"I don't know how music can influence writing, but it has been very important for

me, both jazz and classical music. I feel a sense of music continually in writing,

which is a different matter from having been influenced by it."

(Harold Pinter in Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton, 2000)

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor

between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false;

it can be both true and false." 

Written In 1958 by Harold Pinter

Introduction

Development

1- What is the Theater of the Absurd?

2- Biography: Who is Harold Pinter ?

3- The Plot summary

4- Setting and Character

5- Themes

6- The Language

Conclusion
 Introduction
Harold Pinter shined as a playwright starting with his first play “The

Room” which was very successful ; Pinter`s work is woven around his experience, it is the

embodiment of something ordinary, a real situation closely observed which allows him to

point out certain elements of setting and language. “The Room” is considered to be One

of his best and the most read works.

 What is the Theater of the Absurd?

The “Theatre of the Absurd” is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin

Esslin, who made it the title of his 1962 book on the subject. The term refers to a

particular type of play which first became popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which

presented on stage the philosophy articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in

his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he defines the human condition as

basically meaningless. Camus argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing

that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that

sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd.

Esslin regarded the term “Theatre of the Absurd” merely as a "device " by

which he meant to bring attention to certain fundamental traits discernible in the works

of a range of playwrights. The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd

attempt to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an

inexplicable universe.

Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically
impossible. According to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy

when we are able to abandon the restriction of logic.

Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

 -Biography-

Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, a working-class neighborhood in London's

East End, the son of a tailor. Both of his parents were Jewish, born in England. As a child

Pinter got on well with his mother, but he didn’t get on well with his father, who was a

strong disciplinarian. On the outbreak of World War II Pinter was evacuated from the city

to Cornwall; to be injured from his parents was a shocking event for Pinter. He lived with

26 other boys in a castle on the coast. At the age of 14, he returned to London. 

In 1950 Pinter started to publish poems in Poetry (London) under the name

Harold Pinta. He worked as a bit-part actor on a BBC Radio program,   Focus on Football

Pools. He also studied for a short time at the Central School of Speech and Drama and
toured Ireland from 1951 to 1952 with a Shakespearean troupe. In 1953 he appeared

during Donald Wolfit's 1953 season at the King's Theatre in Hammersmith.

After four more years, Pinter began to write for the stage. THE ROOM (1957),

originally written for Bristol University's drama department, was finished in four days. A

SLIGHT ACHE, Pinter's first radio piece, was broadcast on the BBC in 1959. His first full-

length play, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, was first performed by Bristol University's drama

department in 1957 and produced in 1958 in the West End.

Pinter's major plays originate often from a single, powerful visual image. They are

usually set in a single room, whose occupants are threatened by forces or people whose

precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define. The struggle for

survival or identity dominates the action of his characters. Language is not only used as a

means of communication but as a weapon. Under the words, there is a silence of fear,

rage and domination, fear of intimacy.

The Plot summary

 Pinter’s play The Room is about two people and it was written in four days. Pinter

has given a glimpse of his style and the stage-setting in this play. Rose and Bert are an

old couple living in a small room of a big mansion. Though they live together, yet each

one experiences loneliness untouched by the ideas and attitudes of the other.

Each lives in a world insulated from the others, but is capable of apprehending the

feelings and fears of others. Rose convinces Bert that their room provides security from

the insecure world outside. In this play the conversation of the landlord named Kidd is

utterly vague, and the dialogue of the couple Clarissa and Toddy Sands who are in search

of a room is equally ambiguous. The blind Negro in this play symbolizes the shady past

and guilt of Rose. The characters in The Room are victims of suppressed motives and are

menaced thy some unspecific evil power.

In The Room, Pinter examines man’s life that is not always perceptible and

predictable. Security and peace are two vulnerable states of being. No stability is

guaranteed, and danger is lurking outside the door

Setting and Character

Pinter’s early play is usually set in a room. The room is usually an uncomfortable

place in which the inhabitants live waiting for a visitor from the outside, a threat to their

uncertain equilibrium. The Room "set in 'a snug, stuffy rather down-at-heel bedsit with a

gas fire and cooking facilities'." The room is located in an equally rundown rooming

house . The room can symbolize:

1. a refuge

2. A safe heaven

3. A sort of motherly womb protecting from the outer world

4. A sort of property to be wished and fought for

5. A kind of prison
 Themes

The Room set out many of the themes that dominate his best work. A
housebound wife and her silent husband find their home mysteriously threatened by a

domineering landlord, a pushy couple, and a blind man. There is an unspoken sense of

threat, of impending catastrophe. The air is thick with sexual violence, and the greatest

threat is to the certainties of their home. 

1- The main theme of the play is that of “waiting” which involves not only the

characters, but also the audience which is kept waiting for what’s going to
happen next, while nothing happens at all.

2- Sterility: total absence of women in the play and the “sterile” relationship between

men only.

3- The search for identity: underlined by the characters often bein referred to by

different names (Didi, Gogo, Albert)

4- Memory: characters have great difficulty in remembering anything.

5- The monotony of life: represented by the circular and repetitive structure of the

play: the play starts and ends in the same way, the same place and the same time

6- The inability to act.

7- The pre-occupation with time: time lacks any connotation of quantity and quality,

it is too slow or too fast and sometimes it fails to pass

The Language
 The Language does not serve to the purpose of communication:it is used by the

characters just to fill in the endless waiting. Endless waiting is the only purpose human

beings have in life, and this is the essence of the Absurd.

A device used to show the lack of communication of characters is the para-verbal

language, such as pauses, silence and gags. Much of the language appears to be simple;

the words in fact often have a double sense. The effect is often comic though its meaning

can be tragic, as in the case of their failed attempt at suicide: it is not simply a mixture of

tragic and comic elements.

Conclusion

To conclude with, Pinter was an English playwright who achieved international

success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatists. Harold Pinter's plays

are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, irony, and mysterious small talk. In

2005, Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

 Web-biography

http://www.scritube.com/limba/engleza/literature/

http://nplusonemag.com/harold-pinter

http://www.wsws.org/articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room

http://www.ingilizceforum.net/a-short-analysis-of-the-room-harold-pinter

http://www. yabaluri.org