earlier
poetry, Nature had no exotic significance. A humanitarian phase had followed
‘exemplified’ at its best in The
Ruined Cottage. After a brief period of disillusionment, he became convinced
that the universal human malady in mind and heart could be cured only by
Nature’s “holy plan”. So this poem may be said to illustrate a love, which is
almost religious in conception; “the sentiment of being spread over all that
moves and all that seemeth still”; the experience of communion with the
universal spirit; the moral influence of Nature even in absence. Furthermore,
Wordsworth’s philosophy is almost pantheistic as he alludes to the link a
pantheist sees between Nature and the lot of mankind, which he tries to
ameliorate.

Wordsworth expounds these views not in
isolation from experience but as organically related to his own experience in
the lap of Nature. When he had visited the Wye as a mere boy, he enjoyed the
abundance of Nature instinctively. A fuller commentary on this stage can be
found in the Book I and Book II of The Prelude. At that stage of life, enjoyment of Nature was coarse
and animalistc:

“…when first

I came along these hills; when like a roe

I bounded o’er the mountains…”

Wordsworth then describes his impressions
he got during his second visit in 1793. At this period of life his appreciation
of Nature had been largely emotional. At that time he ahd been

“…more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads than one

Who sought the thing he loved.”

Here speaks simultaneously of vision and
emotion because his perception of the natural objects brought immediate joy to
him. It had then for him no appeal that was “unborrowed from the eye”.

In the third stage Wordsworth find that the “aching
joys” and “dizzy raptures” are no more, but their place has been taken by other
gifts of Nature. As he looks on Nature now, he hears in it

“…the still and sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample
power

To chasten and subdue.”

He is satisfied now because he feels
the presence of the divine power in everything,

“Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”

Wordworth seems to have emerged here as a
mystic in his all-pervading pantheism. But he differs from the conventional
mysticism because unlike a mystic he can communicate his experiences in Nature
to the readers. Now he understands that he is the lover of Nature, “Of all the
mighty world/ Of eye, and ear”. Now his soul is relieved

“ …to recognise

In nature …

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the
nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and
soul

Of all my moral.”

United Kingdom Magzines

December 2008

Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party: a Comedy of Menace

Significance of the Title of Harold Pinter’s Play The Birthday Party

An Analysis of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

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