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III, Issue V, May 2017, ISSN: 2395-6968

The Absurd Elements in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party

Prashant Mandre
Ph. D. Research Scholar
Dept. of Studies in English
Karnataka University, Dharwad
Karnataka State, India
Email : [email protected]

ABSTRACT
The Theatre of the Absurd is mainly the Western phenomenon. The West with this kind of
socio-political changes viewed art and literature quite differently. The European writers
reviewed their very understanding of drama and theatre activities. They thought of the
inadequacy of language in communicating man’s ideas and sensibilities.
The absurd in life, art and literature arose due to several reasons. First of all,
industrialization changed man’s social nature. Its by-product urbanization added a further
dimension to it. The growth of science and technology furthered man’s scientific
temperament and enquiry, thereby causing man’s disbelief in the God and religion and the
impact of the First World War and The Second World War.
Theatre of the Absurd is as old as the play. Only it was not as explicit as it became in the 19 th
century because, the traits of it were not so prominent in ancient drama. Martin Esslin says

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its novelty lies in its somewhat unusual combination of such antecedents, and a survey of
these will show that what may strike the unprepared spectator
Harold Pinter’s two plays The Birthday Party and The Caretaker depict man’s helplessness
and unease today. The Birthday Party seems a play can be understood easily yet it has
elements which make it unique and absurd. The features of absurdity such as unclarity of
scenes, dialogues and plot are reflected. The lack of communication is used so strongly that
even a pause and silence tells much more which makes the play special. The play isn’t
completely unconventional, it has the usual setting as of the cotemporary style but uniqueness
is seen when surprise awaits in the form of imagery unusual circumstances and lack of
dialogue or some time strange approaches. This play doesn’t go to explain everything easily
through the dialogues but the play itself reveals much more than the common elements of the
play.
KEYWORDS
Existentialism, Absurdity, Meaningless, Helplessness, Pinteresque, Human Condition

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RESEARCH PAPER
This paper highlights absurd elements in Harold Pinter‟s ‘The Birthday Party’. The idea of
existentialism is widely experimented and focused by the some European playwrights in the
late 1950s. The purpose of highlighting this theme was influenced by the philosophy of the
human existent. It employs irrational and illogical speech and purposeless and confusing
situations and plots that lack realistic or logical development. It is the result of the disastrous
disturbance occurred during the post war period. Absurdity has become the part of common
men‟s life.
Absurdity may also be a reaction to the gradual disappearance of religious life. There was a
pedestal to these writers to convince the audience to think of a condition which is partially
mystical. Harold Pinter‟s works gives an indication of their influence on Anglo-American
culture. „Pinteresque‟ that occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name
entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and
environment in drama.
The theme of Absurdity is not a new concept to the history of man‟s existence. It was used to
express human fate against challenges and deeds. The analyzation of the theme isn‟t clear and
yet it shows men‟s fear to run away from human existence. The ancient works too contain
absurdity as an aspect of existence, but it was apparent in expressing the very theme directly.
We find the flow of this more clearly in works of those writers after The World War I and
World War II.
The Theatre of the Absurd is mainly the Western phenomenon. The West with this kind of
socio-political changes viewed art and literature quite differently. The European writers
reviewed their understanding of drama and theatre activities. They thought of the inadequacy
of language in communicating man‟s ideas and sensibilities.
The absurd in life, art and literature arose due to several reasons. First of all, industrialization
changed man‟s social nature. Its by-product urbanization added a further dimension to it. The
growth of science and technology furthered man‟s scientific temperament and enquiry,
thereby causing man‟s disbelief in the God and religion. The so-called Darwinism may be
mentioned as an evidence of this. Then the two World Wars gave a deathblow to man‟s
concept of the world as a safe place. These phenomena were the main reasons why man
underwent a transformation.
The term absurd was coined by Martin Esslin and published a book by this title in 1961.
According to Esslin, the five defining playwrights of the movements are Eugene lonesco,

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Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, although these writers were
not always comfortable with the label and sometimes preferred to use terms such as “Anti-
Theatre” or “New Theatre”. Other playwright associated with this type of theatre include
Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, N.F.
Simpson, Boris Vian, peter Weiss, Vaclav Havel and Jean Tardieu.
There is no definite date for the rise of an absurd plays in the Postmodern literature. It wasn‟t
a new phenomenon to English literature either; it was an anguish reaction against post world
war socio-political disturbance. The unpleasant development occurred after world war in
Europe gave away a kind of dilemma in the mind of writers resulted in absurdity. As we
know that literature reflects life, that is true to much destroyed European life and this
opportunity was grabbed by some absurd writers.
Andre Malraux was one of the earliest writers to depict the western man‟s sense of the
absurd. In his work The Temptation of the West (1925), he depicts Europe as a cemetery.
Then the existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre in his works Nausea, The Flies and Huis Clos,
described the nothingness of man‟s life. Sartre says absurdity causes anxiety, of course,
freeing man. Existentialism stresses upon freedom of choice and action.The other European
playwrights who have written absurd plays are Jean Tardieu, Boris Vian, Dino Buzzati, Ezio
D‟ Errico, De Pedrolo, Arrabal, Max Firische, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Robert Pinget,
Edward Albee, Jack Gelber and Arthur Kopit. Some of the prominent East European absurd
playwrights include Mrozek, Rozewicz and Vaclav Havel.
Interestingly the Theatre of the Absurd is as old as the play. Only it was not as explicit as it
became in the 19th century because the traits of it were not so prominent in ancient drama.
Martin Esslin says its novelty lies in its somewhat unusual combination of such antecedents,
and a survey of these will show that what may strike the unprepared spectator as iconoclastic
and incomprehensible innovation is, in fact, merely an expression, revaluation and
development of procedures that are familiar and completely acceptable in slightly different
contexts.
Harold Pinter‟s two plays The Birthday Party and The Caretaker depict man‟s helplessness
and unease today. In Martin Esslin‟s view, The Birthday Party has been interpreted as an
allegory of the pressures of conformity, with Stanley, the pianist, as the artist who is forced
into respectability and pin-stipe trousers by the emissaries of the bourgeois world. Yet the
play can equally well be seen as an allegory of death man snatched away from the home he
has built himself, from the warmth of love embodied by Meg‟s mixture of motherliness and
sexuality, by the dark angels of nothingness, who pose to him the question of which came

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first, the chicken or the egg. But as in the case of Waiting for Godot, all such interpretations
would miss the point; a play like this simply explores a situation which, in itself, is a valid
poetic image that is immediately seen as relevant and true. It speaks plainly of the
individual‟s pathetic search for security; of secret dreads and anxieties; of the terrorism of our
world, so often embodied in false bonhomie and bigoted brutality; of the tragedy that arises
from lack of understanding between people on different levels of awareness. Likewise, The
Caretaker depicts man‟s callousness. Aston and Mick are brothers and they hire Davies for
taking care of their house. But the outsider abuses the opportunity.
Harold Pinter is a great theatre personality in modern times. As so he has won an
international acclaim for his contribution to drama. Harold Pinter‟s The Birthday Party is a
full-length play, he wrote it in 1957. It was first performed in 1958, at Art Theatre,
Cambridge. Harold Pinter himself directed it when it was performed by the Royal
Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London in 1964. The play depicts a tragedy
arisen out of insecurity. It projects a shabby boarding house where Stanley Webber, a man in
his late thirties has found a refuge from real life situations. He is the central character of the
play. Other characters include Meg Boles, the owner of a boarding house, Petey, her husband,
McCann and Goldberg, two sinister visitors and Lulu, a young lady. As Martin Esslin thinks
the play combines some of the characters and situations of The Room and The Dumb Waiter
while, for the first time, omitting the melodramatic, supernatural element – without any loss
of mystery or horror.
The Birthday Party has three acts. The first act opens with Meg is central character in the
play, she was speaking to her husband Petey, a docile old man who worked as a deck chair
attendant on the promenade. The old motherly woman Meg enquires him whether Stanley,
the guest had got up. Her husband does not speak much, symbolizing modern man‟s dry
existence. He does not answer any of her questions asked about Stanley, about his reading, or
about his resting. Once Stanley gets up he engages our attention. He treats Meg as a motherly
woman. He flirts with her as well. When he calls her „Succulent washing bag,‟ she rebukes
him. He says she does not cook well. Pinter introduces two tramp-like visitors at the end of
Act I. We do not know who they are. Yet they interest us as visitors to the Boarding House.
They bring a note of introduction from Mr Bales, Meg‟s husband. They start speaking to
Stanley rudely. It soon becomes clear that they are after Stanley. As Meg announces
Stanley‟s birthday the same day, they burst joyously. They plan to celebrate his birthday
though he does not know that that day is his birthday

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In the Act II we find Stanley getting into trouble. The two sinister visitors harmed him
emotionally. There is much of music and dance. They play the blind‟s game. Stanley whose
glasses have been snatched by McCann becomes more and more hysterical, tries to strangle
Meg, and is finally driven upstairs by the two sinister strangers.
In Act III, Goldberg and McCann take Stanley away in a big car. He is now well dressed and
when Meg comes down, she is still dreaming of the wonderful party and does not realize
what has happed.
Even though The Birthday Party seems a play can be understood easily yet it has elements
which make it unique and absurd. The features of absurdity such as unclarity of scenes,
dialogues and plot are reflected. The lack of communication is used so strongly that even a
pause and silence tells much more which makes the play special. The play isn‟t completely
unconventional, it has the usual setting as of the cotemporary style but uniqueness is seen
when surprise awaits in the form of imagery unusual circumstances and lack of dialogue or
some time strange approaches. This play doesn‟t go to explain everything easily through the
dialogues but the play itself reveals much more than the common elements of the play.
The characters used by Harold Pinter are similar to the modern men‟s psychology. He tries to
become as close as to the life of disturb modern life. He explains the basic mood of the
characters through the beautiful blend of silence and conventional techniques which
sometimes ends in pause. The pause itself convinces something to be interpreted by the
audience. Stanley is unwilling to be part of outside worlds and wants be away from it. It
creates anxiety in the mind of the audience.
Since it is man‟s fear to the unknown danger, which is expressed through the condition of
Stanley. The rush of modern life, its fear, anxiety and expectations and incomplete goals etc.
Reflected through a technique of language so powerfully that adds to the effectiveness of the
scenes.
The language used here is strange which portrait the character of Stanley as a young silent
and sophisticated. Here is the ruin of individuality of the character and Stanley becomes
speechless. Language here strategically to portray the meaningless state of the modern man.
Commenting on the role of language in the absurd plays
GOLDBERG : Your bite is dead. Only your pong is left.
MCCANN : You betrayed our land.
GOLDBERG : You betray our breed.
MCCANN : Who are you, Webber?
GOLDBERG : What makes you think you exist?

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MCCANN : You're dead.

GOLDBERG : You‟re dead. You can‟t live, you can‟t think, you can‟t love. You're
dead. You‟re a plague gone badly. There's no juice in you. You are nothing but an
odour. (Pinter 12)
The use of technique of meaning and meaninglessness has been intensified by Harold Pinter
through the characters of Stanley and Meg. Both Stanley and Meg aspire for some kind of
relationship which is usual human expectation. Finally Stanley bends under the pressure.
Another feature we observe here is the strange and incomprehensible behaviour of characters
which often bewilders the audience. Harold Pinter tries to present realistic state of human life.
The dramatic techniques like solitary life fear for unknown future, unwanted circumstances,
and anxiety and meaningless are exceptional.
Martin Esslin comments that “The Birthday Party has been interpreted as an allegory of the
pressures of conformity, with Stanley, the pianist, as the artist who is forced into
respectability and pin-stipe trousers by the emissaries of the bourgeois world. Yet the play
can equally well be seen as an allegory of death – man snatched away from the home he has
built himself, from the warmth of love embodied by Meg‟s mixture of motherliness and
sexuality, by the dark angels of nothingness, who pose to him the question of which came
first, the chicken or the egg. But as in the case of Waiting for Godot, all such interpretations
would miss the point; a play like this simply explores a situation which, in itself, is a valid
poetic image that is immediately seen as relevant and true. It speaks plainly of the
individual‟s pathetic search for security; of secret dreads and anxieties; of the terrorism of our
world, so often embodied in false bonhomie and bigoted brutality; of the tragedy that arises
from lack of understanding between people on different levels of awareness.” (Esslin 88)
Harold Pinter‟s The Birthday Party is fine play. It has all the elements of Absurd so it reveals
modern human condition.

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WORK CITED
Pinter, Harold. Harold Pinter: Plays 1. (3 ed.). London: Faber and Faber. 2011Print
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of Absurd. London: Vintage publication. 2011 Print.
Baker, William. Harold Pinter. Writers' Lives Series. London and New York: Continuum
International Publishing Group . Faber and Faber. 2005 Print
Pinter, Harold. 'Celebration' and 'The Room': Two Plays by Harold Pinter. London: Faber
and Faber. 2000 Print
Pinter, Harold. Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2008 (3 ed.).
London: Faber and Faber. 2009 Print

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