Harold Pinter - The Playwright that Unveiled

Harold Pinter - The Playwright that Unveiled ‘Dumb Aches,’ Uncertainties ... of Life: A Critique

Ch. A. Rajendra Prasad

“A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.” –Harold Pinter. 

Harold Pinter, a British playwright and writer of other forms of fictional and non-fictional writings was honored with Nobel Prize for Literature for the year 2005. This write-up attempts, though in a modest way, to focus on his dramatic output, and to acknowledge the literary giant’s searing acumen, which pulled large crowds to the enactment of his plays all over the world.

Being a playwright of seminal substance, Pinter endeavors in a sustained way to capture the ever-elusive essence of life through his writings. His prolific dramatic, output makes a subtle but decisive attempt to unravel the dumb aches, futilities and uncertainties of life in a sardonic yet touching way: “One way of looking at a speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”

Notwithstanding the scandalizing feeling one may develop after reading Harold Pinter’s works, he remains highly contemporaneous since he aptly reflects the angst [a profound feeling of generalized anxiety or dread] of the times in a universal manner. Pinter’s project of baring the unseemly in human condition, in a lighter vein, will have curing effect on us as it helps us realize our pretentious behavior and smallness, in a subtle way. Perhaps realizing these features that seem to govern our lives will make us less stiff and less stuffed-up.

Pinter’s writings and speeches remain consistently unvarnished-not in the sense of reflecting human condition in glaring black and white contours. Being a writer of non-­simplistic nature and informed of inescapable complexity in human existence, he seems to be engaged in projecting the ultimate grayish human existence–where the interfacing of vice and virtue, moral and immoral and certain and uncertain inevitably take place.

Similarly, for Pinter, writing and speaking seem not to polish off the unpalatable and the uncomfortable patches of Life but to unveil the same on the arena of our conscience, and thereby remind us about the ever-lurking smallness/nakedness involved in our existence. Definitely, watching/reading his plays, leaves one experience a dumb ache–a pain that attempts to threaten one’s complacency about the taken-for-granted aspects of life: “...there are at least twenty-four possible aspects of any single statement depending on where you’re standing at the time or on what’s the weather like.”

Against this drop, a critique is attempted on Harold Pinter by way of looking at a few of his major plays. In the play, The Birthday Party, Pinter deals with unpalatable yet compelling and disturbing reality of human life ridden with post-modernist concerns like, futility, pretension, and mutual distrust. In this play, the playwright uses the ruse of the freak characters to deal with a possible pan-freakish human nature. The man of the (birth) day is a character, called, Stanley, a freak in his own way.

The play is circumscribed by an all-encompassing decaying ambience. The creation of seemingly freak characters functioning in a surrealistic environment lends a look of sardonic hilarity. Perhaps, the ruse of freak characters and surrealistic treatment of the situation contributes to reducing the impact of the pungent and futile air of the play.

Since it is hard to detail the plot of the plays of Pinter for the reason of blurring and slippery reality, drawing just an outline should be enough:

The Birthday Party mainly deals with the relationship, which is simultaneously pathetic and hilarious, that exists among the three characters: Petey, a man in his sixties, Meg, a woman in her sixties and Stanley (the protagonist) a man in his thirties. The action of the play constitutes the near-absurd incidents that have taken place on the birthday of the protagonist wherein the possible unpalatable human existence–shrouded in hatred, oppression, pretension and immorality–is established.

In this play and elsewhere, Pinter seems to have stuck with the essential dichotomy of human life–the predicament of being caught between the seminal pitfalls and a futile attempt to escape from the same. In The Birthday Party, among other things, Pinter deals with the ever-haunting pitfall of over-sensuality in human sexuality, and a futile attempt to avoid and be evasive of the same. An instance of the play endorses this situation involving Meg, a woman of sixty years age, a freak in her own way, and Stanley, a man of thirty years of age and a sort of freak. The episode essentially expounds the ever-­haunting fear of losing one’s beauty, youth and vigor, and the consequent desperate attempt to cling to the same:

“Meg: Stan?
Stanley: What?
Meg (slyly): Am I really succulent?
Stanley: Oh, you are. I’d rather have you than a cold in the nose any day.
Meg: You’re just saying that.
Stanley (violently): Look, why don’t you get this place cleared up! It’s a pigsty. And another thing, what about my room? It needs sweeping. It needs papering. I need a new room!
Meg (sensual, stroking his arm): Oh, Stan, that’s a lovely room. I’ve had some lovely afternoons in that room.” (The Birthday Party: 13)

Yet another human pitfall that seems to have engaged the attention of Pinter in the play is the domineering attitude of the (mighty) ‘freaks’ against the (weakling) ‘freaks’. But the interesting aspect of the playwright is the all-encompassing ambience of freakish human existence. Perhaps, what is suggested is freakishness is a pitfall, and can catch up with anyone or everyone on turn basis. As has been shown above, Stanley who acts tough with Meg, when the turn comes he himself becomes a freak, and cowers in the presence of two other ‘mighty’ freaks:

(Goldberg and Mccann (together) speaking to Stanley):

“Webber, you’re a fake. When did you last wash up a cup?
Stanley: The Christmas before last.
Goldberg: Lyons Corner House.
Goldberg: Which one?
Stanley: Marble Arch.
Goldberg: Where was your wife?
Stanley: In–  
Goldberg: Answer.
Stanley: (turning, crouched). What wife?
Goldberg: What have you done with your wife?
Mccann: He’s killed his wife!
Goldberg: Why did you kill your wife?
Stanley: (sitting, his to the audience), What wife? (The Birthday Party: 43)

Notwithstanding the weary and freakish atmosphere of the night of the ‘birthday’, the ending of the play is a turnabout, which seems to be a common feature of Pinter. The ending of The Birthday Party is on a note of ‘normalcy’. This should perhaps be taken as an indication of the inescapability of pretense that returns to Life with renewed vigor:

Meg: It was a lovely party. I haven’t laughed so much for years. We had dancing and singing. And games. You should have been there.
Petey: It was good, eh?
Meg: I was the belle of the ball.
Petey: Were you?
Meg: Oh yes. They all said I was. (The Birthday Party: 81)

The play entitled, The Room, deals with the ever-lurking anxiety about being and becoming uncertain about one’s possessions and one’s relationship with others. In addition to this, the usual (in the canon of Pinter) slippery/flippant and pretentious relationships occupy prominent place. Along with this the seemingly ever-ready surfacing of one’s own ugly past constitutes the bulk of the play.

The action of the play revolves around mainly three characters: Bert Hudd, a man of fifty, his wife/concert, Rose, a woman of sixty and Mr. Kidd, an old man and the house-owner of the flat where in Hudd and Rose reside. Faced with an enquiry from a couple about the possible vacancy of the flat they are staying in, Rose gets disturbed and anxious-ridden as the visitors insist on the availability of the flat. While caught in this situation, the fourth character, called, Riley, a blind man, who seems to have carried a message from the past “home” of Rose confronts her.

The following extract of the play endorses the typical ambience of Pinter’s theatrical world wherein uncertainty, breakdown of communication and futility seem to be normal rather than exception:

Rose: What was it all about? Did you see those people? How can this room be going? It’s occupied. Did they get hold of you, Mr. Kidd?
Mr. Kidd: Get hold of me? Who?
Rose: I told you. Two people. They were looking for the landlord.
Mr. Kidd: I’m just telling you. I’ve been getting ready to come and see you, as soon as I heard the van go.
Rose: Well then, who were they?
Mr. Kidd: That’s why I came up before. But he hadn’t gone yet. I’ve been writing for him to go the whole weekend.
Rose: Well then, who were they?
Mr. Kidd: That’s why I came up before. But he hadn’t gone yet. I’ve been waiting for him to go the whole weekend.
Rose: Mr. Kidd, what did they mean about this room?
Mr. Kidd: What room?
Rose: Is this room vacant?
Mr. Kidd: Vacant?
Rose: They were looking for the landlord.
Mr. Kidd: Who were?
Rose: Listen, Mr. Kidd, you are the landlord, aren’t you? There isn’t any other landlord? (The Room:103)

The obviously vocal and possessive Rose crumbles as she comes into confrontation with a stranger who is blind also. Much to her chagrin, her past is forced upon her, which she seems to desist to remember. Ultimately, the blind stranger seems to have succeeded in provoking Rose and her husband to come out of their complacency and behave violently.

The play can be taken a re-run of Pinter’s attempt at proving how fragile human pretensions are. Pinter succeeds in establishing how the lurking fears could dispossess us of our possessions–materialistic or psychological.

In yet another startling but profoundly touching play, A Slight Ache, Pinter delves deep into the depths of the primordial that perhaps governs woman-man relationship. As usual with  Pinter, this also moves around the lurking fears that possibly hang around behind the facades that are routinely put up in human relationships, especially in the area of conjugal and intimate relationships.

In the play, the marital blissfulness seems to have been dogged by the seemingly ever-­lurking fear of the primordial–the male’s fear of being outwitted by a more youthful and powerful male in the sexual relationship with the female, and the female’s supposed subtle stances in the affair, and quick shifting of loyalties from a weakling male to a more prowess male.

The sketchy plotline of the play shows the beginning of the play on a sunny day with a ‘blissfully’ married and intimately ‘bonded’ couple’s (Edward, Flora) plans for gardening and doing domestic chores. The excited talk of the wife and the husband reflects the couple’s intimacy, and caring for each other. The indulging and chivalrous husband, Edward, and the caring wife, Flora, seem to have a fine time ahead for the day:

Edward: What a beautiful day it is. Beautiful. I think I shall work in the garden this morning. Where’s that canopy?
Flora: It’s in the shed.
Edward: Yes, we must get it out. My goodness, just look at that sky. Not a cloud. Did you say it was the longest day of the year today?
Flora: Yest.
Edward: Ah, it is a good day. I feel it in my bones. In my muscles. I think I’ll stretch my legs in a minute. Down to the pool. My God, look at that flowering shrub over there....” (A Slight Ache: 138)

But the threatening feature of the ‘Other’ male, though in the manner of a weakling, insidiously creeps into the relationship, and destabilizes the facade. As it is usual with Pinter, the bizarre turn of the events of play–the weakling, called in the play, Match-­seller (because he appears to be ostensibly a seller of matches holding his ware on a tray), turns into an able-bodied man whereas the husband (Edward) seem to have ‘lost’ all his prowess and becomes a weakling. The clinching twist of the play takes place with Flora switching her loyalty from now-tumed-weakling husband to the weakling match-seller now-metamorphosed into able-bodied youthful man.

The following conversation (where Flora does the talk all the while whereas her interlocutor remains to be a silent listener) attempts to depict the essential primordial dichotomies that seem to keep on tilting ‘balance’ in man-woman relationship:

“Flora: Do you know, I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen you before, somewhere. Long before the flood. You were much younger. Yes; I’m really sure of it. Between ourselves, were you ever a poacher once. It was a ghastly rape, the brute. High upon a hillside cattle track. Early spring. I was out riding on my pony. And there on the verge a man lay–ostensibly injured, lying on his front, I remember possibly the victim of a murderous assault, how was I to know? I dismounted, I went to him, he rose, I fell, my pony took off, down to the volley. I saw the sky the through the trees, blue. Upto my ears in mud. It was a desperate battle.
[Pause]
I lost
[Pause]
Of course, life was perilous in those days. It was my first canter un-chaperoned.
[Pause]
Years later, when I was Justice of the Peace for the county, I had him in front of the bench. He was there for poaching. That’s how I know he was a poacher. The evidence though was sparse, inadmissible. I acquitted him, letting him off with a caution. He’d grown a red beard, I remember.
[Pause]
I say, you are perspiring, aren’t you? Shall I mop your brow? ... [Pause. She mops him]
Ah, there, that’s better. And your cheeks. It is a woman’s job, isn’t it? And I’m only on hand
here.
[Pause]
She leans on the arm of chair. [Intimately] Tell me, have you a woman? Do you like women? Do you ... ever think about women? (A Slight Ache: 174-175)

Understandably, the ideas of this play disturb readers’ complacency about the taken-for­granted stability of a social institution-marriage. But the surrealistic and absurd shroud of the play definitely helps mitigate readers’ uneasiness and fears, and assures them of the impossibility of happening it in real life. In fact, this seems to be the ruse that Pinter continues to use in his play writing. Through these means Pinter seems to attempt to downplay the scandalizing feeling one may experience, while watching or reading his plays.

Note: The textual quotes of the plays are borrowed from Harold Pinter’s Plays One (London: Faber and Faber, 1986).