The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

• The Birthday Party as a Modernist text

• The Birthday Party is a play by English playwright Harold Pinter, who achieved international success as one of the most complex post World War 2^nd dramatist.

• Harold Pinter's plays are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, understatement & cryptic small talk.
• Equally recognizable are the 'Painteresque' themes - nameless menace, erotic fantasy, obsession & jealousy, family hatred and mental disturbance.
• The Birthday Party falls under the category of Theatre of Absurd or especially Comedy of Menace.

•  PLOT

• Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in Theatre of Absurd. Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery.
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• The Birthday Party - Goldberg & McCann. Confront Stanley, torture him with Absurd question and drag him off at the end of the play but is never revealed why. The menace is no longer entering from outside but exists within the confined space.

• Language:-

• Despite its reputation of nonsense language, much of the language in this plays naturalistic. The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés- when words appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the characters- make The Birthday Party distinctive.
• Language in this play gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness.

• Character:-

• The Characters in this play are lost & floating in an incomprehensible universe and they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate.

• The more characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible. Many of Pinter's plays, for example feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by some force that characters can’t understand.

•   Theatre of Absurd:-

• The Birthday Party is also part of Theatre of Absurd. The play has all the characteristics of Theatre of Absurd.
• The play presents meaningless situation of human in confusing, hostile and indifferent world.

•  As comedy of menace:-

• The Birthday Party- a comedy of menace is a tragedy with numbers of comic elements. It is a comedy, which also produces overwhelming tragic effect.
• Throughout the play we are kept amused and yet throughout the play we find ourselves also on the brink of terror. (www.ntworld.com)

• Some indefinable and vague fear keeps our nerves on an edge. We feel uneasy all the time even when we are laughing or smiling with amusement. This dual quality which is modern phenomenon makes the play Modernist literature- which is also breaking old tradition.

• Pinter Pause: -     (Something new than traditional)

• One of the two silences when Pinter's stage direction indicate pause and silence when his characters are not speaking at all- has  become a trademark of Pinter's dialogue and known as Pinter Pause.

• There are two silences:-

• (1)  When no word is spoken
• (2) When perhaps a torrent of language is being employed.

• There is always continuous fear of unknown. Human beings trapped in a situation they don’t know.

• Frustration,
• Isolation,
• Brokenness &
• Disjointedness in The Birthday Party.

• Political reading:- (Deer)

• The play is very much open for various interpretations.
• -Political interpretation of the play suggest that Nat Goldberg and Dermont McCann represents country like U.S.A. and U.K. Lulu represents the idea/concept of welfare state on the grounds of socialistic/ communist/ Marxist Leninist economics. (Nobelprize.org)
• Characters like Meg and Petey represents society- who can do nothing. Impotency of society is presented through these characters.
• Stanley - An artist represents a true individual, free thinker (Nations).
• Play is mixture of terror and amusement; it is frightening as well as funny.
• Nothing is clear in the play. This is the characteristics of Modernist literature that larger things are signified than said directly.
• Conclusion:-
• Thus, with its distinctive characteristics The Birthday Party is a modernist text- different and distinct than traditional works of literature in many ways.