ACADEMIE ROYALE DES SCIENCES D OUTRE-MER BULLETIN DES SEANCES

Vol. 4 No. 2 May 2015 pp. 227-231

ISSN: 0001-4176

Becket's impression on Pinter's oeuvre: the analogy between their absurd writing’s styles

Fariba Sadat Sadreddini, Mojtaba Rezaei Sani

Ph.D in English, English Department, Kakatiya University, Warangal, India

Abstract: This paper studies the influence of Samuel Beckett on Pinter’s oeuvre and analyzes their
differences as well as similarities. As these two Nobel laureates are two impressive men of New Theatre,
thus the meticulous survey on their works seems essential. Despite the fact that Pinter most often takes his
model in writing from Beckett, one can easily diagnose the various distinctions in their plays. In spite of the
same messages about human condition in the world, their techniques and their way of expression differs in
some manners.

Key words: Absurd drama Absurdity Pinter Beckett

  

INTRODUCTION conventional drama. He wrote his works in both French

Absurd Theatre was developed by a group of
expatriates who lived in France during the Second
World War like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and
Arthur Adamov. These dramatists as well as Jean Genet
and Harold Pinter are the major practitioners and
leaders of the Theatre of the Absurd: “Plays within this
group are absurd in that they focus not on logical acts,
realistic occurrences, or traditional character
development; they, instead, focus on human beings
trapped in an incomprehensible world subject to any
occurrence, no matter how illogical” (Rajeshwar 217).
In spite of being influenced by other writers, each of
these Absurd dramatists has his specific approach to
render his vision. The content and structure of their
writing are a witness to their beliefs.
However, this kind of drama portrays man as an alien in
the complicated universe. He lives in solitude and
prefers to be a hermit in the modern society.
Superficially, Absurd drama appears comic, since the
dialogues between the characters seem purposeless.
They are expressed in a thoughtless manner. The
nonsensical and repetitive language draws the
audience’s attention and makes them laugh. But as soon
as they connect to the main theme of the play, the
nonsensical words become meaningful: “Though
Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they
have something to say and can be understood”
(Rajeshwar 218).
Beckett is considered as a father of Theatre of the
Absurd who win international fame by making free the
contemporary playwrights from the restriction of
and English and he said that writing in French made
him to select the words more carefully and brought
more discipline to his writing. His works present a
bleak and gloomy outlook on man and define his
situation with gallows humour and tragicomedy. His
way of writing is known as Beckettian technique. He
also is the most influential absurdist dramatist who
inspired other playwright through his magical word
power. His impression on Pinter is undeniable as Pinter
directly admitted himself. In 1960, Pinter initially sent
each of his original plays to Beckett and after his
reading he allowed others to see them. Pinter’s
admiration of Beckett is noticeable:
The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t
want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, and ways
out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain
basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless
writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit
the more I am grateful to him. He’s not fucking me
about, he’s not leading me up any garden path, he’s not
slipping me a wink, he’s not flogging me a remedy or a
path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he’s
not selling me anything I don’t want to buy — he
doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn’t
got his hand over his heart. Well, I’ll buy his goods,
hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone
unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body
of beauty. His work is beautiful. (12 Graver &
Federman)
Beckett’s most original disciple, Pinter owes his fame
to the fusion of absurdist and realism. He fashions his
dramatic writing based on the reality, and perpetually

Corresponding Author: Mojtaba Rezaei Sani

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employs real characters in his works as it has been
illustrated in this dissertation. Pinter’s new innovative
technique is known as “Painteresque style” and carries
all his features of writing in its womb. Pinter’s drama,
like Beckett’s, takes the audience into the uneasy world
and abruptly they find themselves in an uncanny,
bizarre and gothic atmosphere that elicits they sink in
bewilderment.
Certain Connection between Pinter and Beckett:
Both Beckett and Pinter’s plays, like other absurdist
plays foreground the pathetic figure of human in this
vast universe and express his absurdity in various ways.
Unlike Pinter, who always depicted his imagination
through a real setting and characters, Beckett mostly
dehumanised his personas and pictured his idea via the
surreal world. The language of Pinter and Beckett also
differs in some ways. Pinter uses language to display
the fracture in communication to highlight the failure in
communication. His characters mainly apply language
for domination on each other or use it as a weapon
rather than as a means of communication as “Pinter
understands the ways in which people can use language
obliquely, as a smokescreen” (Watson 195). For
instance, Rose, in The Room, uses words as a weapon to
cover her defects, and defend herself from aliens. She
endeavours to conceal her isolation behind her babble
and break the deadly silence of the room. Beckett, on
the other hand, employs language to express man’s
isolation and alienation in the world as well as his
inability to communicate; as he thinks the language is
the great barrier to communication. Following
paragraphs provide some vivid examples of these facts
and analyses them for more clarity of Beckett and
Pinter’s manners in their way of conveying messages.
Being passive is one of the traits of the Absurd
characters. Both Pinter and Beckett use the passive
characters in their works with slight differences.
Accordingly, in The Room, Pinter presents this
characteristic through Bert Hudd. Rose’s husband is the
passive character of The Room as he does nothing
important within the play, but at the end of the play he
turns to the killer, and murders Riley. His silence also
reminds one, Beckett’s Eh Joe. Joe never talks, but
listens to a woman’s voice. The woman who was
instigated by him to committed suicide. Besides,
Pinter’s blind Negro is similar to Beckett’s Hamm in
some ways: both are blind, lonely and possess the
features of absurd characters.
However, there is a remarkable difference between
these two characters that distinguishes Pinter from
Beckett. Characters in Endgame are not real, and no
one can find a similar person like them in the real
world: Hamm, an abnormal son and cruel man with odd
features, who condemns his parents to live in the
dustbin or a servant who is not able to sit, are not the
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real individuals of this world. Though, Pinter is highly
impressed by Beckett, he merely takes his models from
Beckett’s characters and recreates them in the real
society alongside real personalities.
Furthermore, Riley’s situation at the end of the play is
similar to the character in Beckett’s Act without Words
I, as two characters sink in their immobility.
Nevertheless, again, there are two noticeable
differences between these characters: in the first place,
Riley unlike Beckett’s character is a real person and
simultaneously, he is an interloper and a victim.
Secondly, the element of violence directly intervenes as
Riley’s death.
Again, In comparison with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
and The Endgame, The Birthday Party’s characters are
not images of particular human attitudes; in contrast,
they are real and portray the individuals in the world.
Esslin believes that the personages in Waiting for
Godot and The Endgame “are not characters, but the
embodiments of basic human attitudes, rather like the
personified virtues and vices in medieval mysterious
play” (Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd 76).
In The Dumb Waiter, Ben’s striving to satisfy his
masters resembles Clov in Endgame. But in Endgame
Clov serves his visible master, however here Ben and
Gus are in the service of invisible masters. Clov’s
hesitation to leave his master is like Gus’s tiredness of
the organization, and his desire to leave.
The Caretaker like Pinter’s pervious works is not
discrete from Beckett’s direct impression. Here, Davies
is formed as a dramatic character which reminds one of
Beckett’s personas. Watson observes this similarity and
acknowledges in this regard: “Davies the tramp in The
Caretaker, is superficially at any rate a blood relative of
Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon” (Watson 187). The
Caretaker has three characters with the real traits of a
human being. They are not non-human like in some
plays of Ionesco or Beckett. Beckett’s Not I is a short
play where its character is a mouth that is dangling in
the mid-stage while the darkness encompasses the
whole stage. The mouth’s voice belongs to an old
woman, but her total face is not shown on the stage.
Another character of this play is an enigmatic figure
that wears a long Arabic cloak and silently listens to
this voice. Obviously, both characters have no existence
in the real world.
“Davies steps right off the streets of Hackney to
become the first truly realistic bum in the history of
literature” (Baker & Tabachnick 70). He is a nomad old
man who is rescued by Aston from a brawl in a café. In
the first place, he is a kind of Pinter Ian tramp that in
the course of the play displays the characteristics of a
real waif. In this regard, Gale categorizes Pinter’s tramp
with Beckett’s and introduces him as a wanderer who
simultaneously has inherited the traits of a real tramp in
the universe:
While Davies may represent the existential
Chaplinesque/Beckettian tramp on the road of life, at
the same time he is a real tramp who probably does
“stink the place out” literally and who become
characterized by variations on the tramp’s “Thank you
mister” every time he is given something. (Sharp Cut
101)
Mingling of tragedy and comedy is another significant
characteristic in Absurd Drama. Absurd characters
make the audience laugh, but in fact, the story behind
their life is totally tragic and stimulates one’s sympathy.
Here, these two Absurd writers fuse tragedy and
comedy in their dramatic works to render a better
picture of the human situation in this mundane world at
almost the same level. In this case, Endgame by Beckett
is one of the notable Absurd Dramas that despite the
pathetic situation of characters make the audience
laugh. The characters’ action and dialogue is extremely
comic, but at the deeper level one can feel the latent
pain in the characters’ mind and life. Waiting for Godot
also depicts the picture of individuals who cause
laughter in the theatre, but actually their everyday
expectation of Godot’s coming makes their condition so
pathetic that they prefer suicide to waiting for Godot:
“We should have thought of it when the world was
young, in the nineties … hand in hand from the top of
the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable
in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let
us up” (Beckett 10). Because of insufficient tools they
choose waiting over suicide. In this respect Esslin
mentions that:
Suicide remains their favorite solution, unattainable
owing to their own incompetence and their lack of
practical tools to achieve it. It is precisely their
disappointment at their failure to succeed in their
attempts at suicide that Vladimir and Estragon
rationalize by waiting, or pretending to wait, for Godot.
(Esslin, the Theatre of the Absurd 57)
Beckett’s Happy Days is another explicit example of
this trait. Winnie, a chubby happy woman is captured in
the soil up to her waist. But, little by little she is sinking
into the earth and even her husband doesn’t pay
attention to her. Her cheerfulness is completely in
contrast with her woeful situation, “in one sense her
cheerfulness is sheer folly and the author seems to
make a deeply pessimistic comment on human life; in
another sense, however, Winnie’s cheerfulness in the
face of death and nothingness is an expression of man’s
courage and nobility” (Esslin, The Theatre of the
Absurd 83). Nell in Beckett’s Endgame says “nothing is
funnier than unhappiness … it’s the most comical thing
in the world” (Beckett 18-19). The fusion of comedy
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and tragedy demonstrate how individuals cope with
various situations in life.
However, Pinter often mingles tragedy and comedy to
create a dreadful atmosphere. In his plays, comedy
comes with terror and menace leading to pain. The
amalgam of comedy and menace makes him a
distinctive dramatist. Since Menace is another
fundamental characteristic in Absurd Theatre, it is
conveyed through different means. Pinter’s fusion of
menace and comedy creates Comedy of Menace which
is a kind of comedy, that horrifies and causes pain and
toil and “the use of black humor is often an
accompaniment to such comedies” (Prasad 180). In this
kind of drama, characters are mostly controlled or
menaced by an absent or present force.
The Birthday Party is labeled as an Absurd drama and
Comedy of Menace, as menace continuously hovers in
the atmosphere of the play. A sense of comedy and
menace are conveyed in a parallel manner. Goldberg
and McCann are the source of menace in the play.
Esslin states “The play merely conveys the poetic
image of the kind of nameless menace they represent”
(Esslin, Experimental Drama 141). In The Room or A
Slight Ache, the characters are menaced by outside
forces. Pinter mostly attempts to display the existence
of menace in his dramatic works by using real men. The
setting evokes dark enigmas and mysterious
imagination. Pinter frequently repeated the theme of
menacing the characters through both outside and
inside forces in his plays. In spite of Pinter’s affiliation
to Beckett, menace in his plays is more tangible than in
Beckett’s works:
Beckett’s characters are menaced by the metaphysical
nothingness all around them and the struggle is not so
much to exist as to prove that they exist. The feeling of
Pinter’s characters is quite different. It is not that there
is nothing outside the room which is his favorite
dramatic image; it is precisely that there is something or
somebody outside, and this is a source of threat which
may materialize at any moment. Beckett’s ‘void’ is thus
filled in Pinter with menacing entities. (Watson 188)
A sense of menace as well as a sense of absurdity in
Pinter’s earlier works is stronger, as Prasad highlighted:
“Pinter’s plays have also been considered as comedies
of menace. The early plays in particular are pervaded
by a generalized sense of threat, of some outside danger
infiltrating a secure place like a room for example”
(180). Pinter strives to create a real menace around his
characters. He directly points out in his interview with
Kenneth Tynan: “Obviously, they are scared of what is
outside the room. Outside the room is a world bearing
upon them, which is frightening … we are all in this, all
in a room, and outside is a world, which is most
inexplicable and frightening, curious and alarming”
(B.B.C Home Service).
Absurd drama’s milieu is another challenging issue in
New Theatre. Beckett in contrast to Pinter usually uses
surreal atmosphere in his works.
Pinter’s employing “waiting” theme is another sign of
his binding to Beckett. The Dumb Waiter’s characters’
long wait is similar to Waiting for Godot’s characters’
wait. Robert Gordon touches upon ‘waiting’ as an
analogy between Pinter’s characters in The Dumb
Waiter and Beckett’s men in Waiting for Godot: “like
Vladimir and Estragon, Ben and Gus are always
waiting” (206). However, a noticeable difference
between these two pairs should be considered.
Beckett’s characters’ waiting is seemingly vain and
fruitless because the appearance of Godot is apparently
beyond the bounds of possibility and they just spend
their time recklessly for their belief; such waiting is
somewhat opposed to reality as their waiting has no end
and even by the end of the play they fail to see Godot;
he probably won’t come to see them.
But for Pinter’s men this waiting is not pointless, as
someone always shows up. Unlike Ben and Gus’ absurd
situation their waiting doesn’t clash with reality: “while
they wait, Gus busies himself with preparations for a
realistic tea, and Ben reads the bloodier items from a
realistic newspaper” (Cohn 85). In addition, Pinter
illustrates how the coming of people into one’s world
transforms his situation into an absurd world; however,
Beckett shows this absurd status even without anyone’s
arrival.
In this regard, Esslin mentions that “waiting is to
experience the action of time, which is constant change.
And yet, as nothing real ever happens, that change is in
itself an illusion … the act of waiting for Godot is
shown as essentially absurd” (The Theatre of the
Absurd 52-56). On the other hand, waiting has become
a habit for Vladimir and Estragon, since it explicitly
prevents them “from reaching the painful but fruitful
awareness of the full reality of being” (Esslin, The
Theatre of the Absurd 59).
As a circular plot or having no story is extremely
important in the Absurd Theatre, all the well-known
absurd plays are fashioned with the A-B-A structure. It
means that nothing really happens in the course of the
play. One motif is repeated frequently in different ways
with some specific words and sentences. Waiting for
Godot is an explicit example of the circular plot:
“nothing happens nobody comes, nobody goes, and it’s
awful” (Beckett 41). Regarding this, Esslin mentions
that “Waiting for Godot does not tell a story; it explores
a static situation” (The Theatre of the Absurd 46).
Beckett’s Endgame and Pinter’s The Birthday Party are
other examples that have circular plots, as they end at
where they started. This matter also is totally true about
The Caretaker, as when The Caretaker ends, the
audiences return back to the initial state of the play, as
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if nothing has happened: Davies returns to his former
status of tramp and the two brothers get back to their
mood of isolation: Aston is back to his seclusion and
Mick remains in his non communicative mood with his
older brother.
CONCLUSION
In contrast to Beckett, who just focused on absurdity
traits and surreal aspect in his works, reality plays an
important role in Pinter’s plays as they fraught with the
realities of life of real characters. Hence, prominent
differences which distinguish Pinter’s works from the
other absurdist writers like Becket is commented upon
by Regal as follows:
Unlike Beckett, Pinter has always felt strongly drawn
to surface naturalism. Very few of his plays aspire to
the type of cosmic timelessness evident in Beckett’s
more symbolic descriptions of the human plight. Pinter
focuses on the local and familiar. His characters, for the
most part, bear ordinary names, wear ordinary clothes,
and go about this business in definable naturalistic
settings. (130)
Besides, there are some elements which are common in
Beckett and Pinter as two absurdist dramatists. This is
pointed out in Scott’s statement: “menace, fear, the
clutter of daily living, the concentration on trivial
possessions, the focus on the banality of language were
elements which seemed to form a common denominator
between these two dramatists” (11).
In Pinter’s oeuvre unlike Beckett, characters always are
threatened by real menace and the source of the menace
is totally obvious. In this regard, Hinchliffe observes
“Pinter’s terror and menace are greater because they
exist in the house next door” (41).
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3. Beckett, S. (1958). Endgame, a Play in One Act,
Followed by Act Without Words, a Mime for One
Players. New York: Grove Press. Print.
4. Cohn, R. (1930). “The World of Harold Pinter.”
Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Arthur
Ganz. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,. 78-92.
Print.
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