E.C.301 Modernist Literature

Assignment Paper:-E.C 301 Modernist Literature

Topic:-Theme of Absurdity &Comedy of Menace

Name: - Andharia Darshangi K.

Roll No:-1

URL:- http://darshangiandharia01201112.blogspot.com/

Semester: - 1

Batch:-2011-12               

                                   Submitted to,

                                                   Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                   Dept. of English

                                                   Bhavnagar

                

             Harold Pinter was born in 1930, he is English playwright and director. First he wanted to be poet but than turned to drama. His first play “The Room” was published in 1957.He is known for his comedy of menace. His works are full of unspoken meaning behind in consequential of every day’s talks to induce an atmosphere of menace. Pinter’s most of the plays have single, powerful image. It always set in a single room which threatened by forces or people whose precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define. The struggle for survival dominates the action of his all characters and language is used as a weapon not as a way of communication.

                         

                          Martin Esslin says, “Pinter’s dialogue is as tightly perhaps more tightly –controlled than verse.” His dialogues are short but very effective and contradictory and sometimes meaningless.

What is Comedy of Menace?

                    Tragedy with a number of comic elements. It suggests that there are funny elements with frightening or menacing or terror in a vague and undefined way .The characters and audience are unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable.

In “The Birthday Party”

                    It is a tragedy with comedy but the effect of the play is tragedy .In whole play we amused by the things which happened one by one and also find our selves in deep terror. Some incidents which are very effective and sometimes we feel uneasy even we are laughing with amusement and this quality of Pinter’s writing makes him famous among the people.

                         In the play two strangers are creating this effect. They always ask some questions to Stanley about his past and his current life. There is fear of unknown in the Stanley’s mind and many other things .Stanley is main vehicle of go deep into comedy through his fear but after that the room is become menace with McCann and Goldberg. Sequence of order “sit down” is create funny effect in the mind of the audience but after that reader feels fear that what will with Stanley after this scene? Stanley do cheating in the game blind man’s buff is funny but terrifying because the audience are aware that much more is at shake than appears on the surface level .Even the title of the play is “The Birthday Party” we feel that it is ones birthday and the party is organized but Stanley says that it is not my birthday this dialogue also create the effect of comic scene and Meg gives him toy drum in the gift is also sounds very funny because Stanley is not child.

                          The nature of the reality is confused ,audience no longer know what is or is not true and from this comes atmosphere of mystery and uncertainly. He doesn’t give background information about the character in it. It means that characters are not fixed as belong to any particular place or time. Stanley has no history and he has no family. Here the nature of reality is confused. The audience feels a sense of at their own laughter. His ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object. He can summon forth an atmosphere of menace from every object and every event.

                          Pinter said that “everything is funny until the horror of human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusion and self deceptions, like Stanley dream of a word tour as a pianist; because it is built out of pretence .In our present day world everything is uncertain. There is no fixed point; we are surrounded by the unknown. This unknown occurs in my plays. There is a kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity go together.”

Theme of Absurdity :-

                         

                            The Word absurd itself create an effect of absurd in our mind. The birthday is full of disjointed information that defies efforts to distinguish between reality and illusion. All the characters are in somewhere somehow create the absurdity in the play. Stanley is the main character who is in the center of the play we don’t know much about him. Who is he? Which is his past? He has his family? Why two strangers come? Why they take Stanley with them at the end of the play? All this questions remain unanswered at the end of the play. Who are they it remains mystery.

                            The play begins with dialogue between Meg and Petey. They talked about the newspaper and from that suddenly Pinter gives as the party’s scene of rape. This thing from comedy to deep reality of the character shows the absurdity of the party. Some time when Stanley talks about his career as a pianist first he said that “I have played the piano all over the world” then “All over the country” and then with pause he said that “I once gave a concert.” This show the absurdity of his mind. Why he speaks like that, why he wants to prove himself as a famous pianist of the world, why he spoke false sentences to the Meg. All this questions remain unanswered at the end. Even we don’t know that really he was pianist or not. When Meg and Petey talk each other it speaks like rudely. They jus talk each other for getting information. Even when Petey reads the newspaper and she ask questions that what he new about? And many other things. In presence of Stanley and Meg don’t give Petey the cup of tea and snakes; she gives more attention to Stanley which her husband doesn’t like. Meg behaves with Stanley as her child, because both were longing fir child. In the beginning when Lulu knocked the door at that times Stanley hides himself into the kitchen and even when Meg and Petey were talking about the new comers Stanley asks him why you give them this house, is there any requirement? Why they are coming? Who are they and you know that person? These types of questions show Stanley’s fear of stranger.

                            The talk between the Nat, McCann and Stanley in room. Nat and McCann asked him torrent of questions. Why you leave your previous job? Where is your wife? What about your first name? Why you change your name? These questions working a lot and through these type of question they had down the confidence of Stanley. At the of the play, the game of blind man’s buff and in between the scene of rape we don’t know what happen with Lulu. Is the Stanley in fault or any other character we don’t know the reality.

                            In the beginning of the play Meg says that I had organized party for you but Stanley says that “It’s not my birthday.” All these dialogue make play full of absurdity. According to John Russell Brown “Falsehood are important for Pinter’s dialogue not least when they can be detected only by careful reference from one encourage to look for more that is going to be disclosed. This is part of Pinter’s two disappointing this desire. Where human efforts are seen as pointless but compulsory. It potential for comedy and terror has been exploited especially in the theater. Many writers like Beckett, Lonesco, Albee and Stoppard also write their work with the help of theme of absurdity or they are absurd writers.