THE AFFIRMATIVE ABSURD IN HAROLD PINTERS PLAYS

WONG-ROSENGARTEN, YEANG CHUI

(B.A. English. University of Hawaii, Manoa)

A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2008

Acknowledgements For Mikiko Seo, Matthew Koh, and Cherng; their kindness and companionship provided much comfort during the writing process; John Whalen-Bridge, whose guidance and tireless encouragement made my candidacy at NUS a most unforgettable experience, and finally, Joseph OMealy, whose interest in my work and willing indulgence in my love of strange plays made my work not only possible but immensely meaningful and enjoyable.

I would also like to extend my thanks to Michael Boggan at the British Library for patiently walking me through the procedures of requesting and handling the materials in the Pinter Archive, and Judy Daish, Mr. Pinters agent, for granting me access to the precious papers in the collection, which at the time of viewing was housed in the library as a loan from the playwright and could only be viewed by permission. This truly valuable source has since then been purchased by the British Library.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Harold Pinter: Angry, Absurd, and Affirmative... 1

Chapter 2. Oh, Im So Glad You Came Today: Intruders as Liberators in The Birthday Party.. 11

Chapter 3. Pronouncing Silence, Professing Friendship: Verification and Betrayal in The Dwarfs... 34

Chapter 4. Remembrance of Things Past and Present: The Simultaneity of Time in Silence and The Proust Screenplay... 55

Chapter 5. Conclusion: Accommodating the Possibility of Affirmation in Pinters Drama.... 80

Bibliography. 85

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Summary

In an interview with Theatre Quarterly, Sir Peter Hall, the director most closely associated with his work with Harold Pinters plays, told his interviewers that people often ask him why he does not direct happy plays that are life enhancing. He claims that nobody writes them in the 1960s and 70scertainly not Pinter. Hall speaks for many critics and audiences when he notes that Pinters plays are bleak, uncompromising, hostile, and pessimistic.1 In modern British Drama, these descriptions have come to be synonymous with the Pinteresque, frequently associated with tags like Comedies of Menace, and the infamous label that heads Martin Esslins 1961 book: The Theatre of the Absurd. While the attributes of these labels have been tremendously helpful in situating Pinters enigmatic plays within a historical and philosophical context, they have also delimited interpretive possibilities that defy categorical definitionsmust Pinters works necessarily be dark, pessimistic, and menacing? This dissertation utilizes Esslins coinage as a springboard to explore the affirmative elements in Pinters works thorough a careful and sensitive treatment of the intrusion metaphor as one that is manifest not only in the violation of internal-external space, but also in class conflict, language, and memory. My study of three early playsThe Birthday Party (1957), The Dwarfs (1963), and Silence (1969), juxtaposed against a study of The Proust Screenplay (1972)aims to identify the unlikely
1

The interview from Theatre Quarterly 16 (1974) is reprinted in Ian Smiths Pinter in the Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books Limited, 2005). 131157.

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affirmative elements in Pinters works to show that when we reframe our modes of interpretation, they essentially demonstrate a form of Sisyphean optimism that, even in the midst of gloom and despair, affirms liberation and renewal, embodying, in Halls words, Pinters unblinkingly accurate scrutiny of absurd existence.

1 Harold Pinter: Angry, Absurd, and Affirmative

When Harold Pinter was awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, many in the literary community thought the Nobel committees choice could not have been more agreeable; others like Scottish poet Don Paterson was skeptical: To take a risk in a poem is not to write a big sweary outburst about how crap the war in Iraq is, even if you are the worlds greatest living playwright. Because anyone can do that (Higgins). What Paterson does not mention is that not everyone has been writing consistently for almost half a century, or as the Nobel committee puts it: the continuity in [Pinters] work is remarkable, and his political themes can be seen as a development of the early analyzing of threat and injustice (The foremost). But it will not suffice to reduce Pinters earlier works to threat and injustice, especially since most of his plays, up to the early 80s, were not overtly political in that they did not directly target institutional orders or government policies.2 Aside from The Birthday Party (1957) and The Hothouse (1958), Pinters pre-80s plays deal mostly with sexual and familial politics. In early plays like The Room (1957), The Lover (1962), and The Homecoming (1964), he was mostly preoccupied with the idea of communication, or what some critics call the impossibility of communication.3 In the following decade, Pinters obsession with communication was replaced with more intimate and emotional themes. Between the late 60s and 70s, he turned his attention to the fragility of the human condition and produced some of the most lyrical plays to date: Landscape (1967), Silence (1968), Monologue (1974), and

2 3

Practically all of Pinters political plays are dated after One for the Road (1984). Rdiger Imhof, like many other critics preceding him, incorporates this idea into the title of his essay Pinters Silence: The Impossibility of Communication.

2 Betrayal (1978). All of these plays, written over a twenty-year period, have nothing to do with political injustice at all; their central themes focus on relationships and the struggle of trying to sustain them in meaningful ways. This estrangement of man from language, his companions, his past, and his unforeseeable future contributes to what Martin Esslin terms The Theatre of the Absurd, a label that does not sit well with critics and writers such as Richard Eyre and David Hare even forty years after its inception in 1961. Generally, these individuals consider Esslins label to be a portmanteau term that conveniently lumps together playwrights like Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet, disregarding the unique qualities of the each dramatists works. At the celebration of Pinters seventieth birthday, Eyre expressed the general dislike for Esslins label as he recalls watching his first Pinter play: And then I saw The Caretaker. I hadnt been corrupted by reading about Theatre of the Absurd or by critics passion for kenneling a writer in a category, and I was innocent of the writers supposed concerns with status and territory (Eyre vii). Eyre echoes Herman T. Schrolls concern when he highlights the negative implications of the label, believing it to have done more harm than good: Dramatic commentary, began as an aid to an understanding of the plays, finally lost its effectiveness as resulting theatrical fashions prevented direct reactions to the plays and scholarly interpretations become so abstract that their categories hindered new ideas (8).4 Through several editions, Esslin consistently tells readers that his book aims to provide an analysis and elucidation of the meaning and intention of some of [the

Some critics believe that Pinter criticism has been stagnant for this very reason; interpretations of his plays have continuously circled around what Austin Quigley calls symbol hunting (cited in Begley 12). Even as recent as 2007, Varun Begley puts forth the question: Abstract interpretations often strive to master the strangeness and excess of Pinters works by postulating an Archimedean distance. But does distance constitute a

3 plays], and he is convinced that as a trend the Theatre of the Absurd is important and significant (1617). The task of identifying this important and significant movement has a paradoxical effect; identification is only possible at the expense of collapsing the different aesthetic approaches of the playwrights into a generic category. Even as Esslin tries to isolate and distinguish a unique convention, he generalizes it, and as we will see, his presentation of the Absurd in The Theatre of the Absurd plays an integral role in the interpretation of Pinters plays. For better or worse, Esslins label has made a considerable contribution to the understanding of some of the most esoteric plays written in the twentieth century, and it is able to do so because it defines a specific period in the history of theatre development. For critics and scholars, The Theatre of the Absurd provides a philosophical approach to the plays, but Yael Zarhy-Levo reminds us that labels can also prove to be problematic. The significance of the body of works included in Esslins book is different to each critic, depending on their interpretations of those works. Similarly, literary [p]eriods can be fixed at different points of history depending on the historians conception of history, and philosophical concepts are associated with different groups of plays depending on the critics own philosophical orientation (2). Under these conditions, the category absurd can obscure and delimit the interpretive strategies that are used to study the plays; as Eyre implied, books like The Theatre of the Absurd can instill preconceived ideas about the playwrights and affect our interpretation of their works. Notions of gloom and pessimism so often associated with Pinters works stem from prominent critics like

solution or an evasion? (12). In 2005, Gail Low also expressed a similar concern and notes that Pinters early works are not often critiqued and examined for their topical or sociological references" (168).

4 Esslin, who can determine the acceptance of the plays, and later, the reputation of their creators; for this reason I would like to revisit the philosophical orientation implied by his usage of the term absurd. In writing Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin attempted to study a group of playwrights in the late 1950s who worked against theatre conventions in a form of drama preoccupied with the devaluation of language and plot structures; he emphasized this new theatrical development as a response to the conditions in post-war Europe: [the] hallmark of [the absurd theatre] is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions All this was shattered by the war (23).5 By reiterating this concept as a central idea throughout his book, Esslin gives the initial impression that the absurd play is to be dark and devoid of hope, and perhaps should have been called the Theatre of Despair. But there is more to the absurd in Esslins Absurd theatre than disillusionment and despair. If we understand absurd as ridiculous, discordant, and baffling, then the term is a fitting description for the playwrights in The Theatre of the Absurd. The works of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet, which inherited the legacy of the Dadaists from the preceding generation, are wholly different from the earlier well-made plays of Ibsen and Chekhov. Leonard Powlicks essay, aptly entitled What the Hell is That All About?: A Peek at Pinters Dramaturgy highlights the difficulty in deciphering the absurdist traits of Pinters works as he unabashedly admits that critics, scholars, theatre professionals, and serious theatergoers are at times no less bewildered than the average

Hereafter cited as Theatre.

5 audience at a Pinter play: Hmmm, we have said to ourselves coming out of the theatre in which we have just seen No Mans Land for the first time. Very interesting. We then would add a few stock phrases from our store of stock phrases labeled Pinter, and resolve to ourselves to reread the script first thing in the morning (3031). Most absurd plays have little semblance to plot. At times their characters appear to give meaningless speeches that contradict their actions; time and chronology are often disjointed, and when the plays end, so many loose ends are left hanging that audiences balk at paying full price for a ticket to what they believe is half a play. These plays have no moral lessons to preach, no distinct stories to tell, they are simply: absurd. But Esslin tells us that he does not define absurd in these terms: In common usage, absurd may simply mean ridiculous, but this is not the sense in which Camus uses the word, and in which it is used when we speak of Theatre of the Absurd (23). He turns to Camuss idea of the absurd to create a framework in which he categorizes the plays in his book. For Camus, absurd existence is marked by a series of habits rising in the morning, going to work, coming home, eating, sleepingwhich ultimately end in death. Life is meaningless, and the absurdity of life lies in mans intrinsic desire to continue living tomorrow even though tomorrow is another day closer to death. He describes this feeling of absurd existence as: A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promise land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. (The

6 Myth of Sisyphus 6)6 While there is hardly any trace of affirmation in Camuss description of the absurd condition, his reading of the Sisyphus myth promises to redeem the seemingly hopelessness of the absurd life with five words: One must imagine Sisyphus happy (123). He asserts this possibility with an unlikely proclamation: It is during that return [downhill] that Sisyphus interests me I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end that is the hour of consciousness. Sisyphus, the proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent All Sisyphuss silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. (12123) Sisyphus is stronger than his rock not because he resigns himself to fate, but because he makes that tragic fate his own by accepting the hand that he has been dealt with. His attitude is made possible by his ability to make the best of his plight through scorn and revolt, conscious reflection and contemplation. Camus celebrates the confrontation of absurd existence in meaningful ways despite the void that awaits us at the grave; he compares Sisyphus to that other tragic Greek hero, the blind Oedipus, who even in the worst of times, announces to the world: Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well (cited in Myth 122). This is the undeniable redemptive strand to Esslins Theatre of the Absurd, a quality that is casually mentioned at intervals but not explicitly stressed until the last second chapter of his book:

Hereafter cited as Myth.

7 In expressing the tragic sense of loss at the disappearance of ultimate certainties the Theatre of the Absurd, by a strange paradox, is also a symptom of what probably comes nearest to being a genuine quest in our age: an effort, however timid and tentative, to sing, to laugh, to weep if not in praise of God at least in search of a dimension of the Ineffable [] When it is no longer possible to accept complete closed systems of values and revelations of divine purpose, life must be faced in its ultimate stark reality. (40001) It is the confrontation of this endlessly mundane, trite, and sometimes threatening stark reality that the absurd man deserves to be crowned hero. On this account, and my dissertation uses Camuss interpretation of the Sisyphus myth as a strategy for contextualizing Pinters plays to explore this paradoxical but also assertive strand of absurdism that has been overlooked in Pinter criticism. Pinters place in Camusian absurdism can be found in many of his plays. Between the late 50s and early 70s, he systematically mapped mans uphill battle to reconcile the absurdity of desire and the consciousness of existence. Many of his characters suffer fates not unlike that of Sisyphus. Where Sisyphuss rock rolls back downhill every time it reaches the peak of the mountain, the hopes and anticipation of Pinters characters are frustrated every time a desire or reconciliation is attained because the intrusion, so famously attributed as the most distinctive feature in Pinter plays, is relentless. Initially, the menace appears in the form of the stranger-intruder figure who arrives to undermine the authority of the characters in a room, but once the intruders are turned out, a whole new set of disturbances recurs. This setting is Pinters chief means of developing progress in his plays. The intrusion in his works is the confrontation of absurdity: The menace

8 comes from the outside, from the intruder whose arrival unsettles the warm, comfortable world bounded by four walls, and any intrusion can be menacing, because the element of uncertainty and unpredictability the intruder brings with him is in itself menacing (my emphasis) (Taylor Anger and After 236). Menace, also defined as threat, annoyance, disturbance, and nuisance in OED, is almost always limited to the stranger-intruder figure in Pinter studies, but Taylors observation that any intrusion can be menacing promises new ways of approaching the idea of intrusion in Pinter criticism. Intrusion and menace need not be defined by indoor-outdoor imageries. Indeed, Pinters plays develop the complexities and implications of intrusion in an inward direction. Even after the intruder figure is cast out in one play, other disturbances return in the next in different forms; they become more and more difficult to recognize as they begin to take on abstract manifestations. The chapters in this dissertation develop this idea in detail through three Pinter plays. After covering the basic indoor-outdoor metaphor in The Birthday Party, I identify forms of intrusion that are no longer confined in the interior and exterior structures of rooms, but rather in the lives that are led within them. The other two plays covered in this study, The Dwarfs (1968), and Silence (1968), are plays that have not enjoyed the success of plays like The Caretaker (1959) or The Homecoming (1964) but are no less important because they form the basis of language and memory as disturbancesthemes that become more complicated and immensely important in later works like No Mans Land (1974) and Betrayal (1978). In The Dwarfs, class conflict between Mark, Pete, and Len renders language as a form of intrusion as it threatens to destroy the friendship and solidarity between the three men. My analysis of Silence is juxtaposed alongside Pinters only unproduced screenplay, The Proust

9 Screenplay, to examine the elusiveness of temporality and recollection. In these works, the threat of the stranger-intruder figure all but disappears, but the past intrudes into the consciousness of the characters, and even in the private spaces of their minds, the characters are not safe from themselves; their consciousness of mortality demands to know where and how they situate their existence in a time space that defies memory and chronology. This inward exploration confronts the relentless onset of menace in the lives of Pinters characters and reveals the struggle of absurd existence. The layout of this study leans on John Russell Taylors very helpful observation of the Pinter pattern: In Pinters case the critics task is made easier by the unswerving logic with which each play follows on from the one before, taking up, elaborating or modifying themes and images with such ruthless concentration and precision that it would probably be possible, knowing nothing of Pinter and confronted with his complete oeuvre all jumbled up, to rearrange it in chronological order on internal evidence alone. In broader outline one may trace a numbed of major themes and images which run through his work, now one, now another, taking the most prominent place in the composition. (Harold Pinter 6) Taylors commentary is especially important in the organization and the core concerns of this dissertation in that it systematically unpacks the multilayered components of the plays while stressing the significance of continuity throughout the Pinter canon up to the 1970s. Against this backdrop, I will occasionally draw on Esslins representations of the absurd to trace Pinters plays as an inward manifestation that moves not only through doors but social expectations and language, memory and time. Through these considerations, my analyses aim to explore the affirmative possibilities in the

10 interpretation of Pinters works. I hope to show that however forlorn Pinters characters may appear to be, they are not condemned by the absurdity of their lives but rather, liberated by it through his dramatic technique. They are neither heroes nor anti-heroes, but simply beings that can attest to what Camus calls the magnificent yet overwhelming nature of absurd existence. There is, as Esslin assures us, room for affirmation in the Absurdist drama: The Theatre of the Absurd is facing up to a deeper layer of absurditythe absurdity of the human condition itself in a world where the decline of religious belief has deprived man of certainties, and more importantly, it shows mans courageous efforts to stake out a modest place for himself in the cold and darkness that envelopes him (Theatre 4012). There is redemption in despair, hope in despondency, and if Pinters humour proves nothing else, solace in anguish. Menace is perpetual, the rock will roll on, but if affirmation promises any hope of happiness, then we must imagine Pinters creatures happy.7

Definitions of happiness vary widely. Aristotle believed that what constitutes happiness is a matter of dispute and the popular account of it is not the same as that given by the philosophers (cited in Ricard 18). None theless, this does not mean that the notion of happiness must be ambiguous and vague in this dissertation. Within the limitations of my discussions, the term happiness is most importantly linked to Camuss interpretation of the Sisyphus myth. For Camus, happiness does not have to be characterized by joy or pleasure. On the contrary, happiness can be said to be the discovery of the lack of joy and the ability to continue living despite this knowledge: Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. Oedipuss response to his tragic plight, Camus asserts, is a prime example: I conclude that all is well, says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted (Myth 122). For Camus, as for this dissertation, happiness is, in essence, the affirmation of absurd existence.

11 Oh, Im So Glad You Came Today: Intruders as Liberators in The Birthday Party

Clarence: How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak! Your eyes do menace me [] Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?8 William Shakespeare

For if the intention of the visitor is to strip the man of his delusion, and if this is successful, he may then clothe the man in one of his own, on the principle that delusions are adjustable and can be worn by anyone. You can wear mine. I can wear yours. All you have to do is give me time for a fitting. On the other hand, given these ingredients of man and visitor, something quite different might take place; what could be called a liberation.9 Harold Pinter

Pinters preoccupation with confined spaces and intruders, dominance and subservience, is often traced back to his first play, The Room (1957). In this early piece, a middle-aged couple, Rose and Bert Hudd, are disturbed not just by one, but several visitors in a room rented from Mr. Kidd. The mundane daily activities in the Hudd household are quickly interrupted by Mr. and Mrs. Sands, a couple who insist that Hudds room will soon be vacant, and Riley, the mysterious basement tenant who comes to urge Rose to
8

Act I, Scene IV of Richard III, when Clarence, imprisoned in the Tower, first discovers the intruders sent by the king to kill him (ll. 7274). 9 Pinters 1958 letter to the editor of The Plays the Thing entitled On The Birthday Party II (Various Voices 14).

12 return to her fathers home. This initial image of interior-exterior disruption had in fact appeared in a less developed form eight years before the publication of The Room in Pinters dramatic prose poem Kullus (1949). In the opening line of the poem, the narrator in Kullus is condemned, like many Pinter characters, when he utters the words that seal his fate: I let him in by the back door (Various Voices 75). The invitation soon leads to a psychological battle between the narrator and his guest, Kullus, as they engage in a sinister cross-interrogation that finally undermines the narrators authority over his room. John Russell Taylor describes this classic situation: the room, representing the warmth in the cold, light in the darkness, a small safe area of the known amid the vast unknown; and the outsider who menaces the apparently secure, peaceful existence of those inside (Harold Pinter 7). The stranger-intruders, so famous for their menacing ways in Pinters works are no new comers in the dramatic scene; in classical drama, they fulfil an important dramatic function: As [the intruders] drop from the blue and have done nothing to earn a share, their generic character is that of Imposteran epithet several times flung at them by the exasperated hero. Their common fate is well-deserved rebuff. When they have made an exhibition of themselves, they are driven off with abuse, frequently seconded by blows. The Imposters are always pitted against the hero, who draws out their absurdities with mocking irony. (cited in Shafer 40) But the intruders in the absurd tradition do not follow the footsteps of their earlier counterparts in that the implications of their arrival are often unpredictable. Indeed, there are a good number of intruders who, far from suffering the common fate of being driven out with abuse, successfully overpower the heroes; the most notorious of the breed

13 exemplified by Ruth, the visiting daughter-in-law in Pinters The Homecoming (1964). Because the Pinters intruders resist standard classification, they are frequently put to the symbolic test and made to share the same spotlight as the chronically mysterious Godot, or the mysterious herd of neither two nor three-horned rhinoceros of Ionesco. Austin E. Quigley warns of the risks of similar overly reductive approaches driven by the desire to understand Pinters works as well-made plays: Instead of being assimilated, the ordinary is replaced by the unlikely (The Pinter Problem 9). He makes this comment in reference to critics that read Riley (The Room) as a messenger of death. As Martin Regal points out, this interpretation simply does not follow: it does not match up to the facts of the play. Indeed, a messenger of death who does not report one and is subsequently murdered himself would make an odd figure even in the work of a playwright more disposed to the absurd than Pinter (10). Even when freed from symbolic representations, the strangerintruders are still trapped in yet another frame. The term intrude implies negative connotations, and intruders like Riley are ascribed a set of qualities that are contingent on social stereotypes: they are base, obnoxious, deceptive, scheming, and they bear ill intentions. These ideas of the intruders create a dichotomy that distinguishes victim and victimizer, which leads to interpretations of the stranger-intruder as a necessarily oppressive figure. Like symbolic readings, the distinction between victim and victimizer has romanticizing critics insist on seeing apocalyptic visions in [Pinters] plays (Wellwarth 96). They assume the victims to be helpless tragic heroes, and by default, the intruders as villains. Books on theatre history and drama anthologies have also adopted this mode of interpretation by synonymously linking Pinter criticism with the victim-hero syndrome.

14 In a chapter dedicated to Pinter, Christopher Inness Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century calls special attention to the idea of victimization in a short general overview of the playright. He informs readers that Pinters characters are normally victimized, reflecting the oppressive conformity imposed by society, or hinting at the fate of so many artists in totalitarian states (331). In fact, Innes seems to consider victimization a key term as he repeatedly reminds us in the following pages that Pinters plays are variations on the subjects of dominance, control and victimization, describing the characters in The Birthday Party (1958) as a victimized boarding-house population, and after commenting on The Birthday Party, he declares: The Caretaker is yet another study in victimization (my emphasis) (332, 333, 339). But Pinters plays are not just studies in victimization. It is difficult to address the larger complexities of the plays if we neatly divide Pinters characters into two groups: victims and victimizers. Katherine H. Burkman points out the limitations and the futility of creating such a dichotomy in Pinter criticism: Pinters characters reveal a curious ambiguity about their positions as victims. Stanley, in The Birthday Party, is victimized by two men who are themselves frightened, potential victims of the power they serve (21). Hence, it is not uncommon to find the intruders in Pinters plays to be such potential victims (21). For instance, Gus, one of the two killers in The Dumb Waiter (1957), is presumably killed by Ben, his partner in crime. Both men are victims of an unnamed organization that provides assassination services. The so-called victims in Pinters plays often take up the role of both victim and victor. If victims are potentially victors and vice versa, then it is equally plausible that intruders are not necessarily persecutors. Yet, it is easy to lose sight of the possibilities

15 that lie in this paradoxical assertion. However, it is possible to consider the interpretive possibilities of this condition by turning to The Birthday Party. Instead of studying the characters in The Birthday Party as victim-victors, this chapter will focus on the notion of liberation and oppression to explore the wider implications of the play. Unlike the interrogation between the narrator and the visitor in Kullus and the interaction between Rose and the intruders in The Room, The Birthday Party presents us with not one but two oppressed charactersStan and Meg. By paying close attention to Meg, who is often dismissed as a stupid, doting, suffocatingly motherly landlady (9), we discover that Goldberg and McCann inadvertently expose Stan to be an equally menacing intruder in the Boless house. As the intruders paradoxically assume the role of persecutor and liberator, they reveal the exploited as the exploiter and vice versa. The Birthday Party details the fall of Stan, a young recluse living at a seaside boarding house run by an elderly couple, Petey and Meg Boles, when two mysterious strangers, Goldberg and McCann, come to take him away with the promise of an adjusted life (Plays 1 22, 77). Because Goldberg and McCann never announce the purpose of their job or why they have come to take Stan away, their roles in the play have attracted a variety of speculations, most frequently as representatives of death or of the inevitable loss of childhood security, as projections of Stanleys own Oedipal guilt, or as representatives of specific groups or organizations from which Stanley has defected (Gillen, Harold Pinters 38). In his biography of Pinter, Michael Billington uses the play to highlight Pinters contempt for the moral pressures of orthodox religion, linking Goldberg and McCanns mannerisms to a critique of Christian-Judeo beliefs (79). In his New Historicist interpretation, Ronald Knowles makes a more immediate link with

16 Pinters boyhood years as he speculates the political influences of the play, and by turning to an actual IRA raid that took place several years before Pinter penned his play, he draws attention to the scare tactics that Goldberg and McCann use to frighten Stan in The Birthday Party.10 Pinter confirms this influence in a 1988 interview when he told BBC TV: In The Birthday Party, I think [verbal power and verbal facility] is most evident. I was a boy in the last war, you know, and the sense of the Gestapo was very strong in England. They werent here, but we as children knew about them (cited in Smith 83). Many of these notions, which pit individual against institution, victim against oppressor, are primarily drawn from a letter from Pinter to Peter Wood, director of the first production of The Birthday Party in 1958, in which the latter recommended a clarification or moral judgement for the play cited in Esslin Letter 3). Woods push for clarification was due in large part to anxieties that London audiences would not readily accept Pinters enigmatic plays, especially at a time when London stages were still dominated by conventional naturalistic drama. His concerns were not unfounded: W.

10

Knowless reading of the questions posed by Goldberg and McCann in the famous interrogation scene (Plays 1 4146) has also led to a magnificently cogent study that details the sources of the play to specific events that headlined IRA activism in the 1950s. Citing Winston Churchills 1945 speech in the House of Commons, Knowles suggests that the play is underscored by the vulnerabilities of European countries under police governments: The family is gathered around the fireside to enjoy the scanty fruits of their toil Suddenly there is a knock at the door, and a heavily armed policeman appears It may be that the father or son, or a friend sitting in the cottage, is called out and taken off into the dark, and no one knows whether he will ever come back again, or what his fate has been. All they know is that they better not enquire. (73) Knowless reading is particularly warranted; when Goldberg accuses Stan of playing a dirty game (Plays 1 42) on him, McCann agrees: Thats a Black and Tan fact (42). The ruthlessness of the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence is well documented. Towards the end of the conflict, allegations of IRA men who took the opportunity to murder people against whom they had local grudges were widespread (Irish Republican Army).

17 Darlington (The Daily Telegraph) reports: [The Birthday Party] turned out to be one of those plays in which an author wallows in symbols and revels in obscurity. Give me Russian every time. M. W. W. (The Guardian) warns audiences: What all this means only Mr Pinter knows, for his characters speak in non-sequiturs, half-gibberish and lunatic ravings (Evans 63). Milton Schulmans complaint in the Evening Standard confirms the source of the critics frustration: Who the two strangers are, who Monty is, where they are all going are matters which may be lucidly clear to Mr. Pinter but he has certainly not divulged them to me (cited in Billington 84). Though The Birthday Party enjoyed a successful run in Wolverhampton, Cambridge, and Oxford, it closed within a week of opening in London, bringing in meager box office earnings of only 260 pounds, eleven shillings, and eight pence (83). Pinter adamantly refused to attach a moral judgement to his play and insisted that the audience members must make their own conclusions and explained that The Birthday Party will be a different play altogether if Stan were able to explain his position to Goldberg and McCann (Esslin Letter 4). Consequently, decades of Pinter criticism have typecast Stan in a romantic light. It is generally agreed that he is the manifestation of the modern anti-hero who refuses to yield to societal demands and Goldberg and McCann are intrinsically perceived as ruthless persecutors of the individual, the everyman. We must, however, keep in mind that Pinter also cautions against romanticizing Stan as a victim when he stresses in his letter to Peter Woods that: Though nonconformist [Stan] is neither hero nor exemplar of revolt (5). It is, in my opinion, too hasty to declare Stan an innocent victim persecuted by Goldberg and McCann. E. T. Kirby also cautions audiences from making quick judgements that trivialize the social complexities in the play: it is superficial and

18 incorrect to refer to Goldberg and McCann as intruders into the boarding house. Obviously, they intrude only upon Stanley, upon his space, not upon that of others, namely Meg or Petey (Kirby 162). Pinters revelation of the inspiration behind The Birthday Party sheds some light on Stans mysterious behaviour as he builds a private space for himself in the Boles home We do not know specifically what Stan is doing, or if he is hiding in Meg and Peteys boarding house, but when Pinter reveals the inspiration behind the play, we are given some clues. As a young actor looking for a place to stay on a Sunday night, Pinter meets a man in a pub who recommends a boarding house that later becomes the Boless home. Pinter recalls: He said, I can take you to some digs but I wouldnt recommend them exactly. I had nowhere else to go and I said, I dont care what they are. I went to these digs and found, in short, a very big woman who was the landlady and a little man, the landlord. There was no one else there, apart from this solitary lodger, and the digs were quite filthy [] I slept in the attic with this man Id met in the pub we shared the attic and there was a sofa over my bed you know what I mean propped up so I was looking at this sofa from which hairs and dust fell continuously. And I said to the man one day, What are you doing here? And he said, Oh well I used to be a pianist. I used to play, in the concert-party here and I gave that up. (cited in Billington 76) It seems that Stan, the embodiment of the rejected pianist, has escaped from the social constraints demanded of him by the institutionalized world, but he isnt simply taking refuge from institutional demands. His choice of refuge is a place where no one can find

19 him; protected by the practically unlivable conditions of the house, Stan does not have to worry about being disturbed by other guests, holiday makers, much less the likes of the briefcase toting Goldberg and McCann. Ironically, Megs preoccupation with operating a good house runs counter to Stans self-serving vision: she takes special pride in the maintenance of the boarding house and always has a room all ready for visitors and she looks forward to receiving guests (Plays 1 67). Stan is understandably anxious at the thought of visiting strangers. Their presence in the house not only disturbs his solitude but his dominance over Meg and her property. If we recall the various forms of intrusions that constitute the notion of disturbance discussed in the introductory chapter, we see that disturbance in the Boles house is already in place even before Goldberg and McCaan arrive, as Meg is subverted by Stan through a series of sexual taunts. The relationship between Stan and Meg is particularly curious. She plays the role of mother and seductress around the younger man, but Stans responses are often hostile and tinged with an oppressive tone. He declares himself to be the dominant figure in her house: Tell me, Mrs. Boles, when you address yourself to me, do you ever ask yourself who exactly youre talking to? (15). These taunts shift unpredictably from adoration to repulsion. One moment he tells her that he would not know what to do without her care and affection, and the next moment he insults her housekeeping skills and calls her names. Meg appears to enjoy flirting with Stan, but she also feels oppressed by his erratic behaviour: STANLEY. Get out of it. You succulent old washing bag. MEG. I am not! And it isnt your place to tell me if I am! STANLEY. And it isnt your place to come into a mans bedroom andwake

20 him up. (12) (my emphasis) Though Megs protest seems futile because she quickly yields to Stan soon after reminding him that he does not have any right to insult her, her remark suggests that she is fully aware that the tensions between them are underscored by the clash of authority and the desire to maintain control over each other and the house. As we will see, her consciousness of her plight takes on a Sisyphean quality when we trace her vulnerability to the lack of a masculine figure in the house. Petey is never around when Stan taunts Rose (on the other hand, Stan knows better than to do so when Pete is around), and he is completely oblivious to the violent birthday party. In The Room, Rose, too, is left to fend for herself through most of the play: Bert leaves for a drive in his beloved van before any of the intruders arrive and he is only assigned a few lines at the end of the play just before he kills Riley. But unlike Rose, who appears nonchalant to the dramatic action around her, Meg is painfully contemplative. She is painfully conscious of her plight, and she pines for a father who apparently abandoned her, then went away by himself to Ireland (53). Megs desire for an authoritative male figure is spelt out in a conversation between herself, Lulu, Goldberg, and McCann midway through the second act, when she dreamily tells McCann: There was a night-light in my room, when I was a little girl [] My little room was pink. I had a pink carpet and pink curtains, and I had musical boxes all over the room. And they played me to sleep. And my father was a very big doctor. Thats why I never had any complains (54). The father motif also underscores the emphasis on the gender hierarchy that Stan has imposed in her house. Gender anxieties that give way to the rising tensions of the play are evident in Pinters initial intention to

21 demonstrate Megs consciousness of her plight in a working draft of the The Birthday Party. The lines which I have italicized have been deleted in published versions: STANLEY. I cant drink this muck. Didnt anyone tell you to warm the pot, at least? MEG. Thats good strong tea, thats all. My father wouldnt let you insult me the way you do. STANLEY. Your father? Who was he when he was at home? MEG. He would report you. STANLEY (sleepily). Now would I insult you, Meg? Would I do a terrible thing like that? MEG. You did. (PA: 5)11 The eliminated lines in the final version of the play does not necessarily suggest Pinters attempt to move away from depicting Meg as a character longing for a authoritative male figure, especially since the traces of her self-consciousness and vulnerability shows up consistently through the entire play. Instead, it renders her as a more complex figure than she seems as it amplifies her ambivalence towards Stan. Sometimes she enjoys playing the helpless victim, other times she relishes the role of a doting mother, and finally, she is also annoyed and disturbed that it is ultimately Stan who rules over her in her own home. Pinters working draft suggests that Meg is not only aware of Stans threat to her position

11

All references to Pinters manuscripts housed in the British Library will be cited as an abbreviated form of its listing, The Pinter Archive, followed by the box number. However, the catalog of the the box numbers may have changed since the viewing of the manuscripts between 1821 June 2007, when they were listed as a loaned collection (from Pinter) to the library. The loaned archive was officially purchased by the British Library on 11 December 2007 and may be re-catalogued in a different order. See Pinter Archive Saved for the Nation.

22 in her house and her vulnerability as a lone female defending her property, she is also profoundly aware that she is condemned to be undermined by Stan because there is no male figure in the house. The absurdity of wishing for a father who is not there results in a contemplative effect that is distinctly Sisyphean. Sisyphus is stronger that his rock precisely because he is always conscious of his tragic fate; his triumph is not found in his persistent uphill climb, but in his downhill journey: I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lair of the gods, he is superior to his fate There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. (Myth 121) Sisyphuss absurd mission is redeemed by his consciousness, an extension of his scorn. Megs absurd and empty threats (that her father will protect her) are no less scornful, even if they arise from sheer desperation. When she imagines that Stan will be more compliant to her under different circumstances. This does not necessarily cast Meg in a victim role. On the contrary, Megs consciousness of her plight and her seemingly weak defense against Stan suggests that Pinters refusal to victimology does not amount to quiescent acceptance of defeat or injustice. Furthermore, the passage seems to confirm this because it gives the impression that Stan would indeed be more cautious of his attitude if there were another authoritative figure in the house. Though Megs father is non-existent and Petey is never in the house, the absence of these two protective figures

23 does not spell doom for Meg, especially when two other male characters arrive to redeem the situation. Stan refers to the possibility of Goldberg and McCanns arrival as a false alarm, but there is nothing false about the alarm (15). He is genuinely worried because he foresees the arrival of the two men as a threat to his dominant position in a house where he rules the roost and doesnt do any work, and carries on like an emperor (Prentice 25). He will no longer be the dominant character in the house when they arrive. Thus, he wastes no time in presenting himself as the head of the house and asserting his authority when he first meets them: Let mejust make this clear. You dont bother me. To me, youre nothing but a dirty joke. But I have a responsibility towards the people in this house. Theyve been down here too long. Theyve lost their sense of smell. I havent. And nobodys going to take advantage of them while Im here. (A little less forceful.) Anyway, this house isnt your cup of tea. Theres nothing here for you, from any angle, any angle. So why dont you just go, without any more fuss? (Plays 1 39) Stan hates Megs tea, but nonetheless, he tells Goldberg and McCaan that the Boles house is not their cup of tea; if he wants to stay on top of his game it is better for him to hog the bad tea than to let someone else have a share of it. Furthermore, by claiming responsibility for the people in the house, Stan is also warning Goldberg and McCann that they would be unwise to provoke himthe people whom he claims to protect will no doubt defend him and the house if the situation calls. His tactic fails. As Goldberg and McCann threaten to undermine Stans rule in the Boles house, they unravel his secret fears and inadvertently place Meg back to her rightful position as

24 mistress of her house. The interrogation scene in which Goldberg and McCann accuse Stan of committing every crime imaginablefrom throttling his mother, to abandoning a wife he never married, and even to not knowing if the chicken or egg comes firstculminates in Goldbergs remark: No society would touch you (45). This marks the beginning of the end of Stans reign in the house. The attention given to this scene has resulted in the neglect of the seemingly insignificant progression that leads to Stans dethronement. Many critics believe that Stans violent acts at the party are caused by Goldberg and McCanns verbal assault: The submerged violence is the subconscious expression of an identity not allowed by the social context demanded by McCann and Goldberg (Gillen, Harold Pinters 39). However, if we survey the surrounding tensions right after the interrogation, we will see that Stans meltdown is ultimately triggered by his incapacity to tolerate rejection, isolation, and his fear of being undermined. But to understand this, we must reexamine the conditions that give rise to the violence that occurs at the party. Since I have suggested that Stans dominance in the Boless house is largely based on gender hierarchy, the power struggle in the house must necessarily be renegotiated with the introduction of two male characters, Goldberg and McCann; the most appropriate scene to consider is Stans birthday party, because it is the only scene in the play that records the interactions between Stan, Meg, Goldberg, and McCann. Even before the birthday party begins, Pinter gives us signs that point to Stans downfall, as Meg, Goldberg, McCann, and Lulu drift into lengthy conversations while preparations are being made for the party. What I would like to highlight at this point is that Stan is in the room throughout the entire mingling session; however, he is isolated by the people

25 who are throwing him a birthday party. Though he is asked to participate in the celebration, he does not respond: he refuses to dance with Meg, and is reluctantly made to play blind mans bluff. Pinters A View of the Party (1958), a poem based on The Birthday Party, juxtaposes this detail with a reminder that Stan is no less of a menace than Goldberg and McCann: The party they began, To hail the birthday in, Was generous and affable, Though Stanley sat alone.

The toasts were said and sung, All spoke of other years, Lulu, on Goldbergs breast, Looked up into his eyes.

And Stanley satalone, A man he might have known, Triumphant on his hearth, Which never was his own. (Various Voices 136) The isolation at the birthday party becomes a reenactment of the horrific incident at his initially successful concert in Lower Edmonton. Stans second concert, in which he views himself as a victim of a conspiracy, is strikingly similar to his experience in A View of the Party:

26 I had a unique touch. Absolutely unique. They came up to me. They came up to me and said they were grateful. Champagne we had that night, the lot Then after that, you know what they did? They carved me up. Carved me up. It was all arranged, it was all worked out. My next concert when I got there, the hall was closed, the place was shuttered up, not even a caretaker. They locked it up they pulled a fast one. Id like to know who was responsible for that. (Plays 1 17) At the boarding house, he is as loved and admired as he was as a pianist at his first, successful concert. In fact, Meg proclaims him to be the life in the house of an insipid, childless marriage: [H]es lived here a long while now, and hes my Stanley now I know him better than all the world and there isnt anything I wouldnt do for him (49). The birthday party and the toasts are to be a celebration of Stan, but as it unfolds, it takes on the form of what happened at his next concert. Once the centre of attention, the envy of others, he is now rejected, ostracized at his birthday party. Like those who locked him out of the concert hall, Meg and the gang had pulled a fast one on him (17); he believes that they are out to get him, and he is right: McCann makes him trip over the drum from Meg at the party. The birthday boy is further isolated and humiliated when the partygoers talk to him. Yet, it is what the characters say to each other and not what they say to him that completes the humiliating experience; when they address him, they respond for him, realizing Goldberg and McCanns earlier remark: What makes you think you exist? [] Youre dead: GOLDBERG. Stanley, a drink for your guest. You just missed the toast, my dear, and what a toast.

27 LULU. Did I? GOLDBERG. Stanley, a drink for your guest. Stanley Now raise your glasses. Everyone standing up? No, not you, Stanley. You must sit down. MCCANN. Yes, thats right. He must sit down. GOLDBERG. You dont mind sitting down a minute? Were going to drink to you. MEG. Come on! (Plays 1 49) Goldberg, instead of Stan, then proceeds to give a thanksgiving speech in response to the toast, all the while demanding that he sit down. While Stan consistently refused to yield to Goldberg and McCanns threats before the party, he makes no effort to defend himself in this scene and lets the guests order him to sit. An earlier hostile encounter with Goldberg and McCann shows that Stan is well aware of what enforced sitting means: GOLDBERG. Mr. Webber, sit down. STANLEY. Its no good starting any kind of trouble. GOLDBERG. Sit down. STANLEY. Why should I? [] GOLDBERG [to MCCANN]. Ask him to sit down. MCCANN. Do you mind sitting down? STANLEY. Yes, I do mind. (4041) The argument between the men about who is to sit and when to sit gets increasingly elaborate and runs through three pages. As it becomes more heated, Stan asserts his dominance by insisting that he would sit only if McCann does it first: the seated man is no doubt cast into a submissive role. But at the birthday party, the pairs demand that

28 Stan must sit, urged on by Meg and Lulu, has more immediate implications. Not only is he made to celebrate a birthday appointed by Meg, he is, on the celebration of the day of his birth, symbolically castrated by his party guests, since standing up is often associated with the affirmation of male sexuality. The gender hierarchy that he previously established in the boarding house is frustrated by the arrival of Goldberg and McCann. The party meant to celebrate male birth turns out instead to be a symbolic ceremonyhe is overpowered by those around him. In this context, Stan resembles a failed Sisyphus in that he gives up defending himself when he finally realizes the absurdity of his efforts and the absurdity of wanting to remain dominant in the house. Knocked down from his hill by the occupants in the house, he fails to march back up. His psychological state reaches a breaking point when he trips over the toy druma birthday present from Meg perceived to be an object of mockery to the once successful pianistand attacks Meg and Lulu in the blacked out house. Critics like Simon Lesser believe that Stans attack on Meg and Lulu gives Goldberg and McCann the excuse they have been looking for to use physical force to subjugate him, and his attempt to rape Lulu is fueled by jealousy. But if Stans attack on the women is an excuse for Goldberg and McCann to subjugate him, then we must assume that they had planned and anticipated the attack. It is perhaps too convenient to assume that the anticipated attack is flawlessly realized, as if Goldberg and McCann can predict Stans response to the failed party. There is no textual evidence that supports the claim of such a plan, especially since 1) the toy drum is a gift from Meg, 2) it is Lulu who proposes playing a game, and 3) Meg makes the final decision that everyone should play blind mans buff (55). To assume that Goldberg and McCann had planned the outcome of

29 the party is to say that Meg and Lulu are in a conspiracy with the intruders. In Austin Quigleys words, such an interpretation is more disposed to the absurd than Pinter. Furthermore, it conforms blindly to the romantic tragic-hero interpretations of the play that justify and absolve Stan of his violent acts. A more plausible explanation is that at his most desperate moment, Stan tries to regain control of the situation the only way he knows how, in the only way that has worked for him so farby asserting his masculine authority through brute force (in strangling Meg), and sexual dominance (in his attempted rape of Lulu).12 Ann C. Hall uses this incident to question the integrity of Stans character: once Goldberg finds the flashlight, we are aligned with him again, and our gaze is forced upon Stanley, who is not escaping, not helping Meg, but instead, is poised over the unconscious Lulu in a position suggesting rape and laughing maniacally. There is no hero here, no innocent or noble character with whom we can identify (52). On the other hand, Goldberg and McCann are often perceived as agent[s] of evil who arrive to oppress Stan, but there is also a liberating dimension to their presence in The Birthday Party: they break the cycle of oppression in the Boles the house (Esslin, Peopled Wound 80). Though we can make a case for psychological torment in the play, there is no way of telling if the two men ever tortured Stan or if they merely detained him in his room; interpretations that attempt to cast the pair as vicious characters can only do

12

Because Pinter does not state whether or not Stan is trying to rape Lulu, some critics may disagree with the assumption that rape is intended. However, Pinters directions provide us with an image does not leave much room for other speculations: LULU is lying spread-eagled on the table, STANLEY bent over her (Plays 1 59). Martin Esslin believes that Stan, having tried to rape Lulu, seems to have gone out of his mind (Peopled Wound 77).

30 so in a strictly performative context.13 The fact that Stan is not able to speak after the party may not be a result of torture but a struggle to articulate an explanation for his behaviour at the birthday party. His attack on the women makes it impossible for him to justify his actions; this self-doubt, perhaps even the guilt, could be so intense and overwhelming as to render him babbling. Pinter has said that if Stan had cottoned on to the fact that he need only admit to himself what he actually is and is notthen Goldberg and McCann would not have paid their visit, or if they had, the same course of events would have been by no means assured. Stanley would have been another man, and The Birthday Party would have been another play (Esslin, Letter 4). Stan might have been able to speak after Goldberg and McCann take him in if he had not attacked the women at the partyhe was after all, quite able to defend himself against Goldberg and McCann before the attack; it is only after the violent event that he can only babble. Goldberg and McCann take advantage of this situation to prepare Stan, who can no longer retaliate, for reformation. Their attempts to dress him up, clean him, and shave him after the birthday party then become a ritual that is not unlike the birth of a child, except this sinister rebirth, which promises re-orientation and success, is most abhorrent to Stan, but perhaps not so to Meg. With Stan under the custody of Goldberg and McCann, Meg is reinstated to her role as mistress of her house the morning after the party. She does not acknowledge the nightmarish events from the previous evening, and so it follows that she still behaves like a submissive and frightened landlady even though Stan has been detained by

13

Though textual material does not state if torture is used, productions of The Birthday Party can, however, make a case for torture, especially if Stan is marked with signs of physical abuse in the form of cuts or bruises in the final act of the play.

31 Goldberg and McCann. She is flustered when she hears a door slam: Its Stanley! Hes coming downwhat am I going to do about his breakfast? (She rushes into the kitchen.) Petey, what shall I give him Theres no cornflakes, but her anxieties are laid to rest when the person turns out to be Goldberg instead of Stan (Plays 1 64). A comparison of Stans earlier treatment of Meg, and Goldbergs responses to Meg in this scene redeems the overbearing environment that Stan has created for Meg: STANLEY. I cant drink this muck. Didnt anyone ever tell you to warm the pot, at least? (12) GOLDBERG. Your wife makes a very nice cup of tea, Mr. Boles, you know that? (64) STANLEY. [] Wheres my tea? [] What did you take it away for? [] Who gave you the right to take away my tea? (15) GOLDBERG. [] The pots hot. More tea, Mr. Boles? (64) There is no way of telling if the tea is good or bad, or which man is lying, but it is not important because Goldbergs response to Megs tea, and his acknowledgement of Meg and Petey as his hosts establishes their status as owners of the boarding house. She no longer has to worry about humiliation and disproval when she goes about her choresshe has regained her position, her private space, and her house. Stans demeaning treatment of Meg, his exploitation of her insecurities, his insistence to dominate her space and undermine her position in the house, and his attack on Meg and Lulu prove him to be much more of a menace than Goldberg and McCann in the Boles house. Within the confines of Megs world, his presence is far more intrusive than Goldberg and McCanns. Goldberg and McCanns arrival liberates Meg from Stans

32 daily year-long taunts (which she seems to enjoy at certain times) have instilled a sense of fear and anxiety in Meg. Pinters letter to Peter Wood reminds us that Stan is certainly not the helpless victim that some critics make him out to be. He is neither hero nor exemplar of revolt, and in A View of the Party, Pinter emphasizes the fact that Stan demands to be triumphant on a hearth which never was his own. Arthur Ganz, who also refused to be swayed by critics who portray Stan as a victim, notes that the disintegrating lassitude that Stanley has lapsed into at the beginning of The Birthday Party, for example, is hardly preferable to the bumptious certainties and brutish sentimentalities of Goldberg and McCann (cited in Carpenter 193). In a sense, Stan is struck by the insufferable absurdity of a life analogous to a grade-B version of the ordeal of Sisyphus (108). He is neither going uphill nor downhill because his refusal to submit to authority and his desire to be dominant at all times pull him in two different directions: he is stuck midway on the slope of the mountain. Stan probably does not find this position disagreeable. If he never reaches the peak, his rock will not roll downhill and he will never have to go downhill to retrieve it, only to repeat the absurd task of rolling it uphill againhe refuses to face the absurdity of life altogether. Just as he cannot be absolved of his actions (or inaction), Goldberg and McCann cannot be simply be dismissed as figures of undoubted villainy in The Birthday Party. Whether or not we agree with their moral ideals and motivations, we must acknowledge the fact that their presence in the play has a multi-dimensional effect. As Goldberg and McCann inadvertently expose Stan to be an equally menacing intruder in the Boles house, they urge us to reconsider longstanding ideas that ascribe Pinters protagonists with victimcentric qualities. To perceive the stranger-intruder as a bringer of disorder, and to pit him

33 against the will of the hero compromises the hermeneutic possibilities of Pinters plays. The Pinter intruder does not have to be hero or villainhe can be both. He can antagonize but he can also liberate. By the same token, the ambiguity of his role and the source of his motivations exemplify the absurdity of finding a comfortable place in this social cycle where one is always exploiter and exploited: Goldberg and McCann is exploited by the organization which they work for, and they in turn exploit Stan; Stan oppresses Meg and at the same time finds himself persecuted by Goldberg and McCann. Finally, Meg may be free of Stans abuse at the end of the play, but his absence does not guarantee complete liberation for she is ultimately unable (or refuses) to face up to the incidents that took place at Stans birthday party; in this, she lacks the quality of the absurd hero. The plight of these characters suggests that this paradoxical dualism may promise persecution, but it also embraces the possibility of liberation.

34 Pronouncing Silence, Professing Friendship: Verification and Betrayal in The Dwarfs

[Y]es, there are friends, but it is an error and deception regarding yourself that led them to you; and they must have learned how to keep silent in order to remain your friend Are there not people who would be mortally wounded if they discovered that their dearest friends actually know about them?14 Friedrich Nietzsche

Half a mans life is spent in implying, in turning away, and in keeping silent.15 Albert Camus

One of the most distinct characteristics that distinguish Pinters work as uniquely different from his contemporaries is his use of the stage direction: silence. This stage direction gives a poetic rhythm to his characters speeches, but Pinter critics are more interested in they say, rather than what they dont say. Conventionally, dramatic pauses or extended silences signal characters thought process; in Pinters hands, these seemingly harmless stage directions can become weapons. They can be used to fend off verbal attacks, threaten and dominate others, and can potentially tilt the power struggle in a play one way or the other because it functions as confrontational non-speech. Peter Hall, no doubt the most heralded director of Pinters plays, highlights this: A pause is really a bridge where the audience think[s] that youre this side of the river, then when you speak again, youre the other side. Thats a pause [] Its
14 15

Nietzsches On Friendship in Human All Too Human (148-49). Camuss The Myth of Sisyphus (80).

35 a gap, which retrospectively gets filled in. Its not a dead stopthats a silence, where the confrontation has become too extreme, there is nothing to be said until either the temperature has gone down, or the temperature has gone up, and then something quite extreme happens. (cited in Batty 164) This line of interpretation, often used in addressing the Pinter silence, has severely limited the interpretative strategies in Pinter studies, for it insists on reading the idea of silence strictly as 1) a stage convention, and 2) as a Pinter invention, that is to say, interpreting silence only within the confines of the Pinter canon and not beyond it. In fact, silent discourses are plentiful beyond Pinterland, and they have hardly been employed to open up the possibilities of analyzing this unique Pinter trait. Friedrich Nietzsches general observations of communication in Human All Too Human offer promising possibilities to Pinter studies in that he does not interpret silence simply as a sign that marks the difficulty of communication. On the contrary, silence is necessary for social interactions. Pinter acknowledges this aspect of silence even though it is not always immediately apparent in his plays. For Pinter, there are two types of silences; the first is silence as a form of self-protection: To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility, and the second is a silence that is shrouded in words; it exposes what words fail to do: The speech we hear is an indication of that which we dont hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness (Plays 1 xiii). Hence, silence, whether it be nonspeech, or implied speech, is a reflective act, one that calls judgement for when to speak and when not to speakno one enjoys listening to hurtful truths. Social harmony and

36 social order cannot be achieved without the smoke screen we call decorum, tact, and consideration. If, as Camus observes, half of a mans life is spent in keeping silent, then it follows that speech, or rather, true speech, is the intruder that disrupts social harmony; this is particularly evident in Pinters The Dwarfs. Though The Dwarfs was first performed on stage in 1963, it was written very early on in Pinters writing career: As I say, I wrote a great deal of poetry and I wrote one novel. It didnt occur to me that I was going to write plays (Batty 80). The play is based on Pinters only novel of the same name, which was written between early 1950s and 1956.16 Despite multiple publications, the critical attention that The Dwarfs receives pales in comparison to other Pinter works. Scholars who have published studies on The Dwarfs frequently highlight its notoriety, attributing the difficulty of the play to Lens Joycean interior monologues; George E. Wellwarth exclaims: It is impossible to make anything definite of it (cited in Hinchliffe 78). Even the usually generous Martin Esslin describes the play as a partial failure (Peopled Wound 130). The general consensus

16

The 1963 stage production was based on the 1960 radio play that was revised twice, once in 1961 and the other in 1968. Unless noted otherwise, all citations in this chapter are from the 1968 version of The Dwarfs. Though the story remains the same in all three versions, their details vary quite widely. Most notably, there is an additional fourth character in the original novel, in which Lens betrayal of Pete to Mark is assigned to Virginia, Petes girlfriend. Virginia shows up exclusively in the novel. Martin Esslin speculates that the lone female character is deleted from the play because Pinter wanted to avoid the clich of the erotic triangle, and that Virginias presence is a distraction because it diminishes the significance of the disintegration process of the friendship (Peopled Wound 130). Pinter has not commented on this speculation, although a Sedgwickean take on the homosocial aspects of the novel and the play would no doubt provide promising insight into this piece of work. See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks seminal study on homosociality in literature in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985). For a detailed discussion of the variations between the radio and stage versions, see Mary Jane Millers Pinter as a Radio Dramatist, and Scott Giantvalleys Toying with the Dwarfs.

37 seems to agree that The Dwarfs has remained disconcertingly opaque (Quigley The Dwarfs 413) despite its relatively straightforward plot. The Dwarfs is a semi-autobiographical play that records the disintegration of a friendship through a series of dialogues between three childhood friends who each look to the other to verify the validity of their life choices. Pinter senses the natural urgency of this need and the difficulty of finding it: desire for verification on the part of all of us, with regard to our own experience and the experience of others, is understandable but cannot always be satisfied (Plays 1 ix). For man to validate the essence of his identity by means of turning to the experiences of others is in and of itself an absurd act, for the experiences of each man are as singularly unique as the individual himself. Yet, he seeks fulfillment and security in the reflections of himself in anothers eyes, or in the case of The Dwarfs, anothers words. Such is the tragic flaw of the absurd man, whose condition leads him to live, as Camus notes, between practical assent and simulated ignorance (Myth 18). Against the backdrop of class conflict, The Dwarfs illustrates the strains of socio-professional tensions through its characters disparate visions of self-identification, leading to a betrayal that destroys the lifelong friendship between Pete, Mark, and Len. Because Len betrays Pete to Mark, he is often thought to be responsible for the destruction of the friendship. His speeches, often regarded as nonsensical ramblings, and his mysterious relationship with a group of dwarfs who appear and disappear at will, further sustains the charge, especially because Len is cured of his hallucinations at the end of the play. But Lens role as the middleman of the triangle friendship proves him to be the most misunderstood and most loyal of the three men. His rattled, at times hysterical speeches, and his strange stories about the invisible dwarfs in the play are not

38 the mad rantings that Pete and Mark make them out to be; after all, as Esslin points out, the absurd theatre uses a language based on patterns of concrete images rather than argument and discursive speech (Theatre 403). A culturally and socially sensitive treatment of The Dwarfs shows that Lens speeches are really encoded vows of friendship. He displaces the nakedness of truthful language and replaces his mode of communication with a silent language that, according to Nietzsche, is required to preserve friendship, harmony, even social order. In terminating a friendship poisoned by distrust and self-interest, Len prevents the men from using it as a psychological weapon against each other. To understand the class conflict between Pete, Mark, and Len, we must first trace the faultlines of their friendship to their professions and hierarchical positions on the social ladder; these factors play important roles in their sense of self-identification: For every man, the outcome of his socialisation is his entry into work. His first day at work signifies his initiation into the secretive conspiratorial solidarity of working men (cited in Goodwin 25). In the play, Pete is an accountant for a firm in the city; Mark is an actor; and Len works as a porter in Paddington Station. John Goodwins Mens Work and Male Lives, which examines the socio-professional hierarchy in England through a variety of statistical studies and the governments designation of work types, gives us a good reference point to work with. According to Goodwins study, Pete is engaged in standard work, or work that involves working for another, for a wage and working in a subordinate role. This is indicative of full-time employment and the expectation of indefinite full-time work (55). Mark and Len are engaged in non-standard work, or part-time work, temporary (contract or casual) work, multiple job holding, and own

39 account self-employment (55). The terms standard and non-standard inherently set up a dichotomy between upper and lower class types of employment. Pete, whose position is second only to Managers, is at the upper rungs of the hierarchical scale: he is a Professional. Mark is listed two rungs down in Craft and Related with painters and decorators, secretaries, brick layers, locksmiths and engineers, and Lens work as a porter puts him in the same field as farm labourers, furniture removers, postmen, and cleaners. He is placed at the very bottom of the order under the category Other (99100). Of the three men in the play, Len is most conscious of the social pressure that bears on their friendship. In fact, his awareness of not being as successful as Pete and Mark makes him anxious, even paranoid. He constantly tries to prove that he is doing something, that he is not a loafer; he works hard even in his own home: I have to run downstairs to put the kettle on, run upstairs to finish what Im doing, run downstairs to cut a sandwich or arrange a salad, run upstairs to finish what Im doing (Plays 2 82). Like Aston from The Caretaker (1959), who convinces himself that fixing broken appliances and building a shed are ways to a constructive life, Len believes that he can prove himself to be in the same social class as Pete and Mark if he is consistently working: active hands are associated with work and productivity. The first sign of Lens agitation in the play is revealed when Pete casually asks him if work is going well. In response, Len remarks that he pays someone to do his job at the station while he reads the timetables, and that he could soon be promoted to a first class porter. His response attempts to convince himself and Pete that he is higher up in the social hierarchy than it seems. He promotes himself to the Manager position by employing the nameless man

40 to do his job so that he can keep an eye on the main operations of the station, which of course depends on the departure and arrival of the trains. It is at this point that Len means to ask Pete the same question, but instead of asking Pete how work is going, he poses the question in an abstract form: What are you doing with your hand? (83). Communication now becomes a crucial element in The Dwarfs. Judgements are soon passed, and speech systematically becomes more and more dangerous and intrusive in the mens friendship. While I do not assume that Len is offended when Pete casually asks him about work, he is nonetheless defensive. He turns the same question back at Pete (wanting to know what Pete is doing with his hands), but does so with an air of defiance that reads in subtext: How about you? What are you doing at work? Pete does not catch on, and makes a fool of himself: Ill tell you, shall I? Nothing. Im not doing anything with [my hand]. Its not moving. Im doing nothing with it (Pinters emphasis) (83). Like Stans criticism of Megs tea, and later Goldberg and McCanns praise of it, the object of conversation between Pete and Len is less important than what is being subverted through speech. Neither Pete nor Len are at all interested in what the other is doing with his hands, especially after Len examines Petes hands and declares his friend to be a homicidal maniac. Pete is a homicidal maniac to Len because he is blinded by the prestige of his social status and professional ambitions. He damages their friendship by imposing his worldview and passing judgements on his friends. Twice in the play, Pete warns Len that he will end up in an asylum if Len does get a steady job (82, 94); he looks down on Marks profession and calls him a man of weeds (89), but more importantly, he appoints himself as saviour to the men and their friendship: All Ive got to do to

41 destroy you is leave you as you wish to be (104). The novel gives an eloquent account of Petes self-righteous and sanctimonious ways: [W]hile Mark was not open to correction, Len was open both to instruction and to assistance he knew their friendship to be valuable At their best they formed a unit He was well aware this structure was nowhere near completion. Their differences were conducive to corruption within the unit. Labour was needed to contain them For him the effort was worthwhile. It was more than worthwhile, it was quite frankly, essential If he remained unable to communicate with his fellowman there was nothing left but dryrot. (The Dwarfs 55-56) The irony of Petes vision lies in his perception of communication. He understands that efforts must be made to maintain the three-man friendship, and that these efforts require communication. However, his form of communication does more to violate the friendship than preserve it because his method of communicating with Mark and Len is almost always tinged with judgemental and mocking remarks: Youre a rotten old shirt. Buck your ideas up (89), Make yourself useful, mate youre just a dead weight around everybodys neck. You want to listen to your friends, mate. Who else have you got? (97). Petes condescending tones sound more like attacks than the assurance of friendship. His idea of communication violates Nietzsches precept: friendship is preserved in silence. Petes language becomes a form of intrusion that disrupts the tranquility of friendship because he is unable to refrain from making many similar hurtful and insensitive remarks through the course of the play.

42 In comparison to Pete, Mark is far less judgemental in that he does not impose what he perceives to be the correct or acceptable way of life on either Pete or Len. But like Pete, he too, defines his identity by superficial standardsthrough his appearance and his popularity with the general public. When his new suit fails to gain immediate praise from Len, he becomes painfully self-conscious: Whats wrong with acting? (86). He is conscious of his social status especially in Petes shadow, telling Len: You take him too seriously. I know how to handle him. He doesnt take any liberties with me (92). In warning and advising Len against Petes friendship, Mark maintains his social status and presents himself to be the more sophisticated of the two: he refuses to assent to Petes superiority. Thus, Len, who in the novel declares himself a non-participator (49), becomes the middleman of the three-man friendship as Pete and Mark bad-mouth one another and betray each others trust. Pete and Marks competition to win Lens praise renders the latter a pawn in their friendship. Len becomes a prized figure for his two friends as they vie for his friendship, hoping to form an alliance with him, and in the process force the other out of the power struggle. But Pete and Mark do not understand that friendship cannot be won or preserved with words. In Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida builds on Nietzsches idea of silence as he reconsiders the selfish motives of friendship. Derrida suggests that if mans ideal friend is an image of himself, then friendship is in reality founded in the guise of error and illusionto maintain friendship is to preserve the illusion, or more specifically, the tacit agreement to preserve illusion. Len demonstrates a spot-on understanding of this when he tells Mark:

43 Occasionally, I believe I perceive a little of what you are but thats pure accident. Pure accident on both our parts, the perceived and the perceiver. Its nothing like an accident, its deliberate, its a joint pretence. We depend on these accidents, on these contrived accidents, to continue. Its not important then that its conspiracy of hallucination. (Plays 2 100). The underlying idea of friendship is problematized when its nature is described this way because reality, or truth, is relative to perception. Truths are true only because of joint pretence. Hence, when a person commits himself to a friendship, he consent[s] to declaring to himself an error and an illusion while appealing in sum, to responsibility. A responsibility which can be exercised only in silenceindeed, in secretin a sort of counterculture of knowing-how-to-keep-silent (Derrida 52). This is not to say that he must be silent in a literal sense, but that he must adjust his responses according to this understanding, with an implied silence: This is nothing other than a certain way of speaking: secret, discreet, discontinuous, aphoristic, elliptic, just in disjointed time to avow the truth that must be concealed; hiding itbecause it is deadlyto save a life (54). Though Len is often presumed to have been driven to a psychotic state by Pete and Mark, he is the most aware of this crucial maxim. He demonstrates this understanding in a dialogue with Mark when the latter arrives to show off his new suit: MARK: I didnt want it double-breasted. LEN: Double-breasted? Of course you couldnt have it double-breasted. MARK: What do you think of the cloth? LEN: The cloth? [] What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth.

44 MARK: You like the cloth? LEN: WHAT A PIECE OF CLOTH! MARK: What do you think of the cut? LEN: What do I think of the cut? The cut? The cut? What a cut! What a cut! Ive Never seen such a cut! (Plays 2 85-86) In this dialogue, Mark uses Len as a mirrorhe admires himself in his new suit and he wants Len to appreciate the admiration. In short, he wants Len to verify the validity of the admiration he has for himself. The way that Mark identifies himself is analogous to the nature of his profession. As an actor, he presents himself as a mask to his audience, and it follows that the audience then judges him by his exterior form, his ability to perform and appear before their eyeshis success depends on their approval. Len recognizes Marks need and acknowledges it. Though there is a tone of mockery in his exaggerated response, Len does not directly tell Mark that the pride he puts in his new suit is ridiculous, or for that matter, that there is nothing special about the suit at all. This, in Derridas words, is Lens certain way of speaking that ensures silence is preservedhis silence is manifest in the discreet, discontinuous, aphoristic, and elliptic language that he uses, a language that is completely foreign and incomprehensible to Pete and Mark. Though Len is silent in telling Mark that his notion of self-identification through a new suit is ridiculous, he does not ignore Marks intrinsic appeal for verification. Instead of expressing disproval at Marks deluded sense of self, Len inverts and redirects Marks displaced perception:

45 [Acting] is a time-honoured prefessionits time-honoured [Pause.] But what does it do? Does it please you when you walk onto a stage and everybody looks up and watches you? Maybe they dont want to watch you at all. Maybe they prefer to watch someone else. Have you asked them? (86) Len may seem critical of Marks profession, especially given his conviction that one should constantly be workingacting does not do anythingif one wants to do well, but his questions are more philosophical than judgemental: the suit is superficial. He recognizes Marks ambition and adopts Marks language by using stage analogy to explain the futility of seeking verification from bystanders appraisal of his appearance. In a more crucial passage, Len silently tells Mark that the suit does not make the man: The point is, who are you? [] Its no use saying you know who you are because you tell me you can fit a particular key into a particular slot, which will receive your particular key because thats not foolproof and certainly not conclusive (99). He seems to suggest that if Mark defines himself in terms of his appearance and profession, he will never know who he truly is: Youre the sum of so many reflections. How many reflections? Whose reflections? (99-100). Which reflection is scum, and which is essence? Ironically, Len is a much better actor than Mark because he is able to criticize his friend without seeming to humiliate him. His coded speeches are about as straightforward and explicit as he can get without breaking his silence. But with Pete, his speeches are less decipherable. When Pete laments that he is unappreciated by his fellow professionals, or what he calls city guttersnipes, and concludes that he is too good for them, Len responds with a truly obscure passage: I squashed a tiny insect on a plate the other day. And I brushed the remains off my finger with my thumb. Then I saw that the fragments were

46 growing, like fluff. As they were falling, they were becoming larger, like fluff. I had to put my hand into the body of a dead bird (93). But Lens response to Pete is not the rant of a madman. Instead of telling Pete that the worlds success does not depend on his perceived greatness, and that success today does not verify, much less guarantee success tomorrow, Len warns Pete that all things take their own course in a koan-like tale: the insect he first squashes does not just die, but overwhelms him when they multiply in size and quantity, rendering him the victim. Similarly, the dead bird appears to be the victim of the man, but in actuality it is not sowhat good is a hand enveloped in rotting flesh? (Here again, the hand appears as a metaphor for activity and productivity.) Len tries to tell Pete that the world may seem to revolve around him, when in reality Pete is subject to the dictates of his surrounding conditions. Despite his confused speeches, Len is the only character in the play who is consistently aware of his surroundings, as the dwarfs will prove. Lens madness is more often attributed to his conviction that he is in contact with a group of dwarfs than with his lengthy philosophical monologues. In the notes of his 1990 essay, Between Fluidity and Fixity: Harold Pinters Novel The Dwarfs, Francis Gillen gives a brief overview of the critical responses to Lens condition. In the 70s, Ronald Hayman suggested that the dwarfs seem to feed on people, as Pete and Len were trying to feed off Marks supplies in his absence (59). Steven Gale does not rule out Lens disorganized thoughts as the rantings of a madman. Others have considered the dwarfs to represent institutional orders, financial barrons, and metaphors for the miseries, jealousies, and ignobleness of the dissolving relationship between the men (Gabbard 132-33).17 But I suggest that there is more to be said about Lens difficult

17

Even as late as 2000, Penelope Prentice comments that in destroying the friendship, [Len] rids himself of his imagined dwarfs, but also possibly exiles himself to a sanitized reality of mundane order (103), implying that Len is indeed suffering from a form of psychosis. While similar observations take on different approaches in attempting to explain Lens condition, they all agree that Len is essentially mad to some degree for they often try to explain or trace the cause of his madness. The general agreement of

47 speeches and his relationship with the dwarfs. The origins and identities of the dwarfs are not overtly implied in the play, but Lens method of communicating with his friends through what Derrida describes as a secret silent language shows he is not mad. His vision of the dwarfs is a metaphor of his internal, third-person projection of himself, Pete, and Mark. In revisions of an earlier draft/version of the play, Pinter provides (but deletes in later published editions) a more detailed picture of the invisible creatures when Len first talks about them. Instead of simply telling Mark and Pete that the dwarfs are back on the job and they are waiting for a smoke signal, (90), Len gives the following account: The dwarfs are back on the job, keeping an eye on proceedings. They clock in very early, scenting the event. They are like kites in a city disguise; they only work in cities. Certainly theyre skilled labourers, and their trade is not without risk. They wait for a smoke signal and unpack their kit. Theyre on the spot with no time wasted and circle the danger area. There, they take up positions, which they are able to change at a moments notice. But they dont stop work until the job in hand is ended. One way or another. I have not been able to pay a subscription, but theyve consented to take me into their gang, on a short term basis. I wont stay with them for long. This assignment wont last. The gamell soon be up. All the same, it is essential that I keep a close watch on the rate of exchange, on the rise and fall of the market. Probably neither Pete nor Mark knows to what extent the state of this exchange affects my market. But it is so.

this assumption (of insisting that Len is an unwitting victim of someone or something), I think, has severely deprived Len as a credible character in his own right.

48

And so I shall keep the dwarfs company and watch with them. They miss little. With due warning from them I shall be able to clear my stocks, should there be a landslide. (PA: 14) Bearing in mind the class tensions in the play, this monologue plays a crucial role in any attempts to decipher its meanings. The dwarfs are first and foremost identified in terms of their social status and professional roles. Like Pete and Mark, they are also skilled labourers. We are informed by Dwarfs the novel that Pete resigns from his firm because he is unappreciated by his employer/co-workers, and Mark, who acts only when there are contractual offers, does not have any stable form of incometheir trade is not without risk. Len goes on even further to emphasize their identities in a mocking manner when he ensures Pete and Mark: [The dwarfs] are true professionals. Real professionals (Plays 2 90), unlike the train station porter that he is. Finally, he prophesizes the disintegration of the friendship. All it takes for the battle between Pete and Mark to be formally declared is a smoke signal. In fact, the smoke signal was already visible when Pete criticizes Mark behind his back: Between you and me, I sometimes think [Marks] a man of weeds. Sometimes I think hes just playing a game. But what game? Were old pals. But you look at him and what do you see? An attitude. Has it substance or is it barren? Sometimes I think its as barren as a bombed site. Hell be a spent force in no time if he doesnt watch his step (89). Petes criticism of Mark is really a form of betrayal; he violates the trust that is the basis of friendship by attacking Mark in his absence. Pete and Marks attempts to form an alliance with Len against each other reveal The Dwarfs as a play that socializes the redemptive intruder vision, for the men

49 essentially see each other as intruders to their lives; the three mens awareness of the threats that surround them is metaphorically represented in the game between Pete and Mark.18 The chess game in The Dwarfs cannot be overlooked because it foreshadows and provides a metaphorical reflection of the social manipulation, and psychological games that the men play against each other. In predicting the collapse of the friendship, Len exclaims: The gamell soon be up, and warns Mark that the dwarfs have a new game. (PA: 14, Plays 2 94). Mark uses the same terminology when he confronts Pete for betraying his trust and backstabbing him: Youre playing a double game. Youve been playing a double game. Youve been using me. Youve been leading me up the garden (104). Similar manipulative games run through many, if not all of Pinters works. Guido Almansi and Simon Hendersons Harold Pinter traces in great detail the psychological games that Pinter characters play when they interact. These games are often used to subvert a threatening other, to defend oneself, and of course, to assume authority. The epigraph that opens Almansi and Hendersons second chapter describes the motivations behind these games: They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me, I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game (R. D. Laing cited in 24). The games essentially arise from a deep sense of suspicion, and Pete and Mark have all along been suspicious of each other.19 Petes

18

Pinter uses the same technique far more explicitly in two other early plays. In Tea Party (1963), Dissons loss of his family, and possibly his sanity, to his brother-in-law, Willy, is underscored by two ping-pong games. In The Basement (1966), Law and Stott end their feudto win Janes favour and the right to dominate contested spacethrough a brutal cricket game during which Law is physically battered. 19 Almansi and Hendersons book is modeled after Eric Bernes widely influential study on the roots of communicative game playing, Games People Play. Berne defines a game

50 betrayal of Mark signals the start of the game, and Len knows that the two have taken their positions in preparation for the battle that is about to ensue. Though he cannot predict who will win the game, Len knows that it will essentially be a destructive one because they dont stop work until the job in hand is ended. One way or another. Len understands his presence to be futile but necessary even though the three-man friendship is reduced to a power struggle between two; he makes a self-referential remark to himself as a pawn when he tells Mark: [Pete] may be your Black Knight, you may be his Black Knight, but Im cursed with the two of you, with two Black Knights (101). His silent language may preserve the friendship, but it cannot dispel the hostility between Pete and Markthe maintenance of the friendship is the only meaningful contribution he can make. Lens ability to distinguish reality from illusion is in and of itself also a curse. Unlike Mark and Pete who both crave an ideal reflection of themselves in their friends eyes, the less narcissistic Len does not and cannot see his reflection in their eyes. Instead, he sees the dark realities behind them: You see, I cant see the broken glass. I cant see the mirror I have to look through. I see the other side. The other side. But I cant see the mirror side. [Pause.] I want to break it, all of it. But how can I break it? How can I break it when I cant see it? (92). The other side of the mirror, unlike the surface side, does not reflect what appears to be but it is to be: Theyve left me to sweep the yard, to keep

as an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a welldefined, predictable outcome a game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff it becomes apparent that these operations were really maneuvers; not honest requests but moves in a game (48-49). Bernes definition is especially helpful in understanding how a friendship between three men has always been an outright power struggle between two, as the chess game suggests. Even if Pete and Mark did not plan their moves, all their previous actions directed at Lentheir attempts at verification to compensate each others shortcomings and subsequent betrayal of each other to Lenforms the set of complementary ulterior transactions that lead them to their final showdown.

51 the place in order. Its a bloody liberty What do they think I am, a bloody charlady? Im not a skivvy, they dont pay me, I pay them (94). Indeed, he is the charlady of the friendship. He is burdened with the responsibility of preserving the friendship, and in doing so he makes his payment, or what he likes to call his subscription to join the gang (PA: 14). Thus, when Len claims that he will clear [his] stocks just before the landslide (PA: 14), he implies that he is well aware of the responsibility he shoulders, and that when he withdraws from it, the friendship will fall apart. Although Pete and Marks exploitation of Len can be read as a motivating force to his betrayal of Pete, I suggest that his decision to betray Pete is a conscious and intentional choice, especially after he carefully assesses his place in the unfolding situation. Wedged between his two friends who use him as a weapon against each other, Len feels that he, too, will become an unwitting victim in their gamehe no longer feels safe in his room, which he complains to be changing shape. Like all other rooms in Pinters plays, Lens room is a place of refuge. Ideally, the room is a place where he is safe from external threats, but its protective function is violated when Pete and Len conduct their battles in his home. Pinter provides a stage direction that indicates the extent of this violation when a scene that first includes only Len and Mark unexpectedly switches to one with Len and Pete. Both take place in Lens room: LEN: Youre frightened that any moment Im liable to put a red hot burning coal in your mouth. MARK: Am I? LEN: But when the time comes, you see, what I shall do is place the red hot burning coal in my mouth.

52 Swift blackout. PETE sits where MARK has been. Lights snap up. Ive got some beigels. PETE: This is a very solid table, isnt it? (88). Lens speech is literally interrupted by the stage direction as Pete replaces Marks place in the room. He warns Mark earlier to [k]eep a sense of proportion (87) when the latter visits him to borrow bread and honey, but he ignores Len. Pete and Mark appear to be visiting Len at his house, but they are really intruding on his private space, for they fail to recognize him as their host; their judgemental, self-centred, insensitive remarks, and their ingratitude reduce him to a non-entity in his own home. He paints the destructiveness of the two men: Pete is portrayed in the company of scavenging gulls and rats, and Mark takes on the manifestation of a scheming spider (92, 96). It is no matter of convenience that Len perceives Pete and Mark this way: Both gull and spider are, in their different ways scavengers, predators feeding on corpses (Hinchliffe 85). Pete and Mark are not only feeding on Len, they are also out to get each other. To prevent the scavengers from destroying each other and incurring more psychological damages on themselves, Len decides to dissolve the friendship when he tells Mark: He thinks youre a fool, Pete thinks youre a fool (100). Len is often perceived to be the one responsible for breaking up the friendship because his betrayal leads to the final confrontation between Pete and Mark, but paradoxically, his betrayal stems from loyalty to both his friends. He is the sole witness to the betrayal of their friendship yet he adamantly maintains his silence for a while until he sees no other means of salvaging what little is left of it. At this juncture, I must emphasize that though Len seals the fate of the friendship by betraying Pete, it is ultimately Marks inability to remain silent, or

53 discreet, as Derrida would have it, that the friendship disintegrates. It would not have mattered whether Len betrays Mark or Pete, because it is essentially the breaking of Lens silence that the friendship cannot endure. A three-man friendship cannot depend on one mans silence. If Mark remains silent after he discovered what Pete thinks of him, the friendship, however dysfunctional, would not have endedbut Len knows that neither Pete nor Mark has the faculty to understand the importance of remaining silent. Finally, the subjective reflections of themselves that Pete and Mark demand from their friendship with Len depends upon acceptance of the non-verifiable and upon trust, but what remains consistently non-verifiable is the mens identification of self through superficial means and standards (Gillen, Introduction 2). Both men allow themselves to be defined by social boundaries and other external forces. When these superficial factors do not align with the images that are reflected in their friends eyes, they impose their own visions of reality on others, and in doing so destroy the trust that is required to preserve friendships. The ability to trust and give trust is embodied in the secret language that Len uses throughout The Dwarfs. Trust is the burden of knowing the truth and the ability to withhold it accordingly: The protection of this custody guarantees the truth of friendship, its ambiguous truth, that by which friends protect themselves from the error or the illusion [of attaining self-verification through another] which friendship is founded (Derrida 53). When this custody is violated, the agreement of solidarity is undermined. Mark and Pete hardly recognize the companionship that once felt natural and valued: when the play begins, Len and Pete await Marks return in his house, a welcome of sort, but in the closing scene, Mark asks Pete: Why do you knock on my door? What do you want with me? Why come and see me? (104). The contrast between the two

54 scenes is stark, but the self-indulgent inclinations of the men evidently remain the same as Mark fiercely defends his image of not being a fool, and Pete insists that Mark will not survive without his friendship. We do not know if Pete and Mark will achieve the same inner peace that Len finds at the end of the play, but separated from each other (thus ending the vicious cycle of futile self-verification and the struggle for a false sense of power and security), such a prospect is not inconceivable. Assigned by his two friends to carry the burden of their friendship, Len discovers his task to be more absurd than Sisyphuss punishment; Sisyphus triumphs because he rolls the rock for himself, not for others, and surely not for the gods. Pete and Mark must ultimately look to themselves and not to him, or each other, to assert their insecurities. Len cannot push Pete and Marks rocks, and it is precisely his doing so that has contributed to the rising tensions between the two men. By renouncing his silent language and expelling that intruderdistrustful speechfrom their friendship, Len puts an end to the dissent between Pete and Mark. Even in his final act of betrayal, Len retains his role as the charlady of the friendship. Though he banishes the dwarfs who littered his garden with poisoned shit heaps and a whirlpool of piss, slime, blood, and fruit juice (105), and enjoys a clean scrubbed garden at the end of the play, he does not deny his friends a similar future. He clears out Pete and Marks gardenslittered with distrust, treachery, and strifeand gives them a green lawn: the promise of a shrub, perhaps even a flower.

Remembrance of Things Past and Present: The Simultaneity of Time in Silence and The Proust Screenplay

55

ESTRAGON: We came here yesterday. VLADIMIR: Ah no, there youre mistaken. ESTRAGON: What did we do yesterday? VLADIMIR: What did we do yesterday? [] Whatll we do? ESTRAGON: If he came yesterday and we werent here you may be sure he wont come again today. VLADIMIR: But you said we were here yesterday. ESTRAGON: I may be mistaken. [Pause.] Lets stop talking for a while, do you mind?20 Samuel Beckett

The fact is its terribly difficult to define what happened at any time. I think its terribly difficult to define what happened yesterday.21 Harold Pinter

In the introduction to The Theatre of the Absurd, entitled The Absurdity of the Absurd, Martin Esslin relates the famous anecdote of the 1957 performance of Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot at the San Quentin penitentiary directed by Herbert Blau. Even though absurd plays were then superciliously dismissed as nonsense or mystification, the performance of Becketts enigmatic play, staged before fourteen hundreds convicts, was surprisingly successful (21). A teacher at the prison attributes the convicts appreciation
20 21

Waiting for Godot, in Samuel Becketts Complete Dramatic Works (17). Mel Gussows Conversations with Pinter (17).

56 of the play to the affinity that they share with its characters, Vladimir and Estragon: They know what is meant by waiting and they knew if Godot finally came, he would be a disappointment (20). Within the confines of a penitentiary, where the passing of time is marked by an unending series of repeated routines, anticipation is simply: absurd. While the elusive nature of time is a favourite subject of interest for many absurdist playwrights, no writer in Esslins book has come closer to portraying the complexities of time and memory with the kind of poetic poignancy in Becketts works than Pinter.22 While these elements can be found throughout the Pinter canon to some degree, they become the central focus of his plays in the late 60s and early 70s, particularly in Landscape (1967), Silence (1968), Old Times (1970), and No Mans Land (1972).23 Of the four plays, Silence is the most difficult and least popular because it leans heavily on metaphorical images that become increasingly difficult to interpret as the play progresses; many of its three-way monologues are incomplete, repetitive, disjointed, and hopelessly fragmented. Even Michael Billington, who is often full of praise for the Pinter, commits
22

Becketts influence on Pinter is well-known. His pared down memory monologues are often considered to be a sub-product of Becketts late plays. Studies of Silence and Landscape almost never escape association with Becketts works. Ronald Hayman observes: In this he seemed to resemble Beckett who has not written a full-length play since Happy Days (1961), and goes on to note the similarities between Silence and Krapps Last Tape (121, 133); Rdiger Imhof compares Silence to Happy Days (455); William F. Dohmen remarks: Like many of Becketts plays, Landscape and Silence seem to occur outside time, which has become irrelevant: there is no action for it to measure (192), and Pinters authorized biographer Michael Billington tells readers: Technically, he was influenced by Becketts to Play (197). Others have linked Pinters memory monologues to Embers (1959), Eh Joe (1965), Not I (1972), and Ohio Impromptu (1981). The associations become even more justifiable when we learn not only of Pinters admiration for Becketts method, but that the younger playwright had made a practice of sending his new plays to Beckett for perusal from The Homecoming onwards Beckett, it seems, responded by suggesting small alterations, often cuts that pared down Pinters self-acknowledged tendency to go over the top in lyricism (Regal 110). 23 Pinter scholars have generally categorized these works as memory plays.

57 only about two pages to a discussion of Silence in his biography of Pinter: [T]here is nothing inherently dramatic about the structure. The time scheme is difficult to work out And there is a lack of circumstantial detail about the characters lives (19899). Pinter agrees: I dont regard Silence as an entirely successful piece of work, but I had to write it (Gussow 21). The time scheme in the play is so difficult to work out because it does not follow a conventional, linear, time scale; sign posts that mark the progression of time past, present, and future are often contradicted by the memories of its characters. Silence is concerned with the temporal nature of time and the paradoxical union between past, present, and its implicit effects on the future. The depiction of time in Silence as an intimate, personal, even existential crisis emphasizes the subjectivity of memory against the objectivity of chronological time. Yet, one is intrinsically tied to the other. To understand Pinters preoccupation with time and memory, we must find a way to work through the difficult structure that obscures the central significance of Silence. The study of Silence is normally paired with its companion piece, Landscape, but I find The Proust Screenplay (1972) to be the more appropriate piece of work in undertaking this task, because: 1) it is the only other Pinter play in which narrative progression depends solely and entirely on recollection and anticipation, and 2) since, as Thomas Leitch notes, adaptation theorists have persisted in treating fidelity to the source material as a norm from which unfaithful adaptations depart at their peril (127), what Pinter selectively retains and removes from Prousts work afford us a rare view of his interpretation of temporality and memory. Pinters re-representation of Proust (as opposed to his original plays) therefore allows us to discover how he interprets the flux of time. The structural juxtaposition of

58 these two works reveal that Silence to be the underpinnings of Proust. The former can be said to be an inchoate form of the latter, as Pinter explores the possibilities that seek to reconcile subjective memory and objective time. In dramatizing the elusive nature of time through a series of narratives and images, Pinter captures the essence of that doubleheaded monster of damnation and salvation by always having past and present exist simultaneously (Beckett, Proust 1). In this chapter, we will see that time is indeed double-headed in that the present can never exist as an independent entity; yet, the characters in Silence confront this monster head on, as valiantly as the absurd hero who press on in spite of the absurdity of his plight. The present is essentially the making of the past, and the past, whether we allow it or not, forms the living experience of the present. The two are interdependent, and one sustains the other: they exist simultaneously. An awareness of this condition becomes a kind of sustenance that redeems the absurdity of existence for the characters in Silence. Unlike The Birthday Party, there are no mysterious intruders that disrupt the balance of authority in Silence, and because the characters speeches are self-contained monologues, they do not pose the kind of verbal-communicative threat that we previously saw in The Dwarfs. The idea of intrusion and disturbance formerly associated with the stranger-intruder figure and the unspoken obligations of friendship turn further inward in Silence. The burden of the past and the consciousness of the present becomes a form of psychological menace to Ellen, Rumsey, and Bates. Time and memory link these three characters in an uneasy past as Ellen tells us: There are two. One is with me sometimes, and another (Plays 3 191). The two are Rumsey and Bates. They do not speak of each other at all, and the only reference that may indicate ones knowledge of the other is

59 when Rumsey, the older of the two, urges Ellen to [f]ind a young man (202). Though their speeches are largely straightforward, the difficulty in understanding the play lies in the discrepancies between its visual presentation and the verbal credibility of the characters. A snapshot of Pinters dramatis personae is helpful in setting up the visualverbal problems that will be addressed at length in this chapter. ELLEN: a girl in her twenties RUMSEY: a man of forty BATES: a man in his middle thirties. (190) On stage and through the course of the play, the characters look the ages that they have been assigned. Their monologues, on the other hand, betray their appearances. In other words, they dont sound the way they look. The monologues of Ellen, Rumsey, and Bates are disconcerting to audiences that are (conventionally) prepared only to believe what appears true to the eye. Batess speech prompts audiences to reconsider their assumptions of his age when he complains of a runin with his boisterous neighbors: Im at my last gasp with this unendurable racket. I kicked the door and stood before them. Someone called me Grandad and told me to button it. Its they should button it. Were I young [] One of them told me I was lucky to be alive, that I would have to bear it in order to pay for being alive, in order to give thanks for being alive. (193) Though this account may initially be dismissed as intended sarcasm on the part of his young neighbours, who probably regard Batess interruption as a semblance of parental imposition, his remarks are incongruous coming from a man in his mid-thirties seen on

60 stage (Mayberry 52). The incongruity between Batess appearance and his age shows up again towards the end of the play, when he reports a stupid conversation with his overly-inquisitive landlady: What are you doing here? Why do you live alone? Where do you come from? What do you do with yourself? [] A bit grumpy Has there been no pleasantness in your life? No kind of loveliness in your life? Are you nothing but a childish old man, suffocating himself? (Plays 3 201). Ronald Hayman is one of many critics who question the authenticity of Batess monologue. Bates tells us in his opening speech that he brought a woman to a place that his cousin runs, and there he [u]ndressed her and placed his hand on her (192). But later, when he moves from his seated position on stage to speak with Ellen, and makes the same offer to take her to his cousins place, he is rejected (197). Did she or did she not go with him? Hayman lists the possibilities that could explain this discrepancy: Perhaps he was talking about another girl. Perhaps he was talking about Ellen but only imagined he took her. Perhaps he didnt expect her to remember the place. Perhaps the sequence in which we are watching events is not the sequence in which they happened (132). If Batess monologue is the only one among the three that seems incongruous, then most of Haymans considerations could arguably be valid, but it is impossible to pin down any given explanation because Ellens monologues turn out to be equally ambiguous. Ellens speeches are as confusing as Batess. She does not sound like a girl in her twenties: I seem to be old. Am I old not? No-one will tell me. I must find a person to tell me these things (Plays 3 201). She has no trouble telling us about her past, but during occasional moments of reflection, she cannot tell if she is looking backwards or projecting and dramatizing her anxieties of the future. The difficulty of determining the

61 ages of the characters and the significance of their preoccupations, whether it points backwards or forwards, is amplified when Ellen tells the audience: nobody could tell, from looking at me, what was happening (195). It is difficult to ascertain the real ages of the character when even Rumsey, the only character in Silence who delivers almost all his lines in the present tense, is unsure of the present: RUMSEY: Can you remember when you were here last? ELLEN: Oh yes RUMSEY: You were a little girl. (199) Unlike Bates, whose regular alternation of strenuous activities and rest moves from one nerve-racking enterprise to another, forever pivoting on the crucial problem of finding an answer to his existential questions (Imhof 452), Rumseys memory of Ellen does not suggest regret or yearning for the past. He is quite satisfied with his present living conditions: Ive lost nothing. Pleasant and alone and watch the folding light. My animals are quiet. My heart never bangs. I read in the evenings. There is no-one to tell me what is expected or not expected of me. There is nothing required of me (Plays 3 193). But this contentment does not alleviate his anxieties of the future: I shall walk down to my horse and see how my horse is. Hell come towards me. Perhaps he doesnt need me. My visit, my care, will be like any other visit, any other care. I cant believe it (197). Rumseys uncertainties suggest that he is painfully aware of the absurd nature of time: the future promises to become the present and the present immediately folds back into the past. Once the present experience and moment become the past, the mind registers an inevitable need for a new anticipation. For Rumsey, the anticipation to be wanted and the fear of being rejectedby his animals and Ellenis overwhelming. He appears to enjoy

62 Ellens companionship, but at the same time he tells her that it is better for her to find a younger man. These conflicting feelings make the play increasingly difficult to follow in the play. The desire to understand the progression of time and the sequence of events in Silence has led to many abstract explanations that attempt to resolve Pinters fragmented narratives. Some critics posit that the characters in Silence represent mere mental projections of the protagonists [Ellen] mind, and others suggest that two separate characters occasionally represent the two sides of a single personality (Clausius 29). Martin Esslin believes that Bates, like Rumsey and Ellen, is much older than he appears to be (cited in Clausius 38). Rdiger Imhof takes a contrasting view; he thinks that the characters are the ages that Pinter claims them to bethey have only aged psychologically (38). There is, however, a particular Pinter character that I think may be helpful in trying to shed some light on the difficulty of understanding the temporality of time and memory in Silence: Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it. I leave my experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Childs play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet, I am interested in where I am eternally present and active. (Plays 3 326) These lines, delivered by Spooner (No Mans Land, 1972), highlight the significance of Silence. For Spooner, creating the past is childs play, but maintaining or even changing the present is another story altogether. The present is constantly in creation, but it is also inevitably tomorrows past.

63 In discussing the mutability of time in Silence, William F. Dohmen remarks: If the past is always present, conversely the present must continually contribute to accumulating the past (192). Hence, the nature of time is not unlike the absurdity of Sisyphuss task. Like Sisyphuss rock, which rolls back downhill once it reaches the peak of the mountain, an anticipated moment in the future, once reached and passed, does not remain frozen in time but is necessarily subsumed into the past. Pinter asserts that past and present cannot be disassociated as two separate entities: I think Im more conscious of a kind of ever present quality in life [] I certainly feel more and more that the past is not past, that it never was past. Its present [] I know the future is simply going to be the same thing. Itll never end. You carry all the states with you until end [] But those previous parts are alive and present (Gussow 38). Existence is absurd because the natural movement of time is absurd. If the drive and motivation to continue living depend on an unending series of anticipation, then the attainment and fulfillment of each anticipated moment also promise to cancel out the desire to continue living. The absurdity of anticipation, Camus points out, is the worst enemy of man: [t]omorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd (Myth 14). This absurdity, and the difficulty of trying to reconcile past and present in Silence, is illustrated by the characters attempts to distinguish the past from the present. The creation of the present against the unrelenting onset of time promises to fold the future into the past as the clock ticks. Spooner is right: the prospect of creating a meaningful present is no childs play. This anxiety is evident in Ellens monologue, when she loses her bearing in the midst of the crowds that she passes every day:

64 I dont notice them. Im not in a dream or anything of that sort. On the contrary. Im quite awake to the world around me. But not to the people. There must be something in them to notice But I pass through them noticing nothing. It is only later, in my room, that I remember. Yes, I remember. But Im never sure that what I remember is of to-day or of yesterday or of a long time ago. (204) Ellen sees the faces of people she should notice, but she cannot relate to them. She is uncertain, perplexed, possibly even guilty that she cannot situate them in a context that would make them seem more substantial. Though she is able to reflect on this mundane routine later in her room, time remains slippery. How can she situate her existence against time if she cannot even tell what is of today or yesterday? In Silence, the perception of memory is characterized by the absurd simultaneity of time as Pinter frames subjectivity by having his characters speak as if they were much older than they appear to be, but we can make sense of the dissonance between Ellen, Rumsey, and Batess appearances and their dialogues when the structural features of The Proust Screenplay are superimposed onto Silence. Pinter, like Beckett, is well acquainted with Proust; he adapted the last volume of Prousts seven-volume autobiographical novel, Le Temps retrouv, into a 187-page screenplay that was published under the title The Proust Screenplay (1972).24 Anyone

24

There is some confusion in discussions of the screenplay, especially in critical responses noted before 1995. Steven Gales overview of the work tells readers that director Joseph Losey called Remembrance the best screenplay Ive ever seen or known of (Sharp Cut 219); however, The Proust Screenplay should not be confused with Pinters other Proust play Remembrance of Things Past (2000). The latter is a slightly shorter version of the screenplay and was specifically adapted for stage with Di Trevis, performed at the Royal National Theatre in 2000. A radio variation, which is not in print, is also sometimes mistaken as the screenplay; this is the 1995 two-hour script of The Proust Screenplay adapted by Michael Bakewell for BBC Radio 3 (219).

65 who has read Prousts novel and Pinters screenplay will no doubt feel that the radio and stage production do little justice to the brilliance of the screenplay. The opening of the screenplay is made up of a string of images from Marcels present, and they are presented in fragments as the camera whisks us from a train carriage, to Venice, to a dining room at Balbec, and to different parts of the Prince de Guermantess house. Sounds also play a part in the flow of the montage; the arrival of cars, chauffeurs, silverware on plates, and Vinteuils music in the background announce Marcels social standing as he arrives, as a forty-one year old man, at a party hosted by the Prince de Guermantes. The images seem rather random, but they are really held together by the subtle motif of the yellow screen in the opening scene of the screenplay. When the camera zooms out of the yellow screen, we discover that it is actually a patch of yellow wall in a painting (Collected Screenplays 2 124). The yellow wall is, of course, a part of the famous Johannes Vermeer painting, View of Delft, in Le Temps retrouv. This painting frames the dramatic time space that Pinter works with in his screenplay. The introduction is lengthy; more than thirty shots go by before anyone utters a word. By the time we hear the first speech, given by Dr. Percepied, Pinter has transported Marcel back to Combray in 1888, at age eight. Pinters representation of chronological time becomes even more disjointed as the screenplay progresses. After the young Marcel insists that Franoise pass a note to demand a goodnight kiss from his mother in 1888, we find him at the opera, aged nineteen (Collected Screenplays 128). Just two pages later, Pinter cuts to an image of Marcel, again aged eight, playing with a lantern, and then forward to 1893 at the SaintHilarie Church in Combray (135, 138). Over a span of four decades, the screenplay covers about seventeen different periods in Marcels life. Many critics agree that it is

66 extremely difficult to follow Marcels memories: Pinters Proust screenplay disrupts chronology far more radically than any of his previous scripts, and its images are often described as scattered pieces of an enormous puzzle (Dohmen 197).25 What seems to be even more telling is that the time periods are constantly interrupted by events of the past and the future from the standpoint of young and middle-aged Marcel. Even working backwards, Pinter does not follow a consistent reverse chronology: Marcel is eight, nineteen, back to thirteen, forward to twenty-one, and so forth. Stylistically, Pinters compressed adaptation of Le Temps retrouv is a far cry from Prousts novel, which was written in lengthy and elaborately detailed passages in stream-of-consciousness. The structure of The Proust Screenplay hardly resembles that of Le Temps retrouv: While it is to Pinters credit that he succeeds for the most part in achieving his aim by exhibiting characteristic restraint and concision, the question must be raised whether this goal is valid, since Proust himself filled seven volumes with a million and a quarter words (Davidson 158). But the limitations and constraints of the medium see that Pinter cannot be Proust, much less criticized for not being more like the French author; Pinter is deeply rooted in the operations of time, and not in minute details. Citing Pinters uncharacteristic leniency of Marcels father in directing the terrified boys mother to remain overnight with Marcel in his bedroom, David Davidson complains that The Proust Screenplay fails to highlight the rigid practices of aristocratic French Victorians (160). But the mastery of Pinters adaptation, as Martin Regal notes, lies not in accuracy: it is the irrelevance of accuracy which conveys the sense of Proustian time (Regal 90). The brilliance of Pinters adaptation lies in his ability to Thomas P. Adler provides a very helpful general reference that charts the shifting timeframes in his essay, Pinter/Proust/Pinter.
25

67 capture the essence of the Proustian thesis, as Beckett observes: [Proust cannot] remember yesterday any more than he can remember tomorrow (Proust 17). By departing from Prousts narration of a sustained past, Pinter realizes the structure of The Proust Screenplay. If we consider la recherche du temps perdu as an epic that attempts to demonstrate the difficulty of reconciling subjective memory in objective time, then Pinter succeeds in staying true to Prousts core philosophical concerns. Memory in Proust and Pinter is fragmentary precisely because it is highly subjective: For an experienced event is finiteat any rate, confined to one sphere of experience; a remembered event is infinite, because it is only a key to everything that happened before and after it (Benjamin 202). Unlike Proust, Pinter is not especially interested in the detailed contents of the past but the difficulty of remembering the past in the present: Broken up as it is into short pieces, the past is not so much recaptured as it is recycled in a style more Pinteresque that Proustian [] Pinter scales down memory into the size of a fragment. Scenes from the past have lost their fullness: they become as fleeting as the images passing swiftly before our eyes (Brater 122). Time in The Proust Screenplay is as slippery as Ellen described it to be in Silence. The scenes in the screenplay, which shift unpredictably over time, have a dizzying effect on readers: we never quite know which period Proust is in or when to expect the shift in time. When the fragments of Marcels memories are bound together, they become a montage that veer off in different directions, but at the same time, they also give the feeling that past, present, and future are fused into an entity that only the mind (and the camera) can perceive. This paradoxical quality of time is at the heart of the Proustian dilemma: on the one hand, [the novel] is recording the disintegration of French society

68 from 1880 to 1919 and Marcels disenchantment; on the other, it is the pursuit of an absolute, an experience that would be untouched by the devouring action of time (Billington 226). Readers who have read Prousts La Prisonnire, will know that the yellow screen/wall in Pinters screenplay also underscores the anxieties of regret and mortality. In the fifth book of Prousts seven-volume novel, the yellow wall of View of Delft is synonymous with the death of Bergotte, the French writer whom Proust reveres, and a fan of Vermeers painting. Upon hearing a presumably negative assessment of the painting (that he so admires) from an art critic, Bergotte, ill to the point of dying, makes his way to the museum to view it again. Disheartened by the review of an art critic, he finds traces in the painting that he had not previously noticed: His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious little patch of wall. Thats how I ought to have written, he said. My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall (Proust Vol. 5 244). After Bergotte dies, Proust reflects: He was dead. Dead for ever? Who can say? [] All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life (245). This burden of obligation, not only of the past, but the present, and the anticipated future, is the Sisyphean rock; it cannot be abandoned nor separated from its owner as long as he continues to exist. Pinter registers the essence of this burden by using memory as a form of intrusion that threatens the objectivity and stability that his characters crave. Past and present undercut one another in The Proust Screenplay: All of the years of [Prousts] novel, as Stanley Kauffmann observed, are assumed to exist

69 simultaneously, and the film moves in and out of them as it needs to. (Brater 123). By having past and present occur simultaneously in the screenplay, Pinters disjunctive structure demands readers to be consistently aware of the temporality of the past and present. Mans existence depends on the awareness of this link, which joins the past to the present and vice versa: [M]emory might be called the supreme reality, for really everything is in the mind rather than in the object perceived by the sense. Each of us therefore, conquers time by carrying all our past within us: nothing is ever really lost or ceases to exist, because threads from all the different planes of time are woven together into a rich web so that all things exist at one and the same time within us simultaneously. (Proust cited in Adler 130) The nature of this simultaneity has a direct effect on Marcels perception of time as Pinter distorts historic time in the screenplay by having Marcel live subjectively on three levels of sensation: recollection, immediacy, anticipation. As a result, The present becomes for him mainly a stage for past and future (Walter James Miller and Bonnie E. Nelson cited in Gale Sharp Cut 221). Together with the subjectivity of memory, the experience of temporality is flexible, and it defies chronology. While the interdependency of past and present in The Proust Screenplay are made possible by Pinters cimematographic techniques, the same effect is made possible in Silence through Ellen, Rumsey, and Bates uncertainties of whether they are speaking of the past, present, or the future. Their monologues retain the signs of all three time spaces simultaneously. Given Rumseys fear of the future and Batess desire to return to the past, it makes perfect sense that Ellen mixes up past and present. She is implicated in

70 their feelings for her, as Rumsey turns her away for fear of the future, and Bates is determined to relive earlier days with herthe men pull her in two opposite directions. Her monologues suggest that she possesses a kind of consciousness not unlike Sisyphus, who is always conscious of the absurdity of his plight. That stubborn and pitiless rock that refuses to stay put at the top of the mountain necessitates Sisyphuss uphill climb to be his downhill journeythe Sisyphean state dictates that ascend and descend, like past and present, are essentially simultaneous, even if only in the act of contemplation. Though Ellen demonstrates an inclination to be with Rumsey, she is conflicted nonetheless: I go up with the milk. The sky hits me. I walk in this wind to collide with them waiting. There are two. They halt to laugh and bellow in the year I turn my eyes from one, and from the other to him (203). This conflict is the key to discovering the most enigmatic sections of the play, when Ellen reports her conversations with an unnamed elderly drinking companion: She asks me about my early life, when I was young, never departing from her chosen subject, but I have nothing to tell her about the sexual part of my youth. Im old, I tell her, my youth was somewhere else, anyway I dont remember. She does the talking anyway. (194) My drinking companion for the hundredth time asked me if Id ever been married. This time I told her I had. Yes. I told her I had. Certainly. I can remember the wedding. (205) These passages lead audiences to think that Ellen is perhaps not in her twenties. But if we consider Pinters attempt to fuse past into present, and take a closer look at Ellens speech patterns, it is possible that the elderly woman is, like the other characters in

71 Silence, not who she appears to be: she is the metaphor of time past. The elderly woman is as relentless as passing time; she never stops questioning Ellen about marriage. The onset of time, represented by the persistence of the old lady, brings about the anxieties of ageing, companionship, and loneliness; confronted by her elderly friend about marriage, Ellen insists: But Im still quite pretty, really, quite nice eyes, nice skin (195). She shares the same worries as Beth in Landscape, who is trapped in the happy memories of her past. Beths refusal, or inability to accept the present stems from her fear of ageing: Of course when Im older I wont be the same as I am, I wont be what I am, my skirts, my long legs, Ill be older, I wont be the same [] All the cars zooming by. Men with girls at their sides. Bouncing up and down. Theyre dolls. They squeak (182). Like Ellen, the middle-aged Beth, who is constantly worried that her husband (or lover) will no longer find her attractive and that she will never have children of her own, is also convinced that she is still attractive: I dress differently, but I am beautiful (170). I am inclined to think that Ellen is most likely not married, and never was: her tone indicates that she is exasperated with the old ladys (the metaphorical representation of time past) pressing. To appease her incessant questioning (for the hundredth time), Ellen decides to tell her that she is indeed marriedshe remembers the wedding. Her once youthful past, her desire for companionship/marriage, and the prospect of a future in which she would be married are all concerns that simultaneously plague her in the present. Her preoccupation and frustration with being unmarried are confirmed at the end of the play, when Rumsey and Bates both revert to their opening monologues: Certainly. I can remember the wedding (209). That she is singled out by Pinter as the only character who does not return to her lines in the opening scene calls for attention,

72 especially since repetitions in Pinters plays, as Martin Esslin observed, serve a specific function. The repetition of words and speeches indicate the characters struggle to find the right word, the mot juste when they have got a hold of a formulation, they hold on to it, savour it, and repeat it to enjoy their achievement and does not want to let it go (Esslin, Peopled Wound 21516). Hence, it does not really matter whether Ellen is young or old; her projections of time show that she is living the past and anticipated future at the present time. The same can be said for Rumsey and Bates. Rumsey, possibily twice the age of Ellen, perceives her as a child as Pinter paints a fitting image of the relationship between the older man and his young lover: When its chilly I stop her and slip her raincoat over her shoulders or rainy slip arms into the arms, she twisting her arms (Plays 3 191). His care for Ellen is an extension of the desire to feel needed, but his insecurity, as Penelope Prentice notes, also turns her away: Rumsey, like others in Pinters plays who do not get what they want, avoids risks. He remains unaware that time in old age will reveal his safe choices as cowardice and a retreat that turns existence into a nondescript shell (174). Bates, on the other hand, stubbornly believes that time will not catch up with him and that he is still young: I am strong, but not as strong as the bastards in the other room, and their tittering bitches, and their music, and their love, but continuing, he betrays his seeming confidence when he finds himself overwhelmed regrets: If I changed my life, perhaps, and lived deliberately at night, and slept in the day. But what exactly would I do? What can be meant by living in the dark? (194). The mens anxieties, suggested by their regrets and the dread of the future, characterize the absurd theatre. Their conflicting emotions are parallel to those of the absurd man, whose exile is without remedy since he

73 is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land; Camus asserts: This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity (Myth 6). The characters in Silence thrive on the absurd qualities of life. For Rumsey, the fear of the future echoes the silent discontent of today, and for Bates the past still offers some comfort in the present. Past and present in Silence cannot be disassociated on any account even though there is a disjunctive dimension to time in subjective memory. Silence is such a difficult play because the simultaneity of time is presented as abstractions in the characters speeches. In The Proust Screenplay, projections of time transition far more smoothly than they do on the immediacy of the stage.26 The points at which the characters meet each other in Silence are analogous to the voiceovers in The Proust Screenplay. Examples can be drawn from Giseles voiceover, which Marcel hears as he gazes out of a carriage: Arent you eating any sandwiches? (Collected Screenplays 2 174), and in the immediate scene, Marcel finds himself in the past, amidst the company of Albertine, Andre, Giesele, Rosemonde, and Delphine; after he confronts Albertine about her sexual encounters with Andre in 1901, Marcel finds himself in a sanatorium in 1917 as the voiceover of his grandmother looms over him: GRANDMOTHER (VO): Hows your work getting on? Pause. (gently) Oh Im sorry, I wont ask you again. (231)
26

Pinter once expressed this as a limitation of working with the stage in an interview with The Paris Review: Television and films are simpler than the theater What is so different about the stage is that youre just there, stuckthere are your characters stuck on stage, youve got to live with them and deal with them (Bensky 10).

74 These voiceovers are plentiful in the screenplay, and they often work as a bridge from past to present and from present to future. They serve as indicators to the shifting time periods. By having Marcel move back and forth in time, Pinter is able to convey Prousts fusion of objective reality and subjective perception of present and past through memory (Gale, Sharp Cut 222), thus demonstrating not only the subjective nature of memory, but the impossibility of pinning down chronological time in the minds eye. Like The Proust Screenplay, Silence is more concerned with the fleeting quality of time and the struggle to remember and anticipate than with reconciliation of details from different time periods. The visual does not match the verbal because age does not and cannot match the minds perception of time, or as Beckett puts it, the calendar of facts rarely ever runs parallel to the calendar of feelings (Proust 4). The calendar of facts leaves traces only on the ageing face; it is nothing like the calendar of feelings, which Hirst tells Spooner, is private, exclusive, impenetrable, and very uncertain: I had my world. I have it. Dont think now that its gone Ill choose to sneer at it, to cast doubt on it, to wonder if it properly existed. No. Were talking of my youth, which can never leave me, No. It existed. It was solid, The people in it were solid, while transformed by light, while being sensitive to all the changing light Its gone. Did it exist? Its gone. It never existed. It remains. I am sitting here forever (Plays 3 352) The uncertainty of time is much more contained in No Mans Land, where the characters draw clear lines in separating past and present as two distinctly different time zones. In Silence, it is fluid as they fuse into each other: as we entered the realm of time-in-flux, past and present lost their identity as discreet sections of time. The present becomes

75 specious because on second glance it is seen as fused with the past, obliterating the line between them (Blusetone 54). The obliteration registered in the characters consciousness of past in present is more affirmative than it may seem at first glance: Consciousness is indeed the reason for which one feels the absurdity of ones condition, and yet it is henceforth a priority, Camus insist, to remain conscious consciousness if responsible for the only veritable contact with, or understanding of, oneself (Herbeck 2021). Thus, when the characters in Silence cannot decide if they are in the past or present, they are really narrating an uncertainty that asserts meaning: no one will live [the absurd life], knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it (Myth 54). The monologues of Ellen, Rumsey, and Bates, which consistently bounce past and present off each other, are really private contemplations that sustain meaning: as Landscape and No Mans Land have shown, the world freezes when man refuses to face and contemplate temporality of his absurd existence. By having his characters struggle with what is of yesterday and today as if they both exist simultaneously, Pinter stops short at arriving at the Proustian miracle, where opposites are reconciled; moving and motionless, brilliant and blinding is rendered in images of motion (rhythm) and light (fire) (Oberg 155). The repetitive-circular structure of Silence ensures that opposites are never reconciled. Repetition and circularity embrace the absurdity of life. In fact, circularity is affirmative and its repetitive mode provides a kind of sustenance for the absurd condition: Repetition and recollection are the same movement only in opposite directions;

76 for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas repetition properly so called is recollected forwards. Therefore, repetition, if it is possible, makes a man happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy When one says that life is a repetition one affirms that existence which has been not becomes. When one does not possess the categories of recollection or of repetition the whole of life is resolved into a void and empty noise. (Sren Kierkegaard cited in Erickson 184) Hence, Pinters circularity in Silence and The Proust Screenplay is not the damning circularity of Beckett: time does not move in Waiting for Godot because neither Didi nor Gogo can ever remember what they did yesterday: The two main actions in Becketts drama are anticipation without much memory (Waiting for Godot) and memory with much anticipation (Endgame) (Postlewait 484). Godot does not arrive precisely because the past is taken out of the equation. Since Didi and Gogo cannot recall yesterday, they also negate the possibility of futureGodot will never arrive for as long as they fail to register the past. This circularity is not necessarily damning if characters can remember the past, even if they are tormented by their memories. Circularity provides a continuity from past to present in Pinters works. In a 1970 double bill production of Silence and Landscape at Lincoln Center, Pinter agreed to a most unusual request from an audience member. After Silence and Landscape were staged, Silence was performed again. Nena Thames Whittemore makes an astute observation when she compares the Dj Vu effect of the production to a John Donne poem: Pinter, like Donne, could say it makes my circle just,/ And makes me end, where

77 I begunne (46).27 This comparison, which certainly applies to many Pinter plays with circular structures, can be read in two possible ways: 1) there is no end because the end is just another beginning, hence, if the experience is tormenting (as in Godot), the pain is perpetual, and 2) if the end signals renewal, then the new beginning also promises the opportunity for change. Even before he wrote Silence and Proust, Pinters 1966 play, The Basement, illustrates that repetition can indeed promise change; it can be viewed as an affirmation of the future. In the dreamscape world of The Basement, Law invites the past, manifest in the form of Stotthis old friendinto his apartment. Towards the end of the play, Stott successfully takes over Laws home: the intruder is victorious in this battle. But by looping the end of the play back to the opening, in which Law knocks on the same door that Stott first knocked on at the beginning of the play, Law becomes the intruder. If the repetition in The Basement follows the same sequence of events as the original structure, Law, by becoming an intruder in his own home, ultimately wins it back. When Pinters interpretation of time and memory is translated into narrative and/or images, the simultaneous co-existence of past and present and the consciousness of this condition assure us that the banal circularity of life is not without redemption: sustenance of consciousness is meant to allow an individual to observe the incohesion of life. As difficult as it may be to accept such an [absurd] existence, is value resides in
27

It is also curious that Whittenmore does not associate Donnes lines with Eliots Four Quartets given Pinters reputation as the last modernist (see Varun Begleys Harold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism [2005], esp. 56) and the striking reverberations of Donnes depiction of circular time in Eliots last quartet: What we call the beginning is often the end/ And to make an end is to make a beginning/ The end is where we start from Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning/ Every poem is an epitaph (144), especially since these comparisons bring to mind the influences that Donne may have had on Pinter; the playwright mentioned in an interview that lines and verses from Pope, Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Larkin, and Eliot are always on my mind (Gussow 27).

78 the fact that it generates existence masked by no illusions (Herbeck 24). Thomas Adler highlights the possibilities of Pinters circular structures when he discusses the playwrights adaptation of L. P. Hartleys The Go-Between (1953). At the end of the screenplay, the elderly Leo is given another chance to resolve the estranged relationship between Marian and her grandson, the son of her illegitimate child with Ted. Just before Leo is transported decades back to Brandham Hall, Marians voiceover makes a final request of her now middle-aged love messenger, asking him to re-tell her story to her grandson who is ashamed of his heritage. Marians request, which results in the circular structure of the screenplay, is essentially affirmative: A reprise of past experience is no longer merely an inexorable doom, a haven from uncertainty, or a psychological tool for dominating an adversary, but has become a form of exorcism, whispering of salvation after wrecking its destruction (196). Just as Marcel is whisked back into the past by the end of The Proust Screenplay, Pinter echoes the optimism of Donne when the camera zooms out of the patch of yellow wall and blurs into a yellow screen. Time is not as stagnant as circularity suggests: for Marcel, It was time to begin (310). The temporality of experiences and the natural movement of time are equally absurd in Silence and The Proust Screenplay: past regrets and future anticipations exist side by side. Pinters absurd time proves to be the faithful yet dreaded companion of Camuss absurd man: [d]uring everyday of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future Yet a day comes when man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes a place in it (Myth 13). Ellen, Rumsey, Bates, and Marcels struggle with temporality and memory is a Sisyphean

79 task simply because time is unending. But like the mythical figure who is master of his fate by virtue of his stubborn revolt, Pinters characters are superior to their fates. Their fates belong to them, and time, to paraphrase Camus, is their thing. If Sisyphus triumphs because he recognizes the absurdity of his punishment, then the absurd man, too, is superior to his fate for embracing absurd time.

80 Accommodating the Possibility of Affirmation in Pinters Drama

More than his rebellion against the gods, it is this long stubbornness which is meaningful for us. It accompanies this admirable determination to separate and exclude nothing, and which always has and always will unite the suffering heart of men and the springtimes of the world.28 Albert Camus

Pinter has often admitted in interviews that his plays can be dark; even affirmative readings of his works cannot altogether bring about so-called happy endings. But this dissertation does not aim for happy resolutions. The critical strategies used to analyze the plays in this study uses Martin Esslins Theatre of the Absurd to promote a deeper, more sensitive understanding of Pinters aesthetic and philosophical development as an absurd playwright. Esslin believed that the dramatic conventions employed by the absurd playwrights demonstrate a sense of despair and loss prevalent in the post-war years, but he is also convinced that there is more to despair in the Absurd theatre. Turning to Camuss The Myth of Sisyphus, he characterized these feelings as those of the absurd man: the Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought (Theatre 24). But he also reminds us that Camuss model of the absurd man does not abandon rational devices or discursive thought. On the contrary, it is precisely the tragic nature of his plight that Sisyphus

28

From Prometheus in the Underworld in Selected Essays and Notebooks (131).

81 develops a form of thought that defeats even the gods who cursed him. His confrontation with and contemplation of his absurd fate assure him that there is redemption in condemnation. Like Sisyphus, the absurd man in Pinters plays understands that existence is tragic and magnificent; he embraces the suffering heart of men and the springtimes of the world in its entirety (Camus Selected Essays 131). Neither despair nor happiness is permanent. The man who expects his rock to stay put on the top of the mountain is likely to be more tormented than one who recognizes and accepts the absurdity of such a prospect. As an absurd playwright, Pinter realizes this vision in his dialectic and affirmative approach to the unending struggles of absurd existence in his plays. Any form of sustained happiness is next to impossible in Pinters world. His characters lives are consistently disturbed and interrupted by domineering strangers, social conflicts, and existential anxieties, but this hardly means they are doomed by virtue of existence. As Billington observes, there are temporal moments of liberation amidst persecution, peace in chaos, and affirmation in regret; nothing is quite one-sided: the many moments of happiness in our existence need to be counter-balanced by an awareness of the pain and suffering that survive the world around us it is difficult to sustain and maintain an equilibrium, and [Pinter] is suspicious of people who do (93). Pinters preference to view life for its seemingly insignificant nuances and his adamant refusal to attach a moral tag to his plays caution us not to romanticize notions of good and evil in plays like The Birthday Party. Interpretations that insist only on reading Stans struggle against Goldberg and McCann as a battle of individual against institution deprive the play of its many possibilities. My wariness about labeling Goldberg and

82 McCann, the intruders, as persecutors, and Stan as victim, arose from pondering over a Pinters comment: There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true or false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false, it can be both true and false (Various Voices 15). For Pinter, there is no one way to verify truths and falsities, and it is this ambiguity that makes his characters so complex. Coming from this line of thought, it is just as difficult to draw a clear distinction between good and evil, for if these terms, if they must be used, are never substantive, and they change according to circumstances. One character may be considered to be a villain by another, yet a third may come along to change that assumption; The Birthday Party illustrates the difficult reality of making such distinctions as it exposes the all its characters to be victims and victimizers. The classic model of intrusion in The Birthday Party also encourages us to consider increasingly abstract forms of disturbances in Pinters works; after the intruders are turned out, his characters discover that their indoor refuge is not as safe as they believe it to be. In the opening scene of The Dwarfs, we find Len and Pete already waiting for Mark in his house. The easy access that the three men have to each others homes foreshadows the intrusions that take place in rest of the play: walls and doors offer no protection whatsoever in The Dwarfs. Intrusion, once commonly recognized as an indoor-outdoor metaphor, reappears in a different form, as class conflict and speech patterns threaten to destroy the lifelong friendship between Mark, Pete, and Len. The maintenance of their relationship was never a group effort as Len is unwittingly made to shoulder the responsibility of remaining silent to preserve what appears to be a

83 functioning friendship. When Len eventually breaks his silence, we witness how disruptive true speech can be. Finally, there are no characters that recognize, acknowledge, and accept the absurdity of existence more readily than Ellen, Rumsey, and Bates. Their consciousness of the past, present, and future, and more importantly, their ambivalence of the past and their anxious anticipation of the unforeseeable future is a fitting example of the divorce between man and his existence: The absurd man is he who is not apart from time (Myth 72). Yet, without The Proust Screenplay, it is difficult to fully appreciate the simultaneity of past, present, and future as a type of intrusion, a menace, to the absurd desire for permanence; as Pinter puts it: If one can speak of the difficulty of knowing what in fact took place yesterday, one can I think treat the present in the same way [] Because reality is quite a strong firm word we tend to think, or to hope, that the state to which it refers is equally firm, settled and unequivocal. It doesnt seem to be, and in my opinion, its no worse or better for that (Plays 1 x). The temporal nature of time, which causes in the conflicting desire to relive the past and the anticipation of the future, do not necessarily leave man condemned; he is redeemed by confronting the absurdity of his own existence. The aesthetic and philosophical development of The Birthday Party, The Dwarfs, Silence, and The Proust Screenplay indicate that Pinters plays can accommodate the dialectic qualities of lifeexistence is as wonderous as it is tragic. The absurd mans journey must be a two-way trip if he is to sustain the burden of his existence. Thus, when Lois Gordon comments that Pinters figures are not concerned with ultimates, they surely lack the scorn, truimph, and nobility that exalt Sisyphus as he bravely commits

84 himself to eternally rolling the rock to the top of the hillin spite of an ultimate meaningless, she fails to take into account that for Camus and Pinter, existence in and of itself is the ultimate (Stratagems 10). Neither writers are chasing dreams of an ultimate reality that transcend the absurd life: Camuss Absurd is an awareness of the inexplicable nature of the human condition, of the world as an obstacle to mans understanding it focuses attention on the realities of physical existence [and] also represents the sigh of regret; besides, the absurd man is aware of lifes limits and so also aware of the value of every transient moment (Dobrez 6162). In dramatizing the fragility and fortitude of the human spirit, Pinter epitomizes Camuss affirmative approach to life, for like Camus, the playwright, too, is obsessed with the preciousness of absurd existence.

85

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