Harold Pinter\'s play The Birthday Party PDF

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Download Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party PDF

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Discuss the Harold Pinter's play “The Birthday Party” Harold Pinter is one of the most accomplished dramatist of the Theatre of Absurd. The ‘theatre of absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin. Theatre of Absurd means it is a movement that seek to represent the absurdity of human existence in a meaningless universe by bizarre or fantastic means. It is used to describe the new styles of theatre which developed during the following second World war. Harold Pinter's play ‘The Birthday party’ is an Absurd play. Absurd means a form of play that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations and plots that lack realistic or logical development. This play is considered as a part of the theatre of absurd because the main character Stanley Webber finds himself lost in a nonsensical world that he can't make heads and trails of. However the play ‘The Birthday Party' can be seen as an Absurd play or the element which make this play as an absurd play is that it projects an image of author's existential anxiety. Existential anxiety means various questions were asked about one's own self and one's own role in this world. Such as why you were born in this world? what is your purpose in this world? So a man gets frustrated asking this question unto himself and also other in the society but he never gets an answer. This existential fear in Pinter is never anything abstract or philosophical. Although this existential fear is something which is real he lives through the second World War as young Jewish boy whose life has been tormented any point of time. So this fear is real, ordinary and acceptable. It is tangible as an everyday occurrence. So ultimately all these fear and existential anxiety is based on experiences of a young Jewish boy in the east End of London is going through this experiences in Europe dominated by Hitler. Therefore most of Painter’s play project characters that are frightened and nervous and always afraid about something disastrous happen to them. They were scared of what is outside the room as all the action takes place inside the room. In each of Pinter’s play room is a important factor because a room is like a heaven and safe for the people living in it as well as it provide security to the people from the outside world. The moment we step outside of the room we face a hostile world and unknown territory. So the world outside the room is frightening and it is curious. So this kind of fear creates a situation which are filled with menace , thread and violence. Hence this play is also called as comedy of menace. “The Birthday Party” Is Pinter's best known and most frequently performed play. The plot of the play revolves around a small birthday celebration for a character named Stanley Webber. Stanley Webber is the central character of the play as well as the pianist who

lives in a boarding house which is run by Meg and Petey . Both of them were planning and holding a party for Stanley. Then the unexpected arrival of two sinister strangers called Goldberg and Meccan came to terrorise him and eventually to take him away. Between them they turn Stanley's apparently birthday party into a night mare. The title of the play is ironical title. It is opposite of birthday party. A birthday is a one day which comes only once in a year and it is a time of celebration. It is a time to remember the good times in the past and a chance to look toward hopefulness and cheer in the next year. A birthday is a celebration of life which lies in with the play's idea. Stanley has lived a life of solitude and loneliness. Now McCann and Goldberg had come to give Stanley a chance to reflect on his past life, face the realities which he has hide from and start a new life filled with hope. “There's gentleman living here. He's got a birthday, and he's forgotten all about it. So we're going to remind him. We're going to give him a party”. Just as Stanley has refused to acknowledge his birthday as many people do in this world. They look at birthday as another day older and treat it negatively. It is a time to reflect on the past and look toward the future. It's time to be acknowledged for our achievements and to correct a bad judgement made in the past. Goldberg said that ‘But a birthday, I always feel is a great occasion, taken too much for granted these days. What a thing to celebrate - birth'. It’s a time to move on and that is exactly what Stanley does. Thought with the help of Meccan and Goldberg, Stanley realise that now he can face the past with honesty and begin searching for a better tomorrow. However this happy birthday party were meant for all the people drinking and enjoying but ultimately they indulge in horrible examination and the birthday boy Stanley terribly examine in a most weird manner and at the end of the cross examination he terribly crying. So this happy day turn into a crying day. The cross examination scene or the brain washing scene is like an Impeachment. This scene is very important in this play because it is through this scene we learn the purpose of these two people that is Goldberg and Meccan. These two people Goldberg and Meccan they grill and cross examine Stanley with rapid fire questions with very weird almost sometimes very nonsensical question. These question range from trivial to the sinister to the weird and from the absurd to the serious. And now these question throws Stanley of his guard and this question disorient thing. These cross examination of Stanley by these two stranger who now we realise actually come to get him and probably take him away. Harold Pinter through this birthday party that took place in Meg house wanted to convey that life is illogical without purpose and devoid of meaning. Now we discussed some of the major themes which we find in this play. The first important theme found in this play is the theme of allegory of conformity.

The birthday party has been enter prated as an allegory of Conformity. It means the pressure of conformity of artist in this society. In this case the pressure of conformity are there for Stanley, the pianist. He is an artist who left the society to live a life in its own term. Stanley who was living a sort of bohemian life is now forced into the respectability and pinstripe trouser by the amesrry of the external prusuwa world. So the play becomes an allegory of the pressure of conformity of an artist to comeback to the fold of a society. He strive to leave a life on his own term and in doing so he become a threat to condemnation redeem society. Society dominated by the middle class is always confectionary and when somebody flouts its norms he is ostracized and labelled a bohemian. Then secret agent of society are sent out to hunt and hunt him and deprived him individuality. This is what Goldberg and McCann do through cross examination scene. They try to hunt him out and boringly respectable and then finally Stanley looses his individuality. He was an artist but an artist who want to live life on its own term can not survive in society. So the cross examination scene with its rapid fire apparently nonsensical question had a desire to break Stanley. It breaks his sprit and brings him to a nervous breakdown. The play can also be seen as an allegory of death. It means a man that has been snatched away from the hole which he built for himself from the warmth of love. He is pulled away from this comfort zone by the dark angel of nothingness that is Goldberg and Meccan which came in the form of these two stranger. So this is the death of an artist who was living in his comfort zone pampered by a woman who gave to him a mixture of motherliness and sexuality. The play can also be looked as a morality play. It can be looked as a morality play about life and death. As early in the play Stanley tries to tease and frightened Meg about two people coming in a van to hares and take someone away from this house. At that point this game of Stanley appears only as a projection of his own fear. But in the last episode of the play Goldberg black car represent the hares scene which is to take Stanley away from this house. The death of Stanley is symbolised by the car that is standing outside. The black car is come to take not only Goldberg and Meccan but also Stanley away. His correct formal dress, his Speechlessness and his blindness made him seen as an image of dead body lying in state like the body of important people lying for public view. So all these means that his body is lying like dead body for everybody to see him. Stanley has lost his faculties one by one, he has lost his part of speech, his eyesight, his mental balance and he is finally seen in funeral dressed like a dead body. The words of Goldberg that were acquiring in the play as “you are dead, you can not think, you can not love you are dead” Though the old Stanley is dead and this is the new Stanley is like a dead duck. So it shows life and death which makes the play a morality play and it is considered as a

theme of the play. The next theme which we find in this play is about non communication at one level and break down of communication at another. There is a non communication between Stanley and Meg at any level. He lives in his own world and lives in her own. And little communication that they have is because of Meg in someway fells towards him but Stanley do not feels towards her. He just reveals in a physical comfort that she offers offer him. There is also very little conversation between Meg and her husband Pity. They are old retired couple who have just become a habit for each other. There is a breakdown of communication between them in the way Meg completely miss understands and miss represents Stanley's story to Goldberg. He had told him a lot of thing about himself in the beginning of the play and she did not analyse properly or she was actually not capable of such thing so she totally misrepresent whatever Stanley told him. So at one moment they communicate it and another moment there was a break down of conversation between them. So this breakdown of communication is the result of the fact that each man in this wold is afraid of divulging something about himself or herself to another. And it is also the result of the fact that during second World war the spy network Hitler had spread all over the word particularly in the Germany and the country that were allice of Hitler. The network of spy was so deep that you never knew that your son led away under the spy influence and had become a spy on his own family that is his own mother, father, brother and sister. So the oath that spy took was so powerful that they could go against anybody even their parents. So this break down of communication is also cause of this horrible experience of being constantly under the vigilance of the spy network of Hitler. However this break down of communication is also another factor or theme of this play The Birthday Party. Lastly I would sum up by concluding that Stanley is the central character and also he is symbolic of whatever the world has gone through in this period. And it is through him we understand what it means by absurd world, comedy of menace and allegory of pressure of conformity on an artist who goes against these society. Thus all these thing are projected through the character of Stanley. One can view Pinter’s play ‘The Birthday party' as holding a mirror to society that reveal the difficult and mysterious nature of human condition. The character used in Painter’s play are similar to the modern men's psychology. Hence in his play through the character of Stanley he tried to show the life of a disturb man.

References :-

1.Understanding the element of Absurdity in Harold Pinter's play the Birthday party (http://www.toidac.org) 2. From class lectures or notes....