A Study Into Harold Pinter:

Examining Ibrahim Yerebakan’s journal article on profanity in Harold Pinter’s

work, and its significance in understanding Pinter’s play Mountain Language:

Yerebakan asserted in his work that Pinter “put his political frustrations into his
late works in a rather violent and explicit tone”(Yerebakan 156) captured in his
application of profanity in Mountain Language.

An example is seen in scene 3, where the first line uttered when the lights come
up on the stage is from the offstage sergeant, who exclaims, “Who’s that fucking
woman? What’s that fucking woman doing here? Who let that fucking woman
through that fucking door?”(S3 L1-2). The use of the word “fucking” four times in
the same line, accentuates the brutality of the Sergeant and his power, but in a
non-physical way. In this manner, the sergeant symbolises the authority of the
political world, and the profanity serves as a vehicle in elucidating the harsh
brutality of the play’s antagonists— the prison guards.

Yerebakan also explores the potential cause for Pinter’s desire as a playwright to
aggressively and violently address political issues of his time. He explores how
Pinter changed throughout the course of his literary career from the
“silent”(Yerebakan 156) writer during the 60s and 70s, to a far more passionate
and aggressive playwright during the 80s and 90s(Yerebakan 156). It is
suspected that his early fame contributed to him being more comfortable to
publicly voice his opinions both through his plays and his own public
appearance.

Pinter’s desire for staging political injustice through an aggressive and harsh
tone is thought to have come from his personal context as a witness of the
Second World War. He was exposed to stories of “Slaughter, mass deportations,
concentration camps by brutal dictatorships”(Yerebakan 156). Also being a Jew
meant that he was deeply impacted by the Anti-Semitic movement around
Europe of the time.

In an interview about The Birthday Party, Pinter spoke about the character’s
Goldberg and Mcann, stating that they were “Dying, rotting, Scabrous, the
decayed spiders, the flower of our society. They know their way around. Our
mentors. Our ancestry. Them. Fuck em”(Yerebakan 157) Thus Pinter reveals how
his antagonists often inspire much hatred within him as a writer. Such notions
brought myself to question whether perhaps the writing of plays and literary
works served as a form of emotional catharsis for Pinter to release much political
anger into a medium that he could sculpt and make his own impression on.

In closer analysis of Mountain Language, the article touches on the role of

profane language in Pinter’s craft as a means of staging language as “the
oppressor’s weapon”(Yerebakan 162). The guards “speak in lies, scatology and
double talk”(Yerebakan 162) whilst removing any right for the prisoners to
speak themselves. In this way Pinter highlights the power of the political stage,
where words, rather than guns are the tools aimed to harm the lives of others.
Reflection of the source:
The source is useful in understanding the personal context of Pinter and how
influences affected his writing. It also touches on the role of such harsh language
in conveying the messages of his plays Mountain Language and The Birthday
Party.

Negatives:
It takes a rather broad stance into the influences of Pinter, rather than offer more
specific details pertaining to specific plays and what influenced their creation.

Works Cited:

Pinter, Harold. Mountain Language. London: Grove Atlantic, 2006. Web. 22 Sept.
2017.

Yerebakan, Ibrahim. “Explicit Language, Radical Tone: Harold Pinter's Obscene

Words Speak Louder than Action.” AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik,
vol. 39, no. 2, 2014, pp. 155–173. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24329447.