Themes of “The Birthday Party”

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Name: Trivedi Hezal K.

Roll No: 39

PG Reg. No. PG15101040

M.A. – English Regular, Semester-3

Year: 2016

Paper  No. 9:  The Modernist Literature

Unit-4: The Birthday Party: Harold Pinter

Assignments Topic- Themes of “The Birthday Party”

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

(Gujarat – India)

About author: Harold Pinter

 Harold Pinter was born in 1930 and frequently comments on the irrelevancy of everyday speech.  He was an English playwrighter, screenwriter, actor, director, political activist, and a poet. He was one of the most influential modern British dramatist who wrote for round about 50 years. His best known plays include “ The birthday party” (1958), “The caretaker” (1959), “The homecoming” (1964) and “The betrayal ( 1978) each of which he adopted to film. Some of the uses of Pinter’s techniques such as dramatic pause and the mixture of tension comedy have staples in theatre film. He was also known for the “Theatre of the absurd” , that was a reaction to dramatic forms and theatrical conversations that had come before it and also reaction to the events on the II World War. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel prise for literature including Tony award.

Pinter in his speech at the time of Noble prize:

      “ I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can i ever sum up my play, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did”.

About the play: The Birthday Party ;-

Characters:  PETEY a man in his sixties

                      MEG a woman in her sixties

                      STANLEY a man in his late thirties

                      LULU a girl in her twenties

                      GOLDBERG a man in his fifties

                      McCANN man of thirty

The birthday party is about Stanley Webber, piano player in his 30s., who resides in rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey boles. Their lives are rather dull and repetitive until two unknown strangers, Goldberg and McCann enter in the plot. They arrives on Stanley’s birthday and turn his birthday party into a absolute nightmare. They verbally abuse Stanley. Sexually abuse Lulu, and destroyed the house. The next morning they escort Stanley out of the house and lives of Meg, Petey and Lulu go back to being dull and repetitive.  

Style and Features:

Use of non – verbal devices or communication silences and pauses

1)    To avoid conversation

2)    To show extreme emotional strain

Dialogues are exposing characters alienation from each other and usually futile talk, without meaning.

Major Themes of “The Birthday Party”:

The themes of work of literatures are the idea or ideas which an author picks up to examine in Pinter’s work. There are good numbers of themes in “The Birthday Party” by Harold Pinter. The Birthday Party has been interpreted in many ways. The very ambiguity, the uncertainty and the mystery of events and their motivations have given rise to varying their interpretations of which are consider under that. 

Theme of absurdity:

According to Ionesco : “ Absurd is that which of purpose.... cut off from his religious metaphysical and transcendental root, man is lost, all his action become senseless absurd, useless”.

The term is applied to many of the works of a group of dramatist of 1950s. The concept of absurdity defers person to person.  It expressed the belief that, in s godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communications break down. So, Absurdist theatre examines ideas of existentialism and the meaninglessness of human existence.   The theatre of absurd is characterized by dialogues senseless, repetitive those are able to give a comic view despite the tragic sense of drama. For the Theatre of the absurd, these events concerned life post World War II during which time many people began to question about the meaning of life.

“The Birthday Party” is an full of absurd drama. The Birthday Party has been described Martin Esslin as an example of the Theatre of Absurd. It includes such features as the fluidity and ambiguity of time, place, and identity and the disintegration of language.  “The Birthday Party” is a child of the theatre of the Theatre of Absurd, which explain why it feels like a plot less wonder. Like the rest of its ambiguous brethren, But it does make for a bumpy ride.

So, Pinter in his play uses the theme of identity and absurdity that makes the characters ambiguous and their identity are unclear.  The theme of identity makes the play ambiguous. For example Goldberg is called Nat but in his stories of the past Simey and Banney. It is also McCann is called as a Dermot in talking to Petey and Seamus in talking to McCann.

 Harold Pinter also uses a contradiction as we see in Act 1 when Stanley says “I have played the piano all over the world” then he says “ All over the country”. Then, after a pause he says “I once gave a concert”. It is also in Stanley’s birthday, Meg decided to celebrate but he tries to deny by saying “It is not my birthday no; it is not until next month”.

 

Theme of growing up:

The Birthday Party, viewed from another angle may be seen as an image or metaphor for the process of growing up, of expulsion form the warm, cosy of childhood. Meg is a mother figure seen from the viewpoint of an Oedipus complex. Stanley is unwilling to leave the warm seedy nest which Meg has built for him. Even Stanley is seems to be afraid of sexuality outside of the mother-son relationship and refuses to go out with Lulu. And his guilt of incest with Meg perhaps instigates him, he first attack Meg, the mother figure because she has not opposed the destruction of his relationship with her, although it was because she wasn’t at all aware of the meaning of the visits of Goldberg and McCann. Stanley’s removal in the grab of the respectable gentleman would, from this angle become an image of the adult’s nostalgic leave-taking from cosy, comfortable, warm of his childhood. 
The recurrent theme, ‘The need for security’ had its origin in one of the Pinter’s earlier plays called “The room”. In this play, a blind negro called Riley Shatters this security, while in “The Birthday Party” the security is shattered by some unknown strangers – Goldberg and McCann. Pinter, through this tries to make the readers see that all people for security and sanctuary created are shattered by the violent forces of the outside world.

Confusion and Chaos:

The theme of Confusion and Chaos is the key element of “The absurd theatre”. These element manifest constantly through the many characters in the play. The primary way in which the themes manifest are through the ambiguities of lives and pasts. Stanley has some sort of mysterious past that deserves a violent reckoning, but nobody really provides its details. When Stanley describes his past to Meg in Act 1, there is even the sense that he himself confused about its particulars. Goldberg’s name and past seem shrouded in mystery and delusion, and Meg convinces herself to believing things about her life that are clearly not true. Further, because of this type of confusions, the situation devolves into total chaos. But There’s no truth, only chaos and confusion throughout the play.

Apathy and Compalcency:

May be the most gloomy and negative aspect of the Birthday Party is that the only replacement Pinter gives to Chaos and confusion is a life of Apathy and Complacency. The play’s opening sets this up when Petey and Meg reveal a comfortable but bland life in which they talk in pleasantries and ignore anything of substance. Stanley might be more aggressive then they are, but he too has clearly chosen the safety of Complacency, as they he makes no effect to change his life. When Goldberg and McCann arrive, they challenge this complacent lifestyle until the whole place falls into Chaos. Ultimately, Petey choose to protect the complacency of the boarding house over bravely fighting for Stanley, neither choice is truly appealing. 

Death:

Other critics see in “The Birthday Party” that man’s decay into death, Life as a process of loss. Stanley first loss his sight (The act of snatching Stanley’s glasses indicates the forceful deprivation of Stanley from his personal thinking, freedom, and constructed vision about the world), then his power of speech and finally ceases to exist as a living man.

According to Freud:  

              “Desire for freedom may be their revolt against some existing injustice”

He is taken away dressed in funeral clothes by two men in a large black hearse. As Goldberg says to him, “You're dead. You can't live, you can't think, you can't love. You're dead.”

In this play the killers are devoted of human values, they are pathological terrorist deriving immense satisfaction from the distress of innocent, peace loving people. And Stanley’s blindness and speechlessness makes an image of him as a dead body. Goldberg and McCann could then be messengers of supernatural powers sent to transport a human into realm of death.

Violence:

“The Birthday Party” is full of violence, both physical and emotional, overall suggesting that violence is a fact of life. Violence is doubly affecting because the setting seems so pleasant and ordinary. Most of the men show their potential for violence, especially when provoked. Stanley is cruel and vicious towards Meg, but much more cowardly against other men. Both Goldberg and McCann have violent outbursts no matter how hard they try to contain themselves. Their entire operation, which boasts an outward civility, has an insidious purpose, most violent for the way it tortures Stanley slowly to force him to nervous breakdown. In both acts II and III, they reveal how language itself can be violent in the interrogation scenes. Much of the violence in the play concerns woman. Stanley not only intimidates Meg verbally, but he also prepares to assault Lulu. Goldberg in fact does assault Lulu. So, threat of violence is ever – present in the play. 

Sex:

Sexual of tension is present throughout the entire play, and it results in tragic consequences. Meg and Stanley have a strange. Possible sexual relationship that frees him to treat her very cruelly. The ugliness of his behaviour is echoed when Goldberg calls him a “mother defiler” and “a lecher”. Lulu seems interested in Stanley as well, but is quickly attached to Goldberg in Act II. Her incense makes her prey to men’s sexuality. Her openness leads to two consecutive sexual assaults.

Language:

In this play each of the characters uses language to his or her advantage. In the beginning of the play there were still language fighting between Petey and Meg.  In this play language is used as a weapon. Despite its reputation for nonsense language. Much of the dialogues in absurdist play is naturalist. The moment when characters resort to nonsense language – when words appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the characters, make theatre of the absurd distinctive. Language frequently gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness. As in Pinter’s the Birthday Party when Goldberg and Mccann torture Stanley with apparently questions.

Goldberg: What do you use for pyjamas?

Stanley: Nothing

Goldberg: You vermin ate the sheet of your birth

McCann: What about the Albigensian Heresy?

Goldberg: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?

McCann: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?

Goldberg: Speak up Webber, Why did the chicken cross the road?

Another element that Pinter uses in his play is Painteresque. It is style that combine menace with comedy. It is used when the characters cannot speak. It means that something will be happen in the birthday party, their is pause and silence that spread the selling of horror and dark of the language. It is expressing about the absent Stanley. Uses silence, repetition, stream of consciousness and confusion in his play. He says that thoughts are different from one to another. This shows how language can be confusing. He wants to show that although language has pauses and incomplete sentences, it can also clarify ideas and feeling. We have empty repetition in “The Birthday Party” when Meg serves Petey corn flakes:

Meg: Are they nice?

Petey: Very nice.

Meg: I thought they’d be nice.

Conclusion: -

 These play showcased that what would later become known as “Painteresque.”Harold Pinter’s play is a unbounded by many facts. Any sort of single interpretation of Pinter’s play is not possible. He shows us in the play blindness, society’s treatment of an artist and growing up to adulthood from childhood. One can think of nothingness in every single possibilities. He is greatly respected in his field and the respect he’s earned shows just how affecting his plays. So, the play is the destruction of an individual the independent voice of an individual.

 Works Cited:

1. www.gradesaver.com/the-birthday-party/study-guide

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birthday_Party_(play)

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