Pinter Problem 9781400872404

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THE PINTER PROBLEM

AUSTIN Ε. QUIGLEY

The Pinter Problem PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, N. J.

Copyright © 1975 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton and London ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation This book has been composed in Linotype Electra Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

For Anne, Rita, and Ted

CONTENTS Chronology of Pinter's Career

ix

Preface

xiii

Introduction

xvii

I. Problems and Perspectives II. The Language Problem III. The Room IV. The Caretaker V. The Homecoming

3 32 76 113 173

VI. Landscape

226

VII. Conclusion

273

Bibliography Pinter's Plays

279

On Pinter

279

Theoretical

289

Index

293

CHRONOLOGY OF PINTER'S CAREER

1930

Born, Hackney, London, October 10. Only child of a Jewish tailor.

1944-47

First acting experience, in school productions at Hackney Downs Grammar School.

1948

Spent two unhappy terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art studying acting.

1949-57

Writing devoted mainly to poems and short stories, which have remained largely unpublished. At times used monologue and dialogue forms in these ventures as is evinced in "Kullus" (1949) subsequently published in Harold Pinter: Poems (1968). This 1949 poem provides an early version of The Basement.

1950

First publication, two poems: "New Year in the Midlands" and "Chandeliers and Shadows." First acting engagement, on BBC radio.

1951

Attended Central School of Speech and Drama for further study of acting.

1951-52

First acting engagement in the theater: toured Ireland with Anew McMaster's company performing Shakespeare.

1953

Acting in London, met. Vivien Merchant.

1953-57

Acting in provincial repertory theaters using stage name of David Baron. Writing a novel, The Dwarfs, which has not been published but provided material for a later play of the same name.

1956

Acting with Vivien Merchant in the provinces. They marry.

1957

First play, The Room, written in a few days for a university drama festival. The Birthday Party. The Dumb Waiter.

1958

First London performance of a Pinter play: The Birthday Party. Panned by the critics and taken off at the end of the first week. A Slight Ache, written initially for radio, later televised, and subsequently performed on stage.

CHRONOLOGY OF PINTER'S CAREER 1958

An unsuccessful play, The Hothouse, written but never sub­ sequently performed or published.

1959

A Night Out, written initially for radio, later televised and subsequently performed on stage. A short story, "The Examination," published. Several sketches performed in London revues: "Special Of­ fer," "Request Stop," "Getting Acquainted," "The Black and White," "Trouble in the Works," "Last to Go."

1960

First major success in the theater, The Caretaker. First American performance of a Pinter play: The Birthday Party, at the Actors' Workshop in San Francisco. Night School, written initially for television, later performed on radio but not yet performed on stage. Pinter was at first unwilling to publish this play as he felt it to be of a lower standard than he requires of his work. The play was revised in 1966 for a radio performance, and this version was then published in 1967. The Dwarfs, written initially for radio and subsequently per­ formed in a revised version on stage in 1963. The play was further revised for a 1968 reprint and has now been pub­ lished in three different versions (Methuen 1961, 1966, 1968).

1961

The Collection, written initially for television and later transferred to the stage. First New York performance of a Pinter play: The Care­ taker.

1962

First film script, The Servant, adapted from R. Maugham's novel of the same name.

1963

The Lover, written initially for television and later trans­ ferred to the stage. Film version of The Caretaker. Film script for The Compartment completed, but the film was never made. The manuscript was subsequently used for a television play, The Basement, in 1967.

1964

Nine short sketches performed on BBC radio, including five new ones: "Applicant," "That's Your Trouble," "That's All," "Interview," "Dialogue for Three." The latter sketch had been published in the preceding year. The short story "Tea Party," read by Pinter on BBC radio.

CHRONOLOGY OF PINTER'S CAREER 1964

Film script for The Pumpkin Eater, adapted from P. Mort­ imer's novel of the same name.

1965

The Homecoming. Tea Party, adapted from Pinter's short story of the same name; written initially for television, the play was subse­ quently transferred to the stage.

1966

Pinter awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). Film script for The Quiller Memorandum, adapted from A. Hall's novel, The Berlin Memorandum.

1967

The Basement, initially written as a film script (entitled The Compartment, 1963) but presented for the first time as a television play and later transferred to the stage. The situa­ tion the play deals with is foreshadowed in Pinter's 1949 poem "Kullus." Film script for Accident, adapted from N. Mosley's novel of the same name.

1968

Landscape, initially written for the theater but first per­ formed on BBC radio after problems with the censor over a four-letter word. This mode of censorship was subsequently discontinued, and the play was transferred to the stage. Film version of The Birthday Party. Mac. A memoir of Anew McMaster who gave Pinter his first acting engagement in the theater. McMaster died in 1962. Selected poems from 1949-58 published m Harold Pinter: Poems.

1969

Silence. Film script for The Go-Between, adapted from L. P. Hart­ ley's novel of the same name. A new sketch, "Night." Film version of The Homecoming prepared but production delayed.

1971

Old Times.

1972

At work on the film script for an adaptation of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu).

1973

Monologue, written initially for television and not yet per­ formed on stage. Xl

CHRONOLOGY OF PINTER'S CAREER 1973

Film version of The Homecoming, produced by The Amer­ ican Fdm Theatre.

Throughout his writing career Pinter has continued to act in the theater and on television and has appeared in performances of his own work During this period he has also begun to direct plays professionally and has at times directed productions of his own plays.

Xll

PREFACE !"IAROLD PINTER'S work first appeared on the London

stage at about the same time that I began to take a serious interest in drama. The controversy that quickly surrounded his work attracted my attention and has retained it ever since. This study is the culmination of an interest that now stretches back over several years, and in that time a number of people have helped clarify the problems and point the way toward solutions. It is a pleasure to record here my gratitude to Professor John M. Ellis for his guidance and encouragement in the development of this project. For several years I have bene­ fited from lengthy discussions with him on theoretical issues in the fields of linguistics, literature, and philosophy of lan­ guage. The impact of these discussions is manifest on every page of this study. I count myself fortunate to have been exposed to such rigorous and extensive challenge from a man so enthusiastically committed to the possibility of think­ ing things through. It is likewise a pleasure to record my gratitude to Professor John McH. Sinclair, who first recommended that I combine my interests in linguistics and literature in a study of Pinter's dialogue. A portion of his unpublished inaugural lecture used a Pinter quotation to illustrate processes involved in dialogue, and this suggested my subsequent work in the field. Over the years I have been considerably helped by con­ versations and correspondence with Michael Warren, Mar­ garet Berry, Kent Taylor, and Harry Berger, Jr. In the development of my interest in linguistics, the pub­ lications of M.A.K. Halliday have been an important and influential factor. xiu

PREFACE

For their assistance in the collection of materials relating to Pinter's work, I am grateful to John and Karenza Storey, Edmund and Rita Quigley, and Grace and Benton Ferguson. A grant from the University of Massachusetts was also help­ ful in this respect. A similar grant from the University of Virginia facilitated the completion of the final manuscript. To Anne Quigley, whose contributions have been multiple and indispensable, a special word of thanks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I WISH ΤΟ thank Harold Pinter, ACTAC (Theatrical and Cinematic) Ltd., and the publishers, Grove Press Inc. and Methuen and Co. Ltd., for permission to quote from the following: The Room, The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Homecoming, Landscape, and Last To Go.

INTRODUCTION IN RECENT years a number of books have appeared which attempt to deal with the work of playwright Harold Pinter. As is usual with a writer whose work is of recent date, these books have tended to be introductory in nature. At­ tention has been devoted to surveys of Pinter's life, career, and plays with the aim of providing the kind of perspective that will open up Pinter's work to a rather puzzled audience. In spite of the wealth of background information now avail­ able, the uncertainty that has characterized responses to Pinter's work shows no sign of diminishing. An improved understanding of the author and of his interests has not been matched by a similar improvement in understanding of his work. While a few critical generalizations have been widely accepted, there has remained an unbridged gap between such generalizations and attempts to account for the success of any individual Pinter play. Certainly Pinter's plays deal with problems of identity, illusion, menace, and verification, but so do many other plays. What is needed is a further set of generalizations to establish the characteristic kinds of con­ cern that govern the ways in which these problems function in a Pinter play. As yet, this further level of generalization has not been achieved. It might, of course, be observed that Pinter is still a com­ paratively new playwright, and that understanding his work will necessarily be a gradual process which is not yet complete. But, as a study of Pinter criticism reveals, this is not an accurate description of the current situation. Most of the accepted generalizations about Pinter's work were established in the first few years of his career, and a subse­ quent decade of criticism has done little to modify, much

INTRODUCTION

less advance, our understanding of Pinter's work. There is, in fact, no "gradual process" currently in operation, and something more is needed than another survey of recurring thematic concerns. In an attempt to break new ground in the field, this book takes as its starting point the causes and consequences of the impasse in Pinter criticism. An examination of the prob­ lems thus encountered provides a perspective on the plays which makes it possible to identify with some accuracy just what it is about Pinter's work that one must focus upon in order to grasp the mode of operation of the plays. As the title suggests, this study gradually isolates and focuses upon a problem that emerges as the underlying cause of many of the difficulties encountered in coming to terms with Pinter's work. As a consequence of this concern, the topics covered in the book and the contexts established within it are not of the kind associated with standard intro­ ductory texts. Instead of the "study of life—survey of career —summary of work—assessment of significance" structure, this book selects from criticism, career, and corpus only those elements necessary for the recognition, understanding, and resolution of the basic problem encountered in Pinter's work. The several stages in this process govern the structure of the manuscript. The first chapter describes various mani­ festations of the problem and establishes its most basic form. The second chapter seeks to resolve the problem by referring it to the wider critical/linguistic context in which it has its origins; the implications of this resolution are then examined in terms of the texture and structure of Pinter's plays. Succeeding chapters are devoted to studies of four plays to demonstrate the results of criticism based on the approach established in Chapter II. As the purpose of these studies is to clarify the way in which a Pinter play works, the individual plays are examined in considerable detail. XVlll

INTRODUCTION

The overall interpretation of each play is as important here as in any other work on Pinter, but there is an added em­ phasis placed upon the ways in which information is carried by Pinter's dialogue and upon the ways in which the struc­ ture of each play relates to its central concerns. The perspec­ tive thus established seems at this point a more important contribution to the field than would be provided by another corpus survey. Indeed, the writing of yet another survey seems hardly worthwhile until a path is found that leads beyond the generalizations which governed the field a decade ago. The aim of this study is to make such a path available. All passages quoted from the plays are taken from the Methuen editions. Three dots (. . .) indicate a pause or hesitation in the dialogue; four dots indicate that a portion of the dialogue has been omitted.

XlX

THE PINTER PROBLEM

I PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

A

s AN opening statement to a study of Pinter it is difficult to think of anything more to the point than the recent remark by W. J. Free: "Harold Pinter's plays still puzzle audiences and critics after almost a dozen years of acquaintance with his work. In spite of a growing body of criticism, there are perhaps more unanswered questions about Pinter than about any other major contemporary playwright." 1 Nothing that has subsequently appeared in print has mounted a serious challenge to that statement. Esslin's recent effort, The Peopled Wound, 2 is undermined by the very praise of Time's review: "The Peopled Wound is valuable not because it makes some intuitive new leap of insight but because it gathers in one convenient place most of what has been said and thought about Pinter." 3 It is precisely that "new leap of insight" that has evaded critics for more than a decade. Recognition of this problem and interest in its solution are registered in the ever-increasing volume of writing devoted to Pinter's work. At the same time his public reputation continues to grow, and anything he writes seems virtually guaranteed of a London run at the Aldwych (with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company) 1 W. f. Free, "Treatment of Character in Harold Pinter's The Home­ coming ," South Atlantic Bulletin, xxxiv (November 1969), 1. 2 M. Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (New York, 1970). 3 T. E. Kalem, Time, October 12, 1970, p. 60.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

and a subsequent transfer to Broadway. Indeed, it is by no means unusual to hear him spoken of as the most important playwright now alive. Such opinions stand precariously alongside those that continue to register critical uncertainty about even the most basic issues raised by his work. Argu­ ments about the meanings of his plays, about his use of symbolism, the kinds of characters he creates, and the kinds of communication problems they confront seem not to be moving toward any visible points of convergence. The field is proliferating but not progressing. A study of critical opinion on Pinter's work confirms that the issues currently in dispute are much the same as those raised in the first influential statements of the early 1960's.4 Short essays by Taylor in Anger and After 5 (1962) and Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurdβ (1961) reflect parame­ ters of opinion that seem to have received little modification in the years since then. A decade of subsequent research seems not to have materially challenged the status of these first impressions. A reading of Esslin's The Peopled Wound reveals little about Pinter's basic method that would be out of place in his earlier essay, and Taylor reuses, almost without alteration, a central statement on Pinter's language from his 1962 publication when writing another essay on 4 This opinion is supported by Schroll, who laments that: "for all their work few scholars of late offered new insights into Pinter's plays; the bulk of the writing over these recent years was merely a rewording of what had been said." See, H. T. Schroll, Harold Pinter: A Study of His Reputation (1958-1969) and a Checklist (New Jersey, 1971), p. 8. Schroll's attempt to account for this stagnation (by blaming it on the distorting effect of Pinter's growing reputation) seems less than con­ vincing: ". . . basic questions about the playwright's talents, tech­ niques, and significance were never resolved because his stature as a fashionable playwright intervened" (p. 34). 5 f. R. Taylor, Anger and After, first published by Methuen, 1962; rev. ed., Penguin, 1963. In America, the title is The Angry Theatre (Hill and Wang, 1962). 6 M. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (New York, 1961).

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

1971.7

Pinter in The latter is of particular importance since it is widely recognized that Pinter's peculiar use of language is a major stumbling block for criticism of his work.8 It may well be that a basic cause of Free's "unanswered questions/' and of the field's failure to progress, is a persistent attempt to find answers to the wrong kinds of questions. It would be fruitful therefore to consider the centrality of the issues so far established in Pinter criticism. Early efforts to cope with this new phenomenon 011 the English stage were not unlike those directed toward any innovative writer—the primary problem seemed to be to decide whose work Pinter's most resembled. As Wardle, looking back on his own involvement in this struggle, amus­ ingly describes it: When Harold Pinter's characters first appeared in public in 1958, nobody knew who the father was—and Pinter certainly wasn't telling. For critics, more than for other people, this is an inconvenience. Before you can say anything with any confidence, you feel you have to get the ideological coordinates right. . . . We all dug around and discovered Pinter liked Kafka, and Beckett, and American gangster films, and I, for one, came up with the phrase "comedy of menace" which 7 J. R. Taylor, "Pinter's Game of Happy Families," in A Casebook on Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," ed. J. Lahr (New York, 1971), p. 64. Cf. The Angry Theatre (New York, 1962), pp. 260-261. 8 See, e.g., J. R. Hollis, Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (South­ ern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 13: ". . . the single issue which every student of Pinter must confront is the playwright's relationship to and utilization of language." See also A. Sykes, Harold Pinter (New York, 1970), p. 90. "The aspect of Pinter's plays which has probably been most seriously discussed is, not surprisingly, their language." Sykes' footnote to this comment gives further references. This is not, of course, simply to assert the true but trivial point of the centrality of language in any play, but to point toward a distinctive difficulty in dealing with some elements of Pinter's language.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

explained nothing but at least supplied a comforting label.9 These connections turned out to be of little help. After being dismissed as a lesser Kafka, a poorer Beckett, a pale imitation of Ionesco, and a less humorous N. F. Simpson, Pinter continued to be very successful at being Pinter. Taylor's 1962 publication took the position that Pinter simply could not be placed in the book's schematization of developments on the English stage,10 and Esslin placed him vaguely on the fringes of the Theatre of the Absurd among the "parallels and proselytes." Ten years later the problem remains in its original form. A host of comparative state­ ments have linked Pinter with the work of Chekhov, James, Pirandello, Coward, Genet, O'Neill, Brecht, and many more without providing a framework that substantially illuminates his achievement or his individuality. Caine's recent attempt to describe the structure of The Dumb Waiter by viewing it in terms of a historical perspective on structure in a one-act play is characteristic of this approach.11 The end product is a series of links between diverse plays that are not governed by their centrality as major statements about the individual plays. In Pinter's case, however, the problem seems not to be simply one of misplaced zeal: the problem of generalizing about structure in Pinter's work is only one aspect of what seems to be a recurring difficulty. Whether attention is directed toward character, plot, structure, theme, or any other abstraction, one encounters the same uncer­ tainty over where and how to generalize. Basic to this 9 I. Wardle, "The Territorial Struggle" in A Casebook on Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," ed. }. Lahr (New York, 1971), pp. 37-38. 10 Taylor, The Angry Theatre, p. 233. In 1969 Taylor became even more emphatic: "Pinter is, unmistakably now, 'sui generis' " (Harold Pinter, Writers and their Work Series, no. 212 [Essex, 1969], p. 28). 11 C. S. A. M. Caine, "Structure in the One-Act Play," Modern Drama, xn (February 1970), 390-398.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

problem, of course, is an uncertain grasp of the particulars of the plays. The arguments over the general and the particular in Pinter's work provide an instructive background to the other basic issues in the field: what often seems a conflict of opposing views turns out to be a misplaced contrast between views which cannot logically be opposed. Consider, for example, the discussions of Pinter's characters. In the early plays Pinter tended to deal with characters at the lower end of the social scale. Accusations of triviality have frequently been based on the "commonplace" quality of characters who engage in what seems like "a meticulously accurate tran­ scription of ordinary speech."12 Donoghue, for example, remarks of the early work: "In these four plays there is not a single relationship for which an intelligent adult would give tuppence." 13 On the other hand, it is obvious that a great many intelligent adults have continued to hand in their tuppences, and a great deal more, to watch these relationships in action. Clearly there is some quality in these characters which raises them above the commonplace. Inevitably, the solution has been sought, and is still sought, in symbolic interpretations. Mick and Aston in The Caretaker transcend their prosaic existence and tread the junk-cluttered stage as the Gods of the Old and New Testaments.14 Edward and Flora in A Slight Ache become a dying-year god and a fertility goddess,15 and Riley in The Room a messenger from the dead.16 More recently The 12 F.

J. Bernhard, "Beyond Realism: The Plays of Harold Pinter," Modern Drama, vnr (September 1965), 185. 13 D. Donoghue, "London Letter: Moral West End," Hudson Re­ view, Xiv (Spring 1961), 94. 14 T. Rattigan, cited by A. P. Hinchliffe, Harold Pinter (New York, 1967), 88. 15 K. H. Burkman, "Pinter's A Slight Ache as Ritual," Modern Drama, xi (December 1968), 328. 16 Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 63.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

Homecoming has been transformed into a variant of the parable of the prodigal son.17 Teddy fits neatly into the leading role, his butcher-father links nicely with the killing of the fatted calf, and Ruth's single comment on America suffices to install it as a biblical land of famine and plague. Such interpretations are always vulnerable to charges of extreme selectivity of evidence and do little to account for the element of the commonplace in the work. But the realism/symbolism argument has become institutionalized by the intervention of the author himself. Pinter repeatedly stresses in interviews that he never writes with any abstract ideas in mind, that the symbols discovered in his work are news to him, and, at a particularly emphatic moment, that he wouldn't know a symbol if he saw one.18 The substance of Pinter's objection to symbol hunting is apparent in his comment: "When a character cannot be comfortably defined or understood in terms of the familiar, the tendency is to perch him on a symbolic shelf, out of harm's way. Once there, he can be talked about but need not be lived with. In this way, it is easy to put up a pretty efficient smoke-screen, on the part of the critics or the audience, against recognition, against an active and willing participation." 10 But Pinter, in this interview and elsewhere, overstates his case by rejecting all symbolic interpretation in defending his work against bad symbolic interpretation. His reaction to Rattigan's comment that The Caretaker was about the God of the Old Testament, the God of the New Testament, and Humanity was to stress that on the contrary it was about a caretaker and two brothers.20 This emphasis 17 H. Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," in Modern British Dramatists, ed. J. R. Brown (New Jersey, 1968), pp. 154-155. 18 H. Pinter, "Writing for Myself," interview with R. Findlater, The Twentieth Century, CLXIX (February 1961), 174. 19 H. Pinter, "Writing for the Theatre," in Modern British Drama, ed. H. Popkin (New York, 1969), p. 576. 20 Reported by Hinchliffe, p. 88.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

on the literal as opposed to the symbolic is not a helpful contrast if it is regarded (as it has been) as a point against symbolic interpretation rather than a point against inaccu­ rate symbolic interpretation. What is wrong with this inter­ pretation is, in part, that which is wrong with many such symbolic readings: instead of explaining the function of the commonplace in the plays they simply ignore it. Instead of being assimilated, the ordinary is replaced by the unlikely. This issue has been so thoroughly misconceived that writers who seek to generalize on Pinter's work by means of symbolic interpretation now feel called upon to justify their opposition to the author 21 while others struggle to find a means of interpreting within the author's guidelines: "Pinter says his plays have no significance outside themselves, which means, I believe, that allegorizing them is a pointless intel­ lectual stunt. The Dwarfs, then, should be read within its own premises, i.e. three Kafka-esque, Beckett-like characters probing their identity through intersubjective contact, impermanence, accident and flux."22 The difficulty of maintaining this approach is registered in McLaughlin's uncertain movement from asserting the sole significance of the particular in Pinter to invoking comparisons with Kafka and Beckett. The resort to such comparisons effectively undermines the position at issue. Pinter, in fact, when not 21

E.g., P. Hutchings, "The Humanism of a Dumb Waiter," West­ erly, April 1963, p. 56. "It is necessary to justify a symbolic interpreta­ tion of The Dumb Waiter, since Pinter himself has denied any such interest or intention." See also Sykes, Harold Pinter, p. 11. 22 J. McLaughlin, "Harold Pinter and PBL," America, CXVIII (Feb­ ruary 10, 1968), 193. See also Hollis's comment on The Room, which insists on the concreteness of the setting by denying it any abstract sig­ nificance: "The setting in which Rose and Bert find themselves is not abstract but intensely concrete. Things are things and not signs or symbols pointing beyond the clutter to something else" (Harold Pinter, p. 21). This is surely an unnecessary contrast and the "things" would lose none of their "concreteness" if in a particular case a more general statement suggested itself.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

engaged in a skirmish with symbol-hunters is at pains to defend himself against those who would turn his insistence on the particularity of his plays against him. It is the con­ tention of some who concentrate on the predominance of the commonplace in his work that the plays have no generalizable significance at all. One such accusation came in a radio interview, and Pinter's response is instructive: "If I write something in which two people are facing each other over a table . . . I'm talking about two people living socially, and if what takes place between them is a meaning­ ful and accurate examination of them, then it's going to be relevant to you and to society. This relationship will be an image of other relationships, of social living, of living together [my emphasis]. . . ." 23 What is to be avoided, then, is not the use of symbols in making general statements about Pinter's work, but the tendency (certainly rife in Pinter criticism) to move too readily toward simplistic symbolic interpretations, which account for too little of the detail of the text. It is this erroneous procedure that has prompted Pinter's anger, and it is also this procedure that Cohn has in mind when she stresses that symbols in Pinter's work should be regarded as cumulative rather than instantaneous in their operation.24 The problem of generalizing about Pinter's work is not, however, solved by legitimizing the accurate use of symbolic interpretation. The difficulty that has given rise to so many inaccurate symbolic interpretations remains. Here we con23 H.

Pinter, quoted by Sykes, Harold Pinter, p. 101. Cohn, "The World of Harold Pinter," Tulane Drama Review, Vi (March 1962), 56-57. "Within each Pinter room, the props seem to be realistically functional, and only in retrospect do they acquire symbolic significance. . . . the symbolic significance of the shoes is instantaneous with Beckett (Waiting for Godot), cumulative with Pin­ ter (The Caretaker). Most crucial to an understanding of Pinter's theatre is the symbolism of his characters. For all their initially realisticappearance, their cumulative impact embraces the whole of humanity." 24 R.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

front the second major issue in Pinter criticism: the seeming lack of explicitness in his work. This formulation is, how­ ever, a more sophisticated second-stage of what was initially a fashionable means of criticizing his plays—they were simply too obscure to be viable in the theater. This was a central accusation in the reviews that cut short the first London production of Pinter's work, The Birthday Party, in 1958, and it lingers today in the less pejorative but equally ubiquitous remarks on the inexplicitness of many of the plays. Rather than being rejected because of that irksome obscurity, however, the plays are now frequently held to be successful because of that very same element. Brown remarks that "the audience is puzzled and therefore wishes to notice";25 Marowitz describes Pinter's technique as one of "maximum tension through minimum information," 26 and States would have it: "This, in my opinion, is the source of our consternation and fascination with Pinter—our quest for the lost superiority of knowing more than the characters who now know more than we do. . . ." 27 There is some truth in all of these remarks, but their common tendency is to characterize the role of inexplicit­ ness as that of a device for capturing the attention of the audience: its function in the theater seems not to grow from any central function in the play. Brown raises this issue indirectly by suggesting that such a device operates under the law of diminishing returns as "the audience, expecting to be puzzled, ceases to be truly puzzled." 28 And if the inexplicitness were simply a theatrical device this 23

J. R. Brown, "Dialogue in Pinter and Others," Critical Quarterly, (Autumn 1965), 229. 26 C. Marowitz, " 'Pinterism' is Maximum Tension through Mini­ mum Information," New York Times, October 1, 1967, mag. sec., pp. 36, 89-93. 27 B. 0. States, "Pinter's Homecoming: The Shock of Nonrecognition," Hudson Review, xxi (Autumn 1968), 478. 28 Brown, "Dialogue in Pinter and Others," p. 229. ViI

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

would certainly be the case; seven years later, however, Pinter continues to be as inexplicit as ever and as successful as ever, and a better explanation is needed to account for the use of the inexplicit in his work. This becomes even more evident when one finds, here and there, a comment that the plays begin to suffer if Pinter adjusts the careful balance between the explicit and the inexplicit in his work. Parts of The Room 29 and The Caretaker 30 have been criticized for being overexplicit, and one critic has dismissed the whole of A Night Out on this point alone.31 Clearly the inexplicit plays a considerable role in Pinter's work, but equally clearly that role remains unspecified. Here again the field shows little sign of resolving an issue that has been discussed for as long as Pinter's work has been discussed. With this rather major obstacle to be circumvented, it is not surprising to discover two major trends in thematic interpretations of Pinter's work: one directed toward the obscure elements and one directed away from them. As early as 1962 Pinter lamented the application of "that tired, grimy phrase: 'Failure of communication' " 32 to his work, yet with the problem of obscurity in his work still unsolved this kind of interpretation persists. A recent book by Hollis contains the remarks: "Pinter employs language to describe the 29 W. Sheed, "Absurdity Revisited," Commonweal, LXXXII (April 30, 1965), 193. 30 J. R. Taylor, Harold Pinter, p. 16. 31 R. F. Storch, "Harold Pinter's Happy Families," The Massachu­ setts Review, vm (Autumn 1967), 708. 32 H. Pinter, "Between the Lines," The Sunday Times (London), March 4, 1962, mag. sec., p. 25. "We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: 'Failure of communication,' and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To en­ ter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility."

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

failure of language; lie details in forms abundant the poverty of man's communication; he assembles words to remind us that we live in the space between words. . . . The effect of Pinter's language, then, is to note that the most important things are not being said. . . ." 33 The opposition viewpoint on this issue is by now just as well known. If failure of communication is regarded as central, the plays are reduced to repeating a cliche, and Pinter's recognized individuality is lost in a generalization that has been applied to many other contemporary writers. Also, Pinter has explicity denied such an attack on language,34 and Ionesco has made the telling point that "if he truly believed in incommunicability the profession of writer would be a curious choice." 35 The other major trend in thematic interpretations is hinted at in the final sentence quoted from Hollis above. Leaving aside the rather unusual structure of the sentence, the thrust of the remark is directed toward a textual divi­ sion. In this formulation it is rather crudely put, but when it emerges, as elsewhere, as an appeal to a subtext, its widespread popularity as a solution to the problem of obscurity is apparent. A dichotomy between the surface of the plays and some deeper level of meaning is widely accepted in Pinter criticism. In 1960 Minogue suggested: The terrible thing about the dialogue is that it has the authentic ring of the stop-gap. Behind it lies the aware­ ness of another world of meanings, a plane on which defeats are being acknowledged, and where there is a fight for the right to exist. . . .3e [my emphasis] 33 Hollis,

Harold Pinter, p. 13. See note 32 above. 35 E. Ionesco, quoted by J. Jacobsen and W. R. Mueller in lonesco and Genet (New York, 1968), p. 96. 36 V. Minogue, "Taking Care of the Caretaker," The Twentieth Century, CLXVIII (September 1960), 246. 34

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In 1961 Brine commented: Underneath the web of cliches, repetitions, interjec­ tions, anecdotes, we can understand what the characters are feeling far more profoundly than if they had tried to put it into words themselves.37 [my emphasis] By 1965, this division had multiplied: Pinter's reliance on multiple and conRicting subtexts poses the main problem for understanding his dialogue, especially in reading the mere words of the printed text.38 [my emphasis] These examples could be replicated many times over, and the route to Hollis's statement is clearly charted. What begins as an attempt to cope with the inexplicit in Pinter's plays slides almost imperceptibly into a means of avoiding it. The danger of words like "behind" or "underneath" is that they deflect an intended contrast between two levels of the language into a contrast between the language and some­ thing else. Control of the "something else" is then lost by contrasting it with everything that is available as evidence. In the latter article this inadvertent slide is particularly apparent since the remark occurs in what is perhaps the most useful statement to date on the role of the trivial in Pinter's work. Yet Brown, too, is misled into a contrast between the subtext and "the mere words." It is a logical error to set up a contrast between the textual data and an abstraction from that data. Once more we discover an opposition between things that cannot usefully be opposed. The notion of a subtext loses all utility if what it deals with cannot be spoken of as a product of the linguistic data. The meanings referred 37 A. Brine, "Mac Davies is no Clochard," Drama, no. 61 (Summer 1961), 36. 38 Brown, "Dialogue in Pinter and Others," p. 234.

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to are either linguistically specified or they are not there; how else could we divine their existence? Ultimately the search for a subtext and the need for a symbol have a common foundation but the misuse of both concepts has led criticism away from rather than into the Pinter play.39 An important consequence of this problem is that critics, in general, have found it a great deal easier to perceive "hidden" meanings than to explain how the "hidden" is, or becomes, visible. Bernhard's is a particularly exposed version of this difficulty: "Pinter . . . consistently draws upon two chief sources of dramatic poetry: situations for which the ordinary meanings of words are inadequate and language that conveys something other than the meanings of its words." 40 Once launched upon interpretations which grant that language "conveys something other than the meanings of its words," we would be embarked on a voyage to an improbable destination. But the attempt to formulate the relationship between language and situation in Pinter's work is a step in the right direction. The obscurity and inexplicitness of Pinter's language can only be understood in terms of their function in the overall structure of the individual plays. Inexplicitness is a relative, not an absolute, term. What seems explicit in one situation may well seem inexplicit in another. Instead of studying the problem of appropriately explicit statement in Pinter's work, the ten­ dency has been either to sidestep the issue with appeals to 39 Pinter himself has tended to encourage critics to do the very things he criticizes them for. His own descriptions of how his language operates often move in precisely this direction, e.g., "Language . . . is a highly ambiguous commerce. So often, below the words spoken, is the thing known and unspoken." And also: "There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference" (The Sunday Times [London], March 4, 1962, mag. sec., p. 25). 40 Bernhard, "Beyond Realism," p. 18?.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

symbols and subtexts or to criticize his plays for not mani­ festing the same kind of explicitness as that which is felt to be normative; and underlying that sense of the normative are the requirements of the well-made play. Here we come to the third major issue of Pinter criticism—establishing a grasp on the abstractions of structure and technique in plays that do not manifest the same principles of structure as the well-made play.41 In this area of criticism another curious dichotomy emerges. This too has its origins in the early criticism and is repeated almost verbatim in the most recent studies. While abstractions such as character and theme can readily be discussed in terms of issues in the extra-textual world, attempts to deal with technique and structure are inescap­ ably text-oriented; the critic's eye can much less easily stray from the detail of the play. But when a consensus is estab­ lished that structurally Pinter's plays are brilliant achieve­ ments, the new dilemma arises: how to reconcile belief in the obscurity of the plays with the widespread recognition of Pinter's mastery of his form. So well written are the plays that the recurring comparison is to the spareness and preci4 1 B . O . S t a t e s , " T h e C a s e f o r P l o t i n M o d e r n D r a m a , " Hudson Review, xx (Spring 1967), 49-61. States provides a useful perspective on approaches to this problem. In particular he deplores the resort to metaphor as an abandonment of the critic's task (p. 61) and provides a timely reminder of K. BuTke's. comments on the dangers of regarding change of form as escape from form: ". . . in revolting against certain kinds of form, the artist persuaded himself that he was revolting against form in general." States comments (p. 60), "The practice of denigrating form is probably the artist's most traditional way of escaping the gravity of tradition, and for the inspiration it bestows I hardly begrudge Ionesco the right to tell us he is writing from the universe within, rather than from a predetermined subject and plot. We know what he means. But it is another thing when the artist has persuaded the critic to join his Cult of the Interior, of the Formless, the Irrational, the Anti-, and a host of fresh synonyms for this mythical freedom. . . ."

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sion of sculpture/2 often accompanied by the assertion that in a Pinter play there is no padding, nothing superfluous, never a wasted word.43 Hinchliffe sums up the reaction to this difficulty: ". . . the bafflement with a play like The Homecoming or Tea Party, with their undeniable technical competence, often led critics to admit brilliant expertise but suggest that that was all there was: beautifully done, but to what end?" 44 This problem is extraordinarily widespread and occurs in a variety of forms: Schechner suggests that the "essential characteristic" of Pinter's plays is that they are structurally complete but conceptually incomplete;45 an early review of The Caretaker held that "the speeches seem to be carefully constructed so as to have all the superficies of sense, but a big hole where the meaning ought to be";46 Sykes concludes her recent book with a comment on how "superbly well done" The Homecoming is as a play but wonders if it is worth performing when Pinter has "not as yet had in any 42 E.g., Lahr, A Casebook on Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," p. xiii; K. H. Burkman, The Dramatic "World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual (Ohio State University Press, 1971), p. 131; H. Taubman, "Shared Quicksand," New York Times, December 9, 1962, Sec. ii, p. 5. 43 E.g., Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," p. 150 ". . . in Pinter, far more than in many playwrights credited with tightness of construction and dramatic economy, every word is chosen so that in the final analysis, nothing in the design shall seem arbitrary." See also P. C. Thornton, "Blindness and the Confrontation with Death: Three Plays by Harold Pinter," Die Neueren Sprachen, xvn (May 1968), 222. "In Pinter's work, even his earliest, every action, every word, and indeed every silence, counts." 44 A. P. Hinchliffe, "Mr. Pinter's Belinda," Modern Drama, xi (Sep­ tember 1968), 173-174. 45 R. Schechner, "Puzzling Pinter," Tulane Drama Review, xi (Win­ ter 1966), 177. 46 J. Simon, "Theatre Chronicle," Hudson Review, xiv (Winter 1961), 590.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

of his plays anything particularly profound to say." 47 The latter belief is also echoed in suggestions that Pinter is interested in dialogue for its own sake48 and that funda­ mentally his appeal is only to aesthetes.40 The most instruc­ tive form this problem takes, however, is when it is pointed out that this seems not to be a major difficulty when the play is being performed. Thornton remarks: "It is possible to be baffled by a Pinter play and yet to leave the theatre with the feeling of having had an important and memorable experience." 50 In similar vein, Taylor suggests that in per­ formance the plays have a quality which "forbids any ques­ tioning on the exact significance of what is happening." 51 It seems to be in retrospect rather than in performance that the problem of relating technical virtuosity to something felt to be more substantial occurs; somehow an understand­ ing sufficient for a memorable performance is not sufficient to provide an adequate basis for accounting for the success of the performance. This would suggest that the problem is as much one of description as one of understanding. Tlie capacity to respond to a play in performance is not wholly dependent upon the ability to conceptualize that response for the purpose of communicating it to others. A close look at the reactions to Pinter's plays suggests that this is indeed the problem here. Attempts to elaborate on technique and structure in the plays have the recurring form of an impressionistic metaphor and a list of isolated percep­ tions not clearly related to the opening or closing generali­ zation. Analogies with music, poetry, sculpture, dreams, the 47

Sykes, Harold Pinter, pp. 126-127. "Puzzling Pinter," p. 184. 49 B. Nightingale, "Outboxed," New Statesman, September 25, 1970, p. 395. 50 P. C. Thornton, "Blindness and the Confrontation with Death," p. 213. 51 Taylor, The Angry Theatre, p. 234. 48 Schechner,

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

zoo, and even an aquarium 52 give every suggestion that a critic has understood something about the plays but provide little help for the reader trying to grasp precisely what it is that has been understood: "Pinter's language . . . is a highly conscious yet articulate poetry. The force of his work is aural rather than visual. It is the quality of the writing, the repetition that is never monotonous padding, the use of echoing phrases, the magnificent catalogues, the rich heaps of comic detail, irrelevant memory, the haunting descriptive soliloquies. . . ." 53 Similar lists are provided by other critics,14 and it is a small step from listing such details to categorizing them as Pinter's "devices"55 and a final short step to regarding them disparagingly as "tricks." 56 The basic problem remains: when forced to confront the recalcitrant details of the text, critics find it very hard to assimilate them to any precise interpretation. The resort to metaphor and analogy, like that to symbol and subtext, still leaves the problem of synthe­ sizing the details largely unresolved. The very attempt to abstract technical brilliance from some other "end" of the work is once more to oppose two things which cannot use­ fully be opposed. Here again the operative distinctions for 52 J. P. Amette, "Osborne, Pinter, Saunders & Cie," La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, no. 205 (January 1970), 97. 53 Mark Cohen, "The Plays of Harold Pinter," Jewish Quarterly, VIII (1961), 21. 54 E.g., J. Fletcher, "Confrontations," Caliban, HI (1967), 151; Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd, 1969, p. 240; Marshal] Cohen, "Theatre 67," Partisan Review, xxxiv (Summer 1967), 440-441; C. Leech, "Two Ro­ mantics: Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter," in Contemporary Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, iv, eds. J. R. Brown and B. Harris (Lon­ don, 1962) , 24. 55 As Brown does in both his articles on Pinter: "Mr. Pinter's Shake­ speare," Critical Quarterly, ν (Autumn 1963), 251-265, and "Dialogue in Pinter and Others," pp. 225-243. 56 E.g., J. Simon, "Theatre Chronicle," Hudson Review, xx (Spring 1967), 105-106.

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an accurate description of Pinter's work have not been logically drawn. As the generalizable significance of a Pinter play is dependent on an accurate synthesis of the details, an assessment of the role of the technical details cannot culminate in a contrast between those details and the mean­ ing of the play. The result is simply a disguised version of the form/content problem that has plagued criticism for longer than anyone cares to remember. The reason for its recurrence here will be dealt with later. Obviously "what Pinter has to say" is a function of the structure of his plays and not something separate from it. Not surprisingly, then, the most useful attempts to describe these structures have been in terms which characterize structure as the organization and embodiment of theme rather than as something separate from it. Equally unsurprising is the dis­ covery that such efforts immediately begin to make some sense of the role of the commonplace and the inexplicit in the plays, since the difficulty encountered in working with these elements has been in part a product of the tendency to deal with them in isolation from the context that gives them their function. Nelson suggests: Apparently trivial differences of opinion over cheese rolls, cigars, glasses of water, routes to the airport, are, in fact, Pinter's somewhat unique means of exposition and de­ velopment. What we lack in precise information about the characters' backgrounds and motives is made up for by a very complex knowledge (if we are alert to it) of the nature of their shifting emotions in regard to each other. 57 [my emphasis] And Brown believes that the major structural principle of Pinter's drama is that "Exposition has become Development, and Conclusion as well." 57Nelson,

"The Homecoming: K i t h a n d K i n , " p . 1 5 0 . ,

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Sometimes he gives two flatly contradictory pieces of information, or ensures that doubt is thrown on the simplest piece of factual exposition, as the name of a character, or his home town, or his trade, or whether or not he is married. These devices ensure that the audience is kept alert and curious, even perplexed, throughout the play and, being unable to "follow the story" or "get the message," may discern a progressive disclosure of antag­ onisms, desires or appetites which were hidden at the beginning. Devices which have caused these plays to be labelled "Comedy of Menace," "Theatre of the Absurd," or "Theatre of Non-Communication" are matters of a moment: the whole play is Exposition.58 [my emphasis] But the element of vagueness in Nelson's "if we are alert to it" and in Brown's "may discern" is never subsequently dispelled. The latter's attempt to expand upon this position in a later article reveals considerable insight into the plays, but, as we have seen, his attempt to account for and develop those insights degenerates when he slips into talking of the detail of the play as a device for getting the audience's atten­ tion while all of the important things are going on somewhere beneath the surface. It is instructive to see Nelson fall prey to precisely the same mistake. His structural insight (above) places the trivial component of the language as a central (and nontrivial) element in Pinter's method of exposition and de­ velopment. But as soon as he attempts to expand on this complexity in the language, he too seems curiously uncertain about how to account for or develop this structural principle. His very next sentence is, "What they do not say becomes as important here as what they do say," and he lapses into stressing the importance of nonverbal factors such as silences, visual effects, and physical indicators.59 Instead of the antic5 8 Brown, 50

"Mr. Pinter's Shakespeare," p. 251. Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," p. 150.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

ipated revaluation of the role of the trivial in the structure of the plays we are confronted with simply one more version of that devaluation of language with which Esslin 60 character­ ized the Theatre of the Absurd: "... exposition, develop­ ment, and resolution have been driven underground through a healthy distrust of language." 61 Instead of the promised synthesis of the "what" and the "how," Nelson can only pro­ vide another opposition between them: "Only if we are com­ mitted to charting structural unity in a play through what is said, only if we are unwilling to try to see through layers of subterfuge to the emotional truth of individual moments, shall we be induced to believe that the structure of the play (The Homecoming) is arbitrary or that deliberate obfuscation is a motivating force."62 [my emphasis] It becomes apparent here that the lack of progress in the field of Pinter criticism is not simply caused by a lack of individual insights into his plays and his methods but is also a product of the recurring difficulty critics encounter in trying to build upon accurate perceptions. The articles by Nelson and Brown are among the finest so far produced on these plays, yet neither writer is able to maintain control of the positions he establishes, and neither seems able to avoid sliding into the misleading but stock positions of the field. An understanding of the strength of these seemingly unavoidable positions is essential if any progress is ever to be achieved. The same dead ends are reached by critics who start from what 60 Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd, 1969, p. 7. "The Theatre of the Absurd . . . tends toward a radical devaluation of language. . . ." Whether Pinter should or should not be regarded as a member of this amorphous group seems not to be a question worth pursuing. No issues of any significance hinge on this—particularly when the criteria for acceptance seem so elastic. If Esslin's point on language is in any way central, however, Pinter should most certainly not be included (and one begins to wonder who should). 81 Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," p. 149. 62 Ibid., p. 150.

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appear to be the most diverse of starting points: whether the initial appeal is to symbol, subtext, metaphor, structure, hid­ den meanings, plays on their own terms, or whatever, the final position leads inexorably to a loss of contact between observable detail and reported response. And this brings us to the last and most important issue in Pinter criticism: some­ thing that has not yet been fully understood is going on in the language of the plays. The various attempts at criticizing them have one by one been thwarted by a persistent inability to locate the operative distinctions in Pinter's language. If the various abstractions of "character," "theme," "technique," "structure," etc., are to serve any useful purpose, they must be based upon an accurate understanding of the functions of the language in the plays. Until this problem is resolved, all attempts to carry out critical work on the plays are built on not only insecure, but erroneous foundations. As in other problem areas of the field, comments on lan­ guage function indicate little progress beyond the issues raised in the early statements. But what is particularly important here is that the influential early statements about Pinter's language embody precisely those dead ends that have been encountered in almost every subsequent approach to Pinter criticism. The central dilemma of that criticism is evident in the 1962 paragraph referred to earlier, which Taylor saw no reason not to reuse ten years later: Studying the unsupported line of dialogue bit by bit we might well conclude that it is an exact reproduction of everyday speech. And so, bit by bit, it is. But it is "or­ chestrated" with overtones and reminiscences, with un­ expected resonances from what has gone before, so that the result is a tightly knit and intricate texture of which the "naturalistic" words being spoken at any given mo­ ment are only the top line, supported by rich and intri-

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

cate harmonies, or appearing sometimes in counterpoint with another theme from earlier in the play. It is this which gives Pinter's work its unusual weight and den­ sity; until we understand the process we are at a loss to account reasonably for the obsessive fascination the most apparently banal exchanges exert in his plays. e3 [my em­ phasis] Taylor is right to stress the importance of this problem, but, in his effort to describe the problem precisely, he contributes to its continued existence: the metaphor of orchestration is one in a long line of impressionistic equivalences that confuse the very issues they are intended to clarify. Terms such as "overtones," "resonances," and "harmonies" are too vague to be useful; but what is more important is that they effec­ tively abandon the attempt to reach an understanding of the process that Taylor demands that we confront. The problem concerns the functioning of language in a literary text, and to turn away from the technical terms of this field to those of another is to turn away from the problem. As Taylor points out, the gap between the details of the language and the re­ sponse to those details remains unbridged, and it has remained unbridged in a subsequent decade of criticism. If we turn from Taylor to Esslin we find a slightly different situation. Not content with the grasp on Pinter's language currently established, Esslin, in The Peopled Wound, devotes the whole of the fourth section of his book to the most exten­ sive attack so far on what he recognizes as the major problem of the field: the complete rethinking of our approach to Pinter's language. Going back to the very roots of the prob­ lem, he suggests that we start our criticism from "an examina­ tion of the function of language in stage dialogue generally— 03 Taylor, in Casebook, ed. J. Lalir, 1971, p. 64 and (with minor differences) The Angry Theatre, pp. 260-261.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

and indeed from considerations of the use of language in ordinary human intercourse itself." 64 This seems a reasonable place to begin, but the first thing to be noted about the preceding quotation is that when Esslin talks of the "func­ tion" and "use" of language he talks of them in the singular. That he is able to perceive a variety of uses for language is evident from his analyses of the plays, and it is instructive to follow through the difficulties Esslin encounters in trying to reconcile his interpretative activity with generalizable theoret­ ical positions. Aware of the problem, but unable to solve it to his own satisfaction, Esslin invests in a series of attempted solutions. Beginning his study of Pinter's language with a glance at Chekhov, he draws an initial distinction (p. 211) between "what is being said and what lies behind it." The dangers of this position have already been pointed out, but Esslin's ef­ forts to extend it are even more revealing. He attempts (p. 212) to gloss a Pinter extract in terms of ". . . the complete contradiction between the words that are spoken and the emotional and psychological action that underlies them. Here the language has almost totally lost its rhetorical, in­ formative element and has fully merged into dramatic action." The crucial point here—and it is crucial for Pinter criticism in general—is the direction in which Esslin's distinctions take him. Just as Brown was led to a dichotomy between the words and the subtext, and Bernhard to an attempted separation of the meaning of the words from the meaning of the language, and Hollis to a belief that the most important things were not being said, so Esslin arrives at a distinction between in­ formative and noninformative language. But it is surely obvious that if Esslin can perceive the "emotional and psy­ chological action" underlying the words, then the language is 64 EssIin,

The Peopled Wound, p. 208.

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very informative. What all these writers are seeking is a dichotomy not between words and meaning or between in­ formative and noninformative language but between different ways in which language can carry information. Yet their error seems inescapable in Pinter criticism; wherever one turns, criticism is distorted by misleading distinctions between text and subtext, words and meaning, language and silence, what is said and how it is said, and so on. Even when the implicit distinctions are not formulated the same error is evident in the recurring loss of adequate contact between observable details of the text and responses to it. 05 These distinctions have two widespread characteristics: they are dualistic dis­ tinctions, and they separate the aspect of the text to be dis­ cussed and elaborated on from those elements of the text that are available to controlled and verifiable discussion. This problem is so widespread and so central to the field that it is worth following further Esslin's persistent wrestling with it in order to locate the cause of the problem and the source of its strength. Esslin's own dissatisfaction with the distinctions he makes 05 This has produced a variety of poorly controlled statements, e.g., P. Wray, "Pinter's Dialogue: The Play on Words," Modem Drama, XIIi (February 1971), 418: ". . . Pinter broke the constraint of the necessity for meaningful dialogue and created the evocative chaos of the meaningless, the bizarre and the illogical. This breakthrough has, para­ doxically, begun to return power to speech." See also Schechner's com­ ment ("Puzzling Pinter," p. 176): "Subtextual information is never cognitive; it always carries with it—even when seemingly clear—a heavy baggage of implication, confusion, and nuance"; and Storch ("Harold Pinter's Happy Families," p. 704): "As soon as a situation looks as if it were attaining a recognizable meaning, he introduces some nonsense, wild improbability or verbal play, and we fall once more through the trap-door. His plays consist largely of his dogged attempts to destroy consistency and any clue to a rational pattern. . . . By dislocating our attention from the common sense view of things he makes us alive to primitive fears, destroys the rational facade of the adult mind, and lays bare regressive fantasies."

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is evident in the frequency with which he reformulates them. On page 213 he suggests an opposition between "what people are doing to each other through it (the language)" and "the conceptual content of what they are saying." Some pages later the distinction moves on to a formulation similar to one initially invoked by I. A. Richards: "the words are of the utmost importance; not through their surface meaning, but through the color and texture of their sound and their associa­ tions of meaning" (p. 229). This is clearly related to Richards' contrast between denotative and connotative meaning. Esslin's ultimate arrival at this distinction is a significant indi­ cation of the location of the theoretical error that is implicit in so many of these erroneous distinctions. Common to all of these attempts to deal with language in terms of dualistic distinctions is the very approach that gave rise to the opposi­ tion between denotative and connotative meaning; the same approach is responsible for our continuing encounter with form/content problems; it is also the same approach that gives rise to the limited and limiting "single function" view of language. The constant search for dualistic distinctions to overcome this monistic intuition is at bottom the recurring attempt to escape from the confines of a theory of meaning that dominates our criticism and our critical vocabulary decades after its inadequacy has been convincingly demon­ strated: the reference theory of meaning. The limitations of this theory of meaning are precisely those that have character­ ized Pinter criticism. The theory encourages a distinction in literary language between the observable but trivial and the hidden but profound; it reinforces the assumption that lan­ guage carries information in only one way; it sets a standard for explicitness that is single and arbitrary; and it encourages dualistic distinctions in an area in which pluralistic distinc­ tions are essential. Once this error is located the central con­ fusion in the field of Pinter criticism and the failure of the

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field to make significant progress are both accountable for and resolvable. Before turning to the elaboration of this point, however, there are two other threads of comment on Pinter's language which require attention. The recurring difficulties encountered in attempts to cope with the problems of Pinter's language have led some critics to contemplate one possible solution: it takes the form of an attempt to make a virtue of the unanalyzed on the grounds that it is of its nature unanalyzable. This simultane­ ously offers praise where it is felt that praise is due and dispenses with the irritating problem of analysis. Thus we find the words "poet," "poetry," and "poetic" constantly recurring in criticism of Pinter. This tendency is particularly apparent in Esslin's work, but he unfortunately compounds the error by confusing (1) poet (evaluative) = successful writer and (2) poet (descriptive) = writer of a certain kind of text (as opposed to dramatist and novelist). The use of "poet" and its derivatives in the evaluative sense to compli­ ment the unanalyzed in Pinter is thus given bogus justifi­ cation by an appeal to biographical evidence to support the use of "poet" in the descriptive sense. "Pinter's first ambition was to write poetry; basically he has remained a lyric poet." 66 But with or without this mistaken foundation, the use of the word "poetry" in this context seems of dubious value. Unless the evidence deceives us all, Pinter is a dramatist, and no degree of complexity in his language justifies talking of him in any other terms. There is also no reason to suppose with Esslin that linguistic artistry is confined to or found at its best in poetry. And even if it were, the task of analysis is not materially assisted by gratuitous terminological shifts. There is really nothing to be gained by such flights of fancy as: "Pinter's use of language is that of a poet; there are no redundant words in true poetry, no empty patches, no mere 66

Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 37.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

fill-ins. Pinter's dramatic writing has the density of texture of true poetry." 67 Certainly our critical apparatus and descrip­ tive methods will have limitations, but we must resist the temptation to evade with a value judgment that which is temporarily beyond our analytic capabilities. "Poetry" is simply one more in a series of concepts such as "subtexts" and "hidden meanings" that permeate the field and cause widespread confusion. They encourage poorly controlled impressionistic statements instead of demonstrably accurate analytic statements. The things they deal with are either linguistically specified or they are not there, and if they are linguistically specified, they are available for analysis and demonstration. The unanalyzed in Pinter's work is a product of temporary critical failure, not of some metaphysical, ultra-valuable, unanalyzable characteristic located behind, above, or beneath the text of the plays. The other thread of comment on Pinter's language that requires attention is the occasional suggestion that particular uses of language operate as important components of indi­ vidual plays. Caine, for example, deduces from The Dumb Waiter that Gus must die because of his insistence on questioning while working for an organization which is operating on a basis of command and obedience.68 Cohn, almost in an aside, suggests that Len's incapacitation in The Dwarfs is somehow linked to his verbal capacity. "In the final scene . . . Len is in a hospital; his house has perhaps become his hospital, and his dialogue his illness." 69 More specifically still, Gilman picks on a speech by Teddy in The Homecoming and concludes that here, Pinter's language "exemplifies what is never considered in our public chatter about the theatre: that the language can itself be dramatic, ^lbid.,

p. 237. Caine 7 "Structure in the One-Act Play," p. 392. 8 9 R. Cohn, "Latter Day Pinter," Drama Survey, in (Winter 1964), 368. 68

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

can be the play, not merely the means of advancing an anecdote, a decoration, or the emblem of something thought to be realer than itself." 70 None of these writers develop these perceptions any further, and we are still left with piecemeal observations rather than an overall approach to Pinter's language. Nevertheless, the connections between these comments and the possibility that Pinter's language functions in a new way is evident. The problem left unsolved is how to make that novelty the focus of critical attention without lapsing into the familiar error that GiJwan makes. The appeal of his position is registered in a qualified endorse­ ment by B. 0. States, but both States' endorsement of this position and Simon's rejection of it lapse into the same theoretical error. Simon's caustic response was: It is all right for a poem to be about words, poetry, the making of the poem, because the principal ingredients of a poem are, precisely, words and sounds. But the chief ingredients of a play are the players and their exchange of statements, their actions and relationships. The kind of play Gilman advocates could best be played by radios, phonographs, projections and computers, and that way lies madness, or, as it is now called, hap­ penings.71 Gilman erroneously opposes the language to abstractions from the language and asserts the priority of the former; Simon does the same but asserts a reverse order of priority. States, however, for a brief moment, moves in an illuminat­ ing direction : Now I don't think language can be the play any more than the medium can be the message, but there is 70 R. Gilman, "The Pinter Puzzle," New York Times, January 22, 1967, D5. 7 1 Simon, "Theatre Chronicle" (Spring 1967), p. 106.

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

something in Mr. Gilman's idea. I think he touches upon a habit of composition which Pinter has cultivated more and more as he goes along . . . a direct and almost satirical formalism of expression which is, put­ ting it mildly, inappropriate to the situation.72 Circumscribed by the assumptions of the reference theory of meaning, States soon gets trapped into reformulating this as a "gulf between manner and matter" 73 and hence can do little with it. But if, instead, the significance of the language is pursued in terms of its appropriateness to the situation in which it is used, a whole new set of questions emerges: to what extent is the situation independent of the language uttered? how is a character to decide what is appropriate language for that situation? is the question of appropriateness a given or is it open to negotiation? what if two characters disagree over what is appropriate at a given time? what kinds of issues are raised by such events? These and other questions can provide a way of accounting for the unusual prominence of the language in a Pinter play not in the true but trivial sense that language is vital to these plays (as it is to all plays) but in a way that will make clear the distinctive functions of language in Pinter's work. Some such accounting, which avoids the limited and limiting reference theory assumptions, is necessary if criticism of Pinter's work is to move out of the trough in which it has labored for over a decade. 72 73

States, "Pinter's Homecoming," p. 480. Ibid., p. 481.

II THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM [Pinter's work has the] ability to express the inexpressible, to transcend the scope of language itself. . . . 1 [Pinter] refuses, in fact, to communicate with us at all. His language, while authentic colloquial speech, is stripped bare of reflective or conceptual thought, so that the play could be just as effectively performed in Finno-Ugric.2 Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say).3

SECTION 1: THE THEORY PROBLEM

THE MAJOR difficulty encountered by Brown, Nelson,

Esslin, and others is to reconcile perceptive comments on Pinter's work with general theoretical statements about the ways in which the things perceived are present in the language. It is this difficulty that has kept criticism of Pinter anchored firmly in the positions established by the early contributors to the field. Progress is unlikely to occur when accurate observations are required to interact with inaccurate generalizations. Instead of fruitful interplay between data 1 M. Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (New York, 1970), p. 252. 2 R. Brustein, "A Naturalism of the Grotesque," New Republic, cxLv (October 23, 1961), 29. 3 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (London, 1969), 37e.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

and hypotheses, which is fundamental to the development of further data and to the refinement of hypotheses, there has been a lack of interaction between incompatible ele­ ments, and the field has stagnated. The process of discovery has subsided into a protracted rediscovery of inadequate theoretical positions. A widespread agreement that Pinter's language is doing something new seems to have led inex­ orably to a loss of controlled contact between the details of the language and responses to those details. This pattern of development seems up to this point to have been un­ avoidable. As was suggested in the previous chapter, this dilemma is a direct consequence of a theory of meaning that continues to dominate critical practice long after its inadequacy has been convincingly demonstrated. One manifestation of this problem is noted in this recent comment: It would be hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. On this issue a pious consensus prevails. Everyone is quick to avow that style and content are indissoluble. . . . Most of the same critics who disclaim, in passing, the notion that style is an accessory to content maintain the duality whenever they apply themselves to particular works of literature. . . . In fact, to talk about the style of a particular novel or poem at all as a "style," without implying, whether one wishes to or not, that style is merely decorative, accessory, is extremely hard. Merely by employing the notion, one is almost bound to invoke, albeit implicitly, an antithesis between style and some­ thing else.4 4 S. Sontag, "On Style," in Against Interpretation (New York, 1970), pp. 24-25.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

In an extended investigation of this particular issue Ellis makes it clear that this ambiguous position is the result of an attempt to maintain the use of the concept of style while rejecting the theory which is inseparable from it.5 These con­ tradictory urges are a clear consequence of an inadequate grasp of the full implications of the rejected theory. It is no coincidence that the form/content dichotomy reemerges in Pinter criticism because the same theory of meaning is at issue, and the same barrier to progress is encountered. It is generally accepted that Pinter's language is doing something that is in some way new. But to characterize that new ele­ ment a clear understanding is essential of what exactly it is that is felt to be old. The constant search in Pinter criticism is for a distinction or set of distinctions that will clarify the nature of the novelty in Pinter's language. The barrier to progress in this area is the seeming impossibility of finding a controllable second term with which to contrast what is felt to be characteristic of non-Pinter language. With alarming regularity, this second term refuses to emerge in any adequate form. Contrasts between text and subtext, what is said and how it is said, the language and what lies behind it, prose and poetry, the meanings of the words and the meaning of the language, surface meaning and association of meaning, are constantly rediscovered. Such distinctions are either not logically contrastive or they contrast all that is available as evidence with "something else," which is not available for inspection, analysis, or demonstration. This is a peculiar pattern to discover, and it leads to the conclusion that such a ubiquitous problem must be based upon an equally widespread theoretical error. And that error seems to be very similar to the one involved in the use of the 5 J. M. Ellis, "Linguistics, Literature, and the Concept of Style," Word, XXVi (April 1970), 65-78.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

word "style." To use that concept as the first term in a poten­ tial linguistic distinction is to commit oneself to a theory of meaning that makes the choice of the second term an im­ possible task. Likewise in criticism of Pinter, the attempt to isolate what is new in Pinter founders on the theoretical implications of the terms chosen to characterize the kind of language with which Pinter's is to be contrasted. A series of examples will illustrate this point: [Pinter's work has the] ability to express the inexpressi­ ble, to transcend the scope of language itself. . . .6 His language, while authentic colloquial speech, is stripped bare of reflective or conceptual thought, so that the play could be just as effectively performed in FinnoUgric.7 . . . language . . . used to convey what it cannot say. . . .8 . . . language that conveys something other than the meanings of its words.9 . . . the words are of the utmost importance; not through their surface meaning, but through the colour and texture of their sound and their associations of meaning.10 . . . it is not the discursive connotations of the dialogue which matter ("the words which come through") but 6

See note 1 above. See note 2 above. 8 R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, quoted by J. R. IIollis in Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 14. 9 F. J. Bernhard "Beyond Realism," Modern Drama, vin (Septem­ 7 ber 1965), 185. 10 Esslin, The Peopled Wound, pp. 229-230. 7

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

the fact and pattern of speech—how it sounds, and how it is made, and the response it provokes.11 This should not suggest that Pinter's language is that of plain speech; it is a highly conscious yet articulate po­ etry.12 Each of these statements attempts to describe what is new in Pinter's language by means of an appeal to some norm in language that Pinter either transcends or ignores. Central to these approaches is a recurring appeal to either a core or a boundary of "normal" language. The core is variously ap­ pealed to as the language of the expressible, the language of conceptual thought, the language made up of the meanings of words, the language of surface meaning, the language of discursive connotations, and the language of plain speech. The first terms in these intended contrasts force upon the writers a series of second terms that cast Pinter into a series of limbos of language. These are variously described as lan­ guage that transcends the expressible, language that abandons the expressible, language that conveys things without express­ ing them, language that conveys things other than what it expresses, and language that conveys things in spite of what it expresses. In dealing with Pinter as one who rejects the core or transcends the boundaries of normal language, assent is given to a theoretical position that "normal" language does in fact have a given core or given boundary to which such appeals can be made. It is precisely such an assumption that gives rise to the many dualistic descriptions of Pinter's lan­ guage in Chapter 1; it is also this belief that underlies the recurring form/content error in criticism, and it is this belief 1 1 K. Morris, "The Homecoming," Tulane Drama Review, xi (Winter 1966), 190. 1 2 M. Cohen, "The Plays of Harold Pinter," Jewish Quarterly, vm (1961), 21.

TIIE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

in something fixed and constant that is at the heart of the reference theory of meaning. The implications of the assumption will become more clear if we return for a moment to the notion of "style." As we have noted, the very use of the word in literary criticism leads inexorably to a distinction between form and content. This is inescapable when the notion of stylistic variation is predi­ cated upon the assumption that something in the language is remaining constant—some core of meaning, which is fre­ quently thought of in terms of the referent of a word. Thus7 to use Ellis's example, the words "start," "begin," and "com­ mence" might be held to mean the same thing on the grounds that they all refer to the same action. But while their uses are related, their function in a given situation might be very different: "The use of the word 'commence' in relation to a dance, for example, may well give enough information about that event to dissuade devotees of certain types of dancing from attending it." 13 We only equate these words if we believe that there is a fixed reference involved which is the core of the meaning, and that the differences in meaning are somehow capable of being categorized as "stylis­ tic." This is by no means an unreasonable assumption, and the very "reasonableness" of its appearance is the source of its strength. But it is the limitations of such an assumption that Wittgenstein is at pains to demonstrate in his later work. In doing so, he makes clear the source of the theoretical errors that have prevented progress in the field of Pinter criticism. Wittgenstein demonstrates conclusively the inadequacy of attempts to view meaning as a single function of reference whether the reference is to external objects or to internal concepts, and, at the same time, he renders untenable the assumption that language has any single or central function 13 Ellis,

"Linguistics," p. 70.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

at all. A necessary consequence of this demonstration is the abandonment of the assumption that there is a given core or given boundary of language use. His well-known discussion of the meaning of the word "game" explicitly raises this issue: Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think but look.—Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious rela­ tionships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost." Switching to the concept of "number," Wittgenstein points out not only the absence of a given core but also the lack of a given boundary to its meaning: Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a—direct—relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of num­ ber as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.15 [my emphasis] 1 4 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, pp. 31e-32e. " t 5 Ibid.., p. 32e.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

The basis of the recurring difficulty critics have encoun­ tered in trying to isolate what is new in Pinter is made clear by Wittgenstein's "thread-spinning" image. This relational unity, which has no common fiber and no given boundary, is as characteristic of sentence function as it is of word mean­ ing. Far from having a "given" or "normal" function, lan­ guage has no final range of application and likewise no final range of meaning. But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say asser­ tion, question, and command?—There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call "symbols," "words," "sentences." And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get for­ gotten. 10 In this context it becomes apparent that the urge to perceive what is new in Pinter by contrasting his language with what is felt to be old is by no means as simple as has been assumed. If it is carried out (as it has been) with the assumption that what is old is somehow single, fixed, and central, then it is inevitable that one will find oneself describing new language as non-language. Pinter is thus characterized as one who has transcended the boundaries of language or one who has failed to write language as we know it at all ("the play could be just as effectively performed in Finno-Ugric"). 17 The attempt to re-relate this non-language to what is felt to be normal language is what gives rise to such chimerical con­ trasts as surface meaning versus deeper meaning, or the meaning of the words versus the meaning of the language, and it is this same factor that gives rise to the widespread dependence on the concept of a subtext to explain the im16

Ibid., p . l i e .

11

See note 2 above.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

pact of words which read in the "normal" way appear trivial. The basic error running throughout these approaches is the attempt to base useful dualistic distinctions upon first terms that erroneously assume something central in normal lan­ guage. As this frequently includes everything available as evi­ dence, one critic after another has been forced to select a contrastive second term that effectively abandons control of the data. Dualistic distinctions are pursued in an area in which pluralistic distinctions are essential. The failure to make adequate allowance for the inherent plurality of language function is then the major blind spot in the field. To avoid this recurring pitfall of Pinter criticism it is helpful to proceed with an explicit awareness of what gave rise to it. Progress can then be expected if one reminds one­ self that language may be used for an infinite number of pur­ poses, one of which is to refer to things; this function is not, however, the central function of language, and neither is it the one upon which meaning is centrally based. Rather: "For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we em­ ploy the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language." 18 It was precisely this awareness that Nelson was approaching when he attempted to reconcile the discussion of trivial topics by Pinter's charac­ ters with the markedly nontrivial impact of such discussion. "Apparently trivial differences of opinion over cheese rolls, cigars, glasses of water, routes to the airport, are, in fact, Pinter's somewhat unique means of exposition and develop­ ment." 19 If we can avoid Nelson's next step of turning to nonverbal factors as the source of added meaning to the trivial topics, then we will be on the way to discovering how Pinter's language can combine a dependence on trivial topics 18

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 20e. H. Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," in Modern British Dramatists, ed. J. R. Brown (New Jersey, 1968), p. 150. 19

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

with the achievement of nontrivial discourse. But there is a further barrier to progress in this area. It emerges when we turn to critics who have attempted to work with an approach to language that avoids the single function error. Presumably, if they had achieved major successes, the lingering impact of the reference theory would by now have disappeared. But though there is no lack of precedent for such an approach to literature, it has thus far made little impact on the general practice of criticism. There is no reason to suppose that critics of Pinter are alone in ignoring recent advances in the understanding of the logic of language, so there is clearly some obstacle that has prevented the by no means unknown ideas of Wittgenstein from becoming integrated into critical practice. If we look for a moment at the work of I. A. Richards, part of the problem begins to emerge. Richards was aware of the shortcomings of a single-function approach to language well before Wittgenstein came to grips with it. But, in his at­ tempts to move beyond this assumption, he takes a significant step: instead of rejecting the notion of reference along with the single-function assumption of the reference theory, he attempts to adapt the old assumptions to new ones. Instead of rejecting the centrality of the referential function along with its adequacy, he retains it and simply adds others. Initially, he postulated two functions instead of one: "We may either use words for the sake of the references they pro­ mote, or we may use them for the sake of the attitudes and emotions which ensue." 20 This is clearly a step in the right direction but does not go far enough. Richards' subsequent position that language has not just two but four major func­ tions is again in the right direction. But once more, instead of reconsidering the centrality of reference, he simply gives 20

211.

I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (London, 1967), p.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

that function a new name and concentrates upon subdividing the "emotive" function of language into three separate parts. The four functions of language then become Sense, Feeling, Tone, and Intention. 21 The very term "sense," however, con­ tinues to give assent to the centrality of the reference func­ tion, and Richards is effectively confining his awareness of the pluralistic function of language to what is left over when the referential function has been extracted. In a pre-Wittgenstein period this had the appearance of a useful new ap­ proach, but, after Wittgenstein's exposure of all the limita­ tions of the reference theory, it clearly fails to come to grips with the basic problem: not only is the single-function as­ sumption wrong; so also is the assumption that the referen­ tial function, or any function, is central: One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of do­ ing this. It is not a stupid prejudice. 22 Richards was correctly aware that something was wrong, but not fully aware of all that was wrong, with the reference theory. Thus he attempted to mend what he ought to have rejected—the limitations of the reference theory cannot be overcome simply by adding new functions to make up for what the central function fails to cover. But when we turn to more recent attempts to posit theories of multifunctioning language we find that that same position is still assumed. Jakobson, in a remarkably astute article called "Linguistics and Poetics," strenuously objects to attempts by Joos to focus linguistics on some major functions of language. Rather, "language must be investigated in all the variety of its func2 1 1.

A. Richards, Practical Criticism (New York, 1969), pp. 175-176. Philosophical Investigations, p. 109e.

2 2 Wittgenstein,

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM 23

tions." Yet when he sets up a model for this investigation, Jakobson does so in terms that continue to accept that lan­ guage does, in fact, have a major function: "Obviously we must agree with Sapir that, on the whole, 'ideation reigns supreme in language . . . ,' but this supremacy does not authorize linguistics to disregard the 'secondary factors.' " 24 But approaching language with a built-in belief in "supreme" and "secondary" factors is the fallacy in the theoretical posi­ tion of Richards. "Ideation" is a terminological improvement on "Reference" and "Sense," but the basic problem remains unaltered. Likewise, M. A. K. Halliday, in a recent article on "Lin­ guistic Function and Literary Style," stresses the multiplicity of linguistic functions but fails to shake off all the effects of the theory that gave rise to the assumption of a single func­ tion : "The demands that we make on language, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers, are indefinitely many and varied. They can be derived, ultimately, from a small num­ ber of very general headings; but what these headings are will depend on what questions we are asking." 25 So far, this is fine; as Wittgenstein would agree, we may draw our boundaries according to the task at.hand as long as we 23 R. Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, ed. T. A. Sebeok (M.I.T. Press, 1968), p. 353. 24 Ibid. Both Richards and Jakobson acknowledge that different lin­ guistic functions can predominate at different times, but their theoretical terminology continues to support the overall predominance of the refer­ ence function. 2 5 M . A. K. Halliday, "Linguistic Function and Literary Style," Literary Style: A Symposium, ed. S. Chatman (New York: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 1971), p. 331. While Halliday registers the same general error here, my debt to his work is something I gratefully acknowledge. His publications in the past decade have been central to the development of my interest in the problems of linguistic description. It came as no surprise to discover that his approach to Golding's work was in some ways similar to what I was trying to do with Pinter. There are, neverthe­ less, substantial differences as this point indicates.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

realize that they are so drawn for this particular purpose and not somehow given in advance. But when Halliday attempts to set up a tripartite division of language functions, his first category once again engulfs him in the very theory he is seeking to transcend. His first function, like Jakobson's, is the "ideational function," which he glosses as follows: "In the first place, language serves for the expression of content." 26 This is clearly little more than a revised version of Richards' "Sense" and leads to a rather dubious contrast with the other functions of language that he postulates: "In the second place, language serves what we may call an interpersonal function. This is quite different from the expression of con­ tent. Here, the speaker is using language as the means of his own intrusion into the speech event: the expression of his comments, his attitudes, and evaluations, and also of the re­ lationship that he sets up between himself and the lis­ tener. . . ." 27 If these things are not also "content" then what are they? The very use of the word "content" suggests a distinction from form, yet these things are clearly not form. Even if we stretched interpretation to admit these things as some kind of secondary content we would still only have ad­ vanced as far as the inadequate position occupied by Rich­ ards. In fact, a later article by Halliday seems to reveal his own uneasiness in this area. Again drawing his tripartite dis­ tinction, he suddenly qualifies his assertion of the predomi­ nance of the ideational function: ". . . the predominant de­ mand that we make on our language (predominant, at least, in our thinking about language; perhaps that is all) is that it allows us to communicate about something." 28 This qualifi­ cation is dropped as suddenly as it is raised, but it crucially undermines the task that is being undertaken: how to arrive 26 Ibid.,

27 Ibid., p. 333. p. 332. M. A. K. Halliday, "Language Structure and Language Function," in New Horizons in Linguistics, ed. J, Lyons (Middlesex, 1970), p. 145. 28

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

at an approach to language that avoids the limitations of a theory that continues to affect "our thinking about language" decades after its inadequacy has been widely acknowledged. Thus, in spite of a growing and already widespread recog­ nition of the essentially pluralistic nature of language func­ tion, the "prejudice" that Wittgenstein mentions shows no sign of disappearing. It continues to block progress in our thinking about language and has prevented the work of Witt­ genstein from making an impact on critical practice in gen­ eral and on Pinter criticism in particular. Its strength and staying power are registered in recurring attempts to assimi­ late new models to the old though the new and old are basically incompatible.29 Instead of a rejection of Richards' approach we are confronted simply by more sophisticated versions of it. The common approach to multifunctioning language is still governed by attempts to divide up what is left of language when the central component, the referential component, or the basic content, has been extracted under a newly coined name. Such an approach to linguistic meaning is as much rooted in error as ever, and the lessons of Witt­ genstein's work have not been learned.30 With so little progress evident in this area, it is much less surprising to find that the field of Pinter criticism continues to be dominated by a misleading attitude toward the ways in which language functions. With the preceding examples in mind, it is clear that any29 Here again the issue is similar to that encountered in the use of the word "style." 30 For an extended study of the relationship between Wittgenstein's work and the theory of criticism see J. M. Ellis, The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis (University of California Press, 1974). Ellis provides an illuminating perspective on the limitations of other theorists who have attempted to cope with the ideas of Wittgenstein. In particular, see his comments on W. Righter, Logic and Criticism; J. Casey, The Language of Criticism; and M. Weitz, Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

one attempting to describe Pinter's use of language must shake off all, not simply some, of the implications of the reference theory. Not only is the assumption that language means by referring to things a basic misunderstanding of how language works, 31 so also is the assumption, inseparable from the theory, that language carries information in any single or centra] way. The route beyond the reference theory of meaning is not to be found by simply adding other func­ tions to one felt to be central, even if limited, but by reject­ ing the very notion of a central function. Any attempt to contrast Pinter's language with some given core of normal language is thus fundamentally misguided. Rather, we must look at Pinter's language from exactly the same point of view that we should adopt in approaching all language use; we must begin with Wittgenstein's suggestion that we: "Look at the sentence as an instrument, and at its sense as its em­ ployment." 32 Only the lingering impact of the reference theory would encourage us to try to separate the meaning of a sentence from its use. And the inevitable result of such an approach is precisely that helpless dichotomy between the linguistic data and its impact that is so characteristic of Pinter criticism. Suggestions that Pinter's language conveys something other than the meanings of its words, that Pinter shows that language can be used to convey what it cannot say, that it is not the words that count but the subtext, that Pinter has transcended the boundaries of language—all are based upon a separation of meaning and use. What has been transcended is the limitation of a method of describing how 31 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 20e: "It is impor­ tant to note that the word 'meaning' is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. Ν. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies." 32 Jbid., p. 126e.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

language works; Pinter's plays have simply drawn attention to the boundaries of the theory, not the boundaries of language. SECTION 2: THE INTERRELATIONAL FUNCTION

There is a further question to be considered about the theoretical problem outlined above: why has this problem proved so crucial in describing Pinter's work? It is clearly a problem that relates to the description of all language, but something in Pinter's language has given this theoretical issue a prominence not, as far as is known, characteristic of other fields. An attempt to supply the answer to this question is likely to provide an indication of what it is about Pinter's language that is felt to be new and original. A useful starting point is an incident in Pinter's youth which he recalled in an interview with Lawrence Bensky in 1966. Used with care this incident can direct us toward a grasp of one of the major functions of Pinter's dramatic language. By reminding us of what is a common enough usage in our daily language, this episode can lead us to an understanding of a central component in the language of the plays. The incident deals with the period just after the Second World War when Pinter and some friends attended a Jewish club in London's East End. As it involves a point in Pinter's life when he felt part of a threatened minority group, it is naturally seized upon by cause-oriented critics as an indication of why Pinter should write plays dealing with latent menace. There is, however, a rather more important aspect of this incident. . . . I went to a Jewish club, by an old railway arch, and there were quite a lot of people often waiting with broken milk bottles in a particular alley we used to walk

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

through. There were one or two ways of getting out of it—one was a purely physical way, of course, but you couldn't do anything about the milk bottles—we didn't have any milk bottles. The best way was to talk to them, you know, sort of "Are you all right?", "Yes, I'm all right." "Well, that's all right then, isn't it?" And all the time keep walking toward the lights of the main road.33 [my emphasis] To avoid the consequences of this threatening situation, Pinter indicates two possible approaches: one physical, the other verbal. One could either fight one's way through or do something with words. Pinter recommends the latter and bears witness to its success. But just what is being done with the words in this incident? How does this brief dialogue operate? There is no argument, no discussion, no attempt to deny Jewishness in order to evade the consequences of being a Jew, no attempt to threaten the opposition; yet the short, clipped phrases transform a situation of imminent hostility to one in which the threat is neutralized. If we look closely at the stages of the verbal event we might abstract the following: 1. The context is that of a threatening group and a threatened group. 2. The threatened group initiates a conversation. 3. The conversation they initiate ignores the given rela­ tionships of the groups and invokes instead a friendly relationship. 4. The opening friendly remark is in the form of a question. 5. In spite of their hostile intent, the threatening group 3 3 II.

Pinter, "The Art of the Theater, III" (interview with L. M. Bensky), Paris Review, χ (Autumn 1966), 31.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

is somehow coerced into making a verbal rather than a physical response to the question asked. 6. In spite of their hostile intent, the threatening group answers the question in a manner that manifests friendliness. 7. The threatened group reinforces the verbal relation­ ship with a witty play on words. 8. The threatened group acts upon the verbal relation­ ship rather than the opening relationship and walks on unconcernedly. What seems to happen here is that the conversation initiated by the threatened group is one which would obtain between friends. This conversation, once started, superimposes the context that would be suitable to it on the situation that is initially not suitable to it. This superimposition is achieved as soon as the threatening group responds to the question on the terms that the question requires. But what makes them respond in this manner? What coercion is brought to bear on them? Pinter, of course, would be the last to maintain a 100 per­ cent reliability for the method, but what is of great sig­ nificance here is the nature of the power invoked by the dialogue rather than a precise measure of its strength. It would seem that relationships are subject to verbal negotia­ tion, even verbal imposition, in ways of which we may not be fully aware, while being constantly engaged in the process nevertheless. The purpose of this example is not, however, to lead toward sociological statements of general relevance but rather toward statements that shed light on the social activity within the plays. The problem that can be ap­ proached from this angle is outlined by a writer for the Lon­ don Times: "The surface of his works is simple and lucid— none of the individual things his characters say is very subtle

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

or obscure. What is obscure, however, is the connection be­ tween any two things a character says . . . and even more the connection between what one character says and what another says afterwards [my emphasis]. . . ." 84 As long as criticism is handicapped by an implicit belief that language is primarily referential, that it is mainly concerned with the transfer of verifiable facts, we will continue to be puzzled by the connective thread which links successive statements in Pinter's plays. Such an approach inevitably culminates in re­ marks on the inexplicitness and triviality of much of the dialogue. But once it is realized that other language func­ tions can predominate, we will look again at these connec­ tions and find them anything but "obscure." The coercive power invoked by the youthful Pinter and his friends in post-war London is an important key to the puz­ zling dynamics of the Pinter dialogue. In an illuminating essay on the processes of verbal communication, the noted British linguist J. R. Firth pinpoints the source of the peculiar tension generated by Pinter's language: You are not free to say just what you like. . . . The moment a conversation is started, whatever is said is a determining condition for what in any reasonable expec­ tation may follow. There is positive force in what you say, and there is a negative side, too, because what you say shuts out most of the language of your companion, leaving him only a limited range of possible responses.35 This is the coercive force that was brought to bear on the gang in the London alley. There is a strong social pressure available in language to promote the responses one wishes to 34 The Times (London), quoted by Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 13. 3 5 J. R. Firth, "The Tongues of Men" and "Speech" (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 94.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

receive. But in spite of the success of Pinter's youthful experi­ ment, the power is by no means absolute. Firth's formulation glosses over the consequences of refusing to meet the "rea­ sonable expectations" determined by someone's remark. The tension in much of Pinter's dialogue derives from just that refusal—a refusal that is often both comic and disturbing: LEN : MARK: LEN : MARK: LEK: MARK: LEN : MARK: LEN: MARK:

Do you believe in God? What? Do you believe in God? Who? God. God? Do you believe in God? DO I believe in God? Yes. Would you say that again?

30

P. Davison has dealt at some length with the relationship between Pinter's dialogue and the traditional cross-talk of music-hall comedians.37 Undoubtedly they share similar comic effects when the verbal expectations are consistently not met. But when two characters in a Pinter play find them­ selves at odds, the situation has a more important angle. To be able to dictate, however imprecisely, the responses of one's companion is to dictate, however temporarily, the role that he plays relative to you. And the role that he plays relative to you in turn governs the roles that it is possible for you to play relative to him. In the above example, Len initiates a conversation dealing with Mark's attitudes to God. Mark consistently refuses to 36 The Dwarfs, in "A Slight Ache" and Other Plays (London, 1966), pp. 111-112. 37 P. Davison, "Contemporary Drama and Popular Dramatic Forms," in Aspects of Drama and the Theatre (Sydney University Press, 1965).

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

participate in this conversation and deflects it into a struggle for clarification. In doing so, he rejects the intimacy of the relationship that such a discussion would acknowledge. Len persists in spite of the rebuffs but is eventually worn down. Mark has -the verbal competence to evade a direct response to the question without resorting to a specific refusal. What is at issue here is not (as a referential approach would indi­ cate) the existence of God or even Mark's belief in God, but rather whether or not Mark accepts the relationship with Len on terms that would allow such topics to be discussed. He obviously does not. As Len has previously been shown to be in great need of a relationship on these terms, the effect is simultaneously comic and distressing. As Pinter has put it: "I'm rarely consciously writing humour, but sometimes I find myself laughing at some particular point which has sud­ denly struck me as being funny . . . more often than not the speech only seems to be funny—the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life." 38 This battle, in the Pinter world, is grounded in the power available in language to promote the responses that a speaker requires and hence the relationship that is desired. It is here that the link be­ tween language and relationships is established, and it is here that we must concentrate our attention. The language of a Pinter play functions primarily as a means of dictating and reinforcing relationships. This use of language is not, of course, exclusive to a Pinter play and is a common com­ ponent in all drama and in all language; but, in giving this use such extensive scope, Pinter has simultaneously achieved his own individual form of stage dialogue and made his work unavailable to any critical analysis based on implicit appeals to the reference theory of meaning. This linguistic function is characteristic of a great deal of Pinter's dialogue and is the one that has caused much of the trouble in criticism of his work. Where the central focus 38

Pinter, "Art ot the Theater," p. 34.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

is on the developing relationships between the characters, there are two important consequences. The kinds of topic discussed and the kinds of explicitness with which they are discussed are derived not from a need to establish some kind of objective truth but from the shifting demands of indi­ vidual characters attempting to give a desired shape and co­ herence to a relationship. Though the preceding conversa­ tion between Len and Mark reveals little about their belief in God, it does reveal a considerable amount of information about their attitudes toward each other.39 What is left inex­ plicit on the one hand is matched by something quite explicit on the other. What is left incomplete in the conversation is matched by information that is complete enough to force Len into a subsequent lengthy and desperate plea to Mark for a change in his attitude. The linguistic function thus isolated is in need of a name —if only for the purpose of identifying it during the rest of this discussion. It clearly is not unrelated to the things Halliday subsumed under his "interpersonal" function. But there is an important distinction. Interpersonal tends to suggest that the personalities, the identities of those participating, are given in advance.40 In the Pinter world, however, the 39 Nelson's remark is relevant here: "What we lack in precise infor­ mation about the characters' backgrounds and motives is made up for by a very complex knowledge (if we are alert to it) of the nature of their shifting emotions in regard to each other" ("The Homecoming: Kith and Kin," p. 150). An awareness of the way in which language is functioning here makes it clear how one can be alert to this kind of information without having to make Nelson's appeal to the significance of nonverbal factors. 40 This point did not escape Halliday's attention. "It is, I think, significant for certain forms of literature that, since personality is dependent on interaction which is in turn mediated through language, the 'interpersonal' function in language is both interactional and personal" ("Linguistic Function and Literary Style," p. 333). To avoid the implication of a personality given in advance and also to avoid the distinction implied by Halliday's three-way division of functions, it seems wiser not to use the term "interpersonal."

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

considerable prominence of developing relationships is in large part dependent on the ways in which relationships func­ tion in the development of a self-concept. Unless others act upon the fact that a character's identity is what that charac­ ter believes or wants it to be, the identity lacks corroboration and is of uncertain value. The conflicting urges toward an individual and toward a shared reality are central to The Dwarfs and a major factor in many of the other plays. Though a private reality can be adapted to meet many of the demands of a particular charac­ ter, it can never meet his need for external confirmation. Yet as soon as external confirmation is required, the self-concept that exists unchallenged in a private reality is put at risk. Relationships thus become major battlegrounds as characters attempt to negotiate a mutual reality. In doing so, they have to cope with a compromise between the ways in which they wish to be regarded and the ways in which their companions are willing to regard them. In an important sense, then, the "personality" of a particular character, the kind of identity with which he can operate, is a function of a compromise negotiated in a particular relationship. Because of this his operative identity will not be a single thing but something potentially as multiple as the relationships in which he en­ gages. The processes and consequences of these negotiations are central to the linguistic function at issue here. For this reason the term "interrelational" seems not unsuitable. The verb "to interrelate" is glossed in the dictionary41 as "to place or come into mutual relationship," and that is the cen­ tral focus of linguistic activity in much of the dialogue of a Pinter play. This term is not, of course, designed to make the true but trivial point that Pinter's plays deal with relation­ ships. Rather, it provides a general name for the kind of 41 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, ed. W . Morris (New York, 1969), p. 685.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

language that is characteristic of people preoccupied with a particular kind of concern for the relationships in which they are involved. The term refers back to the preceding discus­ sion of coercion, explicitness, self-concepts, reality-concepts, and relational roles. The coining of a name for this function of language does not reduce it or Pinter's plays to something single or some­ thing that is simply repeated from one play to the next. The abstract term serves to provide a perspective from which to view the variety and subtlety of the work of a major writer. With this general statement about Pinter's work established, it remains to test its validity by seeing to what extent it inter­ acts with the details of individual plays. Before analyzing four plays in some depth, it will be helpful to look at a variety of details in different plays to get a general idea of the scope of the interrelational function in Pinter's dialogue. A great deal has been made of the frequent pauses and long silences in Pinter's plays. Indeed, their importance is underlined by the title of Hollis's recent book on Pinter, which he subtitled The Poetics of Silence. With the inter­ relational function of language in mind there is no need to adopt Hollis's position that in Pinter's language the most important things are not being said.42 This is to assume a very limited sense of how things can be "said" in dialogue. Silence itself is a form of response and not a neutral stance. As Firth has indicated, no matter how one is addressed there is an implicit demand for a particular range of response. To respond within that range is to accept the relationship on the terms of the first speaker; to reply outside of that range is to qualify or reject the common ground of the relationship as envisaged by the first speaker. Clearly, the response of 42 J. R. Holl:s, Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 13.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

silence is frequently of the latter kind.43 Thus, in A Slight Ache, Edward greets the stranger "cheerfully" but is grad­ ually reduced to a state of horror, nausea, and collapse by his inability to elicit any verbal response. After unsuccessfully casting their relationship in a variety of forms by implying different roles for each of them relative to the other, he is finally supplanted by the mysterious, silent stranger who goes off with his (Edward's) wife. Unable to impose his desired personality on the silent stranger, Edward loses his grasp on both the situation and himself. The threat to identity and the self is likewise evident in The Dwarfs as already indicated. There is a point there, too, where the threat takes the form of silent response. At a crucial point in Len's relationship with Mark and Pete, he attempts to get at the truth of their relationship by accusing Mark of dissembling: You're trying to buy and sell me. You think I'm a ven­ triloquist's dummy. You've got me pinned to the wall before I open my mouth. You've got a tab on me, you're buying me out of house and home, you're a calculating bastard. (Pause.) Answer me. Say something. (Pause.) Do you understand? (Pause.) You don't agree? (Pause.) You disagree? (Pause.) You think I'm mistaken? (Pause.) But am I? (Pause.) 44 The image of a ventriloquist's dummy crystallizes Len's fear of the controlling power of other people's language, but his reactions to Mark register his equal fear of their silence. The former has confronted him with an alien self-concept; the latter leaves him uncertain of any individualized self at all. 43 One can, of course, envisage situations where this would not be so, e.g., a teacher appealing for silence in a classroom, a member of a theater audience requesting that others stop distracting him by talking, etc. 4 4 T h e Dwarfs, p. 107.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

Neither the accusations, nor the commands, nor the ques­ tions succeed in enforcing a verbal response, and Len's "But am I?" turns him back to the only course available—internal self-confirmation. Lacking external corroboration of the identity he believes he has or wants to have, he turns inward to an illusory world peopled by the dwarfs of the title, and seeks in a relationship with them the things that he cannot find in external reality. A query about the identity of the dwarfs, which a referential approach would demand, is avoided when we see them simply as players in an alternate game which Len sets up to counteract the influence of Mark and Pete. They function only in the process of internal ad­ justment, which Len undergoes as a reaction to his inability to combat Mark and Pete in verbal confrontation. The pri­ marily tactile relationships of this fantasized internal world remove the consequences of Len's inability to cope verbally in the environment that surrounds him. Mark's silence serves only to alienate him further from the external world. "Silence itself is defined in relationship to words, as the pause in music receives its meaning from the group of notes round it. This silence is a moment of language; being silent is not being dumb; it is to refuse to speak, and therefore to keep on speaking." 45 If silence is an important moment in the interrelational function of language, then so also is the avoidance of silence. A great deal of humor in the plays is based on the characters' need to confirm the status quo of their relationship by con­ versing after the fashion of a tennis practice. Lonely people in Pinter's review sketches often have little in common but the need to participate in a relationship. As long as they can keep a "conversation" going they are active in a structured situation that gives them a temporary role, a confirmation of 45

J. P. Sartre, What is Literature?, trans. B. Frechtman (London,

1967), p. 14.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

identity, and an escape from the terror of unstructured isola­ tion. In Last to Go a newspaper-seller leans against a coffee stall and talks: MAN: BARMAN: MAN: BARMAN: MAN:

BARMAN: MAN: BARMAN: MAN:

Silence. You was a bit busier earlier. Ah. Round about ten. Ten, was it? About then. Pause. I passed by here about then. Oh yes? I noticed you were doing a bit of trade. Pause. Yes, trade was very brisk here about ten. Yes, I noticed. Pause.46

The halting conversation becomes an exercise in perpetuation for a newspaperman who, having sold his last paper, is thrown back on inner resources instead of occupational resources to manifest his identity and relate to others. Elsewhere, Pinter makes extensive use of another charac­ teristic of language: its dependence on an axis of contrast. Once the absolutist approach of referential meaning is aban­ doned we must perceive instead that language operates sim­ ply by making distinctions. . . . two signs . . . are not different but only distinct. Between them there is only opposition. The entire mechanism of language . . . is based on oppositions of this kind. . . . In language, as in any semiological system, whatever distinguishes one sign from the others constitutes it. . . . 46

Last to Go, in "A Slight Ache" and Other Plays, pp. 129-130.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

. . . language being what it is, we shall find nothing simple in it regardless of our approach; everywhere and always there is the same complex equilibrium of terms that mutually condition each other.47 To Saussure this complex equilibrium is the state of every utterance. In a given situation an utterance functions by means of a set of purposefully balanced linguistic opposi­ tions. The task of the language user is to produce from a myriad of potential linguistic oppositions a balance appro­ priate for his purposes to the situation at hand. This is a matter of both formulating appropriate distinctions and tak­ ing care that no extraneous oppositions creep into the utter­ ance. As language is of its nature patterned, there is a nega­ tive task of eliminating redundant and distorting oppositions as well as the positive task of producing appropriate opposi­ tions. Language then operates by making sufficient distinc­ tions for the task at hand. But what constitutes sufficient dis­ tinction for a given situation is very much at the mercy of the people involved in the situation. This provides dramatic possibilities which Pinter draws on frequently for a variety of purposes. In The Birthday Party comedy is generated from the in­ efficient organization of potential linguistic contrasts. In a conversation that is rambling and not carefully attended to, redundant contrasts can spring up and be very amusing. The opening dialogue of The Birthday Party involves an old couple whose conversation functions, as before, as a means of avoiding silence. Lengthy verbal establishment of presence and contact is built around the serving of cornflakes, the possibility of reading from a newspaper, and the weather. Petey responds to Meg's questions largely to make the ges47 F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. W. Baskin (New York, 1966), pp. 121-122.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

ture of responding, while all the time reading the paper. When Meg, reaching for another topic of conversation, men­ tions their lodger, Stanley, a peculiarly redundant contrast is evinced in the language. MEG: IS it nice out? PETEY: Very nice. Pause. MEG: IS Stanley up yet? PETEY: I don't know. Is he? MEG: I don't know. I haven't seen him down yet. PETEY: Well then, he can't be up. MEG: Haven't you seen him down? PETEY: I've only just come in. MEG: He must be still asleep.48

Two commonly contrasting words are used noncontrastively but in such close proximity to each other that the nonoperation of the contrast is confusing and amusingly banal. What is at issue in both of Meg's formulations is whether Stanley is awake or still asleep. The potential contrasts of (1) not up/'up = in bed or not in bed (2) down/not down = available for contact versus not available for contact (3) up/down = upstairs versus downstairs in the house are run together. The freewheeling dialogue produces the odd conclusion that if Stanley has not yet been seen "down," then "he can't be up." From the perspective of (3) an im­ possible conclusion, but from (1) and (2) quite acceptable. Such redundant contrasts and potentially confusing lan­ guage are largely humorous when they occur in a conversa­ tion where little is at stake but the reinforcement of the 48

The Birthday Party (London, 1966), p. 10.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

status quo of the relationship. But when the relationship is under negotiation, the fluid nature of language can provide the battleground for mutual hostilities. In The Dumb Waiter Gus and Ben are enclosed in a small room waiting to per­ form a task not yet communicated to them by their obscure employer. Their attitudes to their work and to their employer are gradually revealed, and their early harmony becomes in­ creasingly undermined as they become involved in a series of petty disagreements. In this situation the fluidity of lan­ guage provides a focus for their growing conflict. BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN: Gus: BEN : Gus: BEN:

GO on, go and light it. Eh? GO and light it. Light what? The kettle. You mean the gas. Who does? You do. (his eyes narrowing) What do you mean, I mean the gas? Well, that's what you mean, don't you? The gas. (powerfully) If I say go and light the kettle I mean go and light the kettle. How can you light a kettle? It's a figure of speech! Light the kettle. It's a figure of speech! I've never heard it. Light the kettle! It's common usage! I think you've got it wrong. (menacing) What do you mean? They say put on the kettle. (taut) Who says? They stare at each other, breathing hard.

T H E LANGUAGE PROBLEM

BEN: ( Deliberately.) I have never in all my life heard

anyone say put on the kettle. Gus: I bet my mother used to say it. BEN : Your mother? When did you last see your mother? 49 Here we have a fine example of the way in which a trivial topic can be the focus of much more significant issues. As this conversation is preceded by Gus's using the term "light the kettle" and is succeeded by Ben's using "put on the kettle," it is clear in the context that the argument is not a disinterested quest for settlement of "normal" usage. What is at issue is the mutual status of the characters in the rela­ tionship. Gus's attempt to correct Ben is simply an attempt to undermine his stature by catching him in error. Ben's strong counterattack reveals his awareness that it is his authority in their relationship that is at stake. There is, however, another dimension to this situation— the danger for both Gus and Ben if no satisfactory solution is arrived at. Mutual certainty about language is also cer­ tainty about a shared reality. As we have stressed that lan­ guage has no given core or given boundary, words have no final fixed function. With language operating not by precise reference but by making sufficient distinctions for the situa­ tion in which it is used, distinctions that are superfluous to the local context are often left unspecified. While this can be a source of comedy in a dialogue like that between Petey and Meg, it can also be a source of great stress for people earnestly pursuing an important conversation. Because of this we often pause when talking to receive confirmation that we are making sufficiently precise distinctions to suit our companions. If this confirmation is not given, acute problems 40 The Dumb Waiter, in "The Room" and "The Dumb Waiter" (London, 1966), pp. 47-48.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

can arise. But worse, if two people find themselves at odds over a particular usage, then the mode of confirming their mutual sense of reality breaks down. As there is no given, precise relationship between words and things, language de­ pends on mutual recognition of sufficiency of distinction in order to operate. If disputes break out, it is very difficult to settle them. Truth or reality cannot be appealed to because they are frequently the very things at issue. Appeals can be made to "common usage," but this itself is usually appealed to by an individual in support of the way he uses language. Such conflicts, lacking external arbitration, can only be settled by the imposition of authority by the dominant per­ sonality involved. If this authority is challenged by the other person, the characters, as here, are left in a maddening im­ passe. The implicit threat to both Ben and Gus is registered in their mounting anger. As the value of the relationship for both characters is dependent on mutual understanding, it is also dependent on mutual agreement on linguistic usage. They cannot agree to differ and leave it at that, as this would acknowledge a rift in their relationship, which neither desires. Their combat is over the terms of their relationship, not over its existence. Ultimately such a conflict has to be solved by one or the other giving way and accepting the status of the relationship that this would imply. Eventually, Ben enforces such a solu­ tion by resorting to physical coercion. He demands of Gus: "Who's the senior partner here, me or you?" and then rein­ forces his position by grabbing Gus "with two hands by the throat, at arm's length," 50 an action alarmingly extreme if one equates the function of a conversation with the topic discussed, but an inevitable result if the function of the con­ versation is clearly understood. In the given situation, "light the kettle" would be quite sufficient indication for the task 50

The Oumb Waiter, p. 48.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

at hand if Gus did not decide to make an issue of it. Once the issue is raised it can only be solved by the establishment of authority on the part of one or the other of the characters. The question of usage, of what constitutes sufficient and appropriate distinction, is always available as an issue onto which characters can project their latent conflicts. In the interrelational function of language, linguistic imprecision is both a potential source and a potential focus of disharmony in relationships. The preceding elevation of a redundant distinction to a focus of conflict is based on a disagreement over the quality of a distinction in a given situation. In The Birthday Party conflict is waged not in terms of quality of usage but by the sheer weight, variety, and quantity of usage. Stanley is con­ fronted by two visitors, who overcome his self-confidence neither by employing silence nor by concentrating on an in­ efficient use of language. They verbally bludgeon him into submission and silence by the sheer number and variety of their accusations. A long series of questions and accusations, to which he is hardly given time to reply, culminates with: MCCANN: GOLDBERG: STANLEY: GOLDBERG: MCCANN : GOLDBERG: MCCANN: GOLDBERG: STANLEY: MCCANN: GOLDBERG:

You're a traitor to the cloth. What do you use for pyjamas? Nothing. YOU verminate the sheet of your birth. What about the Albigensenist heresy? Who watered the wicket in Melbourne? What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett? Speak up Webber. Why did the chicken cross the road? He wanted to—he wanted to—he wanted to . . . He doesn't know! Why did the chicken cross the road?

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

STANLEY: GOLDBERG.· STANLEY: MCCANN:

He wanted to—he wanted to . . . Why did the chicken cross the road? He wanted . . . He doesn't know. He doesn't know which came first! GOLDBERG: Which came first? MCCANN : Chicken? Egg? Which came first? GOLDBERG AND MCCANN : Which came first? Which came first? Which came first? Stanley screams. 51

Language that would appear random and inconsistent from the perspective of a referential approach is simply controlled diversity from the perspective of the interrelational function. But some critics, seeking to make sense of the impact of this onslaught on Stanley, have searched the list of accusations to find the "true" one to which Stanley finally proved vul­ nerable. Lois Gordon, for example, picks on the accusation "Mother defiler!" to postulate that "In an effort to deny an amorous relationship with his mother, whereupon he usurped his father's place in the household, Stanley has moved to a new land and become the hopeful son of his present fam­ ily." 52 To select one such accusation and ignore the others seems rather arbitrary even if Stanley's relationship with Meg might give some support to it. In fact, neither the play nor the process of accusation concentrates on or culminates in any link between Stanley and his mother. All of these accusations are devices whose power is born of their number and variety, not of their accuracy or even relevance to Stan51

The Birthday Party, pp. 51-52. L. G. Gordon, Stratagems to Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas of Harold Pinter (University of Missouri Press, 1969), p. 21. Cf. also p. 27: "The Oedipal son, Stanley, is incapable of establishing a meaning­ ful relationship with any woman; he has won his mother from his father, but he feels such guilt that he must punish all women." 52

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

ley's past or present life. Their function is to overcome Stan­ ley by the quantity of accusation, not by the truth-quality of any particular accusation. Here again the language is pri­ marily used in the negotiation of the relationship between Stanley and his visitors rather than for its overall referential possibilities. If anything, the diversity of potential referential usage is subordinated to and organized by an interrelational motive and goal. The point to be grasped about the verbal activity in a Pin­ ter play is that language is not so much a means of referring to structure in personal relationships as a means of creating it. Characters are constantly engaged in exploring, reinforc­ ing, or changing the relationship that obtains between them and their current situations. To overlook the extensive scope that Pinter gives to this function of language is to miss what is fundamental to his drama. To read his plays in terms of a primarily referential function of language is not only to miss the essential but to distort it beyond our descriptive grasp. The activity of conversation in a Pinter play is a voyage of discovery. Facts, opinions, hypotheses, etc., are not given simply to transmit objective information; they are used for particular purposes. An essential purpose is to create and confirm a mutual sense of reality: "The fact is that in sharing experience with others man is using language to make that experience real to himself." 53 The major tension in the plays grows from the conflict generated by incompatible demands of what that reality should be. In the Pinter world, the ex­ ploration and confirmation of relationships is the central focus of the verbal activity of the characters. On it hinges their capacity not to achieve public goals whether social, political or religious, but basically to confirm their estimate of their own identity and to survive. The confirmation of a 53

p. 6.

J. Dixon, Growth through English (Reading, England, 1967),

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

companion is the chief arbiter of reality in the Pinter world. "All of us test the validity of what we have said by sensing how far others that we trust have shared our response." 54 The need for such mutual confirmation runs very deep, and in singling out this use of language, Pinter has constructed a new dynamic of dialogue in which the coercive power of social conversation becomes the focus of character confronta­ tion. The conflict that is essential to all drama is generated by the interrelational coercive dialogue of characters who are at crucial points of adjustment between themselves and the environment to which they are currently exposed.

SECTION 3: THE STRUCTURAL IMPLICATIONS

Though the approach to Pinter's language outlined above can contribute to an understanding of the detailed working of the dialogue, there is still the problem of understanding the structural consequences of the dominant interrelational function. The paradoxical opinions on the structure of Pin­ ter's plays can be better understood if we perceive this structure as the result of language's functioning in a way that has not hitherto been adequately grasped. The frequent assertions that Pinter's plays are structurally perfect but thematically vacuous are clearly related to the general prob­ lem of failing to grasp the variety of ways in which language can carry information. Three important issues are relevant here: relationships, explicitness, and sequence. The significance of sequence is tentatively confronted by Taylor. Lamenting the difficulties that Pinter's plays present to the critic, he concludes reluc­ tantly: "The most, finally, that the critic can do is describe, retell the story in less effective terms, and hope thereby to 54

Dixon, Growth through English, p. 8.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

convey something of its quality." 55 Since such a prominent critic is driven to this tack, there is clearly something of sig­ nificance in the area that he chooses, even reluctantly, as a potential haven. Taylor's mistake, it seems, is simply one of losing faith in his own instincts. He concedes too readily that criticism giving prominence to sequence is doing no more than retelling the story of the play. Certainly there are grounds for this belief. If we look for a moment at Forster's Aspects of the Novel, we find that in distinguishing story from plot he emphasizes the importance of sequence: "We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. . . . If [an incident] is in a story we say 'and then?' If it is in a plot we ask 'why?'" 56 This is a useful way of distinguishing two aspects of a literary text, but it does not necessarily lead to Taylor's conclusion. Though all that is story is sequential, not all that is sequential is necessarily story. Taylor rightly perceives something un­ usual in the relation of structure to sequence in a Pinter play but wrongly assumes that criticism dealing with se­ quence is dealing only with story. One component of "what" is said in any utterance is the factor of "when" the words are spoken. In language dominated by the interrelational function the importance of the "when" factor is unusually high. It is the unusual prominence of the "when" factor that Taylor is reacting to; if we do not reduce this factor to "story," as he does, we can begin to come to grips with an important aspect of Pinter's plays. To understand the precise significance of "what is happen­ ing now" onstage an accurate awareness is needed of the con­ text that gives an event its significance. In any situation a particular character's reaction to a particular incident is 03 iG

J. R. Taylor, Harold Pinter (Essex, 1969), p. 30. E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (Middlesex, 1963), pp. 93-94.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

likely to be as dependent on who else is present as on the other characteristics of the external incident. A knowledge of an individual's previous experience with the other people involved is frequently as important to our understanding of his reactions as a knowledge of his previous exposure to such incidents. In Pinter's plays, however, the predominant in­ fluence on a character is frequently the former rather than the latter. Indeed, verbal and nonverbal events are often organized by individual characters solely to influence the course of the relationship in which they are involved. The reactions of Ben and Gus to the issue of lighting the gas stove and the reactions of Mark and Len to the issue of the existence of God are largely dictated by the kind of impact that each character anticipates his reaction will have on the other person present. Such influence is, of course, by no means uncommon in any play. Distinctive in Pinter is the degree to which the development of dialogue depends upon this factor. A considerable burden is placed on the audience, which must be able to infer something of the previous joint experience of the characters if it is to understand the context in which current events are operating. This is a problem for any playwright but a particularly acute one here. The basic problem for Pinter is that truths about the past and present of a relationship are not readily available, given the unreliable nature of potential informants. In other plays, in which truths about the central concerns demonstrably exist independent of an individual character's construction of them, it is possible to organize a conversation onstage in which explicit statement will convey the "reliable" version to the audience. But in a Pinter play the dominant interrelational function obviates this possibility. We are provided with only a variety of potential truths, each of which is heavily influenced by the needs of the speaker at the mo­ ment it is voiced. (Examples of this abound in The Collee-

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

tion, which focuses upon the difficulty of establishing any single truth about a putative marital indiscretion.) If the plays are to provide anything more than the fragmentation of opposed viewpoints, the structure of a particular play must serve to narrow the possibilities of truth to the degree that is appropriate to the rendition of the particular work. And this, it seems, is one of the major structural problems that Pinter faces: how to make clear to the audience what is never ex­ plicitly acknowledged by any of the characters onstage. It is in terms of this structural problem that the issue of explicitness becomes relevant once more. When it is realized that the principal context in which the language functions is not that of a reality that exists independent of the characters, but a reality that is constantly being negotiated by them, the origin of the problem of explicitness becomes clear. As the central concern of the characters is with the ways in which issues are likely to be construed by their joint past experience, the kind of explicitness that characterizes their dialogue is governed by awarenesses that the audience does not initially share. In situations where characters meet for the first time, the characters are placed in the position of having to guess at the nature of the potential common ground between them. And the nature of these guesses is guided by a character's previous experience in other relationships, again an area to which the audience has only gradual access. Yet the truth of a given situation cannot be simply spelled out to the audience when either none of the characters onstage is yet certain of what the truth of the situation is, or the characters who are aware of what that truth might be find it necessary or useful to avoid acknowledging it. This is what has given rise to criticism that suggests that Pinter deliberately confuses his audience and refuses to give them sufficient information to understand the plays. Again, a comment by Taylor is rele­ vant: "The technique of casting doubt upon everything by

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

matching each apparently clear and unequivocal statement with an equally clear and unequivocal statement of its con­ trary . . . is one which we shall find used constantly in Pinter's plays to create an air of mystery and uncertainty." 37 But what Taylor has perceived here is not simply a device for creating audience uncertainty; it is a thematic consequence of plays that deal with truth and reality as negotiable concepts. The kind of explicitness that is available is not the single kind that the reference theory encourages us to expect, but a dif­ ferent kind that relies heavily on the previous mutual experi­ ence of the characters involved. As this experience is not directly available to the audience, the structure of the plays must serve to provide the appropriate degree of explicitness in ways that do not require direct statement by any of the characters. If we return for a moment to Brown's comments on struc­ ture we find that he was aware of some aspects of this prob­ lem. He touches upon the issue of explicitness when he sug­ gests that the basic concern of a Pinter play is a "progressive disclosure of antagonisms, desires or appetites which were hidden at the beginning." This leads him to assert that structurally "the whole play is Exposition" for "Exposition has become Development, and Conclusion as well." 58 But, as Brown subsequently acknowledges, some of the things that he regards as "hidden" at the beginning are hidden from some or all of the characters as well as from the audience. Many of the issues that become manifest in the play may reasonably be regarded as having existed prior to the action of the play, but insofar as they are made explicit in the relationships for the first time, they register as new. That some of the external factors may remain the same is no 57

J. R. Taylor, Anger and After (Middlesex, 1968), p. 287. J. R. Brown, "Mr. Pinter's Shakespeare," Critical Quarterly, ν (Autumn 1963), 251. 58

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

reason to assume that development is reduced to exposition. The central context in which the action of the plays takes place is that construction of reality that the characters have so far negotiated. But this negotiation is usually incomplete or unstable in the areas upon which the plays focus. Indeed, it is this very element of incompleteness or instability that makes these areas central. In depicting the characters' efforts to complete or renegotiate the consensus in these areas, the plays chart the progressive development of character relation­ ships, not simply the progressive revelation of them. The structure of the plays thus focuses attention not only upon the external events that impinge upon the characters' lives but also upon the ways in which new forms of explicitness are conceded by the characters to each other. An awareness of novelty in the latter sphere is as crucial to our under­ standing as an awareness of the occurrence of events in the former sphere. It is this focus on new developments in relationships that makes sequence so important in a Pinter play. Obviously, sequence is fundamental in the structure of any play, but it has a particularly crucial role here. The writer for the London Times whose remark on obscurity was quoted earlier is once again useful here: ". . . none of the individual things his characters say is very subtle or obscure. What is obscure, however, is the connection between any two things a char­ acter says . . . and even more the connection between what one character says and what another says afterwards."50 An understanding of the significance of what any character says in any play requires that we ask not only "what words did he utter?" but also "why did he say that now?" In a Pinter play, that always important second question becomes a factor of such major importance that one cannot begin 5 9 The Times (London), quoted by Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 13.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

to develop an interpretation without constant recourse to answers to it. This requires a kind of criticism that provides constant and detailed indication of the ways in which the "when" factor controls and dictates the significance of the words uttered at any given point. Without due attention to this factor, trivial topics remain the foundation for trivial discourse. With due attention to this factor, the trivial topics become the instruments and focus of issues that are anything but trivial. What is true for the interpretation of individual sentences and individual statements is also true of the larger structural units of the text. They, too, are unusually depend­ ent upon sequential ordering for any interpretation that progresses beyond the elementary and inaccurate. But those larger structural units are themselves in need of specification and explanation. A remark by Ruby Cohn in her recent book on contem­ porary drama is useful in this respect. At one point, she comments on a characteristic structural device in Pinter's plays and provides us with an insight she might well have developed further. Her comment that Pinter's "dramatic building block continues to be the duologue which is a verbal duel" 60 is, in the context of the current discussion, very illuminating. As the development of relationships is Pinter's central concern, then it follows that the major structural units of his work will coincide with major units of progress in these relationships. In effect, the categories of theme and structure fuse in the charting of significant episodes in the development of these relationships. The thematic structure of a Pinter play thus centers upon a series of juxtaposed duologues,61 each of which is heavily 6 0 R. Cohn, Currents in Contemporary Drama (Indiana University Press, 1969), p. 80. 6 1 This is not, of course, to rule out the situation in which more than two characters are present, but merely to draw attention to a major structural principle that runs throughout Pinter's oeuvre.

TIiE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

dependent for interpretation on its place in the sequence. And it is this utilization of sequence in the duologue struc­ ture that Pinter depends upon for communicating to the audience what is frequently never clear to all of the characters onstage. For much of the time, the audience is involved in the experience of the partial and inconsistent knowledge that so disrupts the lives of the characters. But an appropriate sequential revelation of perspectives provides the audience with a sufficiently precise knowledge of the parameters of possibility to allow it to make reasonable judgments as to the parameters of probability. These perspectives, each conveyed by a particular duologue, are not simply spatially contrasted but are heavily dependent upon sequence for their appropriate impact. It is the failure to perceive the role played by sequence in these duologues that leads Sykes to criticize The Room on the grounds that it is "rather crudely constructed on the principle of a many-layered sandwich." 62 She perceives one aspect of the play's structure but overlooks the way in which the sequential ordering of the parts controls their function. Taylor perceived the structural centrality of sequence but misunderstood its consequences. Certainly it is very difficult to select from a Pinter play quotations that provide explicit summations of its thematic concerns. The characters simply do not give vent to such statements. But the kind of sequence-oriented interpretation that is necessary in dealing with these plays is not merely a resort to "retelling the story"; it simply takes account of the unusual degree of prominence of the "when" factor in language dominated by the interrelational function. The sequential juxtaposition of a series of duologues is Pinter's way of organizing our percep­ tion of change in a relationship so that we may perceive the fact of change, the location of change, and, ultimately, the 02

A. Sykes, Harold Pinter (New York, 1970), p. 33.

THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

significance of change. The "crudity" or otherwise of this structural principle is not something to be debated outside of the context that gives it its function: the thematic development of the individual plays. Succeeding chapters deal with this issue and chart the structural and textual implications of the interrelational function of language in four plays that span Pinter's first decade as a playwright.

Ill THE ROOM A common language is a sort of social switchboard which commands the power grid of the driving forces of the society. The meaning of a great deal of speech behaviour is just the combined personal and social forces it can mobilize and direct. 1

XINIER 's first play, The Room, is also one of his most

puzzling works.2 Tension characterizes every relationship in the play though the sources of the tension are at best obliquely indicated. The conclusion focuses on the death of a blind Negro, who enters the play very late but is none­ theless central to the movement of the action portrayed. This late entry, with its consequent abridgement of informa­ tion about the Negro, has inevitably led to a variety of inspired guesses about who he is and what he represents. As accuracy in this area is both essential and difficult we are confronted with considerable critical disagreement and a variety of interpretations. The play is severally described as a failed satire,3 a "little allegory about life, death, and cosmic concepts," 4 "about two people in a room and how they invest that room with 1 J. R. Firth, "The Tongues of Men," in "The Tongues of Men" and "Speech" (London, 1966), p. 113. 2 The reader interested in further chronological, biographical, or com­ positional data is referred to A. P. Hinchliffe, Harold Pinter (New York, 1967) and M. Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (New York, 1970). 3 "Malice Domestic," Newsweek, December 21, 1964, p. 76. 4 A. Walker, "Messages from Pinter," Modem Drama, χ (May 1967), 1.

THE ROOM 5

the secrets of their concealed lives," an existential drama/ "an image of an aging woman's final confrontation with the reality of death,"and "simply about people bothering people who want to keep to themselves." 8 Hinchliffe extends the latter statement to a general comment on all of Pinter's plays, but as such it is inaccurate. Even as far as The Room is concerned, it glosses over a vital source of tension in the play: the tension between the desire to be left alone and the desire to know more about what one wants to be left alone by. This error is perpetuated by many critics and probably has its basis in Taylor's influential 1962 survey of modern English drama, Anger and After. His chapter on Pinter contains this comment on The Room's main character: ". . . essentially Rose, the Rose of the earlier scenes any­ way, belongs to that group of characteristic Pinter figures from his first phase . . . those who simply fear the world outside." 9 This generalization seems rather tenuous when applied to other plays and particularly misleading when applied to Rose. To miss the side of Rose's character that does more than "simply fear the world outside" is to miss the part of the play that prepares for the entry of the Negro. The latter is not only feared; he is also desired,10 and Rose 5 J. R. Hollis, Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 21. 6 W. Kerr, Harold Pinter (Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 10-13. 7 P. C. Thornton, "Blindness and Confrontation with Death: Three Plays by Harold Pinter," Die Neueren Sprachen, xvn (May 1968), 215. 8 Hinchliffe, Harold Pinter, p. 43. 9 J. R. Taylor, Anger and After (Middlesex, 1968), p. 288. 10 K. H. Burlcman also draws attention to this point but uses it to support the view that Bert, not Riley, is the enemy for Rose. In fact, it is Rose's ambivalence that draws Bert and Riley into opposition, and their confrontation externalizes her inner conflict rather than indicating a husband's hostility toward his wife's father. See K. H. Burkman, The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual (Ohio State University Press, 1971), pp. 71-72.

THE ROOM

is not the victim of an arbitrary intruder but the victim of her own fundamental ambivalence. Like the matchseller in A Slight Ache and Goldberg and McCann in The Birthday Party, the Negro bases his power as a disrupting intruder more on the individual vulnerabilities of Rose than on any remarkable powers of his own. This point is given physical emphasis in A Slight Ache and The Room, in which the intruders are silent and blind respectively, and it should be noted in both cases that the intruder is invited in. Rose is vulnerable because she is ambivalent about her role and her life in "the room," and this internal conflict is externalized in the final confrontation between Bert and Riley. The basis of this ambivalence is of crucial importance to an understanding of the play, as the developments it gives rise to culminate in the arrival of Riley. The play is built around this gradual process, and in approaching its structure we need to recall Cohn's suggestion that Pinter's "dramatic building block continues to be the duologue which is a verbal duel." 11 Applied with an awareness of the extensive scope that Pinter gives to the interrelational function of language, this suggestion provides us with an approach to the structure of the play. As indicated in Chapter II, relation­ ships fuse the categories of theme and structure in a Pinter play, and it is the separate conversations, the duologues, in which developing relationships are explored, that provide the major units of development. The Room is made up of six such conversation-units. These conversations are linked by a series of recurring motifs, by the constant presence of Rose, and by the constant location—the room itself. They can be listed as follows: pp. 7-11 11-16

1. Rose and Bert 2. Rose and Mr. Kidd (with Bert present)

11 R. Cohn, Currents in Contemporary Drama (Indiana University Press, 1969), p. 80.

THE R O O M

17-24 25-28 28-31 31-32

3. 4. 5. 6.

Rose and Mr. and Mrs. Sands Rose and Mr. Kidd (with Bert absent) Rose and Riley Rose, Riley, and Bert

We need to establish the significance of each of these units by describing their internal structure and also the external patterns that develop between them to form the unity of the play.

SECTION 1: ROSE AND BERT (PP. 7-11)

Noting the constant tension in the relationships of Pinter's characters, Lois Gordon suggests that "Pinter's assault is levelled at the sources responsible for [the] terrible disparity between one's acts and impulses—civilization itself . . . the shackles and misery that are man's inevitable lot when he enters into the company of other men. . . . There is some­ thing about the nature of the individual that is incompatible with the communities of men." 12 To generalize this problem to an assault on civilization is to move the point of focus from personal relationships toward ephemeral social struc­ tures of one kind or another. Pinter leads no assault on civilization or on anything else. His plays explore the more basic problem that Gordon mentions, the potential con­ straints imposed upon the individual when he comes into contact with other individuals. But these constraints are not wholly negative in nature; the constraints involved for a given person in a given relationship can also be balanced by compensations that the individual may find indispensable. As indicated in Chapter II, the central irony of Pinter's plays is that a character can only substantiate his sense of his 12 L. G. Gordon, Stratagems to Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas of Hdrold Pinter (University of Missouri Press, 1969), p. 8.

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individuality by operating in relationships which acknowledge and affirm that individuality; yet as soon as he enters into a relationship he is confronted with the complementary demands of his companion. The resulting compromise is negotiated in the dialogue, and if the conflicting demands are excessive, the compromise can be one of dangerously balanced, rather than resolved, tensions. It is the latter situation that we encounter in the opening scene of The Room. Rose talks, with Bert present, for an extended period, and Bert never enters into the potential conversation, even when addressed directly by name. As previously indicated, silence is not a neutral activity. By refusing to make the responses that would meet the demands of Rose's language, Bert is refusing to confirm that their relationship is as Rose would wish it to be. She casts him in the role of one dependent on her motherly supervision, and he simply refuses to participate in a conversation that defines their relationship in this way. But there is a second com­ ponent to their relationship. Not only does Bert refuse to acknowledge Rose's demands, Rose also refuses to acknowl­ edge Bert's silence. She continues to talk as if he were participating in her conversation on the terms she is dictating. There is no explicit acknowledgement of the friction between them. He never tells her to be quiet, and she never demands that he reply. We are faced with a relationship that has reached a fixed point of discord, a discord that is not acknowl­ edged by either character but is manifest in every facet of their relationship. The lack of explicit acknowledgement of their discord is important. If the discord were all that their relationship consisted of, they might just as well part. But, in fact, they stay together for reasons which are only gradually revealed, and this is a major function of the opening scene. Rose talks, partly to fill the silence, but mainly to record, reiterate, and

THE ROOM

reshape those components of her existence that give her life a meaning she can value. The room itself is one such component, and she dwells on its warmth, its cosiness, and its convenience: "If they ever ask you, Bert, I'm quite happy where I am. We're quiet, we're all right. You're happy up here. It's not far up either, when you come in from outside. And we're not bothered. And nobody bothers us" (p. 9). But the very fact of her saying this, the very need to verbalize what might well have been assumed, raises the possibility of her doubts as well as her reasons for overcoming those doubts. She is not simply trying to convince Bert, who probably isn't listening, anyway; she is also trying to convince herself. Jf this were only an isolated statement, it might simply indicate a savoring and sharing of satisfaction. But when it recurs several times, the strength of her inner doubt is increasingly confirmed by the persistent need to invalidate it. This is all right for me. (p. 8) . . . . this room's all right for me. I mean, you know where you are. When it's cold for instance, (p. 8) This is a good room. You've got a chance in a place like this. . . . Like when they offered us the basement here I said no straight off. I knew that'd be no good. The ceiling right on top of you. No, you've got a window here, you can move yourself, you can come home at night, if you have to go out, you can do your job, you can come home, you're all right. And I'm here. You stand a chance, (p. 11) Rose's affirmation of the benefits of the room is contrasted with the room itself—a sparsely furnished place which serves Rose and Bert as bedroom, living room and kitchen com­ bined. But for Rose it is a place which meets some of her

THE ROOM

needs. It gives her security and it gives her life a structure. In tending Bert's needs here she also ministers to her own. Rose's attitude to the room is similar to her attitude to Bert. His shortcomings, like the room's, are dealt with by talking them out of existence. Ignoring Bert's silence, she casts herself as one vitally concerned in providing Bert with food, information, advice, encouragement, nursing, and admiration. She constantly projects his needs in order to define for herself a variety of functions in their relationship. Whether her first priority is his needs or her own comes quickly into question as Bert's participation in her projections seems limited to consuming the food she cooks and serves. The information, the advice, the encouragement, and the admiration are all ignored, and Rose is left to fantasize the indispensable role she would have played if Bert had ever become seriously ill: "I'd have pulled you through" (p. 9). Here again the needs of her self-image seem to be served as much as any unselfish concern for Bert's health. The most important aspect of the latter fantasy, however, is its link with her methods of reinforcing her valuation of the room. Rose constantly shores up her commitment to the life she leads by relying on comparisons with alternatives. Thus, the merits of the room are extolled by referring to the disadvantages of living in the basement or by contrasting the warmth and light inside with the dark and cold outside. The method itself is indicative of the paucity of obvious advantages displayed by the room. But more important, the range of comparison and the repetition of certain comparisons give us important information about Rose. It gradually becomes apparent that these comparisons are dwelt upon not only for the purpose of confirming the benefits of life in the room but also as a source of escape from the limitations of that life. To Rose, the room is not solely a haven, an escape from the outside—as many critics have

THE ROOM

suggested—though this is certainly one of its functions. In fact, she is also fascinated by and drawn toward the mysteri­ ous life that she has cut herself off from. She rises, goes to the window, and looks out. It's quiet. Be coming on for dark. There's no one about. She stands, looking. Wait a minute. Pause. I wonder who that is. Pause. No. I thought I saw someone. Pause. No. She drops the curtain, (p. 10) Throughout this first scene Rose is uncertain about her commitment to the life she leads, and this uncertainty is repeatedly indicated in the detail of her speech. On the one hand, she stresses the benefits of not being bothered by people where they live, and, on the other, she is fascinated by the thought of who might be living elsewhere in the house and who might be passing outside. She emphasizes the benefit of the cosy warmth in the room but dwells on the windy, cold world outside the house. But the most frequently recurring manifestation of her ambivalence is her fascination with the basement of the house. While rejecting its value relative to their room, she returns to it obsessively. Initially it seems merely an innocuous comparison. . . . . the room keeps warm. It's better than the base­ ment, anyway, (p. 7) But, as she returns repeatedly to this topic, it gradually takes on a greater significance. The damp, running walls of the basement, its small size, its low ceiling and lack of a window

THE ROOM

are all commented upon, but this repeated emphasis on its unsuitability as a place to live is combined with speculations as to who might nevertheless be living there. I wouldn't like to live in that basement. Did you ever see the walls? They were running, (p. 8) I don't know who lives down there now. Whoever it is, they're taking a big chance. Maybe they're foreigners. (P. 9) I wonder who has got it now. I've never seen them, or heard of them. But I think someone's down there, (p. 11) Rose invests the basement with an ugliness and strangeness that goes well beyond her need for advantageous comparison with her room. Even her indication that it was once offered to them and that she, not Bert, turned it down is insufficient justification for her obsession with it and its inhabitants. Her compulsive dwelling on this topic subsequently gives rise to a comic conversation between herself and Mr. Kidd, who fails to substantiate her belief that it is so excessively uninhabitable. It must get a bit damp downstairs. Not as bad as upstairs. What about downstairs? Eh? What about downstairs? What about it? Must get a bit damp. MR. KIDD: A bit. Not as bad as upstairs though. ROSE: Why's that? MR. KIDD: The rain comes in. Pause, (p. 14) ROSE: MR. KIDD: ROSE: MR. KIDD: ROSE: MR. KIDD: ROSE:

The short conversation runs at cross purposes as Mr. Kidd operates on the assumption that the topic is dampness in

THE ROOM

rooms, while for Rose the essential topic is the basement itself. Mr. Kidd's straightforward attitude to the basement con­ trasts sharply with Rose's fascination with it, and this is important. Walter Kerr, commenting on the play, suggests that the room is a "solid-inside-a-void environment" 13 in which "whatever impinges directly upon the consciousness is the sum total of what can be known."14 Outside the room is an alien unstructured void which can be commented on but cannot be defined or controlled. The mistake here is to accept Rose's version of the outside to the exclusion of the views of other characters. Mr. Kidd may be evasive at times, but he talks as if the world outside is fully structured. The Sands mention the quiet district the house is located in and comment on the pleasant appearance of its exterior. Bert, too, seems to have no trouble locating and driving his van, and overall there is enough to suggest that the world outside is quite a normal one. What Kerr has done is to accept as valid an image of the world outside which is in fact a pro­ jection of Rose's inner needs. The cold, dark, damp, windy, alien world that Rose describes tells us more about Rose than about the world outside. She is fascinated by what she describes as repulsive. The unpleasantness of her view of the world outside is born of her need to believe it is ugly in order to substantiate her contentment at being inside. But even in its ugliness, the outer world obsesses her, and her internal tension is externalized in the back and forth motion of the rocking chair to which she repeatedly returns. Lacking the verbal confirmation she needs from Bert, Rose uses repetition and contrast to keep herself content in Bert's world. But the contrasts themselves become fascinating 1 3 Kerr, liIbid.,

Harold Pinter, p. 14. p. 13.

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because they are other possibilities, not just because they show her present state in a beneficent light. Bert's refusal to serve as a mode of confirmation of Rose's role in life turns her elsewhere for a substitute, and this substitute, this method of advantageous comparison, begins gradually to reveal the possibility of a life in which Bert is totally substituted. The preparation for Riley's entry and the foun­ dation of his power develop directly from the internal conflict that Rose demonstrates in this opening scene. Far from being a deus ex machina, Riley focuses and externalizes a side of Rose's character which, though severely restricted at the beginning of the play, is nonetheless manifest in her opening meandering speech. But while the opening scene provides clear, if often missed, indications of the significance of the play's conclusion, it does not provide much indication of what gave rise to the opening situation. For that we must go on to other sections. SECTION 2: ROSE AND MR. KIDD—BERT PRESENT (PP. 11-16)

With Mr. Kidd's entry, we have someone available who is ready and willing to converse with Rose. The latter's one-sided, complex speech to her silent husband gives way to what promises to be a more "normal" form of conver­ sation. But instead of becoming more clear, the problems and ambiguities of the opening section are multiplied by the landlord's readiness to converse. The volubility of Kidd, like the silence of Bert, serves only to increase the uncertainties of Rose's world. Language, like silence, can be a means of evasion. But it would be wrong to follow Hinchliffe and conclude that Mr. Kidd "arrives, talks, but does not com­ municate." 15 To suggest that "His conversation tells Rose 15

Hinchliffe, Harold Pinter, p. 43.

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nothing . . ." 16 is to fall into the error of believing that language carries information in only one way. In fact, his conversation tells Rose enough to make her very suspicious of his honesty. His regular failure to meet the terms of Rose's questions has prompted many critics to regard him as deaf, senile, or insane. But as Esslin points out, he "dis­ plays no symptoms of mental incapacity" 17 elsewhere in the play, and his hearing seems unexceptionable later when he is persuading Rose to admit Riley. Once we reject these explanations of his conduct, we are on the way to realizing that in the world of the play the odd opening "conversation" between Rose and Bert is not really so very odd. It is merely one example of what is also true of the Rose/Kidd relationship and of all the relationships in the play. Language is not used in these relationships simply to convey objective information. Rather, it is an instrument open to a variety of uses in the process of relating to others. Mr. Kidd's oblique response to Rose's language is not a sign of insanity; it is a mode of refusal, a method of evasion. Like Bert, he is not ready to tell Rose all she wants to know; he is not willing to allow her to relate to him as one who is entitled to know the details of his life. The details themselves may be trivial, but if Rose, or anyone else, wants to know them, then they may have a significance that has hitherto eluded him. His language, like Bert's silence, is a defehse against forces that he feels are antagonistic. Pinter's comment on the "failure of communication" issue is useful here: "I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well . . . and that what takes place is continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty 10

17

Ibid., p. 44. M. Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 64.

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within us is too fearsome a possibility." 18 It is this, not senility, that prompts Kidd to reply to Rose in the following manner: ROSE: HOW many floors you got in this house? MR. KIDD: Floors. (He laughs.) Ah, we had a good few

of them in the old days. ROSE: HOW many have you got now? MR. KrDD: Well, to tell you the truth, I don't count

them now. (p. 14) Likewise, it is overconcern for his social image as landlord of a good house, rather than hearing problems, that accounts for his excessive denial of Rose's suggestion that he had a female help in the house: ROSE:

I thought you had a woman to help.

MR. KrDD.- I haven't got any woman. ROSE:

I thought you had one when we first came.

MR. KrDD: No women here. ROSE:

Maybe I was thinking of somewhere else.

MR. KTDD: Plenty of women round the corner. Not here though. Oh no. Eh, have I seen that

before? (p. 12) Reacting to what he feels are the implications of Rose's re­ marks, Kidd interprets her suggestions as an attack on his moral status and he defends himself first by denial and then by changing the subject to counterattack Rose. His final sen­ tence above leads into an assertion of previous knowledge of her room. To Rose, whose life is so intimately bound up with the room, this is indeed a vulnerable area. Kidd hints that the rocking chair has a hidden significance, which might 18 H. Pinter, "Between the Lines," The Sunday Times (London), March 4, 1962, mag. sec., p. 25.

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seem trivial out of context, but in terms of their conflict is a subtle move. The conversation between the pair becomes a series of at­ tacks, evasions, and counterattacks as each seeks to outmaneuver the other, and Kidd's defensive maneuvering gives further indication of the diversity of language dominated by the interrelational function. As was suggested in Chapter II, there is a continuum of possible responses to a given state­ ment, running from silence at one end to total conformity on the other. But within the continuum are a vast number of ways of responding in terms of the former pole with answers disguised as ones from the latter pole; Kidd makes full use of these as he gets into awkward situations: ROSE: When did she die then, your sister? MR. KIDD: Yes, that's right, it was after she died that I

must have stopped counting, (p. 15) Here the topic of the death of the sister is responded to, but not the essence of the question, which dealt with time. The utterances are linked, but obliquely. ROSE: When was this your bedroom? MR. KIDD: A good while back. (p. 14)

Kidd's response this time meets the request for a time speci­ fication but supplies only a vague time instead of the pre­ cision Rose seeks. The battle continues with Rose questioning his hearing her husband drive off in the morning on the grounds that his bedroom is at the back of the house and out of earshot. He evades this by refusing to confirm the whereabouts of his bedroom and by saying that he was somewhere else at the time—again not specifying where. Kidd then counterattacks by reminding Rose of her status as tenant and temporary occupant of the room she so depends on: "This was my bed-

THE

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room. . . . when I lived here" (p. 13), he remarks, and indicates Rose's beloved room. This, in terms of the battle, is a lethal remark, and Kidd, far from being senile, seems very perceptive in pinpointing Rose's vulnerabilities. The conversation becomes a battle over who can claim or suggest knowledge of the other's life in a threatening area. Pinter indicates beautifully the maneuvering mind of Rose when she returns some two pages later to the bedroom topic, using it as a means of catching Kidd off guard. The question de­ rives from her earlier query of how he could hear her hus­ band leaving in the morning, but she manages to present it in matter-of-fact terms as a restart to conversation after a pause. The apparently innocent question is anything but innocent: "Where's your bedroom now then, Mr. Kidd?" Pinning down the whereabouts of his bedroom has become a focus of their conflict, and he is well tuned-in to the nature of the attack: "Me? I can take my pick" (pp. 15-16). This is a neat evasion, but unfortunately contradicts his statement five lines earlier that the house is "packed out" (p. 15). It is examples like the latter that led Taylor to believe that Pinter was engaging in cheap mystification by matching statements of fact with statements of the contrary. "The technique of casting doubt upon everything by matching each apparently clear and unequivocal statement with an equally clear and unequivocal statement of its contrary . . . is one which we shall find used constantly in Pinter's plays to create an air of mystery and uncertainty." 19 As was pointed out in the preceding chapter, this is not the tech­ nique, and this is not the purpose. The contradictions are not born of a simple desire to confuse the audience. Rather, they occur because the truth or falsity of a statement is not a dominant criterion for its use. The appeal to "facts" is subordinated to and governed by the interrelational require19

Taylor, A n g e r a n d A f t e r , p. 287.

THE ROOM ment of the situation at hand. In this situation it is not "truth" that gives a set of statements its power, but con­ sistency. A character's strength is a function of his capacity to uphold consistent positions in the face of a variety of conflicting demands; and, conversely, the major failure for a participant is inconsistency. Thus Kidd is being outmaneuvered by Rose when he contradicts himself on how full his house is, and this, not mystification, is the point of the con­ trast. As Kidd becomes increasingly flustered by Rose's per­ sistent questioning, we perceive an oblique indication of one of the causes of Bert's silence. Her attempt to disorient and dominate Mr. Kidd parallels her excessive mothering of Bert in the opening section. Her concern over what Bert does and what he wears, and her readiness even to pour the salt and pepper on his meal for him begin to look like symptoms of a constant urge to dominate the men in her life. Her ability to outtalk Mr. Kidd hints at a possible earlier stage of her rela­ tionship with Bert. Defending himself against further questioning on the or­ ganization of his house, Mr. Kidd goes off on a reminiscence about his sister and his family. But unlike Rose, Mr. Kidd's control of his language is not commensurate with the de­ mands he makes on it. Unnerved by Rose's questioning, he gets himself into a series of difficulties. He becomes con­ fused over whether his mother was a Jewess, whether his sister or mother had many children, and what his sister died of. An important indicator of the doubtful veracity of his statements and his loss of control of the situation is his mis­ use of two words. He refers to his mother's offspring as "babies" (when they would be much more likely to come to mind as his brothers and sisters), and he refers to his sister's bedroom as her "boudoir" (an indication of a possi­ ble confusion of memories of a sister with memories or fantasies of a different female relationship). It is partly this

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misuse of words that prompts Rose to exclaim on his exit "I don't believe he had a sister, ever" (p. 16). The inappropriate use of words is as revealing as the inconsistent assertion of facts. Both reveal Mr. Kidd's inability to cope with Rose in the process of verbal interaction. In Kidd's talking to Rose we find an indication of why Bert maintains a silence. To resist Rose's domineering, Mr. Kidd talks. To resist Rose's domineering, Bert remains silent. Both methods are partially effective, but both demand their price. SECTION 3: ROSE AND MK. AND MRS. SANDS (PP. 17-24)

The Rose/Kidd section served us with one pole of com­ parison for the relationship between Rose and Bert; the Sands' relationship provides us with another. At first glance, the marriage of this voluble couple seems to contrast strongly with the marriage of Rose and Bert with its rather different version of oblique conversation. Before we look further at the Sands' relationship, however, we must note one very important point. Though Rose is initially shocked by the discovery of the Sands just outside her door, she reveals few qualms about inviting them in. This supports the point that she is not just clinging to her room as a haven and escape from the outside. She is constantly struggling to reconcile her fears and insecurities to the persistent curiosity that she feels toward people outside the room. The invitation to the Sands links with her preoccupation with people outside, people in the basement, Mr. Kidd's activities, etc., to under­ line her interest in what lies beyond the room. Unlike the preceding relationships introduced in the play, the Rose/Sands relationship seems to have no previous his­ tory. TTheir meeting seems simply to be the product of the chance opening of a door. And once they leave we never hear from them again. But their entry at this point does

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more than simply provide another married couple with whom we can compare Rose and Bert. It also provides us with an indication of how Rose copes with strangers. The Rose/Sands relationship needs structuring from the foundations up. Much of their opening dialogue is therefore filled with ques­ tions and a tentative search for common ground. It is impor­ tant to grasp the contrast of this uncertain conversation with Rose's much more positive attitude toward Riley when he enters later. Confusion is an immediate factor in the embryonic rela­ tionship of Rose and the Sands. But the focus of that con­ fusion is an issue that Rose finds rather disturbing. The Sands' assertion that the landlord is not called Kidd threat­ ens to undermine the organization and security of Rose's world, for it is he who gives her authority over her room. But, in spite of her vulnerability in this area, she betrays no qualms about inviting the Sands to come in. And once in­ side, their marital disharmony provides an indication of their function in the play. The immediate battle between Mr. and Mrs. Sands over whether he should sit down or not characterizes the stage of their marital relationship. Unlike Rose and Bert, who have reached a fixed point of maladjustment, the Sands are con­ stantly in the process of establishing their relationship. Each tries to dominate the other, and each attempts to achieve this by outtalking the other. They argue over whether he needs to sit down, over whether or not Mrs. Sands saw a star, over the length of time they have been in the building, and over the usage of "perch" and "sit." Always there are two opposed versions and no agreed source of authoritative settlement. When Mrs. Sands challenges Mr. Sands' denial that she saw a star and demands proof, he provides a signifi­ cant response:

THE ROOM MR. SANDS: YOU didn't see a star. MRS. SANDS: Why not? MR. SANDS: Because I 'm telling you. I 'm telling you

you didn't see a star. (p. 20) Acceptable facts in the Pinter world are, as we have stated, those that small groups commonly agree to be true. When disagreement occurs and only two people are involved, valid­ ity is established by the dominant partner, as we saw with Gus and Ben. As "validity" and "reality" dictate relation­ ships and relationships define the individual, the conflicts in this area can be extreme—as they are here in the Sands' rela­ tionship. The particular topic is secondary, but the issue is always crucial and, in a nonph}sical sense, violent. Mr. Sands invokes a single standard for truth—his language; it is so because he says so: "Because I'm telling you. I'm telling you you didn't see a star." In the light of the wearying conflict of the Sands, the Rose/Bert relationship takes on a clarifying perspective as a later stage in the same battle. The seeds of Rose's internal ambivalence are present in the conflict that Mrs. Sands faces over her urge to dominate her husband and his complementary efforts to dominate her. As long as she is unsuccessful she faces constant battling and constant in­ stability. But if she succeeds, a possible result is a more stable, but equally unsatisfactory, passive resistance of the kind we see in Bert. In this depiction of two unsatisfactory marital relationships, Pinter prepares the way for another choice, embodied in the entry of Riley. The scene with the Sands has another important function. Rose's domineering of her male companions has been shown in her relationships with Bert and Mr. Kidd and paralleled by Mrs. Sands' attacks on Mr. Sands. But we see Rose in another light when Mr. Sands seeks to establish control over her. Torn between curiosity and fear, she becomes evasive when asked direct questions that put her world up for ex-

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ternal corroboration, but after she learns that the Sands have visited the basement her curiosity impels her to pursue the conversation. Unnerved at first by Mr. Sands' demands for knowledge about the whereabouts of the landlord, she begins to build the verbal barriers that she feels will protect her. The parallel with the behavior of Mr. Kidd in the previous scene is unmistakable as she becomes evasive and subordi­ nates the validity of "facts" to their usefulness in defending her current situation. She denies even knowing Mr. Kidd and reinforces her position with: "We're very quiet. We keep ourselves to ourselves. I never interfere. I mean, why should I? We've got our room. We don't bother anyone else. That's the way it should be" (p. 21). But the other side of Rose's character soon reasserts itself. In spite of the fears that gene­ rated this insistence on her ignorance of and lack of interest in anything outside the room, her obsessive fascination with the basement soon proves stronger. Less than ten lines later she switches from defensive withdrawal to persistent ques­ tioning as the inherent dichotomy in her character manifests itself once more. Mrs. Sands' mention of a man in the base­ ment grips her attention: "A man? . . . One man? . . . You say you saw a man downstairs, in the basement?" (p. 22). She is so obsessed by this that she is not even distracted by the vicious argument that occurs between the Sands at this point. But she is distracted when Mrs. Sands triggers her fears once more by contradicting herself. Rose's hyper­ sensitivity to possible danger homes in on Mrs. Sands' state­ ment that they were on their way down the stairs when Mrs. Hudd opened the door on them: ROSE:

You said you were going up.

MRS. SANDS: What? ROSE:

You said you were going up before. MRS. SANDS: NO, we were coming down. ROSE: You didn't say that before, (pp. 23-24)

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But the strength of her fascination with the basement over­ comes these suspicions very quickly. Rose's internal conflict is clearly indicated by these rapid switches from fear and withdrawal to curiosity and a demand to know. ROSE:

This man, what was he like, was he old?

MRS. SANDS: We didn't see him. ROSE:

Was he old? Pause, (p. 24)

At this point in the play, many threads of development converge on the basement. Apparently random details begin to form a pattern with its central focus pointing to this mysterious room. What began in Section 1 as an innocuous comparison, ". . . . the room keeps warm. It's better than the basement, anyway" (p. 7), has gradually developed into something potentially much greater. The piece by piece indi­ cation of its characteristics has made it into a microcosm of Rose's version of the external macrocosm. Her fearful hints of the nature of what lies outside her room have repeatedly invoked a cold, damp, dark, inhospitable world, peopled with strangers, and the basement has become something of an archetypal example. And on this particular evening, Rose's estimate of the world outside her room receives partial con­ firmation in the Sands' report on their experiences since entering the house: ROSE:

What's it like out?

MRS. SANDS: It's very dark out. MR. SANDS: NO darker than in. MRS. SANDS: He's right there. MR. SANDS: It's darker in than out, for my money. MRS. SANDS: There's not much light in this place, is

there, Mrs. Hudd? Do you know, this is the first bit of light we've seen since we came in? (p. 19)

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This confirmation of the contrast between the room and the world outside is only the first of Rose's projections that the Sands lend support to; the next is Rose's image of the base­ ment: MRS. SANDS·. I felt a bit of damp when we were in the

basement just now. . . . ROSE: What was it like down there? MR. SANDS: Couldn't see a thing. ROSE: Why not? MR. SANDS: There wasn't any light, (p. 21) The darkness and dampness of the basement are stressed again as Mrs. Sands gives Rose a longer account of their movements in the building, and she goes on to confirm yet another of Rose's fantasies—the presence of someone rather strange in the basement: . . . . it was very dark in the hall and there wasn't any­ one about. So we went down to the basement. Well, we got down there only due to Toddy having such good eyesight really. Between you and me, I didn't like the look of it much, I mean the feel, we couldn't make much out, it smelt damp to me. . . . we couldn't see where we were going, well, it seemed to me it got darker the more we went, the further we went in . . . . then this voice said, this voice came—it said—well, it gave me a bit of a fright .... this man, this voice really, I think he was behind the partition, said yes there was a room vacant. He was very polite, I thought, but we never saw him, I don't know why they never put a light on. (p. 23) The still circumstantial link between the characteristics of the basement on this particular evening and Rose's projec­ tion of a dark, damp, alien world is made concrete by Mr.

T H E ROOM Sands' startling addition to his wife's account. As Rose 7 un­ nerved by these reports of her fears/hopes coming true, tries to get rid of the Sands by denying that there are any rooms for rent, Mr. Sands counters: MR. SANDS: The man in the basement said there was

one. One room. Number seven he said. Pause. ROSE:

That's this room. . . . This room is occu­ pied. (p. 24)

At this point the Sands leave, but their unexpected cor­ roboration of Rose's vision of the basement, together with the confirmation of a link between the inhabitant of the basement and the room that Rose lives in, has developed what seemed only to be Rose's fantasies to a point at which fantasy has a potentially concrete link with reality. MR. SANDS: Haven't you ever been down there, Mrs.

Hudd? Oh yes, once, a long time ago. MR. SANDS: Well, you know what it's like then, don't you? ROSE: It was a long time ago. (p. 21) ROSE:

SECTION 4: ROSE AND MR. KIDD (PP. 25-28)

The section opens with a conversation at comic cross-pur­ poses which makes the ironic point that confusion can arise as easily between two people bent on communicating directly to each other as between two people who are being mutually evasive. But the sources of this confusion reveal a further irony; the conflict over which of two urgent topics should be discussed by the two characters effectively externalizes the confusion within Rose. The topic she wants to discuss (the security of her room-rental) and the topic Mr. Kidd wants to

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discuss (the stranger in the basement) manifest the conflict­ ing concerns of Rose's inner self. Her private conflict has be­ come and continues to become increasingly public as the play progresses and the route to the entry of Riley is clearly charted. Rose's oscillations between fear and curiosity become in­ creasingly painful for her as the issues that hinge upon them become increasingly concrete. In the midst of frantic ques­ tioning of Mr. Kidd about the security of her room-rental, she is stopped abruptly by his shattering demand: MR. KIDD: You'll have to see him. I can't take it any

more. You've got to see him. Pause. ROSE: Who? MR. KIDD: The man. He's been waiting to see you. He wants to see you. I can't get rid of him. . . . You've got to see him. (pp. 25-26) Significantly, the unnamed man will not come and simply break in on Rose; he insists on waiting until he is invited. MR. KIDD: I said, you can go up, go up, have done with

it. No, he says, you must ask her if she'll see me. . . . He just lies there, that's all, waiting, (p. 26) Also, it is Rose, not Mr. Kidd, who locates the place where the unnamed visitor is waiting: ROSE: He lies there, in the basement? (p. 26)

Rose's internal conflict, previously manifest in dual-pur­ pose projections of alternatives to her current life, now ac­ tualizes itself in the choice of whether or not to see the un­ known stranger in the basement. Who the stranger might be is not as important as what his possible presence means to her. Fantasized alternatives to her current life do not put

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it at imminent risk. But to confront in person a representa­ tive of her inner needs requires a choice that might prove irrevocable. The timid, fearful side of Rose's nature recoils from the prospect: ROSE:

See him? I beg your pardon, Mr. Kidd. I don't know him. Why should I see him? MR. KIDD: You won't see him? ROSE: Do you expect me to see someone I don't know? With my husband not here too? MR. KIDD: But he knows you, Mrs. Hudd, he knows you. ROSE: HOW could he, Mr. Kidd, when I don't know him? MR. KIDD: You must know him. ROSE: But I don't know anybody. We're quiet here. We've just moved into this district, (pp. 26-27)

Once more, the tactic of the insecure, excessive denial, comes to the fore as Rose casts herself in the role of a loyal wife totally dependent on her husband and his interests. Her strident, "Do you expect me to see someone I don't know? With my husband not here too?" asserts a self-image of loyalty to Bert and conformity to the nicest social rules. But within seconds, the image is undercut by a greater fear that the man might visit her, not when Bert is absent, but when he is present. If Rose were, in fact, the simple, loyal wife whose image she invokes, then this possibility would not worry her. But as we have seen throughout, there is a basic uncertainty in her allegiance to Bert and to her life in the room. It is this ambivalence, this fundamental dichotomy in her character, that makes her vulnerable in this situation. It is this that forms the basis of the newcomer's power. Rose is not simply the victim of Bert, or of Riley; rather, the play

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brings to a head the inherent instability of her opening situa­ tion. What was at best an uneasy compromise now becomes the operative factor in a critical dilemma. If she invites the man in, she runs the risk of having Bert return and dis­ cover them. If she refuses to invite him, she runs the risk of having him call when Bert is present. That both situations seem threatening to her is a function of her inner betrayal of Bert and the possibility that this betrayal might become evident in the presence of the visitor. Precisely why the visitor should be repugnant to Bert is not made clear at this point and is never finally clarified. Ulti­ mately, it is not of central importance. The precise nature of Rose's betrayal of Bert is not pinned down to the morality or validity of any particular event in her past because this is not the locus of the play's concerns. Rose's vulnerability to the threat of betrayal is more significant than what the par­ ticular betrayal might be. This vulnerability is sufficient proof of her disloyalty to Bert, and it registers in her behavior even before the newcomer is named. The man downstairs is not identified when Mr. Kidd reports that he prefers to wait for Bert to leave before confronting Rose. He is likewise uniden­ tified when Rose recoils in fear at Mr. Kidd's threat: MK. KIDD: I know what he'll do. I know what he'll do. If you don't see him now, there'll be noth­ ing else for it, he'll come up on his own bat, when your husband's here, that's what he'll do. He'll come up when Mr. Hudd's here, when your husband's here. ROSE: He'd never do that. . . . He wouldn't do that. Μκ. KIDD: Oh yes. I know it. (pp. 27-28) Mr. Kidd, in fact, is merely using this potential threat to get the visitor off his hands and out of his way. His only grounds

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for believing that this would be a threat to Rose is her readi­ ness to react to it as such. Her control of her own life is be­ ginning to slip from her hands as the power of the repressed side of her character makes itself felt. Her subsequent con­ frontation with the visitor takes on the form of a decisive battle between the timid, withdrawn side of her nature and the curious, outgoing side that urges her to align herself with a life very different from the one she lives with Bert: Fetch him. Quick. Quick! (p. 28) SECTION 5: ROSE AND RILEY (PP. 28-31)

The entry of the man from the basement is, of course, a fine theatrical moment. His arrival brings to a crisis the con­ flict between the two sides of Rose's ambivalent character, and his presence becomes the focal point of both her fear and her curiosity. On the one hand, he confirms her fear of coldness, darkness, and otherness in the world outside, and, on the other, he justifies her obsessive curiosity about the possibility of an unknown and perhaps foreign presence in the mysterious basement. That he should be black and blind strikes one as both surprising and appropriate. Rose's be­ havior strikes us the same way. The role she adopts relative to him is unlike anything she has revealed so far, yet given the thoroughgoing ambivalence of her nature, the "new" Rose seems a recognizable mutation. When we recall the sparring and questioning that char­ acterized Rose's first meeting with the Sands, we see by contrast an important aspect of Rose's attitude to the new­ comer. She immediately assumes a crude aggressiveness and authority, as if she has categorized him in advance. She questions not only his mission but his right to have any mission involving her. The extremity of her behavior serves

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only to undermine its credibility. Calling him a "creep" and a "cripple," she struggles to define the relationship on terms that give her control. Riley is not so easily outmaneuvered, however, and refuses to answer demands put to him in those terms. This refusal undermines Rose's attempts to control the situation, and as she strains ever harder to impose her authority on him she is forced to resort to shoring up her vision of herself: "I can keep up with you. I'm one ahead of people like you. Tell me what you want and get out" (p. 28). This explicit verbalizing of attitude and intent is more like the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Sands than anything Rose has revealed in her conversations with Bert and Mr. Kidd. In contrast, the visitor is quiet and selfcontrolled, saying simply, "My name is Riley" (p. 28). The calmness of this response serves only to make Rose's attitude even more extreme as she waxes vitriolic about Riley and his peers. These insults, however, have no visible impact on Riley, who simply announces in measured tones: "I want to see you" (p. 29) and then lapses into silence. Riley's imperturb­ ability is an obvious manifestation of resistance to Rose's in­ fluence, and she switches back and forth between different methods of gaining control over the situation. On the one hand, she stresses his weaknesses: "Well you can't see me, can you? You're a blind man. An old, poor blind man. Aren't you? Can't see a dickeybird" (p. 29). On the other, she denies any knowledge of him, claiming to be insulted at the possi­ bility. Yet in the face of his silence she continues to attempt to clarify his relationship to her. She pictures him as a customer, as a beggar, and as a source of scandal, but none of these strikes any chord in Riley. Eventually, Rose reverts to the aggressive demand that he tell her what he wants, and Riley's response brings her ambivalent character to another state of crisis. When he replies, "I have a message for you" (p. 30), he triggers once

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more the conflict between fear and curiosity that makes Rose's life so unstable. But this time the resolution is crucial. Her first reaction is to scoff at the possibility of his having a message—"How could you have a message for me, Mister Riley, when I don't know you and nobody knows I'm here and I don't know anybody anyway?"—and she goes on to insult him again. This attitude, the side of Rose born of her fears and insecurities, the side that attaches her firmly to the silent Bert, elicits no response from the inscrutable Riley. There is a pause, and in that pause the balance of Rose's world shifts irrevocably. The other side of her character emerges, questioning and curious: What message? Who have you got a message from? Who? (p. 30) To this side of her character, Riley responds immediately: "Your father wants you to come home" (p. 30). The part of Rose that needs to look outward, afraid, but mainly curious, finally gains dominance over the part that is mainly afraid and needs the room and needs Bert. The latter side of her character, which insulted Riley and refused to acknowl­ edge him, temporarily disappears. With the change comes a change of name. Riley, who initially addressed her as Mrs. Hudd, now calls her Sal and calls her home. The room, al­ ways defined in contrast to other things, now falls in contrast to "home." It loses its haven characteristics and becomes only "here." With the loss of those characteristics goes the life which Rose has tried to build verbally upon it. Tliat life is seen anew as repugnant: ROSE: RILEY: ROSE: RILEY: ROSE:

I've been here. Yes. Long. Yes. The day is a hump. I never go out.

THE ROOM RILEY: ROSE: RILEY:

NO. I've been here.

Come home now, Sal. (p. 31)

We have here the verbal reinforcement of a shared reality that Bert has long denied Rose. Riley's monosyllabic re­ sponses are crucial statements for Rose, who finds in this relationship the common ground of "reality" which her previous life in the room significantly lacked. The virtues of that life crumble as one verbal illusion is substituted for another. Staying within the room is now pictured as repugnant: "The day is a hump. I never go out." Stroking the Negro's head, she recognizes a self that has been long repressed in the relationship with Bert. But peace is not to be found here. The side of Rose that longs for the room and its security is, at this point, transcended in the relation­ ship with Riley, but its strength is by no means extinguished. SECTION 6: ROSE, RILEY, AND BERT (PP. 31-32)

The unacknowledged gulf between Rose and Bert has surfaced in Rose in the scene with Riley. In this section its presence can no longer be denied between Rose and Bert, and this new explicitness in their relationship alters it irrev­ ocably. Darkness, associated with Rose's suppressed life, with her curiosity, and with the world outside, has entered the room in the shape of the Negro. When Bert draws the curtain of the room as he enters, he is no longer separating two forms of reality; the curtain has become a mere arbitrary line in a black continuum. The Sands regarded Rose's room as the only area of light in a darkened building; now the stage direction says explicitly that within the room "It is dark" (p. 31). Rose, ever ambivalent and afraid, goes toward Bert as he enters and responds uneasily to his opening

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remarks. But Bert's references to his journey, his first remarks in the play, significantly transfer to his van the concern for femininity that he has never revealed for Rose. His domineer­ ing references to the van parallel Rose's earlier domineering attitude toward him. Their incompatible urges to dominate are made clear in this speech, as is also Bert's parallel attempt to find outside their maladjusted relationship a means of manifesting that which compromise had repressed within it. Rose responds to his mention of the dark and cold of his journey but recoils into silence at the insistent stress on his power over the "female" van: BERT: I drove her down, hard. They got it dark out. ROSE: Yes. BERT: Then I drove her back, hard. They got it very

icy out. ROSE: Yes. BERT: But I drove her.

Pause. I sped her. Pause. I caned her along, (pp. 31-32) It is now Bert, not Rose, who is creating a verbal world that conforms to his needs, and it is now Rose, not Bert, who is required to give confirmation of this world. But Rose, like Bert earlier, lapses instead into silence. Bert's loss of Rose becomes manifest in the dialogue as she ceases to provide verbal reinforcement to his statements. Like Rose at the beginning of the play, he is forced to repeat and rephrase himself, to supply his own confirmation of the nature of his world. As Rose's responses cease, he is left to face the isolation of his needs. With realization dawning on him, he lashes out at the only available focus of their new disharmony and beats Riley

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to death. But the change in Rose is irrevocable, and their old relationship no longer viable. Rose stands and clutches her eyes: Can't see. I can't see. I can't see. Blackout. Curtain, (p. 32) The stage is plunged into darkness as Rose's final cry con­ firms the priority of her link with the Negro over that with Bert. This is its major significance. It is not naturalistic, but it completes the pattern. The internal conflict between two sides of Rose's character is finally externalized in this clash between Riley and Bert. No victory is possible between them because no solution is possible. The loss of whatever possi­ bilities the Negro represented for Rose leaves part of her mutilated. But to lose Bert would equally rob her of a strength necessary to her security, a strength Riley conspicu­ ously lacks. Much ink has been spilled in trying to account for RiIey and for Rose's and Bert's reactions to him in terms of hypothetical reconstructions of Rose's past. As the play gives us no more than a hint of this, it is obviously an unnecessary quest. To regard the Negro as a symbol of death, fate, age, or whatever is also to go beyond the demands of the play. The play operates in the realm of variable character, uncer­ tain fact, and unspecified fears. To label any of these is to change the play. We only have the parameters of perform­ ance to guide us, and these parameters specify things only up to a certain point and no further. The blackness of Riley and Rose's blindness symbolize only the connection between them. They operate as links in the chain that binds Rose's desires and fears to a presence in the basement and to an irrevocable acknowledgement of the division between herself

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and Bert. The latter is what is important and perceivable. The other factors are important only in bringing about that acknowledgement for Rose and Bert. The ever-imminent confrontation between the two sides of her personality finally manifests itself in a clash that cannot provide a solution. Both Bert and Riley are essential to Rose, but they also manifest incompatible demands. The play is built around a series of polarities between light and dark, warmth and cold, cosiness and inhospitability, man and woman, husband and wife, domination and sub­ ordination, Rose's fears and Rose's desires, and finally Bert and Riley. This final confrontation synthesizes the others. What is important about the others indicates what is vital about Bert versus Riley. They signify choices defined by their incompatibility, by the fact that they are opposite. We are given no indication of the possibility of a solution for Rose because her desires are defined in opposition to what she already has; they are not pinned down to concrete issues recognizable in other than these relative terms. Rose longs for alternatives—no more and no less. No possible relation­ ship could enable her to express all the range of her individuality all the time. Every relationship is a compromise, and every compromise potentially unstable. Rose's attempts to stabilize the compromise between herself and Bert in­ volved the contemplation of alternatives. This in turn led to the savoring of alternatives and eventually to the collapse of their previous compromise. The conflict between the social need for compromise and the individual need for something more is at the heart of the play, and it is this which we referred to earlier as the "something about the nature of the individual that is incompatible with the communities of men." In another age Dr. Johnson wrote: ". . . some desire is

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necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied, must admit those of fancy." 20 Rose's "real wants" are never established and are never met because she does not know them and could not achieve them, anyway. "Fancy" is nonetheless rampant and nonetheless destructive. Riley functions primarily as an embodiment of Rose's fanta­ sized alternatives to the dissatisfactions of her life with Bert. But in reaching for the alternative she loses what is indispen­ sable in what she already has. To return once more to Dr. Johnson: . . . nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left. Those conditions, which flatter hope and attract desire, are so constituted, that, as we approach one, we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. . . . Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.21 Rose's inability to rest content with her choice of life with Bert brings on the collapse of that way of life. The conclu­ sion recognizes no alternatives. The curtain comes down with Rose, as at the beginning of the play, faced with a helpless awareness of the inescapable and insupportable, of the indispensable and the unavailable. Progression on one level encounters circularity on another, and what looked like a revivifying change results only in a regressive mutation. Rose and Bert cannot go on as before, but in the absence of alternatives, they must nonetheless go on. It is this situation, not Rose's death, that forms the conclusion of the play. 20

S. Johnson, "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia" (spoken by Imlac), in Dr. Johnson, ed. M. Wilson (London, 1963), p. 405. 21 Johnson, "The History of Rasselas" (spoken by the Princess Nekayah), p. 444.

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POSTSCRIPT

Many of the critics who have written about this play have questioned the consistency of its conclusion, and their dis­ cussion has tended to center on the character of Riley. Their criticism seems largely unjustified in the light of the interpretation suggested above. Nevertheless, there does appear to be one loose thread that Pinter has not adequately tied up. The connecting motifs, the repeated images, which gradually converge upon the basement and find concrete expression in the person of the Negro, are finally brought into question by one of Riley's remarks. As Leech neatly puts it: ". . . we are conscious of being invited to look for allegory and yet not sufficiently impelled to conduct the search." 22 This urge toward allegorical interpretation is one that is dictated by the needs of puzzled critics rather than by the needs of the play, but Pinter allows a moment of uncertainty to give some justification to such an approach. The enigmatic figure of Riley at one point threatens to develop sufficient identity to arouse questions about his motives, and not just Rose's. Riley's appeals to Rose to come home are general enough for them to function simply as contrasts to Rose's concern for the sheltering character­ istics of her current abode. But at one point, his repeated appeals set up a contrast in another area: "I want you to come home" (p. 30); and "Your father wants you to come home" (p. 30). This contrast begins to deflect attention from Rose's need for an alternative "home" to speculations about who is doing the calling and why. Instead of remaining the simple focus of Rose's needs, Riley begins to develop suffi­ cient individuality to justify questions about his attitudes 22 C. Leech, "Two Romantics: Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter," Contemporary Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, iv, gen. eds. J. R. Brown and B. Harris (London, 1962), p. 26.

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and concerns. This tendency, slight though it may be, has given support to considerations of what "home" might be aside from the characteristics that Rose has defined for it in her various projections of an alternative world. And this, in turn, invites attempts to locate symbolic significance in the darkness, dampness, etc., instead of acceptance of their unspecified but potent significance as contrasts to the re­ stricted life Rose leads in her confining room. But, as Leech points out, the rest of the play simply does not provide the kind of evidence that would support such interpretations. Pinter himself has revealed a degree of discontent with the presentation of Riley: "I don't think there's anything radically wrong with the character in himself, but he behaves too differently from the other characters: if I were writing the play now I'd make him sit down, have a cup of tea." 23 Whether this would have solved the problem remains a moot point. Nevertheless, Pinter's comment gives some indication of why the loose end was left dangling. The character of Riley seems for a moment to balance unsatis­ factorily between two alternative kinds of intruder that Pinter used in plays written at about the same time as this one. In The Birthday Party, the new arrivals actively outmaneuver and carry off their victim. In A Slight Ache, the newcomer is totally silent and passive and functions solely to catalyze by his presence the destructive elements already present in the victim's psyche. In The Room, Riley's function is primarily the latter, but one or two unfortunate remarks invoke the former possibility and add a slight element of uncertainty to the play's conclusion. What is finally central to the play, however, is not a symbol, a message or a label, but a process: the process of characters grappling with the problems of the self in its relation to others. It would be very difficult to derive any 23

Pinter, quoted by Gordon, Stratagems to Uncover Nakedness, p. 19.

Ill

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summarizing moral, metaphysical, political, or philosophical messages from the play—except in the very basic sense in which all of these terms can be spread to cover all activity. To put it more precisely, no religious, political, or phil­ osophical system is being expounded or tested by the activities onstage. The process upon which the play focuses is much more local in its genesis and much more universal in its application: "Before you manage to adjust yourself to living alone in your room, you're not really terribly fit and equipped to go out to fight battles." 24 For Rose, this adjustment of the self to its environment is a process of eternal compromise and ever-present risk. Her longing for a "home," for a place where she could synthesize and satisfy all her needs and fantasies, is never satisfied. The attempt to convince herself that she had found it with Bert was always a self-deception. The belief that she could find it with Riley proved equally fallacious. Trapped in a world of unsatisfactory choices where compromise and contest are inescapable, Rose battles her way through relationships that she can neither make do with nor do without. This process, the ever-present stress between the individual and his companions, is the process dramatized by a play that discovers and begins to develop the dramatic possibilities of language used primarily for interrelational concerns. "The meaning of a great deal of speech behaviour is just the combined personal and social forces it can mobilize and direct." 25 24 H. Pinter, "'Funny and Moving and Frightening': Pinter" (inter­ view with K. Halton), Vogue, CL (October 1, 1967), 236. 25 Firth, "The Tongues of Men," p. 113.

IV THE CARETAKER "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?"—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. 1

T

HE STAGE SET for The Caretaker, like that for The

Room, is a shabby, all-purpose room, but there is an important contrast between the two settings: the objects surrounding Rose function clearly in a fixed pattern of life with Bert, but those surrounding Aston seem largely random. The stage is littered with things; boxes, vases, paint buckets, a stepladder, a lawn mower, a shopping trolley, a coal bucket, and a statue of Buddha are strewn around the room. Even apparently functional objects like the kitchen sink and the gas stove are reduced to random stature by their lack of proximity to a water pipe or a gas supply. Far from evoking a highly structured life, this setting suggests not only a lack of such structure but a breakdown of more usual connections. The possibility of discovering or imposing order and pattern on this environment is a constant counterpoint to the efforts of the characters to establish significant structures in their own relationships. The potential links between the characters are as tentative and exploratory as those between the various objects that Aston keeps bringing home; a new object, like L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. Ε. M. Anscombe (London, 1969), p. 88e. 1

THE C A R E T A K E R a newcomer, provides different possibilities of permutation among what is already at hand. The play develops from the new alternatives that Davies' arrival provides. Before his arrival there is a relationship between Aston and his brother Mick which centers on the junk-cluttered room. Whatever benefits and liabilities that relationship involves for each of them is set in opposition to the new possibilities that emerge. A third person entering a binary relationship sets up a situation that demands not only new relationships with the newcomer but also an adjustment of the relationship that holds between the orig­ inal pair. The common ground, the common reality, the common language between three people must inevitably differ from that between the original two. Instead of examin­ ing this readjustment largely from the point of view of one of the participants, as in The Room, Pinter here gives considerable attention to the needs, hopes, and problems of all three characters. In widening his focus, Pinter also widens the scope of interrelational complexity. While the characters in The Room employ a largely similar range of verbal strategies, the characters in The Caretaker are differentiated by diverse linguistic abilities as well as by a diversity of goals. As the play progresses it becomes increasingly clear that the conflict­ ing concerns of the characters are inextricably intertwined with verbal vulnerability and verbal power. The linguistic ability to create and sustain a social identity becomes a focus of thematic concern as the liabilities as well as the benefits of particular abilities gradually emerge. As was the case with The Room, the duologue provides the basic structural unit of this play. In these duologues, four alternatives are explored as the three characters seek to order their new situation·. (1) The three can establish a relationship that includes them all. (2) Aston and Davies can exclude Mick. (3) Mick and Davies can exclude Aston.

THE CARETAKER

(4) Mick and Aston can exclude Davies. These alternatives constantly underlie the struggles for control, which are presented in a series of scenes ά deux. An important indica­ tion of the progress of a particular binary relationship is the kind of attitude toward the absent member that individuals attempt to establish as a common ground of their relation­ ship. The play falls into fourteen sections when based on these duologues, and the several sections are linked by the fixed locale, the constant presence of Davies, and a series of recurring motifs. (Mick, alone) pp. 7-21 21-27 27-28

1. Davies and Aston 2. Davies and Aston 3. Davies (Mick)

Act 1

(a few seconds later) 28-36 36-39 39-44 44-32 52-57

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Davies and Mick * Davies, Mick and Aston Davies and Aston * Davies and Mick * Davies and Aston *

Act 2

(two weeks later) 58-64 64-66 66-70 70-74 75 75-78

9. JO. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Davies and Mick * Davies and Aston Davies and Aston* Davies and Mick * Davies, Mick and Aston Davies and Aston *

Act 3

(* The absent member of the trio is referred to.) SECTION 1: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 7-21)

From the above it can be seen that throughout Act 2 and Act 3 frequent reference is made to whichever member of

THE CARETAKER

the trio is absent at any given time. As the new situation presented by Davies' arrival involves an adjustment for all three characters, any adjustment between any pair must affect and be affected by the third person. Thus Pinter makes an effort to get Mick involved in Act 1 even though it is largely devoted to the embryonic relationship between Davies and Aston. For this reason, Act 1 begins with Mick briefly alone in the room prior to Davies' and Aston's arrival and ends in mid-scene with Mick once more onstage. While Mick says nothing at the opening of the play, his appearance adds an important perspective to the succeeding events. He spends some moments gazing slowly round the junk-littered room "looking at each object in turn" (p. 7). And this, of course, leads the audience to do the same. His rapid exit upon hearing the approach of voices leaves his link with the house and its occupants unspecified but established—a type of link which is reflected in the clutter onstage and which becomes characteristic of the play as a whole. The Davies/Aston relationship immediately picks up on this motif as the characters enter together and begin to converse. While such joint activity is frequently evidence of a degree of common ground, it soon becomes apparent that in this case such common ground is, at best, minimal. But more important, it also becomes apparent that the degree of concern that this generates is markedly different for each of the two characters. Though the fact of a link between the two characters seems to be mutually agreed upon, the nature of that link remains highly tentative, and Davies seems much less able to cope with this uncertainty than is Aston. In this discrepancy we encounter the first manifestation of the difficulties that the play ultimately focuses upon. The Davies/Aston relationship begins with Aston appar­ ently in command of the situation as both host and rescuer of the itinerant Davies. His calm, quiet acceptance of the

THE CARETAKER

uneasy guest seems a natural posture of superiority, and Davies at first accepts it as such. As both guest and rescued, Davies, in contrast to Aston, is noisy, repetitive and insecure. The evident aim of his early initiatives is to locate a potential common ground and preferably one that will lessen his degree of dependency in the relationship. Ironically, his insecurity is increased by the very means that he adopts to diminish it. The fact that it is he, and not Aston, who feels compelled to talk undermines his position at the same time that his verbal maneuvers seek to strengthen it. DAVIES: Sit down? Huh . . . I haven't had a good sit down . . . I haven't had a proper sit down . . . well, I couldn't tell you . . . ASTON: (placing the chair) Here you are. DAVIES: Ten minutes off for a tea-break in the middle

of the night in that place and I couldn't find a seat, not one. All them Greeks had it, Poles, Greeks, Blacks, the lot of them, all them aliens had it. And they had me working there. . . . All them Blacks had it, Blacks, Greeks, Poles, the lot of them, that's what, doing me out of a seat, treating me like dirt. When he come at me tonight I told him. Pause. ASTON: Take a seat. (pp. 7-8) That Davies should invoke in rapid succession a sense of injury, a major prejudice, and a defiant self-reliance gives us a quick resume of the potential roles he might adopt relative to Aston. That Aston ignores all three, providing neither sympathy for the first, reinforcement for the second, nor admiration for the third gives us an immediate indication of the likelihood of their success. Aston's seeming refusal to encourage any of Davies' ten-

THE CARETAKER tative roles provides Davies with major problems. In the face of Aston's taciturnity he is forced to thresh around des­ perately for some means of altering the situation. It soon becomes apparent that his large supply of words is not matched by a similar supply of verbal strategies. As the conversation progresses he simply resorts to repeated use of the tactics implicit in his first speech. Appeals to Aston's sympathy and to his prejudices recur repeatedly, though Davies is smart enough to defend himself against becoming a victim of the kinds of prejudice to which he feels himself vulnerable: All them toe-rags, mate, got the manners of pigs. I might have been on the road a few years but you can take it from me I'm clean. I keep myself up. That's why I left my wife. Fortnight after I married her, no, not so much as that, no more than a week, I took the lid off a sauce­ pan, you know what was in it? A pile of her undercloth­ ing, unwashed. The pan for vegetables, it was. The vegetable pan. That's when I left her and I haven't seen her since, (p. 9) As he finishes speaking he finds himself face to face with a "statue of Buddha standing on the gas stove." The mutual incompatibility of the stone face and that of the tramp com­ ments directly on the success of these efforts to manipulate Aston's attitudes and concerns. The silent inscrutable Bud­ dha, incongruously perched on the gas stove, is as much be­ yond Davies' comprehension as the taciturn Aston sur­ rounded by the diverse objects collected in his room. Davies' other category of approaches involves attempts to assert a degree of independence from Aston. But his efforts to create an image of self-reliance are even less successful than his previous moves and not entirely compatible with them. His appeals for sympathy for his age and health mingle

THE CARETAKER uneasily with assertions that he intends revenge for his mis­ use at the cafi: "I'll get him. One night I'll get him. When I find myself around that direction" (p. 10). The strength of this commitment is clearly undermined by Davies' vague reference to when it will occur and by his admission that this would not be his primary reason for going there. In spite of these repeated failures, Davies' stock of varia­ tions on his maneuvers is not yet exhausted. Indeed, he has yet to play his trump card. Unsuccessful as the heroic survivor of the cafe incident, unsung as the virtuous rejector of an un­ hygienic wife, and unsympathized with as a downtrodden, exploited old man, he invokes a new image of one on the verge of self-sufficiency and success. The tack is circuitous, involving shoes, the weather, a false name, and papers that will "prove everything" (p. 20). But, in essence, the theme is that of a journey to Sidcup which will solve all problems and structure his life anew. Once the journey is made all diffi­ culties will disappear, and Davies will once more be a man to be reckoned with: DAVIES: If only I could get down to Sidcup! I've been

ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES:

waiting for the weather to break. He's got my papers, this man I left them with, it's got it all down there, I could prove every­ thing. How long's he had them? What? How long's he had them? Oh, must be . . . it was in the war . . . must be . . . about near on fifteen year ago. He suddenly becomes aware of the bucket and looks up. (pp. 20-21)

But this maneuver, too, is thwarted by Aston's reactions to it. Clearly, Davies does not match his emphasis on the impor-

THE CARETAKER tance of the journey with a similar commitment to getting there. The time lag he admits to makes nonsense of the value he places on the journey, and Aston's puzzlement is evident. Once again the haphazard dialogue is matched revealingly with an item of junk that is eminently visible but obliquely connected to its surroundings. At this point, Aston's contribution to the "conversation" seems rather unfriendly, to say the least. Whatever Davies does to try to improve the connection between himself and Aston is neutralized by his inability to elicit from Aston the responses he needs. To Davies it seems that Aston's posture of quiet superiority is a consistent strategic imperviousness to his needs and wiles. But Aston's behavior seems peculiarly inconsistent. His apparent unconcern for Davies' psychologi­ cal needs is sharply contrasted with an evident concern for his physical needs. Aston's initial generosity toward Davies in the cafe is extended by offers of cigarettes, shoes, and money, and by a willingness to go and retrieve Davies' be­ longings for him. This inconsistency, this apparent lack of connection between two aspects of Aston's behavior, is an­ other manifestation of juxtaposed but unclearly linked data in the play. But its effect on the relationship is by no means unclear; this inconsistency disorients Davies and maintains his subservience as effectively as Mick's later inconsistent conversation. As this section progresses, however, it gradually becomes apparent that Aston's efforts (unlike Mick's) are not deliberately aimed at this goal. Indeed, it is very difficult at this point to perceive a deliberate aim in any of Aston's be­ havior. It does seem clear, however, that he does not share Davies' urgent need for a verbally explicit rapport. The problem the audience has in understanding Aston is obviously shared by Davies. Sensing the failure of his efforts to impose on Aston any of the relationship roles he has in mind, Davies eventually switches to trying to draw out of

THE CARETAKER

Aston information that might guide him to more successful maneuvers. Feeding him topics dealing with the room and its contents, Davies once more finds himself making little head­ way: DAVIES : You got any more rooms then, have you? ASTON: Where? DAVIES: I mean, along the landing here . . . up the ASTON: DAVIES : ASTON: DA VIES: ASTON:

landing there. They're out of commission. Get away. They need a lot of doing to. Slight pause. What about downstairs? That's closed up. Needs seeing to . . . The floors . . . Pause, (pp. 11-12)

Aston's unwillingness to discuss any of these more neutral topics suggests that his reluctance to converse with Davies is motivated by something more than mere resistance to Davies' wiles; the reluctance seems to proceed from a general antip­ athy toward any kind of conversation. But, paradoxically, he is not entirely unwilling to talk. While evasive about the house and his legal relationship to it, he does venture the in­ formation that he "might build" a shed in the back garden. This willingness to talk is further indicated by a sudden longer statement on the drinking of Guinness—a topic that he discusses with a seriousness that does little to calm the puzzled, uneasy Davies: Pause. I went into a pub the other day. Ordered a Guinness. The}1 gave it to me in a thick mug. I sat down but I couldn't drink it. I can't drink Guinness from a thick

THE CARETAKER

mug. I only like it out of a thin glass.2 I had a few sips but I couldn't finish it. (p. 19) This relates to nothing previously discussed, and whatever significance it has for Aston is not shared by Davies, who resorts to a quick change of subject. The short speech is undoubtedly odd, but the kind of oddity it represents provides the first clear indication of the basic difficulty confronting the pair. If Davies fails to respond to or follow up on this topic because he is unable to locate its significance, perhaps this is also the reason for Aston's similar reactions to Davies' conversation topics. The speech itself, while specifying nothing precisely, undermines Davies' operating assumption that Aston's taciturnity is simply a manifestation of superiority and disinterest. Such an assump­ tion has already been brought into question by Aston's non­ verbal generosity to Davies, and this speech suggests that Aston, in spite of his general silence, also has a need to talk. The section ends with Aston, as he has done extensively dur­ ing this opening scene, devoting his attention to a faulty plug on an old electric toaster. His persistent concern for this faulty connection characterizes the activity of the opening section: potential links between the characters remain uncer­ tain because the means of establishing appropriate connec­ tions has gone awry. DAVIES: I used to know a bootmaker in Acton. He was

a good mate to me. Pause.

You know what that bastard monk said to me? Pause.

How many more Blacks you got around here then? (p. 14) 2 Grove Press in its 1965 edition of The Caretaker misprints "thin" as "tin" in this speech, p. 19.

T H E C A R ETAKER SECTION 2: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 21-27)

The problems facing Davies and Aston in Section 1 are evident in the uncertain nature of their conversation, but the basic cause of these problems remains obscure to both. At this point, it may also seem rather obscure to the audience. But, as this section increasingly reveals, the obliqueness of the dialogue is not (as in The Room) simply a consequence of interrelational maneuvering, but a consequence of one character's limited understanding of the subtleties of dialogue that is dominated by an interrelational function. A major manifestation of this problem occurs when Aston raises the issue of the "noises" that Davies has made during the night. As these noises disturbed him, he simply wants them stopped, and he is clearly unprepared for the reaction this provokes in Davies. His verbose guest first denies that the problem exists, then suggests, incongruously, that Aston has "got hold of the wrong bloke" and then unites his de­ fense with his favorite prejudice: a prejudice which he per­ sistently presumes that Aston will share—"Maybe it were them Blacks making noises, coming up through the walls" (p. 23). This verbal barrage serves only to bewilder Aston, who seems quite oblivious to the vulnerabilities of Davies' self-concept. Davies, likewise, remains sorely puzzled by Aston's behavior but is equally uncertain as to what he should do about it. Unable as yet to locate the bases of Aston's concerns, Davies simply projects onto him the ones which most preoccupy him. That Aston does not share these concerns does not escape him, but he is unable to locate any others. It becomes increasingly clear, however, that Aston's assumed role in these interrelational conflicts is largely illusory. To a considerable extent, Davies is engaged in com­ bat without an adversary. Ironicalh', however, Aston's mode

THE CARETAKER of nonparticipation, silence, remains a potent threat to Davies, who consistently assumes that Aston is resisting and seeing through the web of fabrication that he profusely spins. As in Section 1, the uncertain connection between the two characters is underlined by the surrounding clutter. Davies' misconstruction of Aston as an adversary is paralleled by his fear of the equally unfamiliar (and hence equally threatening) gadgets in Aston's room. The electric fire and the gas stove are regarded with particular suspicion: DAVIES: Eh, I was going to ask you, mister, what about

this stove? I mean, do you think it's going to be letting out any . . . what do you think? ASTON: It's not connected. DAVIES: YOU see, the trouble is, it's right on top of my bed, you see? What I got to watch is nudging . . . one of them gas taps with my elbow when I get up, you get my meaning? He goes round to the other side of the stove and examines it. (p. 26) Uncertain about the cause and effect connections of these appliances, he is as wary of them as he is of Aston, whose reactions are similarly beyond his powers of understanding. This situation of mutual misunderstanding is, of course, a fertile source of comedy, and Pinter makes full use of its possibilities. The lack of a common understanding of the function of individual utterances is particularly evident when Aston earnestly recalls an incident in a cafe when a woman asked to see his body. Davies humorously, but revealingly, misinterprets the function of the statement and attempts to share Aston's glory by asserting that he, too, has enjoyed such female attention:

THE CARETAKER

Women? There's many a time they've come up to me and asked me more or less the same question. Pause, (p. 25) The pause, as so often in the dialogue, registers a point of impasse. What Davies felt was a development of the con­ versation was to Aston a dislocation. While this incident is very humorous it has a rather more important dimension. This is Aston's second attempt to con­ fide something to Davies, and it is also his second failure to establish contact with him on issues whose importance we must divine simply from the fact that he raises them. As with the thin-glass/thick-mug speech of Section 1, this topic relates to nothing that immediately precedes it in the dialogue and is not directly related to the topic that succeeds it. Aston's silence drives home to Davies his misunderstand­ ing without giving any indication of what a better under­ standing would have been. Both recognize the need for further explication, but both also sense the problems involved in taking the discussion further. While neither character understands the other, both feel the necessity of behaving as though full understanding were achieved. Conceding ignorance or misunderstanding would be to acknowledge a difficulty that neither feels secure enough to deal with at this point. As with Rose and Mr. Hudd, the modus operandi is to keep things going: ". . . people, knowing perfectly well what gulfs they are skirting, do their best to keep things going, to let them work themselves out.3 While the audience moves ahead to other possibilities, Davies, locked in his self-concern, continues to project his characteristic fears onto the situation and thus continues to find justification for them. Innocent, friendly questions asked 3 H. Pinter, "Accident" (interview with J. R. Taylor), Sight and Sound, xxxv (Autumn 1966), 184.

THE CARETAKER by Aston are construed as potential threats with ulterior motives: ASTON: Welsh, axe you? DAVIES : Eh? ASTON: YOU Welsh? DAVIES : ASTON: DAVIES': ASTON : DAVIES :

Pause. Well, I been around, you know . . . what I mean . . . I been about . . . Where were you born then? (darkly) What do you mean? Where were you born? I was . . . uh . . . oh, it's a bit hard, like, to set your mind back . . . see what I mean . . . going back . . . a good way . . . lose a bit of track, like . . . you know . . . (p.

25) We have here a muted form of the interrelational warfare that characterized the first encounter between Mrs. Hudd and Mr. Kidd in The Room. But, as the audience increas­ ingly realizes, the vital difference here is that one of the contestants is not fully conversant with the rules. It also becomes increasingly evident that this difference between the two characters involves benefits and liabilities for both. Aston, in his ignorance of interrelational strategies, is limited in the facility with which he can make a desired impact on his companion. But that ignorance also makes him much less vulnerable to the maneuvers of Davies because he tends simply to miss their point. At times this also makes him something of a lethal opponent as he tramples inad­ vertently on the vulnerabilities of his uneasy guest. Davies, on the other hand, has a knowledge of interrelational strate­ gies and is potentially able to benefit from them in situations

THE CARETAKER

other than the one he currently confronts. But that very situation throws into relief the limitations to which he, too, is susceptible. The great irony of Davies' predicament is that he is socially limited by the very means that he uses to facilitate his social mobility. The interrelational strategies he has thus far demonstrated are the only ones he has available, and the evident implication of this is that he can only form relationships with people who can work within the very narrow set of strategies that he has available. To a large extent, Davies is a victim of his own expectations. His verbal strategies are predicated upon the assumption that every companion is a potential threat and a potential master, and the unfortunate result is that these are the only com­ panions he can countenance.

SECTION 3: DAVIES (PP. 27-28)

Davies' brief moments alone on stage merely confirm the audience's estimate of his character. Left alone in the room, he locks the door and begins to ferret around in Aston's belongings, revealing much more nosiness than gratitude. Unable to conceive of a generosity that does not have selfinterest at the bottom of it, Davies sets out to defend himself by discovering, in advance, Aston's hidden motives and the obscure connections between those motives and the accumulation of junk that fills the room. That he should have the tables turned on him by Mick's entry is a devastat­ ing twist for him as he is caught in self-revealing circum­ stances at a moment when he is bent on discovering some­ one else's secrets. But even when alone, he projects images of self-preservation and self-protection—"I don't make no noises" (p. 28)—demonstrating, as in The Room, the use of language to make things real to the self as well as to others.

THE CARETAKER

SECTION 4: DAVIES AND MICK (PP. 28-36) While Aston presented Davies with problems because of his imperviousness to the coercion of interrelational dialogue, Mick presents him with even greater ones; far from being unskilled in interrelational combat, Mick turns out to be a master tactician. Where Davies and Aston spent two long conversations vainly seeking out common ground, Mick "places" Davies in a moment and rigidly dictates the terms of the relationship between them. Twisting his arm and gesturing him to silence, Mick treats Davies with the con­ tempt which Davies seems to expect in life and which he was unnecessarily warding off when talking to Aston. The contrast between Aston's and Mick's attitudes to Davies is strong and telling, and Act 1 closes with Davies physically threatened and under direct interrogation. Mick's early motives are not immediately clear, but his initial aim is obviously to establish control over Davies. His technique follows up a physical demonstration of his superior power with a verbal demonstration. Linguistic coercion as a means of reinforcing dominance is never more apparent than here. Mick goes through a ritual of repeated questions and forces Davies to acknowledge his subservience by repeating answers that he has already given. MICK: What's your name? DAVIES: I don't know you. I don't know who you are. Pause. MICK: Eh? DAVIES: Jenkins. MICK: Jenkins? DAVIES: Yes. MICK: Jen . . . kins. . . . What did you say your name was?

THE CARETAKER

DAVIES: Jenkins. MICK: I beg your pardon? DAVIES: Jenkins! Pause. MICK: Jen . . . kins. (pp. 30-31)

The same coercive routine is enforced on the topic of whether Davies slept there last night, which bed he slept in, and how well he slept. Davies' occasional efforts to resist are rapidly rebuffed, and he is forced into answering as required. Mick goes to great lengths to reinforce this dominance by engaging in a series of lengthy, circuitous speeches that serve to further disorient and frighten the outmaneuvered Davies. Far from being a speech in which "the gratuitous reminisc­ ing about relations . . . destroys a lot of the tension with its funny but freewheeling irrelevancies," 4 the first of these speeches provides a display of verbal ability that overpowers Davies' mind as much as the youthful strength of Mick has overpowered his body. The peculiar logic of its construc­ tion is as bewildering to Davies as the incomprehensible logic of Aston's behavior, and that is precisely its point. But in contrast to the dearth of obvious connections in Aston's speeches, Mick's are bewildering because of the sheer excess of connecting detail. Indeed, it is the very fact of the connection that seems to give rise to each successive state­ ment rather than any necessity to inform Davies about these diverse issues. In fact, it is the sheer diversity of the topics that serves the dominant purpose of Mick's language at this point: Very much your build. Bit of an athlete. Long-jump specialist. He had a habit of demonstrating different run-ups in the drawing-room round about Christmas 4

R. Hayman, Harold Pinter (London, 1970), p. 38.

THE CARETAKER time. Had a penchant for nuts. That's what it was. Nothing else but a penchant. . . . Had a funny habit of carrying his fiddle on his back. Like a papoose. I think there was a bit of the Red Indian in him. To be honest, I've never made out how he came to be my uncle's brother. I've often thought that maybe it was the other way round. . . . Your spitting image he was. (p. 31) The speech is not far removed from the one in The Birthday Party in which Goldberg and McCann pepper Stanley with a vast array of accusations whose function is to confuse and disorient rather than convey facts significant in themselves. Davies is aware mainly of the fact of being told he is known; the range of comparisons serves only to bewilder him. Mick's verbal profusion and Davies' mute incomprehen­ sion provide an ironic parallel between this situation and that in the first act. Aston's silence and verbal paucity were just as bewildering to Davies as Mick's verbal excess is here. And instead of the verbose Davies generating incomprehen­ sion in Aston, it is Davies who is now faced with an impene­ trable verbal barrage from Mick. But the crucial point here is that Mick, unlike Davies and Aston, is well aware of the confusion he is causing and does it quite deliberately. By comparison with Mick, Davies' earlier volubility looks more like nervous discharge than strategic maneuvering. When Hayman complains that "Mick's reactions to Davies are almost as confusing to us as they are to the old man," 5 he perceives their impact but misses their point. Mick alternates these confusing speeches with putting Davies through ques­ tion-response rituals and successively reinforces his domi­ nance to the point at which Davies is completely subjugated. In this section we see as clearly as anywhere the impor5

Ibid.

THE CARETAKER

tance of realizing "what is being done with the words." 6 Though the kinds of jargon Mick resorts to give us some indication of his own self-image, it would not be helpful to devote a great deal of time to disentangling his past or his career from this hotchpotch of words; we would clearly be missing the activity in which he is engaged. The speeches are designed to have only a superficial coherence; that is their point. The bewildered Davies is verbally thrashed for his presence and is given a lesson in Mick's superiority that will indelibly affect whatever arrangement he attempts to make with Aston. To suggest that Mick is jealous of Davies' relationship with Aston at this point is to go further than the text does. Mick is simply asserting himself. As the impact of Mick's maneuvers on Davies becomes apparent, the earlier contrast between Aston and Davies takes on further significance. Davies is vulnerable to this kind of verbal manipulation because he himself is a party to such tactics. From the evidence available in Act 1, how­ ever, it would appear to be unlikely that Mick could apply these tactics with similar success in his relationship with Aston. In this conflict between Mick and Davies the benefits and liabilities of different kinds of verbal ability become increasingly concrete. With some of the characters' indi­ vidual strengths and weaknesses thus established, the play refocuses on the possibilities of resolution available to the three characters. SECTION 5: DAVIES, MICK, AND ASTON (PP. 36-39)

This brief section is important, for it is the first of three successive sections that examine in turn the three new alternatives that Davies' presence has made possible. One by 6A.

A s h w o r t h , " N e w T h e a t r e : I o n e s c o , B e c k e t t , P i n t e r , " Southerly,

XXIi (1962), 147.

THE CARETAKER

one these alternatives are tested and found wanting. The first is a possible adjustment of all three characters to a joint arrangement. This possibility, however, has to take into account the potential adjustment of each character to each of the others. At this point the audience has been supplied with a lengthy portrayal of Aston and Davies together and of Mick and Davies together. But the Aston/Mick relation­ ship is as yet unclear. In Section 4, however, Mick made two brief mentions of his brother: "I'll get my brother to decorate it up for you first. I've got a brother who's a number one decorator" and "This brother I mentioned, he's just about to start on the other rooms. Yes, just about to start" (p. 36). These comments provide the first indication of the expectations Mick has of Aston, but the state of the surrounding environment casts immediate doubt on Aston's ability to meet them. Whether this is a source of discontent between them is not certain at this point, but it is a concern that Mick constantly returns to in talking of or to Aston. In contrast, Aston has yet to mention his brother. Aston's limited adherence to the verbal niceties of interrelational activity is evident when he enters and, without addressing either Mick or Davies, resumes his prolonged preoccupation with the troublesome toaster. But for the first time the trio is forced to face up to the new situation as a trio, and the initial reaction of all three is anything but promising: Silence. A drip sounds in the bucket. They all look up. Silence, (p. 37) It is Mick who makes the first effort, and his opening comments to Aston parallel Davies' earlier attempts to establish favorable common ground. As he begins to chat to Aston, he tries to steer him toward his recurring concern for the problems of repairing the house. But Mick is no

THE C A R E T A K E R more successful at manipulating Aston's concerns than was Davies. Aston responds only briefly, and the halting dialogue confirms the ineffectiveness here of the verbal dexterity that Mick had demonstrated in controlling Davies. A distinct lack of rapport is revealed as neither engages at any length in the conversation, and neither seems ready or able to instigate a new one. The halting conversation lapses into five pauses in fifteen lines before Davies seizes a chance to speak. This verbal manifestation of the new component in the situation gives undue prominence to a trivial question and a sense of bathos to the response: DAVIES: (abruptly) What do you do—?

Theγ both look at him. What do you do . . . when that bucket's full? Pause. ASTON: Empty it. Pause, (p. 37) But, significantly, it is Aston who makes the response. The verbose Mick seems strangely restricted by Aston's presence, and in contrast to the confidence he displayed in dealing with Davies, Mick is hesitant and uncertain about how best to proceed. Aston, who was clearly unable to locate the thrust of Davies' maneuvering speeches, seems nevertheless to have acquired an understanding of Mick's reasons for returning repeatedly to the topic of decorating the house and is very reluctant to discuss it. The suggestion is that this is, indeed, a problem between them: MICK:

I was telling my friend you were about to start decorating the other rooms. ASTON: Yes. Pause. (To Davies) I got your bag. DAVIES: Oh. (crossing to him and taking it) Oh thanks, mister, thanks, (pp. 37-38)

THE CARETAKER

As Aston turns away from Mick to Davies we get the first indication of his sense of priorities in the new situationMick's are equally evident in his readiness to address Aston and ignore Davies. Mick's maneuvering is evident here, too, in his reference to Davies as "my friend." This is the first explicit suggestion of a pairing in the group, but Aston makes nonsense of it by producing Davies' bag and witness­ ing in Davies' thanks the closeness of Davies' relationship with him rather than with Mick. Deliberate or not, it sparks the first confrontation of the trio; Mick is obviously, even though very subtly, losing ground. His reaction to this is to vent his annoyance with Aston on the unfortunate Davies. Uncertain how to deal with Aston, Mick has no doubts about how to make an impact on their uneasy guest. But in the very act of switch­ ing the focus of his annoyance from one to the other, Mick confirms the benefits that Aston enjoys in his lessened vulnerability to verbal coercion. Davies, by contrast, is sub­ jected to further pressure as Mick implies secret knowledge about Davies and his effects: MICK: DAVIES: MICK: DAVIES: MICK: DAVIES: MICK:

What's this? Give us it, that's my bag! (warding him off) I've seen this bag before. That's my bag! (eluding him) This bag's very familiar. What do you mean? Where'd you get it? ASTON: (rising, to them) Scrub it. (p. 38)

Davies is once more put in the situation of having to cope with an accusation that is implied but never explicitly stated. In such a situation his ubiquitous fears run riot. But Aston, significantly, takes Davies' side, and the mutual antipathies move toward a crisis.

THE CARETAKER Pinter introduces here a version of a schoolboy game to demonstrate the antagonisms and the alliances. (This tech­ nique reaches its peak in The Basement when a game of cricket, played with a marble and a flute, focuses the contest between two rivals for a mate.) Here, the critical and the comic are inextricably intermingled as the growing hostilities become explicit in a battle for possession of Davies' bag. The laboring Aston spots the logic of successive grabs at the bag (which is going from Davies to Mick to Aston to Davies) and then reverses it, and Mick, under the compulsion of the sequence, finds himself giving the bag to Davies. In this nonverbal form of combat it is Aston who is victorious. But we have in this demonstration of the power of habitual responses a parallel to that available in language. Just as the threatening gang in Pinter's London gave the habitual response to a friendly question in spite of their opposite intentions, so Mick is coerced by the moves of this routine into giving the bag to Davies. With the hostilities now on the surface, the situation is suddenly frozen as the long pause is interrupted by a drip sounding in the bucket; they all look up. Exactly the same thing had occurred in the silence that greeted Aston's entry. The two moments are close in time, but the relationships onstage have developed considerably between the two drips, and the freezing of the action on both occasions signals the significance of the episode in between. The relationship as a trio has had its brief moment of possibility. Aston, who has yet to initiate a conversation with Mick, makes a second attempt to converse with Davies: ASTON: How did you get on at Wembley? DAVIES: Well, I didn't get down there. Pause. No, I couldn't make it. Mick goes to the door and exits, (p. 39)

THE C A R E T A K E R The inevitable response cuts the possible flow of the dia­ logue, but the direction of Aston's concern does not escape Mick. Temporarily the wallflower, he leaves, and the Davies/ Aston pairing, at Aston's instigation, dominates the room. SECTION 6: DAVXES AND ASTON (PP. 39-44)

In this section of the play the Aston/Davies relationship has achieved temporary priority over the other alternatives open to the trio. But the very words that established its priority and dismissed Mick from the stage also undermined the likelihood of its permanence. Aston's attention to Davies is enough to make Mick withdraw, but the first thing that Aston and Davies discover together is their joint failure in their avowed aims for the day. Davies didn't get to Wembley to check on a job at a cafe, and Aston didn't buy the jig saw he set out to purchase. The problem of Mick seems no more amenable to simple solution. The latter's place in the overall situation demands a reckoning that Davies has understood only too well. The Aston/Davies relationship can no longer ignore his existence. Davies, very much aware of the possible consequences of Mick's manifest dislike of him, seeks to minimize those consequences by establishing with Aston that Mick is only a "bit of a joker" (p. 39). Aston, doubtless missing the point, sees no reason to disagree with the proposition. Again the two are at cross-purposes as Davies struggles to compensate for things that Aston is not very concerned about. But dis­ cussion of the absent brother produces an admission that has a very different significance for Davies than it has for Aston: ASTON: I'm supposed to be doing up the upper part of

the house for him.

THE CARETAKER

DAVIES: What . . . you mean . . . you mean it's his

house? ASTON: Yes. (p. 40) The impact of this information on Davies is registered in his halting, disbelieving request for confirmation. The signi­ ficance that this might have for Davies and for their rela­ tionship is lost on Aston, whose matter-of-fact response indicates his blindness to Davies' devious character. Like the statements that threatened Davies in Act 1, those that threaten Aston go unrecognized and unnoticed by him. The growing relationship between Aston and Davies begins to founder on the relationship with the absent Mick. As Aston elaborates on the decorating duties he owes Mick, Davies' concern is directed pointedly at Mick's status as owner of the house. The conversation, and the relationship, splits ominously as Davies' preoccupation with Mick clashes with Aston's concern for the task of redecoration: ASTON: I'm supposed to be decorating this landing for

him. Make a flat out of it. DAVIES : What does he do, then? ASTON: He's in the building trade. He's got his own

van. DAVIES: He don't live here, do he? ASTON: Once I get that shed up outside . . . I'll be able to give a bit more thought to the flat, you see. Perhaps I can knock up one or two things for it. He walks to the window.

I can work with my hands, you see. That's one thing I can do. I never knew I could. But I can do all sorts of things now, with my hands, (p. 40)

THE CARETAKER

The power of the link between Mick and Aston is indicated by Aston's development of this topic in terms of partitions and oriental screens—a muted form of Mick's later dreams about the possibilities of the place. But Davies, as yet un­ aware of the importance Mick attaches to the housing development, registers no interest in what seems to him only another of Aston's rambling speeches. The possible signi­ ficance of Aston's concern for doing things with his hands and his peculiar use of the word "now" also escapes Davies' immediate attention. His lengthy silence speaks volumes of the devious mind searching out the expedient in the new situation he confronts. Aston, in contrast, commits himself increasingly to the relationship with Davies. His generosity continues as he offers Davies shirts, a smoking jacket, and finally a job: ASTON: You could be . . . caretaker here, if you liked. DAVIES: What? ASTON: YOU could . . . look after the place, if you

DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES:

liked . . . you know, the stairs and the land­ ing, the front steps, keep an eye on it. Polish the bells. Bells? I'll be fixing a few, down by the front door. Brass. Caretaking, eh? Yes. Well, I . . . I never done caretaking before, you know . . . I mean to say . . . I never . . . what I mean to say is . . . I never been a caretaker before. Pause.

ASTON: How do you feel about being one, then? DAVIES: Well, I reckon . . . Well, I'd have to know

. . . you know. . . . (p. 42)

THE CARETAKER Davies' response trails off as the situation develops more quickly than he can work out where his best interest lies. At the very moment when Aston's power has diminished, he offers Davies secure residence in the house. Davies is torn between irreconcilable possibilities. Mick, who has been totally hostile, has the power of strength and ownership. Aston, who has not the ultimate physical or legal authority, is offering the friendship and the job. To take the job is to expose himself to Mick's wrath; to refuse it may be to lose the tentative grip he has on a place with a roof, a bed, and some wannth. Caught in a dilemma, Davies struggles to play for time, and, at the point of commitment, he warily retreats. Asked to consider answering the doorbell, he side­ steps hurriedly onto one of his favorite evasive tracks. Reiter­ ating the multi-menaced nature of his life and the conse­ quent dangers of answering doorbells, he launches forth once more on his problems with insurance cards, unnamed agents and self-identification: "My real name's not the one I'm using, you see. It's different. You see, the name I go under now ain't my real one. It's assumed" (p. 44). This verbal track is still as opaque to Aston as Mick's verbal outpourings are to Davies. In the face of this barrage of complication and evasion, silence descends, and the arrangement, along with the relationship, is left unresolved. But the silence itself sets an ominous precedent for their future relationship: their oblique dialogue of misunder­ standing slides toward the silence of separation. SECTION 7: DAVIES AND MICK (PP. 44-52)

In the previous section the Davies/Aston pairing was tenta­ tively explored as an alternative to the uneasy relationship of the trio. Now, the Davies/Mick pairing is set up for com­ parison. Initially, nothing seems to have changed between

THE C A R E T A K E R

the pair since the last time they were onstage together. Mick again attacks Davies, this time psychologically rather than physically, by pursuing him around the darkened room with a vacuum cleaner. For a moment Davies' deepest fears about the malevolence of the gadgets in the room seem to have come true. Humorous on the written page, this move is quite terrifying in the theater until the light goes on and Davies is revealed, clutching a knife in terror, flat against one wall. But this time, Mick's engineering of dominance has more to it than generally maintaining Davies' subservi­ ence. This time certain uses of Davies' pliable character seem gradually to occur to him. As with the Davies/Aston pairing, the new stage of the Davies/Mick relationship begins with references to the ab­ sent member. Mick, having first renewed Davies' terror of him, attempts to increase his insecurity by emphasizing the strength and harmony of the link between himself and his brother. He stresses their mutual concern over, and mutual responsibility for, the upkeep of the flat—an arrangement from which Davies is, of course, excluded: "We take it in turns, once a fortnight, my brother and me, to give the place a thorough going over [my emphasis]" (p. 45). The tempo­ rary nature of Davies' presence is underlined by Mick's designation of him as a guest, and it is rendered even more temporary by a suggestion that he is one from whom rent is expected, again a role that Davies cannot play. Davies, waving the knife, is much more resistant than previously, but Mick's verbal superiority soon overcomes Davies' violent posturing. In a confrontation that parallels that of the youth­ ful Pinter in the London alley, Mick talks a potential threat out of existence and flatters Davies into a role in which he will be manageable and suitable: MICK:

I'm very impressed by what you've just said. Pause.

THE CARETAKER

Yes, that's impressive, that is. Pause.

I'm impressed, anyway. . . . I think we under­ stand one another, (p. 47) Mick's use of flattery suggests a new development in the relationship with Davies, and Mick seems to reinforce this by raising for the first time the possibility of his own dissatis­ faction with Aston. Davies' reaction to this provides the first concrete example of his tendency to be a victim of his own interrelational maneuvers. Always seeking to further his own ends, he denies particular friendship with Aston, afErms Aston's dislike of work, and is eventually led into adding his own criticism: "Well . . . he's a funny bloke, your brother" (p. 49). Mick's ambivalent attitude to Aston suddenly re­ verts, however, and Davies, finding himself out on a limb, is forced to change his mind and opinion with equal rapidity and somewhat less grace: MICK: I don't call it funny. DAVIES: Nor me. (p. 50) By this point, Mick has almost complete control over Davies' responses as Davies seeks only to meet the verbal cues in his remarks. As the conversation progresses, the power of coercion in language is amply demonstrated; Davies per­ forms as required, fabricating evidence for whatever image Mick desires of him: MICK: . . . . y o u ' v e b e e n i n t h e s e r v i c e s , h a v e n ' t y o u ? DAVIES: The what? MICK: You been in the services. You can tell by your stance. DAVIES: Oh . . . yes. Spent half my life there, man. Overseas . . . like . . . serving . . . I was. MICK: In the colonies, weren't you?

THE C A R E T A K E R DAVIES: I was over there. I was one of the first over

there, (pp. 50-51) Offered the same job by Mick as he was by Aston, Davies, after a check on the ownership of the house, reacts, as the stage direction indicates, "decisively": "Well listen, I don't mind doing a bit of caretaking, I wouldn't mind looking after the place for you" (p. 51). The words "for you" calmly reject Aston in spite of the latter's generosity to him. The invitation itself is couched in terms that include Aston's supplantation, and Davies' readiness to agree to this under­ lines his myopic self-interest. While Aston in the preceding section clearly opted for the relationship with Davies as the best alternative available, Davies equally clearly opts instead for the relationship with Mick. Ironically, he is unable to see beyond the possibilities of his own interrelational skills and fails to recognize that he is being manipulated by Mick in exactly the way that he has attempted to manipulate Aston. Having convinced Davies of his concern over Aston's shortcomings, and having led him into a sense of inde­ pendence of Aston, Mick can safely leave the development of the Davies/Aston relationship to Davies' habitual selfinterest and self-aggrandizement. But we should not too readily dismiss all of Mick's words as simply a means of maneuvering Davies into a delusory situation. Mick's lengthy dwelling on Aston's slow rate of work links directly to concerns he has expressed in his two previous appearances. On both of these occasions he talked of, or with, his brother in terms of doing something about the house. Mick's concern over the delay is recurrent. There is no indication at this point that Mick has settled on the use that he wants to make of Davies, but he is evidently toying with the possibility of having Davies provide a partial compensation for the shortcomings of his brother. In inviting

THE C A R E T A K E R

Davies to be caretaker, Mick also provides a potential pres­ sure on Aston to get on with his task of decorating the house or risk having the task entrusted to the newcomer. While Aston has evidently found the task onerous, he obvi­ ously also needs to believe he can carry it out and would not want to have Davies take it over. The overall situation is becoming increasingly complicated, but it is clear that Mick, like Aston, is less than satisfied with the relationship with his brother. SECTION 8: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 52-57)

By this point in the play, the opening humor is strongly tinged with wider significance. The needs of the individual characters are more firmly established, and though Aston's pursuit of Davies' friendship is not yet clearly motivated, it is clearly there. That it should reach its peak of demonstra­ tion at a moment when the possibility has just disappeared is another manifestation of the extensive counterpointing which dominates the play. The new stage in the Aston/ Davies relationship is set in contrast to that which preceded Mick's efforts to establish a closer link with the self-concerned tramp. This section opens with Aston still being generous to Davies and waking him early for his much heralded journey to Sidcup, a journey that Davies rapidly decides is impos­ sible, again because of the weather. From that point the conversation heads toward conflict as Aston begins to raise once more the problem of the noises that Davies makes during the night: ASTON: I . . . I didn't have a very good night again. DAVIES: I slept terrible.

Pause, (p. 52)

T H E CARETAKER

Aston's hesitant and indirect raising of the problem reveals again his uncertainty over how to deal with relationships verbally, while Davies' abrupt response characterizes his new attitude to Aston. No longer feeling dependent, he no longer manifests subservience to Aston or concern for him. ASTON:

YOU were making . . .

DAVIES: Terrible. Had a bit of rain in the night, didn't ASTON:

it? Just a bit. (p. 52)

The clash between the two is immediately evident in the con­ flict over a conversation topic. Davies simply ignores Aston's gesture in the direction of the noises he makes at night and talks about the weather instead. Aston is coerced into re­ sponding to Davies' conversation topic rather than extending his own. Temporarily defeated, he moves away and begins to sandpaper a small plank—nonverbal activity replacing the verbal interaction. The conflict over the organization of their relationship focuses on the right to organize the junk-clut­ tered room. The displaced conflict over Davies' noises becomes cen­ tered on the open window. Davies wants it closed so that he can sleep better; Aston wants it open so that he can sleep better. Neither states explicitly the motives for his position, but what is at stake is evident. Aston's need for the open window to stop the room's getting "stuffy" has an obvious link with the tramp's state of cleanliness (put somewhat bluntly by Mick as "stinking the place out"). Davies makes an issue of the window so that it can be held responsible for his restless, noisy sleeping. With neither willing to put his central concern into explicit statement, the clash is verbalized obliquely, and the arguments are neither logical nor conclu­ sive:

THE CARETAKER ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON*. DAVIES:

I couldn't sleep in here without that window open. Yes, but what about me? What . . . what you got to say about my position? Why don't you sleep the other way round? What do you mean? Sleep with your feet to the window. What good would that do? The rain wouldn't come in on your head. No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. Pause. I mean, I got used to sleeping this way. It isn't me has to change, it's that window, (p. 53)

Again there is an indication of their disparate verbal abilities: a problem that constantly underlies the difficulty of adjust­ ment in the relationship. The fluid nature of language throws this into relief as Aston, humorously, interprets "posi­ tion" as a reference to the angle at which Davies sleeps, while Davies was using the word in the more abstract sense of "problem." Ironically, the misinterpretation provides As­ ton with a decisive point, and Davies, much more interested in asserting himself than avoiding drafts, is outmaneuvered and forced back onto repetition: "No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that." This gives him time to think of a new argument while maintaining his position. But instead of an argument he falls back on a stubborn, self-interested de­ mand: "It isn't me has to change, it's that window" (p. 53). What began as a defensive evasion of responsibility for the "noises" has developed by this point into an attempt by Davies to establish his authority in the relationship. In spite of Aston's generosity, Davies has no compunction about attempting to exploit him. As Lois Gordon puts it, ". . . per-

THE CARETAKER

haps among certain men, only two moralities are possible, that of the slave and the ruler." 7 "Moralities" is not quite the right word. The options available to Davies seem to be only those that can be circumscribed by the linguistic strategies he has available—he is either dominating and exploiting his fellows or being dominated and exploited by them. Aston's attempt to establish a relationship on terms of equality is doomed to failure with a man who cannot cope with the option. The impending failure of the relationship is not lost on Aston. The requirement that the "window" must change effectively demands that he change, for it is he who is requir­ ing it to be open. Aston has not the facility to perceive Davies' intentions in the midst of circumlocutory anecdotes, but he has no difficulty in recognizing the stubborn denial of his own needs. His agreement that the window should be closed is reluctant and strained. Whatever needs drove Aston away from Mick and toward Davies seem at this point no more likely to be met by Davies than by Mick. If the relationship with Mick was unsatisfac­ tory because of Mick's demands (as Mick's persistent con­ cern that Aston begin decorating the house suggests) then the relationship with Davies is becoming disconcertingly similar. In both cases, the mutual demands imposed on the relationship do not seem to be resolved in favor of Aston. Aston's increased awareness of this problem has a remarkable effect. He suddenly launches into a lengthy recollection of an even more threatening situation in his past. As the speech progresses, his struggle to give verbal form to the shattering experience suggests a need to master its meaning as well as a need to communicate that meaning to Davies. That this is an internal conflict, as well as a contribution to the declining 7 L. G. Gordon, Stratagems to Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas of Harold Pinter (University of Missouri Press, 1969), p. 43.

THE CARETAKER

relationship with Davies, is indicated by the stage direction: "During Aston's speech the room grows darker. By the close of the speech only Aston can be seen clearly" (p. 54). The fading lights register the isolating impact of the speech as the chosen influences on his future—the disorganized objects, and the uncomprehending Davies—are replaced by the dark­ ness of an internal struggle with the past. What begins as an urge to communicate to Davies something that will enhance understanding and repair the damaged relationship, ends in isolation and helpless self-concern. This, the longest speech in the play, is Aston's most exten­ sive and concerted attempt at self-revelation. He recalls an episode when he was committed to a mental hospital and subjected to shock treatment on his brain. The account, told in halting, unfocused language, is a moving struggle to locate the significance of the past event and apply it to the present. References to the people involved indicate his lack of under­ standing of those most closely concerned and his estrange­ ment from them. He talks of "these men," "they," "some­ one," "people," "they," "them," "they," "this man," "doc­ tor, I suppose," "the head one," "He," "they," "my mother," "a man," "they," "this chief," "the chief doctor," "the man," "a man," "he," "the chief," "they," "one or two of them," "one of them," "another one," "this chief," "he" (pp. 55-57). Most of these pronouns have no given referent, and most of the nouns are general rather than specific. Even when closer specification is striven for, it still gets nowhere near a per­ sonal relationship. The "head doctor" and "chief doctor" are only authoritative figures in an alien group, and the "head doctor's" qualifications sound like the remains of an argu­ ment someone else once put to Aston: "... the head one . . . he was quite a man of . . . distinction . . . although I wasn't so sure about that" (p. 55). The alliance of the mother with these alien forces is stated

THE CARETAKER in matter-of-fact terms that serve only to add to the pathos. Significantly, that relationship, too, was afflicted by misun­ derstanding. As Aston recalls the symptoms that betrayed him, the problem of interrelational language is given explicit prominence in a line that provides a startling new perspec­ tive on the verbosity of Davies and Mick: "I talked too much. That was my mistake" (p. 54). In revealing himself too trustingly in his preoperation talk, Aston fell prey to the demands of others. Branding him as socially abnormal, peo­ ple called his insights (his "clear sight" [p. 55]) "hallucina­ tions," and Aston was rejected by the people both in the factory where he worked and in the cafe where he ate. Ironi­ cally, the forcible operation changed things for Aston, but it did not improve his ability to control situations verbally: "The trouble was . . . my thoughts . . . had become very slow . . . I couldn't think at all . . . I couldn't . . . get . . . my thoughts . . . together . . ." (p. 57). Though his relationships with other people underwent drastic adjust­ ment, the change was not for the better: ". . . . I don't talk to people now" (p. 57). In this context, Aston's concern for "doing things with his hands" becomes a clear alternative to the verbal world of social relationships. In this speech we get a rare "explanation" of a character's behavior, but it must not be forgotten that it is Aston's view­ point on those events. One reason why Davies' verbal wiles have been largely lost on Aston is made clear. Already afflicted with problems in relating verbally to others, Aston found that the operation served merely to make interrelational lan­ guage even more opaque to him. In the sphere of verbal coercion and countercoercion, Aston is a crippled but, in some ways, less vulnerable combatant. Davies' early misun­ derstanding of and later attempt to exploit this weakness seems only one more in a succession of such problems for Aston, problems that the operation did nothing to solve.

THE CARETAKER

Much has been written about the possible inappropriateness of this speech. It has, on the one hand, been hailed as "a long, brilliantly delivered soliloquy that is one of the un­ forgettable moments of the play" 8 and dismissed, on the other, as its "central failure." 9 To Taylor, it is "a distin­ guished piece of writing in itself, but somehow too explicit, lacking the richness and indirection of Pinter's best work."10 This suggestion of the primacy of indirection in Pinter's work is what leads many critics to suggest that there is an unfortunate inconsistency here. Wardle's objection locates the critics' concern even more precisely: ". . . my objection to the speech is that it gives a character a biography instead of a style of speaking. Elsewhere the play of language creates its own world, incidentally flowering into biographical de­ tail." 11 But in locating the problem have we not discovered precisely the point of the speech? Aston has a peculiar impact on the flow of dialogue because, as we have suggested, he is not fully in touch with the rules. He does not promote or extend conversations because he does not rapidly grasp "what is being done with the words." His speed of thought is slow, and so is his ability to perceive the movement of a conversa­ tion. Because of this, he himself is not extensively involved in or revealed in dialogue. To Aston, then, the need to get closely involved in a relationship requires a long, elaborate self-revelatory speech of this sort. It is not inconsistent with his previous verbal behavior though it may be different from it. This speech has been foreshadowed in his earlier disjunc­ tive statements about the drink of Guinness and the woman asking to see his body. Not fully tuned in to the requirements 8M.

P a n t e r - D o w n e s , N e w Y o r k e r , xxxvi (July 9, 1960), 60-61. R. Gilman, "Pinter's Hits—and Misses," Commonweal, LXXVII (December 28, 1962), 366. 10 J. R. Taylor, Harold Pinter (Essex, 1969), p. 16. 11 1. Wardle, "There's Music in that Room," The Encore Reader, eds. C. Marowitz, T. Milne, and O. Hale (London, 1965), p. 131. 9

THE CARETAKER

of dialogue, Aston steps in with whatever happens to interest him. He does this at times that are not verbally prepared for because he does not fully grasp the function of such verbal preparation. On this level, Aston is a character with a dis­ tinctive problem that requires distinctive statement. This speech, then, is contrastive when matched against the dia­ logue of Mick and Davies, but that is precisely its point; and, because of that point, it is not a flaw in the play but an individual expression of an individual character's needs. In making the latter statement we raise one more aspect of the speech. Davies' needs and Mick's needs are indicated by the maneuvers they attempt in the dialogue. Their efforts to frame relationships on the terms they require are embodied in the dialogue. We must not allow Aston's more explicit statement of his problems to lead us into the error of believ­ ing that his needs do not affect its delivery. While slow to follow the moves in dialogue, Aston is not totally oblivious to the shifting relationships involved. This long speech comes at a time when the relationship with Davies is deteriorating, and it has a function as a response to that deterioration. In spite of the generosity of spirit that makes him so differ­ ent from Davies, Aston has already revealed similarities. His plan to go out and buy a saw is as easily thwarted as Davies' projected visit to a cafe for a job. The renovation of the house that he has promised to undertake for Mick is no nearer commencement than Davies' visit to Sidcup, and the barrier to his progress, the building of the shed, is confronted no more systematically than Davies' intermittent search for shoes. Both seem able to excuse procrastination indefinitely. All three, in fact, engage in planning that never gets trans­ lated into action. The Sidcup journey means to Davies what the dream of a showpiece block of flats means to Mick and what the building of the shed means to Aston. All project

THE CARETAKER

verbally the selves the)' are about to be, but all get no nearer the achievement. We must see Aston then, in spite of his generosity to Davies, as a man whose needs are also revealed in his verbal preoccupations, and consequently it must be recognized that his report on the hospital experience is not necessarily fully accurate.12 The speech on the mental hospital episode is, like Davies' anecdotes, doubtless grounded in truth, but equally doubtless it, too, tells us as much about Aston as about the event described. It is not just a disinterested report, but, again like Davies' reminiscences, combines a struggle for a self-image with an appeal for sympathy and an excuse for failure. The parallel between them is underlined by the pseudo-heroic conclusion, which echoes Davies' earlier re­ marks on urgent but uncertain revenge. I've often thought of going back and trying to find the man who did that to me. But I want to do something first. I want to build that shed out in the garden, (p. 57) The link with Davies' reaction to his maltreatment by a "Scotch git" (p. 10) is unmistakable. I'll get him. One night I'll get him. When I find myself around that direction. Likewise, the overplaying of the aftermath of the operation reveals a certain self-indulgence, terrible though the experi­ ence may well have been. . . . . I laid everything out, in order, in my room, all the things I knew were mine, but I didn't die. The thing is, I should have been dead. I should have died. (p. 57) 12 Cf. Pinter's remark in an interview with L. M. Bensky, Paris Review, χ (Autumn 1966), 30: ". . . the one thing that people have missed is that it isn't necessary to conclude that everything Aston says about his experiences in the mental hospital is true."

THE CARETAKER Davies' overplaying of the cafe incident goes in the same direction: . . . . I got to loosen myself up, you see what I mean? I could have got done in down there, (p. 8) The appeal for sympathy intertwined in the reported data is obvious enough. But these parallels do not undercut As­ ton's story in the same way that Davies' reports are undercut. Davies is obviously an inveterate liar who will say whatever the situation demands to suit his aims. Aston is never so devious. But he, too, indulges in self-deception and appeals for sympathy at a time when events seem beyond his con­ trol. The balance between self-pity and an appeal to Davies is indistinct, but one of the great ironies of the play is that, after a long period of not talking to people, he decides to un­ load his terrors and needs on a character who is incapable of displaying the generosity of spirit that might help him, a character who sees weakness solely in terms of its possible exploitation. SECTION 9: DAVIES AND MICK (PP. 58-64)

Though Aston and Davies are very different in some ways we have gradually grown aware of their equivalence on an­ other level. They have different needs and different perspec­ tives, but they share one problem—both require the sym­ pathy and reinforcement that will help them to adjust to and overcome a chronic sense of weakness and vulnerability. This pattern of common ground emerging among such diverse characters is extended in this section to include, to a lesser degree, the apparently self-sufficient Mick. Two weeks elapse between Aston's long speech and the next act of the play. The curtain reveals Mick and Davies together onstage with Davies relaxed in a chair, clutching

THE CARETAKER

his pipe, adorned in the smoking-jacket, and looking very much at home. He devotes his time to reinforcing what he feels is a growing relationship with Mick, partly by denigrat­ ing the absent Aston. But the fragility of this relationship, like that with Aston, is revealed in the uncertain flow of the dialogue. For a long time Mick does not join in the potential conversation and just lets Davies run on. In spite of twelve pauses by Davies, he breaks in only once to add the potent but unelaborated remark, "I know what you want" (p. 59). As before, the means of establishing a binary relationship involves the settlement of a common attitude to the absent third member, but it is Davies now, not Mick, who dwells on the subject. In criticizing Aston, Davies suggests that the relationship with Aston has, if anything, deteriorated even further: "He don't answer me when I talk to him" (p. 58), and ". . . . he don't seem to take any notice of what I say to him" (p. 59). In the light of Aston's long speech it would appear that Aston has reverted in his relationship with Davies to the position he had previously adopted with other people. The abandonment of a reliance on words in relating to others might seem like a lack of interest in them. But there is clearly more to the issue than that. To Davies, however, the lack of verbal interaction is indicative of a major deteriora­ tion in the relationship: "Couple of weeks ago . . . he sat there, he give me a long chat . . . about a couple of weeks ago. A long chat he give me. Since then he ain't said hardly a word" (p. 59). That Davies considers the speech only a revelation of Aston's self-concern is an ironic indictment of his own self-interest. Far from sympathizing with Aston's problems and unhappy experience, Davies sees this subse­ quent silence merely as a rebuff directed at him. There is a deep irony in his comment that "You can't live in the same

THE CARETAKER room with someone who . . . who don't have any conver­ sation with you" (p. 60). The implications of the latter statement are complex. Con­ versation in these plays, as we have seen, is not a simple timepassing activity; it negotiates basic relationships all the time. It is a constant attempt to resolve the conflict between needs and necessity. Aston7 however, cannot utilize dialogue for his needs in the ways that Davies seeks to, and dialogue serves more to thwart his hopes for the relationship than to serve them. Davies, meanwhile, seeks conversation to promote his own ends. Aston loses both ways. He cannot change Davies by dialogue, and Davies does not respond sympathetically to his monologues. Aston, in his silence, has in fact switched to the only asset he has: "I can work with my hands, you see. That's one thing I can do" (p. 40). Recognizing his con­ sistent failure to improve relationships verbally, Aston falls back on doing things. He had instigated the friendship with Davies by providing him with cigarettes, shoes, and money. Now we find that he has at last achieved something with the house by tarring over the roof. This effort by Aston to impose tactile control on his en­ vironment is of considerable importance. The proliferation of verbal data with which Mick has confronted Davies and with which Davies has confronted Aston is paralleled by the proliferation of objects that confront Aston in his room. The things, like the words, are useless without structure, without the connections that give them form and function. Aston, having failed once more to use words to structure success­ fully the relationships in the room, turns back to attempts to structure the room itself. It is possible to see this effort as an attempt to improve the relationship with Davies (who is living there) or with Mick (who wants the house repaired). But more important, it is an effort by Aston to assert con­ trol, any sort of control, on the chaos that surrounds him.

THE CARETAKER

The manifestation of control in this area is as vital to Aston's self-image as the verbal manifestation of control has been to other Pinter characters. Its meaninglessness to Davies, however, is marked by his casual mention of it and by his subsequent criticism of Aston's insensitivity to him. But, as things develop, Davies' insensitivity in this area proves to be crucial. Not surprisingly, Mick remains unmoved by Davies' com­ plaints. But what is surprising is the chord that the maneu­ vering Davies suddenly strikes in Mick that links the reticent Mick with the absent Aston: DAVIES: YOU and me, we could get this place going, (p.

60) To Davies, the essential word in the sentence is "we." That Mick understands Davies' maneuvering precisely is evinced in the response: MICK: (ruminatively) Yes, you're quite right. Look what

I could do with this place, [my emphasis] (p.

60) But Mick's recurrent concern for improving the establish­ ment is nonetheless engaged, and he launches into a lengthy vision of the developmental possibilities, concluding: "it wouldn't be a flat it'd be a palace" (p. 60). Davies, delighted to have established contact, is quick to reinforce the belief, but for his own reasons: DAVIES: MICK: DAVIES: MICK:

I'd say it would, man. A palace.

Who would live there? I would. My brother and me.13 Pause. DAVIES: What about me? (p. 61) 13

The Methuen edition (1967) misprints a question mark here.

T H E CARETAKER

Mick ignores the question, but his enthusiasm is unabated. His fascination with the possibility seems increasingly sin­ cere. Unlike Mick's earlier speeches, this one coheres fully around a single vision, and his characteristic use of detailed technical vocabulary is no longer directed toward confusing Davies: Yes. Venetian blinds on the window, cork floor, cork tiles. You could have an off-white pile linen rug, a table in . . . in afromosia teak veneer, sideboard with matt black drawers, curved chairs with cushioned seats, arm­ chairs in oatmeal tweed, a beech frame settee with a woven sea-grass seat, white-topped heat resistant coffee table, white tile surround. Yes. (p. 60) Mick's self-investment in this verbal reality is as serious as Aston's efforts to give verbal form to his experience in the mental hospital. He even feeds in his own verbal confirma­ tion with the two uses of "yes." Davies' inability to react un­ selfishly to Mick's needs here is as revelatory of his shortcom­ ings as his failure with Aston. But Mick, momentarily gripped by the project, finds his grandiose plans, like those of Aston and Davies, undermined by the surrounding con­ glomeration of disorganized and uncomprehending junk—a telling counterpoint to his verbalized dream. For the first time Mick's criticism of Aston is a direct comment on their rela­ tionship unmediated by any attempt to outmaneuver Davies: MICK: (quietly) All this junk here, it's no good to any­

one. It's just a lot of old iron, that's all. Clob­ ber. You couldn't make a home out of this. There's no way you could arrange it. It's junk. He could never sell it, either, he wouldn't get tuppence for it. Patise.

THE CARETAKER Junk. Pause. But he doesn't seem to be interested in what I got in mind, that's the trouble. Why don't you have a chat with him, see if he's interested, (p.

61) Significantly, it is at this moment of explicit dissatisfaction with Aston that Mick turns most seriously toward Davies. Like Aston and Davies, Mick, too, has a vital need that the relationships have left unmet. But whatever momentary hope Mick might have had of using Davies to promote the desired end is instantly dashed. Still seeking the expedient, Davies once again becomes the victim of his own limited awareness of interrelational possibilities. He denies friendship with As­ ton (to preserve, he feels, his link with Mick) and returns to the track of denigrating him as before, singling out for par­ ticular comment the fact that Aston stands and smiles at him when he thinks he's sleeping. Ironically, Davies blunders at this point into the very error that Aston had warned him about: "I talked too much. That was my mistake" (p. 54). Seeking to maneuver the relationship with Mick toward a position of acknowledged mutual concerns, Davies succeeds only in reminding Mick of his selfishness and the folly of allying himself with Davies in any way. The moment of the closer relationship is past, and Mick reverts to distancing and confusing Davies as before: DAVIES: YOU want to tell him . . . that we got ideas

for this place, we could build it up, we could get it started. You see, I could decorate it out for you, I could give you a hand in doing it . . . between us. Pause. Where do you live now, then?

T H E CARETAKER

MICK:

Me? Oh7 I've got a little place. Not bad. Every­ thing laid on. You must come up and have a drink some time. Listen to some Tchaikov­ sky. [my emphasis] (pp. 63-6 4)

The attempt to negotiate a relationship that will exclude Aston is rejected by Mick, who responds by again projecting their relationship beyond the capacities of the struggling tramp. Davies cannot fit the role of listening to classical music over cocktails, and Mick, unwilling to face the incom­ ing Aston, leaves. Davies trails off once more into silence: a silence as prophetic of separation as that which concluded Davies' previous meetings with Aston. SECTION 10: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 64-66)

In the previous section Davies failed to take advantage of the one moment when he might have established a more en­ during relationship with Mick. In this section he likewise fails to respond to the final display of Aston's generosity toward him. Blind to the single opportunity he missed with Mick, Davies is equally blind to the value of Aston's re­ peatedly offered friendship. His desperate attempts to find favor with the hostile Mick are juxtaposed to his readiness to find fault with the generous Aston. The contrast drives home the increasing precariousness of Davies' situation and his constant inability to see beyond the myopic limits of his own self-seeking. Far from offering thanks for the shoes that Aston has brought him, Davies remarks only on their inade­ quacy, regarding this not as a regrettable mishap but as a justification for reprimanding the donor: DAVIES: Where's the laces? ASTON: NO laces. DAVIES: I can't wear them without laces.

THE CARETAKER

ASTON: I just got the shoes. DAVIES: Well now, look that puts the lid on it, don't it? I mean, you couldn't keep these shoes on right without a pair of laces. The only way to keep a pair of shoes on, if you haven't got no laces, is to tighten the foot, see? Walk about with a tight foot, see? Well, that's no good for the foot. Puts a bad strain on the foot, (pp. 64-65) His readiness to find fault is registered in a similar objection to the laces that Aston finally produces—brown ones, which Davies accepts very grudgingly because the shoes are black. Aston's effort to improve the relationship with Davies by do­ ing things for him is no more successful than before and no more successful than trying to affect him verbally. As Davies launches once more into his favorite sequence of projects and excuses, Aston simply leaves, unnoticed. When Davies does notice, his reaction reveals the minimal impact of As­ ton's generosity, and the conflicting focuses of their interrelational concerns: "Christ! That bastard, he ain't even listening to me!" (p. 66). SECTION 11: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 66-70) Aston's efforts to avoid further verbal negotiation of the relationship founder in the face of the continued occurrence of the problem that had initially caused trouble between them—Davies' restless, noisy sleeping. Far from resolving the problem, this reversion to negotiation by dialogue serves only to provide Davies with a further opportunity to contribute to his own downfall. This is the third time Aston has raised this subject, and this time he is much more decisive than before. Attacking the problem directly instead of waiting until morn­ ing, he shakes Davies awake:

T H E CARETAKER ASTON: Hey, stop it, will you? I can't sleep, (p. 66)

The deterioration of their relationship can be traced in the succession of responses Davies has given to Aston on this problem. The first time (p. 23) he denied responsibility for the noise and suggested that it was "them Blacks" next door who were at fault; the second time (p. 53) he blamed the open window, and indirectly Aston, for his restlessness; this time, armed with a knowledge of Aston's weakness, he resorts to a direct attack: DAVIES: Just you keep your place, that's all. Because I

can tell you, your brother's got his eye on you. He knows all about you. I got a friend there, don't you worry about that. I got a true pal there. . . . They can put the pin­ cers on your head again, man! They can have them on again! Any time. All they got to do is get the word. . . . They'd take one look at all this junk I got to sleep with they'd know you were a creamer. That was the greatest mistake they made, you take my tip, letting you get out of that place, (p. 67) To emphasize his argument and protect himself from any violent response, Davies draws a knife. But Aston, like Mick earlier, is not impressed by the threat. In a devastatingly lowkey statement, even his slow-moving thoughts reach the in­ evitable conclusion: ASTON: I . . . I think it's about time you found some­ where else. I don't think we're hitting it off.

(p. 68) Davies is not to be rebuffed, however, and ironically goes on to reveal his success at convincing himself of what he cannot

THE CARETAKER

convince others. He emphatically dictates a counterconclusion: DAVIES: YOU! YOU better find somewhere else! (p. 68) The underlying problems of the relationship rise to the sur­ face as the mutual awareness of irreconcilable differences be­ comes increasingly explicit. Commenting on the evasive character of much of the dialogue that he writes, Pinter made an important qualification: "I'm not suggesting that no character in a play can ever say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a mo­ ment when this happens, where he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back." 14 For Aston and Davies, this moment has arrived. It is important, however, to note precisely what it is that Davies says that proves to be irrevocable. Aston reacts with only mild puzzlement when Davies seeks to undermine his position by invoking Mick's authority. And he remains toler­ ant in the face of insults that question his sanity. But when Davies makes a remark about the shed that Aston is building, the mildness and tolerance vanish. Aston's reaction to this attack, rather than to the others with which he is confronted, underlines the dependence of his self-image on this scheme. Like Mick's luxury flats and Davies' papers at Sidcup, Aston's shed supplies a focus for optimism which is indispensable to his attempts to cope with daily failures. But more than that, the shed also provides a testing ground for his recurrent claim to expertise "with his hands," with all that that means to him as an alternative skill to the one of manipulating words. Davies' slighting remarks about the shed provide a final focus for the disharmony in the relationship. 14 H. Pinter, "Between the Lines," The Sunday Times (London), March 4, 1962, mag. sec., p. 25.

T H E CARETAKER

The ensuing confrontation exploits once more the dra matic possibilities of language's flexibility. The word "stink" is put to services that belie its apparent simplicity, as Pinter invests once more in the different distinctions it is possible to make with the same word: 15 ASTON:

DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES: ASTON: DAVIES:

ASTON:

You've no reason to call that shed stinking. Davies points the knife. You stink. What! You've been stinking the place out. Christ, you say that to me! For days. That's one reason I can't sleep. YOU call me that! You call me stinking! You'd better go. I'LL STINK YOU! He thrusts his arm out, the arm trembling, the knife pointing at Aston's stomach. Aston does not move. Silence. Davies' arm moves no fur­ ther. They stand. I'll stink you . . . Pause. Get your stuff, [my emphasis] (p. 69)

The defeated Davies trails off as he recognizes his powerlessness in the face of Aston's anger. Continuing to verbalize his impotent opposition, the vacillating tramp exits to seek sup­ port elsewhere.

SECTION 12: DAVIES AND MICK (PP. 70-74)

The power of any threat Davies might provide to Aston is by now totally dependent on Mick's wishes. But, as Davies soon discovers, Mick is much more concerned about the 15

More accurately, "The same lexical item."

THE CARETAKER

problems that he himself confronts in dealing with Aston than he is about Davies' problems in the same sphere. Mick, like Davies, is being gradually forced to face up to the limita­ tions of his influence over Aston. And Mick, like Davies, is discovering in this experience a threat to his needs and de­ sires that is anything but welcome. The crucial difference between Mick and Davies, however, is in their ability to ad­ just to a situation that they are unable to change. The nature of Mick's concern over Aston has become in­ creasingly evident, but the extent of that concern is revealed for the first time in Mick's reaction to the increasingly desperate Davies. His dislike for Davies and his regrets about his brother fuse into a denunciation of Davies that is even stronger than the one Aston provided. But the immediate focus of his conversation underlines the interdependency of his concern for others with concern for himself and for his treasured property development: MICK:

Well, you say you're an interior decorator, you'd better be a good one. DAVIES: A what? MICK: What do you mean, a what? A decorator. An interior decorator. DAVIES: Me? What do you mean? I never touched that. I never been that. MICK: You've never what? DAVIES: No, no, not me, man. I'm not an interior decorator. I been too busy. Too many other things to do, you see. (pp. 71-72) Mick's reaction to this is peculiarly overemphatic. While he is still seeking to draw Davies out of his depth, his response to the verbal acknowledgement of Davies' artistic incom­ petence is extreme. There is more than a hint of sincerity in

THE CARETAKER

his berating of Davies for failing to live up to a role that he also demands unsuccessfully of his brother: MICK: How could I have the wrong man? You're the

only man I've spoken to. You're the only man I've told, about my dreams, about my deepest wishes, you're the only one I've told. . . . (p. 72) The speech articulates explicitly concerns that could equally well be voiced by the outraged Aston and the dismayed Davies. The accusation "imposter" that Mick directs at Davies is the unspoken reproach of each character for the others. In the case of Davies, however, neither Mick nor Aston is able to locate any compensating virtues. MICK: I can take nothing you say at face value. Every

word you speak is open to any number of dif­ ferent interpretations. Most of what you say is lies. You're violent, you're erratic, you're just completely unpredictable. You're nothing else but a wild animal, when you come down to it. You're a barbarian, (pp. 73-74) In a rage, Mick picks up the Buddha and smashes it—a gesture appropriately directed at an image that is as silent and inscrutable as the one that Aston presents to him, and an image that also exemplifies the apparent randomness of Aston's efforts to decorate the junk-filled room. In resorting to a physical gesture to climax a verbal tirade, Mick ironi­ cally finds himself momentarily at one with Aston's com­ mitment to a world of doing rather than a world of saying. And in the moment of anger, he moves from the emphatic assertion of his own needs ("That's what I want") to the beginnings of an acceptance of the needs of Aston:

THE CARETAKER

MICK: I thought I was doing him a favour, letting him

live here. He's got his own ideas. Let him have them. I'm going to chuck it in. (p. 74) Though this is at best a grudging acceptance, it must be read in the light of the strength of commitment of all three characters to their image-enhancing goals. Mick's adjustment here is a significant one. Davies' irrelevance to Mick and Mick's world is indicated by the progress of Mick's concern from general annoyance with Davies to real anger and disappointment over Aston. In a joint article, Cook and Brooks make a helpful comment on Mick's hopes for the house: "Mick's dream of the lush decoration of the flat is at once a self-deception, a means of self-mockery and a means to mock Davies."16 It is the realization of the former rather than disappointment with Davies that produces the anger and bitterness in Mick, and when Davies asks the question on which his whole future depends Mick does not even look around. The pathetic "What about me?" is greeted with silence. Dav-ies, who has spent much of the play trying to maneu­ ver himself verbally into secure positions, has merely talked himself securely into hostility and rejection. Mick's silence is final. Davies, who never understood the motives that pro­ voked Mick's verbal attacks, is left with a silence that is equally eloquent but equally beyond his grasp. As Hollis puts it: "Even the most banal aspects of existence seem fraught with serious implications for Davies because he is trying desperately to learn the game so that he can play it too. At every turn, however, he is defeated by language. Language is either too much for him or not enough for him; it either 16 D. Cook and H. F. Brooks, "A Room with Three Views: Harold Pinter's The Caretaker," Komos, ι (1967), 65.

THE C A R E T A K E R

bewilders him or tells him the obvious." 17 But it is not sim­ ply language that defeats Davies, or, for that matter, Aston or Mick; rather, it is certain aspects of language that they themselves are not able to employ successfully to further their ends. Ultimately, then, the problem is not one of lan­ guage but one of character. The silence that so often is the culmination of their interaction is not one of failure to com­ municate but of failure to relate.

SECTION 13: DAVIES, MICK, AND ASTON (P. 75)

The rejection of Davies, first by Aston and then by Mick, revealed in the two preceding sections, leads to the inevi­ table. Davies, whatever his needs and concerns, is reduced to an episode in a more enduring relationship. As Aston enters to find Mick and Davies present, the situation is no longer that of Section 5, when all three were last together. This time it is Davies, not Mick, who is the odd one out. The two brothers face each other in silence, and a faint smile passes between them. Neither takes any notice of Davies. Mick begins to say something, thinks better of it, and leaves. But in that moment of decision Mick takes the step that involves the acceptance of Aston's individuality and of Aston's com­ mitment to a nonverbal world. The smile, however slight, suffices to reestablish the priority of the link between the two brothers. That the major affirmation of the play should come in a nonverbal form is something of a comment on the linguistic performances of the three characters. All three have different needs and different verbal abilities. All three have invested much time and effort in coping with the situation that faces them, but Davies' undeviating selfishness has always de17 }.

R. Hollis, Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 84.

T H E CARETAKER

stroyed any possibility of including him in new arrange­ ments. In the face of that factor, the verbal conflicts and maneuvers have served only to inform Mick and Aston of the irreconcilable nature of the potential relationships with Davies. Aston's move toward silence began with his long speech to Davies. Mick's silence served only to make explicit the rejection of Davies that was always implicit in his long, confusing speeches. Now, in reestablishing their past link, Aston and Mick find that a smile of recognition sufHces. And the parallel between this smile and those that Aston be­ stowed on the sleeping Davies serves to give retrospective impact to Davies' loss. Though Mick's rejection of him was rarely in doubt, a close relationship with Aston was his in return for a little generosity and unselfishness. As ignorant of Aston's "game" as of Mick's, the conniving tramp was his own worst enemy. The silent smile that links Mick and As­ ton serves only to drive home to Davies the emptiness of the silence that now surrounds him. SECTION 14: DAVIES AND ASTON (PP. 75-78)

With Aston and Mick resorting to silent acceptance of the outcome of the overall situation, it remains for Davies to attain a similar awareness. Faced once more with Aston's hostility, and now deserted by Mick, Davies goes through his coercive routines once more. Too late he tries to show in­ terest in Aston's concerns with the toaster plug and the shed, and too late he voices the sympathy that Aston had sought earlier. Suggesting that the solution to the "noises" problem is changing beds, he is served explicit rejection in Aston's renewed allegiance to Mick: ASTON: NO, I like sleeping in this bed. DAVIES: But you don't understand my meaning! ASTON: Anyway, that one's my brother's bed. (p. 76)

THE CARETAKER

As Aston also rejects his preferred assistance in building the shed, Davies turns to the ultimate resort of a direct appeal for sympathy. His contrived "We'll both put up that shed together" and "we'll keep it as it is" falters into a manifest self-concern: But . . . but . . . look . . . listen . . . listen here . . . I mean . . , Aston turns back to the window. What am I going to do? Pause. What shall I do? Pause. Where am I going to go? Pause, [my emphasis] (pp. 77-78) Aston's unyielding rejection of his presence negates the ques­ tions before they are asked. His categoric, "You make too much noise" (p. 77) has, in the context of the play, taken on a much wider significance than merely Davies' restless sleep­ ing. The "noise" of Davies is his every verbal intrusion into the situation. A perpetual stream of self-defense, self-con­ cern, and self-aggrandizement, the "noise" has never been directed toward anyone's benefit but his own. As Aston turns to gaze out the window at the site of the projected shed, he turns his attention from the verbal world of Davies to a tactile world that excludes his spluttering guest. The silence "to keep things going" has become the silence of rejection. In the silent confirmation of their mutual dependence, Mick and Aston remain finally opaque to the audience; the source of strength of their enduring relationship remains un­ clear. To suggest that the play "is a study of the unexpected strength of family ties against an intruder" 18 is to elevate 1 8 J. Arden quoted by A. P. Hinchliffe, Harold Pinter (New York, 1967), p. 102.

THE CARETAKER the fact of their relationship into a reason for its success, ancl the text provides nothing further than the fact. Ultimately, we do not need to know its basis, Davies is finally rejected not because he offers a poorer alternative relationship for the brothers but because he offers no alternative. Davies has revealed his character to be substantially the same in inter­ acting with both brothers; he has nothing else to reveal. The interdependent nature of a close relationship is beyond him; his verbal strategies are limited to domination or dependence. In the final moments he faces a situation in which both roles are denied him. He cannot dominate Aston, and in the earlier attempt to do so he lost the acceptance that allowed him a dependent role. His stock of verbal maneuvers runs down into a silence of imminent recognition: If you want me to go . . . I'll go. You just say the word. Pause. I'll tell you what though . . . them shoes . . . them shoes you give me . . . they're working out all right . . . they're all right. Maybe I could . . . get down . . . Aston remains still, his back to him, at the window. Listen . . . if I . . . got down . . . if I was to . . . get my papers . . . would you . . . would you let . . . would you . . . if I got down . . . and got my . . . Long Silence, (p. 78) The myth of the papers at Sidcup comes to the brink of empirical testing. The words on which Davies bases his escapist self-image begin to take on their purely verbal reality. As the tired phrases are being uttered, the alternatives they present come home to him. If Aston's silence precedes a yes, there are no papers at Sidcup to change the status quo; if Aston's silence implies no, the status quo likewise remains unchanged. With recognition dawning for Davies, Aston need not reply, for the useless question is finally never asked.

THE CARETAKER

On the brink of a confrontation with self-knowledge, Davies reaches the limits of his verbal resources. The road to Sidcup has become the road to silence.19 POSTSCRIPT

In view of the extensive critical commentary on ways in which assumed limitations of language are exposed in Pin­ ter's plays, it is important to avoid a misunderstanding of the function of the silences that conclude this play. The silence that settles upon each character in turn is not a recognition of the limitations of language but of the limitations of self. The characters fall silent not because they find themselves unable to speak but because they recognize that all they can usefully say has already been said. While this recognition is some­ thing of an achievement for Mick and a clear defeat for Davies, it remains an ambiguous conclusion for the silent Aston. One of the consequences of Aston's mental problems is that he has been forced to choose between a world domi­ nated by words and a world dominated by things. The un­ fortunate corollary of this situation has been a simultaneous choice between a world peopled by a variety of others and a world that includes only himself and his brother. In bringing home Davies, Aston provides an indication of his discontent with the consequences of his choice and suggests that he is 19 Pinter has indicated that at one point he anticipated a violent conclusion to the play. Eventually he felt that the characters as they had developed could not resolve their mutual animosities in this way (interview with H. Thompson, "Harold Pinter Replies," New Theatre Magazine, xi [January 1961], 10). Hollis makes a useful comment (.Harold Pinter, p. 94): "Violence, Pinter notes, is just one of the special strategies by which people compete for dominance. The struggle for dominance had resolved itself as a linguistic struggle in which Davies could not finally compete."

THE CARETAKER considering once more the possibility of putting himself at risk in a wider sphere. Unfortunately, he finds in his new companion only what he has found among previous ones. The potential common ground between himself and the socially outcast Davies is nullified when it becomes apparent that Davies brings with him the pressures of the society that has rejected him. The most vital of the many flaws in Davies' character is his complete dependence upon a limited and limiting set of verbal strategies, with his consequent in­ ability to recognize that these vital social defenses are, in this situation, his most dangerous liabilities. In his instinctive drive for power over Aston, Davies becomes as much a vic­ tim of his own verbal abilities as Aston is of his. At the end of the play, Aston's silence reaffirms the validity of a choice he had made once before in his life ("I don't talk to people now" p. 57). Recognizing that a choice between verbal and nonverbal relationships is also a choice between wide social contact and minimal social contact, Aston must nonetheless revert to his previous choice. In turning away from Davies to the site of the projected shed he turns away again from people and words to himself, his brother, and things. But the smile that keeps operative the link between himself and his brother Mick reveals his awareness of the limitations of his choice. The smile is not enthusiastic, it is "faint." Aston's acceptance of Mick is as necessary and as forced as Mick's acceptance of Aston. In reaffirming his relationship with Mick, Aston is simply giving recognition to his only option. There is no major breakthrough here, simply a reacceptance of mutual disharmony and a recommitment to working in that context. Aston returns not to a new free­ dom but to an old role, and his final stance, with his back to Davies and to the audience, leaves him face to face with the project that has burdened him from the outset—the building of a shed to facilitate his work for Mick.

THE CARETAKER The problem that faces so many Pinter characters is no less operative in the conclusion of this play. The coercive force of interrelational dialogue that puts so much strain on a character's self-image is not evaded by a decision not to talk. To be a noncombatant in verbal warfare is not to be free but to be another kind of captive. And had Davies been capable of joining with Aston in a nonverbal relationship, it is doubtful that this would have solved Aston's problem either. The benefits of close relationships carry with them the liabilities of close relationships, and those liabilities are not evaded by refusing to give them verbal form. Aston's "doing things with his hands" is as effectively circumscribed by Mick as anything he ever tried to do with words. The problem of coercion is not, as Aston once hoped, a problem grounded in language, but a problem grounded in relation­ ships. To escape language is not to find relationships free from coercion but to confront coercion manifest in another form. The silence that settles upon Aston, like that which settles upon Davies and Mick, is not an escape from the prob­ lems that confront him, but a helpless acknowledgement of an inability to solve them.

V

THE HOMECOMING Two cultures or technologies can, like astronomical galaxies, pass through one another without collision; but not without change of configuration. In modern physics there is, similarly, the concept of "interface" or the meeting and metamorphosis of two structures.1

IN FOCUSING The Caretaker on the problems of all three characters, Pinter continued the gradual elimination of his early distinction between two radically different kinds of character. The play's extensive concern for Davies' problems confirmed the essential similarity of the issues confronted by both the intruders and those intruded upon. As early as The Birthday Party (1957) Pinter was toying with the vulnerabili­ ties of such powerful intruders as Goldberg and McCann, and by the time he wrote The Collection (1961) it was ap­ parent that his characters' conflicts were based more upon psychological intrusion than upon territorial intrusion. And, as The Collection made abundantly clear, such intrusions are almost always mutual. In such situations, the distinction between the two kinds of character becomes dramatically extraneous. The Collection reduced interest in inanimate territory to a minimum but The Homecoming marks a return to Pinter's earlier concern for the relationship between physical and psychological terrain. In The Homecoming, however, Pin­ ter avoids the kind of distinction between the characters that 1 M.

McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (London, 1967), p. 149.

THE HOMECOMING

might make the house take on a misleading significance. In this play, all of the characters are in a position to make some kind of claim on the residence in which they encounter one another. Furthermore, Pinter adopts from The Collection the basic format of two social groups coming into conflict with each other, making the mutuality of disturbance a cen­ tral factor from the outset. The Homecoming is a marked structural advance upon The Collection, in which Pinter continued to utilize his basic duologue structure. In a lengthy play like The Homecoming there is an evident need for some scenes with at least four characters onstage if the play is to portray successfully the mutual disturbance of the two social groups. Pinter manages to combine the strength of the duologue structure with the need for greater flexibility by making the dialogue on a crowded stage focus upon a single individual. Thus, the play consists of a series of the usual Pinter duologues and also a series of adapted duologues in which the structure is that of one individual versus the rest of the characters present. Such scenes convey both the conflicts between the two groups and the conflicts within particular groups. And it is from the dual nature of these conflicts that the play derives its remarkable vitality. As all of the characters can make individual claims on the London "home," there is ample room for disagreement over the issue of control, but the play takes on a further dimension when it relates the issue of control to the much more impor­ tant issue of the nature of the thing that is to be controlled. It becomes evident that the word "home" is construed in different ways by different characters, and the nature of the different constructions becomes manifest in the kinds of social structure that each of the characters seeks to impose on the others. These efforts encounter a variety of obstacles

THE HOMECOMING

and include a variety of strategies, but all are worked out in terms of the potential social groupings that might embody a particular concept of the nature of the "home" and help it to endure. The focus on "home" as a central factor in the characters' mode of interaction has given rise to a tendency to see the play exclusively in terms of family conflict. But if the play is reduced to an illustration of a preexisting theory of the na­ ture of family relationships, it is being seriously misread. The play explores relationships in a family context, but it is in no way limited to the kinds of stereotypical relationships that prominent psychological, sociological, and anthropological theories have made widely known. The characters in the play are all confronted by family relationships, but they do not regard their companions solely in the light of that relation­ ship. Rather, they bring with them into the family situation sets of attitudes derived from nonfamily relationships (e.g., careers) and are, throughout, concerned with family relation­ ships as only one of the factors in the many interrelational concerns that govern the interaction between themselves and others. This is a simple and vital point for accurate under­ standing of the play, but it seems to have been overlooked by those who register shock at the behavior of these mem­ bers of the "same family." The latter phrase is also misleading when one looks again at the basic structure of the play. What we have here is not just a single family at all but initially two families and later more. There is the family that Teddy left behind in London, the family that he has since formed in America, and the family that inhabits the home at the close of the play, not to mention the recurring echoes of previous generations. Of course, it is possible to use the word family to cover all of the characters, but "family" is as mobile a term as any in the English language, and it is important to use it in the

THE HOMECOMING

way that the play demands if misunderstanding is to be averted. RUTH: TEDDY: RUTH: TEDDY:

Don't you like your family? Which family? Your family here. Of course I like them. What are you talking about? (p. 54)

An awareness of the variable application of the term "family" in the play is not only necessary to avoid misunder­ standing, but is essential to any attempt to grasp the dynam­ ics of the play. The play deals not just with the nature of homes but with the nature of homemaking. "Home" in this play becomes a particular kind of common ground upon which particular kinds of relationship can be built. To change the nature of that home is to change the range and kind of possibilities of self that can operate within that home. And in that context, the creation of a home becomes a special case of the generalization that covers much of the activity of characters in all of Pinter's plays. The pursuit of advantageous common ground as a means of establishing and reinforcing desired relationships is, in the Pinter oeuvre, the key activity and central source of conflict as characters seek to find a situation in which they can be what they wish to be. In this battle in a family home, the location calls attention to the dual nature of a family home as both physical and psychological common ground, and also to the dual nature of the conflict in times of change, as both a physical and a psy­ chological battleground. In keeping with this duality, the play's focus on homemaking as an ongoing process is re­ flected in the set. The opening description records previous developments in the characters' efforts to impose a particular conception of home on the house that they all share:

THE HOMECOMING

An old house in North London. A large room, extending the width of the stage. The back wall, which contained the door, has been removed. A square arch shape re­ mains. (p. 6) When Teddy draws Ruth's attention to this change in the structure of the house, he links it immediately to a change in the nature of the home—the death of his mother. But he does so in terms that stress the basic continuity of the struc­ ture in spite of the ugly renovation. In the process of homemaking the relationship between change and continuity be­ comes of considerable significance, and the set is a constant reminder of the kinds of stress that such adjustments can involve. Early in the play Teddy returns to a location which has, in the past, synthesized for him certain possibilities of physi­ cal and psychological common ground, and it is evident that Teddy's return to this location now is a return to the former in pursuit of the latter. But Teddy has another home that he has founded with Ruth in America. While that home as a physical location is left behind in the United States, the emo­ tional and psychological home of the couple travels with them. And the instabilities of that home come face-to-face with the instabilities of the London home to generate a mutual disequilibrium. In the process of redefining the situa­ tion, the characters seek to redefine themselves and to recon­ sider, rediscover, or rebury possibilities of self that had be­ come temporarily fixed or latent. And it is in the characters' return to confrontation with these issues that the significance of the title is most clearly revealed. In their various efforts to come home to each other, the characters are forced to strug­ gle once more with what it means to come home to them­ selves.

THE HOMECOMING

pp. 7-11 11-16 16-19 19-24 24-27 27-35 35-37 37-44

45-51 51-53 53-55 56-58 58-62

1. Max and Lenny 2. Max, Lenny, and Sam 3. Max, Lenny, Sam, and Joey Blackout 4. Teddy and Ruth 5. Teddy and Lenny Act 1 6. Lenny and Ruth 7. Lenny and Max Blackout 8. The London family and the American family 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Max and the two families Lenny and the two families Teddy and Ruth Lenny and Ruth Act 2 Ruth/Lenny and the rest of the family Blackout 62-74 14. Teddy and the London family 74—82 15. Ruth/Lenny and the rest of the family SECTION 1: MAX AND LENNY (PP. 7-11)

The first three sections of the play successively reveal the nature of the family Teddy left behind in London. In The Room it was possible to overlook Rose's dissatisfaction with some aspects of her life with Bert, but here it is impossible to overlook the much more explicit viciousness of the father/ son relationship of Lenny and Max. The opening duologue is full of threats, insults, and mockery. Lenny suggests that his father is demented, calls him a "stupid sod" (p. 9), and recoils in mock fear as Max threatens retaliation with his walking stick. The crucial point here, however, is not so much the fact of the conflict as the nature of its origins and the significance of its location at the opening of the play.

THE HOMECOMING

The first indication of the difference between the two characters is their dress. Lenny wears a dark suit, and Max enters in an old cardigan and a cap; as the play develops it becomes apparent that the differences in dress of each mem­ ber of the family reflect the relationship each has established between the world inside this house and the world outside it. Lenny is dressed to leave the house, Max to stay.2 Every other member of the household has commitments in the world outside, but the old, retired Max functions in the world solely as father and focus of the family group that he heads. Not surprisingly, therefore, Max's attitudes to the others in the household and his evaluation of their behavior is very much in terms of their contribution to the family. From Max's point of view, this includes the fulfillment of financial obligations and the fulfillment of those domestic obligations incurred by virtue of the family role each has been assigned. But role assignment and family duty are not necessarily perceived similarly by each member of the house­ hold, and disagreement on these issues characterizes the suc­ cessive glimpses of the London family with which the play begins. The extremity of this disagreement is immediately evident in the behavior of Max and Lenny. An apparently innocuous request by Max for assistance in locating a pair of scissors is greeted with a response that is unambiguously hostile. Lenny's "Why don't you shut up, you daft prat?" (p. 7) leaves no doubt about his attitude toward Max's view of filial obligations, and Max's reaction indicates that this is no news to him. But Max's persistent efforts to come to terms with his contemptuous son suggest that the issues involved here are of considerable importance to him. And the un­ covering of the significance of this concern is the main func­ tion of this opening scene. 2 The cap is standard indoor wear for Max. This is by no means unusual for an old man in an English setting of this kind.

THE HOMECOMING

Max7 who clearly lacks the physical ability to impose his will on Lenny, resorts to psychological maneuvers which alternate between attempts to compete with Lenny and attempts to excuse himself for being unable to do so. These alternating approaches to Lenny are the first indication in the play of a major inconsistency in the self-image of the man who is assigned most emphatically in the play the relational role of father. In this role Max oscillates between emotional security and vulnerability. On the one hand he boasts of the primacy of man's abilities as a homemaker, but on the other, he manifests a recurring need to justify himself in terms of achievements in the world outside the home. Max's inconsistent estimates of his major role in life are evident in these early remarks to Lenny. First, he tries to compete with the image he feels Lenny has in the world outside: "You think I wasn't a tearaway? I could have taken care of you, twice over. I'm still strong" (p. 8). And when Lenny's attention remains on the horse-races in the news­ paper, Max tries to claim expertise in this area, too: "I had a . . . I had an instinctive understanding of animals. I should have been a trainer. Many times I was offered the job—you know, a proper post, by the Duke of . . . I forget his name . . . one of the Dukes" (p. 10). But when Lenny remains unimpressed by these claims, Max switches to claims of a rather different kind, and these claims are in the nature of both an excuse for failure in the world outside and an avowal of a different kind of success. The man who was one of "the worst hated men in the West End of London" (p. 8) emphasizes, at the same time, his claim to "a kind heart" (p. 8); and the man who was so dexterous with horses ex­ plains his lack of activity in that field by stressing a prior commitment to his family: "I had family obligations, my family needed me at home" (p. 10). Max's alternating concern for domestic and extradomestic

THE HOMECOMING

achievements is the major reason for the existence in the play of numerous references to the late MacGregor: the man Max might have been. In his admiration for the rugged bachelor-philanderer MacGregor7 and his simultaneous affir­ mation of the value of his chosen role of father and husband, Max maintains a fundamental duality that he is quite unable to reconcile. It is this inconsistency that is also the major factor in Max's conflicting estimates of the late, and some­ times lamented, Jessie: ". . . . she wasn't such a bad woman. Even though it made me sick just to look at her rotten stinking face, she wasn't such a bad bitch. I gave her the best bleeding years of my life, anyway" (p. 9). It is important to note, however, that Lenny is no more impressed by the role that Max claims to have fulfilled suc­ cessfully than he is by the roles that Max claims he might have played successfully. And, in this rejection of Max's domestic status, Lenny marks himself off from the members of the family who will subsequently appear. Having ignored Max's claim to expertise outside the home, Lenny deliber­ ately undercuts Max's claim to expertise within the home: "Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs" (p. 11). Max's vulner­ ability to this remark is evident in his angry reaction and the strong grip he exerts on his walking stick. Lacking any func­ tional expertise in the world outside the home, Max is partic­ ularly sensitive to the attitudes of others toward his expertise within the home. In this vulnerability we perceive also the part that the family plays in Max's psychological makeup. In his role as head of the family he maintains a position of power that is not available anywhere else or in any other form. But paradoxically, this commitment to the family as a sphere in which he can still wield power is also a commit­ ment that renders Max subject to the power of others. Lenny, well aware of Max's weaknesses and Max's needs, is ready to

THE HOMECOMING

exploit them to the full. Not in the least dependent on the family he lives with, Lenny is in a position to use Max's needs as a means of controlling him. And this, of course, is the reverse of what Max hopes to achieve by keeping Lenny in the role of son. This opening glimpse of the London family reveals a situa­ tion far removed from any abstract ideal of a social group with shared needs and reciprocal responsibilities. Instead these are distorted into a system of mutual exploitation as Lenny and Max seek to manipulate each other for individual, rather than family, ends. And the notion of family structure as something given rather than something constantly under negotiation is heavily undermined in this explicit confronta­ tion between father and son: MAX:

Well, get out! What are you waiting for? Lenny looks at him.

LENNY: What did you say? MAX: I said shove off out of it, that's what I said. LENNY: You'll go before me, Dad, if you talk to me in

that tone of voice, (p. 11) These callous attempts by Max and Lenny to exploit each other prepare the way for Teddy's return in search of some­ thing he needs, rather than something the family needs. But more important, this opening conflict raises many questions about the kinds of benefit that Teddy might hope to find in returning to his old family home. SECTION 2: MAX, LENNY, AND SAM (PP. 11-16)

In the silence that concludes the confrontation between Max and Lenny, Sam enters and provides a further perspec­ tive on the London family. Wearing a chauffeur's uniform, he immediately manifests the kind of expertise that Max

THE HOMECOMING

lacks: Sam has a clearly established function in the world outside. Sam's relationship with Lenny seems initially more har­ monious than the relationship that Max has with Lenny. But it soon becomes apparent that Lenny's enquiries about Sam's working day are a means of mocking his uncle as deliberately as he has mocked Max. Furthermore, Lenny's efforts to draw out from Sam the details of his day's work seem calculated to annoy Max as much as to mock Sam. He cleverly guides the conversation toward an extended emphasis on Sam's function in the world outside—an emphasis that can only feed Max's sense of inadequacy in this sphere. This strategy quickly works as Max is stung into retaliation by suggesting that Sam's popularity as a chauffeur has less to do with his driving ability than with other ways in which an unmarried adult male chauffeur might be "had." SAM: YOU know what he said to me? He told me I was

the best chauffeur he'd ever had. The best one. MAX: From what point of view? SAM: Eh? MAX: From what point of view? (p. 13) Lenny, delighted at the double success of his strategy, pushes it one stage further, and the unwitting Sam is led further in­ to trouble: LENNY: I bet the other drivers tend to get jealous, don't SAM·. MAX:

they, Uncle? They do get jealous. They get very jealous. Why? Pause, (p. 13)

While Lenny is simply enjoying the opportunity to mock Sam and Max simultaneously here, it is important to note that whatever sympathy Max might arouse in his current

THE HOMECOMING

plight is largely vitiated by his readiness to mock Sam, too. He seems as ready to insult and exploit Sam as Lenny is to insult and exploit him. And Sam's readiness to flaunt his mode of expertise in the face of his brother's vulnerabilities renders him also somewhat less than admirable. This further revelation of the nature of the family that Teddy is returning to reinforces the image presented in the opening section and makes the family mode of mutual exploitation even more explicit. But it is important to note that the value of family life seems unquestioned by some of the family mem­ bers. And, furthermore, the concept of family duty and family obligation is still a potent source of interrelational power. Max successfully counters Sam's achievements out­ side of the home with his achievements within it: SAM: After all, I'm experienced. I was driving a dust cart at the age of nineteen. Then I was in long­ distance haulage. I had ten years as a taxi-driver and I've had five as a private chauffeur. MAX: It's funny you never got married, isn't it? A man with all your gifts.

Pause. Isn't it? A man like you? SAM: There's still time. MAX: IS there? Pause, (p. 14) The success of Max's appeal to the primacy of domestic achievements when dealing with Sam draws attention to a major difference between Sam and Lenny. Where Sam's conflict with Max is worked out inside the framework of the existing home, Lenny's conflict with Max does not take that framework for granted at all. In this respect, this scene, like the opening scene, prepares the way for issues that later develop in the family relationship of Teddy and Ruth.

THE HOMECOMING

SECTION 3: MAX, LENNY, SAM, AND JOEY (PP. 16-19)

With the entry of Joey, the family that Teddy left behind is fully assembled onstage. Joey, like Sam and Lenny, is dressed for a role outside of the house and throws off his jacket as he enters. Like Sam, too, he is quick to direct the conversation toward his abilities in the world outside. Joey, it seems, is a boxer, and Max reacts to this ability with a mixture of the strategies he employed in dealing with Sam and Lenny. On the one hand he defends himself against his own inadequacies by mocking the pugilistic skills of Joey, and on the other hand he seeks to boost his own image by claiming expertise in another of the areas that claim the at­ tention of his sons: MAX: I'll tell you what you've got to do. What you've

got to do is you've got to learn how to defend yourself, and you've got to learn how to attack. That's your only trouble as a boxer. You don't know how to defend yourself, and you don't know how to attack. Pause.

Once you've mastered those arts you can go straight to the top. (pp. 17-18) With all four members of the family now presented there has yet to appear any manifestation of generosity or sympathy within the assembled group. The whole family structure seems based less on mutual sharing than on mutual exploita­ tion. And, ironically, the exploitation falls most severely on the head of the one most responsible for keeping the group together. Max, the core of the family, its nominal head, brings nothing to the family from outside and consequently is expected to provide the most in fulfilling necessary func­ tions inside. Where he sees the role of head of the family as

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the focus of everyone else's giving, they, consistently enough and ironically enough, perceive him as the source of all bene­ fits that a family ought to bestow on them. As head of the family, he is regarded as the one responsible for providing home comforts, and Max, who clings tenaciously to the status, is caught resentfully in the trap of having also to pro­ vide the benefits. JOEY: Feel a bit hungry. SAM: Me, too. MAX: Who do you think I am, your mother? Eh? Hon­

est. They walk in here every time of the day and night like bloody animals. Go and find yourself a mother, (p. 16) Lenny, ever alert to the possibilities of mocking the other members of the family, fastens onto the possibility of turn­ ing the screw on Max for his pretensions as expertly as he turned it on Sam for his. Lenny's mocking emphasis on Max's status as "Dad" is intertwined neatly with a mocking flattery of Max's frequent claims for "special understanding" of things that interest his sons. LENNY: What the boys want, Dad, is your own special

brand of cooking, Dad. That's what the boys look forward to. The special understanding of food, you know, that you've got. (p. 17) The benefits and liabilities accruing to the man who plays the role of head of the family are evidently a major issue in these family conflicts, and the issue takes on a further di­ mension when Max turns away from Lenny's mockery to work off his frustrations on Sam. Threatening Sam with ejec­ tion from the home when he gets too old to pay his way, Max provokes a reaction that raises the basic issue of the play: whose home this is and what the consequences are for

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those involved in it. Sam counters Max's threat by pointing out that the house does not, in fact, belong to Max at all.3 SAM : This is my house as well, you know. This was our

mother's house. MAX : One lot after the other. One mess after the other. SAM : Our father's house, (p. 19) While Max goes on to evade this issue by launching into a reminiscence about his father, the point that Sam has made reverberates throughout the play. The fact is underlined here that Max's vulnerability to the demands of the family is a consequence of his desire to be its head and not because of any legal or moral duties. All of the men are adult and well beyond the age when dependence upon parents is necessary, and it is evident that Max fosters their dependence to suit his own needs. While this house may not be his, the home, as it is currently structured, clearly is. Even the scathingly insulting Lenny is tolerated by Max to preserve one branch of his limited domain. And this clarification of the basis of Max's status as head of this family prepares the way for challenges to it. Max's leadership is neither necessary, nor successful, nor greatly desired. It exists in the absence of an alternative, indeed, in the place of a lost alternative. Throughout the opening pages, frequent references are made to the dead mother of the family. It is her domestic role that Max now fills with evident dislike, and it seems at first that his adoption of her role is an effort to preserve the continuity of the family after her death. But the play con­ tinually raises doubts about this time sequence, and there are frequent suggestions that Jessie's domestic contribution 3

Note that Sam opposes Max here to maintain his place in the current structure of the home, not to change the natuie of that home. In this respect, his conflict with Max is unlike that between Lenny and Max.

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was always very limited and that Max has been filling her role for most of his life. Jessie, it seems, had interests that went far beyond those of domestic routine, and those in­ terests are frequently linked with the name of the late, rakish MacGregor. If one side of Jessie was attracted to Max and a family role, another side was seemingly attracted to MacGregor and the world outside of the home. The balance between the two is difficult to assess, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that Jessie's domestic role was only inter­ mittently operative. Sam, recalling his pleasure at driving Jessie round in his cab, congratulates himself on Max's trust in him; but his comment on the relative trustworthiness of himself, his brothers, and MacGregor serves only to raise doubts about the trustworthiness of Jessie: "You wouldn't have trusted any of your other brothers. You wouldn't have trusted Mac, would you? But you trusted me. I want to remind you" (p. 18). The problem of reconciling domestic and extradomestic roles is widespread in this family, and the issue of the domes­ tic reliability of Jessie and Max's brothers is followed quickly by Max's recollection of the domestic role of his own father: ". . . . he'd dandle me. Give me the bottle. Wipe me clean. Give me a smile. Pat me on the bum. Pass me around, pass me from hand to hand. Toss me up in the air. Catch me coming down. I remember my father" (p. 19). This portrait of the father mingling maternal and paternal roles suggests that the conflict over family roles that has characterized the opening scenes is a conflict that has a long history in the life of this family. Here again, an issue raised in the London family prepares the way for a similar problem arising in the Teddy/Ruth family. As the three sections portraying the London family come to a close, they do so with the domestic and extradomestic roles of all the characters considerably clarified—all, that is, except for those of Lenny. It is against

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this background that the missing son makes his long-delayed return to the family home. SECTION 4: TEDDY AND RUTH (PP. 19-24)

With the London family appropriately presented, the play switches to the American family returning to London for the first time since Teddy's marriage. The opening tableau lends emphasis to the separation of and imminent confrontation between the two families. Teddy and Ruth stand, not in the room, but "at the threshold of the room," and their light, expensive clothing marks them as from a different world. But as they stand together, Teddy tosses in his hand the key to the door of the house, which is also the doorway to his former self in his former home. His appearance suggests a change from that former self, but the key and his presence are claims to a continuity that has Teddy seething with a nervous excitement—an excitement that is clearly not shared by Ruth: TEDDY : RUTH: TEDDY: RUTH:

Shall I go up and see if my room's still there? It can't have moved. No, I mean if my bed's still there. Someone might be in it. (p. 20)

As Ruth points out the probability of change, Teddy's tena­ cious clinging to his belief in the continuity of the home suggests that this is a vital factor in his decision to return there. Stressing that "Nothing's changed" (p. 22), he paces nervously around the room, framed significantly by the ugly alteration to the long wall in the background. Whatever Teddy might prefer to believe about continuity in the family home, the new "living area" that was established after the death of his mother has neither the same point of focus nor the same sharply defined boundaries as the room with the previous structure.

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The lack of a shared response to the new environment is only one manifestation of what is soon perceived as a major lack of rapport between Teddy and his wife. And this dis­ harmony is so much in evidence from the outset that it is clearly a problem that they bring with them. The difficulties in their relationship are given a new focus in the new en­ vironment, but are in no way created by it. And the distinct lack of empathy between the two newcomers is a noticeable echo of the relationships that have preceded them onstage. Conflict over family roles, it seems, is not restricted to the London family alone. There is an ominous hint in this con­ nection that the continuity Teddy returns in search of may indeed exist, but not in the form that Teddy has envisaged. This similarity of conflict within the two family units quickly broadens into a problem that spreads across the two family units. As Teddy roams nervously around the room, he manifests an instinctive subservience to the needs of the London family that is in clear conflict with his duties as husband in his new family. Ironically, his pursuit of con­ tinuity in his former home promotes an immediate discon­ tinuity in the role he has adopted in his new home. It may be the London family's due not to be disturbed at night by the return of a son, but it is surely Ruth's due to be an­ nounced when she makes her first visit to her husband's family home. As she perceives the predominance Teddy gives to his role of son over his role as husband, Ruth switches from indifference to concern. RUTH: DO you want to stay? TEDDY: Stay? Pause.

We've come to stay. We're bound to stay . . . for a few days. RUTH: I think . . . the children . . . might be miss­ ing us. (pp. 21-22)

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But Teddy remains adamant, and in the face of his objec­ tions, Ruth quickly gives way. Her commitment to her duties as a mother and to her dues as a wife seem as tentative as those of Teddy to his role as husband. And as Teddy begins to revert to the role of son, Ruth begins a transformation that is equally marked, but at this point much less clearly defined. Her earlier tiredness suddenly vanishes, and she determines to go out for a walk. This beautifully constructed presentation of a relationship in the process of change culminates in a reversal of the situa­ tion that opened the scene. Ruth, determined to go for a walk, takes possession of the key, smiles, and sends Teddy to bed: a three-way reversal of their earlier situation. Further­ more, Ruth is now in possession of the key that opened the door to Teddy's former life, and her need to leave the home and walk the streets raises echoes of Max and Jessie's prob­ lems in reconciling a life within the home with a life outside of it. Alone in the room and temporarily separated from the two families to which he owes allegiance, Teddy shows the stress the new situation imposes on him: Teddy goes to the window, peers out after her, half turns from the window, stands, suddenly chews his knuckles, (p. 24) It is a vital factor in the development of the play that Teddy is confronted at this point not by Max or by Ruth but by his younger brother, Lenny. SECTION 5: TEDDY AND LENNY (PP. 24-27)

There are signs from the beginning of the play that Lenny holds a rather odd position in this home. His attitude to the other members of the family is almost exclusively one of

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mockery, and he alone is willing to defy consistently and ex­ plicitly the claims of his father to superior status. He relies on none of them for anything and seeks from them nothing in the way of intimate relationships. For Lenny, home as a physical and psychological common ground with others is weighted very much toward the former. Even in this respect the sharing is as limited as possible. The location of his room, as revealed in this scene, underlines his unique position on the periphery of the household. All of the other charac­ ters sleep upstairs, but Lenny, in spite of the availability of Teddy's old room upstairs, does not. Instead, he sleeps down­ stairs, next to the big family room, and it is clear from his comments to Teddy that this is an arrangement that has occurred since Teddy left. Things are not, it seems, just as Teddy left them: TEDDY: Hullo Lenny. LENNY: Hullo Teddy. Pause. TEDDY: I didn't hear you come down the stairs. LENNY: I didn't. Pause.

I sleep down here now. Next door. I've got a kind of study, workroom cum bedroom next door now, you see. (p. 25) In the light of the family's general inability to reconcile roles, this suggestion of Lenny's ability to combine domestic and extradomestic commitments in one location is strikingly contrastive. At this point it is also markedly enigmatic and draws attention to the lack of information thus far on the nature of Lenny's profession. But the key point in this ex­ change is its relationship to Teddy's concern for continuity in the London home. Lenny's place in this structure is no longer what it was when Teddy left.

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From this later perspective, it is possible to look back on a further significance of the scene with which the play opened. That extreme initial confrontation between Lenny and Max was not just one of many conflicts in the family, but the most divisive and extreme conflict in the current family situation. Lenny is seemingly still in this family structure, but no longer of it in the way that the other members of the family are. It is particularly significant, therefore, that Teddy's opening confrontation with his old family is not with Max, the man whom he regards as its head and its core, but with Lenny, the man seemingly least representative of, and least restricted by, the forces that hold his old home together. If Teddy is returning in search of some kind of continuity, he is confronted, in Lenny, with a man more interested in change. The meeting between Lenny and Teddy is very low key, and Teddy, lapsing quickly into his previous London family role, doesn't even mention that his wife is accompanying him. Both Teddy and Lenny maintain the maximum of reserve in spite of their fraternal relationship, but this seems more of a manifestation of mutual suspicion than of mutual lack of interest. It becomes apparent that Lenny has over­ heard the conversation between Teddy and Ruth adjacent to his bedroom, and, at this point, his interest in Teddy is simply displaced onto the companion that Teddy has brought with him. Lenny denies Teddy an enthusiastic welcome, en­ courages his departure to bed with a big yawn, and sits down to await the return of the other guest. This short scene makes explicit little of the basis for the tension between the two brothers, but its location in the se­ quence of events underlines the importance of Lenny's part in the development of future issues. It also throws doubt upon Teddy's recurringly manifest assumption that coming to terms with home once more simply means coming to

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terms with Max.4 There is another factor to be reckoned with, for Lenny is active in this family structure and not clearly circumscribed by it—a comment that might equally be applied to the returning Ruth. SECTION 6: LENNY AND RUTH (PP. 27-35)

Just as the play opens with a confrontation between Lenny and Max, and just as Teddy's return to the family begins with a confrontation with Lenny, so also Ruth's introduc­ tion to the family begins with a clash with the ubiquitous Lenny. But while Lenny's approach to Teddy was indirect and evasive, his approach to Ruth is excessively familiar and openly insulting. In this conversation with Ruth we perceive the displaced reactions that Lenny has to the return of Teddy to the family home. These reactions to Teddy are not unexpected. Teddy has achieved a particular kind of prestige in the public world, and Lenny, like his father, is defensive about the ways in which other people's success might reflect on him: ". . . . my goodness we are proud of him here, I can tell you. Doc­ tor of Philosophy and all that . . . leaves quite an impres­ sion" (p. 31). In keeping with this concern, Lenny imme­ diately takes up with Ruth the brief conversation he had had with Teddy over things that tick in the night. It is to Ruth, instead of to her husband, that he directs his response to Teddy's explanation of the phenomenon. Teddy had sug­ gested that Lenny check his clock if he is worried about the origins of ticking noises, but Lenny now argues at some 4 The first thing Teddy draws Ruth's attention to is "my father's chair" (p. 20). Note also his comments "See them all in the morn­ ing . . . see my father in the morning . . ." (p. 21), and ". . . . we have to be up early, see Dad. Wouldn't be quite right if he found us in bed, I think" (p. 23). For Teddy, at the beginning of the play, coming home means coming home to Max.

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length that "that could very easily prove something of a false hypothesis" (p. 28). This indirect challenge to Teddy's status as a thinker is accompanied by a simultaneous chal­ lenge to his brother's status as a desirable male companion. Lenny seems anxious to impress upon Ruth that he, too, is a man of some expertise in the realm of male/female rela­ tionships. In these compensatory gestures, Lenny reveals vulnerabilities vis-a-vis Teddy that he has never revealed in his relationship with other members of the family. Lenny's displaced reactions to Teddy are mingled also with sporadic attempts to cope with another kind of threat—the kind that might be presented by Ruth, not just as a repre­ sentative of Teddy, but also as a representative of the oppo­ site sex. His efforts to cope with this threat signal a return to the mocking behavior that has characterized Lenny from the outset. Ignoring her claim to be Teddy's wife, he suggests, "you sort of live with him over there, do you?" (p. 29). He then seeks to diminish her further by downgrading what he regards as her claim to the prestige of being an international traveler. Instead of the elegant chitchat that is characteris­ tic of people sharing memories of places they have both visited, Lenny provides a mocking parody of such a script: Not dear old Venice? Eh? That's funny. You know, I've always had a feeling that if I'd been a soldier in the last war—say in the Italian campaign—I'd probably have found myself in Venice. I've always had that feeling. The trouble was I was too young to serve, you see. I was only a child. . . . (p. 30) These efforts to make Ruth insecure and nervous culminate in a direct attack, but in Ruth's calm and measured response we see the ineffectiveness here of the mocking strategy that Lenny has employed successfully in goading the other mem­ bers of the family.

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LENNY: DO you mind if I hold your hand? RUTH: Why? LENNY: Just a touch.

RUTH:

He stands and goes to her. Just a tickle. Why? (p. 30)

Lenny is evidently nonplussed by his failure to shake Ruth, and, for the audience, Ruth's calm assurance in this situation is a notable indication of her ability to function within this family. But in her measured response, we also perceive the lack of moral outrage that might not unreasonably accom­ pany this excessive familiarity from a comparative stranger. Ruth, it seems, has other abilities in male/female relation­ ships than those demanded of a conventional and dutiful wife. Lenny, who would have been equally delighted by out­ raged denial or meek submission, is completely thwarted by Ruth's calm, controlled, and almost clinical interest in his activities. Threatened by what he does not understand, Lenny rapidly shifts to the defensive maneuver of storytell­ ing—a maneuver reminiscent of Davies' efforts in The Care­ taker. But Ruth, unlike Aston, understands perfectly what Lenny is trying to achieve and demolishes his long-winded narratives with brief, carefully chosen questions. Lenny's two stories, one picturing him dealing expertly and savagely with a young female and another picturing him dealing similarly with an older lady, indicate the two kinds of threat that he feels Ruth presents to him. And when they are unsuccessfully concluded, the initiative passes to Ruth, who brilliantly usurps Lenny's major strategy of mockery. Focusing their conflict on her glass of water, she first estab­ lishes herself as an authority figure by treating Lenny as a wayward child and then confronts him with the power of the female sexuality that his stories have been designed to diminish:

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LENNY: RUTH: LENNY: RUTH: LENNY: RUTH: LENNY: RUTH: LENNY:

RUTH: LENNY: RUTH: LENNY: RUTH:

And now perhaps I'll relieve you of your glass. I haven't quite finished. You've consumed quite enough, in my opinion. No, I haven't. Quite sufficient, in my own opinion. Not in mine, Leonard. Pause. Don't call me that, please. Why not? That's the name my mother gave me. Pause. Just give me the glass. NO. Pause. I'll take it, then. If you take the glass . . . I'll take you. Pause. HOW about me taking the glass without you taking me? Why don't I just take you? Pause, (pp. 33-34)

Ruth, clearly victorious, disappears upstairs, but her au­ thoritarian treatment of Lenny has struck chords in his mem­ ory of a previous relationship in the same house with another woman—his mother, Jessie. As Ruth exits under the arch that commemorates the conclusion of Jessie's control of the fam­ ily, she does so with a new female control, still embryonic, but established on the outer fringes of the family that Jessie left behind. In her efforts to establish that control, she has exhibited characteristics that make it clear that she, like Lenny, is not circumscribed by the roles assigned to her in the family structure to which she currently belongs. The words that Lenny flings after her vanishing form ironically

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foreshadow a new kind of relationship that might dominate the families now in residence in the old London home. LENNY: What was that supposed to be? Some kind of

proposal? Silence, (p. 35) SECTION 7: LENNY AND MAX (PP. 35-37)

The comic figure of the aged Max hurtling downstairs to defend his home against possible burglars succeeds the tense confrontation between Lenny and Ruth. But the issues rapidly cease to be simply comic as Lenny declines to tell Max about the return of his eldest son. The diametrically opposed interests of Lenny and Max are further confirmed in Lenny's silence on this issue as he effectively ignores Max's status as head of the home in neglecting to inform him of this important family matter. Lenny's concerns, it seems, are elsewhere. It is evident that his renewed interest in his origins, while a deliberate attempt to needle Max, are also the result of Ruth's reminder to him of the powerful role of the female in family life. I'll tell you what, Dad, since you're in the mood for a bit of a . . . chat, I'll ask you a question. It's a ques­ tion I've been meaning to ask you for some time. That night . . . you know . . . the night you got me . . . that night with Mum, what was it like? Eh? when I was just a glint in your eye. What was it like? What was the background to it? I mean, I want to know the real facts about my background. I mean, for instance, is it a fact that you had me in mind all the time, or is it a fact that I was the last thing you had in mind? . . . I should have asked my dear mother. Why didn't I ask my dear mother? Now it's too late. She's passed over to the other side. (pp. 36-37)

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Max's response is to spit at Lenny for his cynical mocking of his mother and father, but the way that Lenny raises the issue of his own origins is important. He deliberately draws attention to his arrival in the family as a by-product of in­ terests that had nothing to do with him as an individual, and this characterizes his own approach to the family in gen­ eral. Family life as a source of benefits for the individual predominates over family life as a context of shared respon­ sibilities and reciprocal duties. Max's warning that "You'll drown in your own blood" (p. 36) takes on a particular irony in this respect, for Lenny's behavior in the family is thoroughly consistent with that of his parents on the night he was conceived: the interests primarily being served on that night were not those of the family but those of the participants. And there is at least a suggestion here that though Jessie was certainly one of the participants, the other was not necessarily Max. What we learn of Jessie elsewhere suggests that she was not limited to Max in disposing of her favors, and the possibility that Lenny is not necessarily Max's son adds another dimension to their unique conflict within the family. Lenny, a potential usurper in the developing situation, has a lengthy catalog of selfish exploitations of family life to guide him in his future actions. And, as things develop further, so, it seems, has Ruth. SECTION 8: THE LONDON FAMILY AND THE AMERICAN FAMILY (PP. 37-44)

The first act of the play culminates in an extraordinaryscene of confrontation between the two families now resi­ dent in the London home. The basic structural device of the duologue is adapted here to a new kind of confrontation: not, this time, a disorienting clash between two individuals, but an even more complex interaction between two family groups.

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The scene opens with a reprise of the disharmony between Max, Joey, and Sam that reaffirms the importance of family allegiance as a major factor in Max's control of his domain. The London family is then thrown into disruption by a new manifestation of that allegiance, the return to the fold of the eldest son. As Max concludes another attack on Sam, he finds himself confronted by Teddy and Ruth in dressing gowns. Whatever the reception Teddy hoped to receive on his re­ turn to his former home, the one he does receive is obviously not it. Max's first reaction is one of anger that he, as head of the household, has not been informed of something occurring inside his own domain. His second is to attack Teddy for breaking one of the rules of the household. MAX:

Who asked you to bring tarts in here?

TEDDY: Tarts? MAX:

Who asked you to bring dirty tarts into this house? (p. 41)

And his third is to demand that the prodigal son be returned from whence he came. MAX (to Joey): Chuck them out. (p. 42)

Given the family-establishing inclinations of the other males in the family, it is not surprising that Max refuses to consider that Teddy might be married and assumes instead that Teddy's protestations about Ruth being his wife are merely attempts to deceive him. The facts that we later learn of Ruth's and Jessie's backgrounds suggest that Max's impression of Ruth is not without justification. Joey, however, is not so ready to ignore Teddy's version of the relationship between himself and Ruth, and his unwill­ ingness to eject the newcomers sparks a brilliant visual

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presentation of the impact on the London family of the visit of the family from America. Lenny walks into the room, in a dressing-gown. He stops. They all look round. Max turns back, hits Joey in the stomach with all his might. Joey contorts, staggers across the stage. Max, with the exertion of the blow, begins to collapse. His knees buckle. He clutches his stick. Sam moves forward to help him. Max hits him across the head with his stick. Sam sits, head in his hands. Joey, hands pressed to his stomach, sinks down at the feet of Ruth. She looks down at him. Lenny and Teddy are still, (pp. 42-43) The catalytic impact of the visiting family forces to the sur­ face the conflicts that exist between the various members of the London family, and Max's collapse in the effort of con­ trolling them provides a fine externalization of his, and his family's, basic plight. But just as important is the position of Lenny in this tableau. Unlike the three other members of the London family, he is not downed by the conflict that suddenly breaks out. Instead, he is on the periphery of that family looking on. His position, standing like the newcom­ ers, dressed like the newcomers, and gazing down at those on the floor, suggests a pattern of allegiances that is not yet fully worked out, but which has clearly shifted from the one that opened the play. Lenny is still on the periphery of his own family, but he is now in operation on the perimeter of the Ruth/Teddy family, too. From confrontation, the interaction between the two families moves toward conciliation. But this initial attempt at conciliation is one solely between father and son. Max, having ascertained that Ruth is not just a woman but also a mother of three children, is ready to look upon his errant son in a new light. Realizing that Teddy, too, is a father, Max

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approaches him with a reminder of the continuity of the family tradition that Teddy has come home to rediscover: "Teddy, why don't we have a nice cuddle and kiss, eh? Like the old days? What about a nice cuddle and kiss, eh?" (p. 43). Teddy, delighted at this confirmation of continuity at home, is oblivious to the possible inconsistency between the self that is operative in this situation and the self that is operative in his American family. He reverts to behavior that is very different from that of the cool, analytical philosopher who had earlier confronted Lenny: TEDDY: Come on, then.

Teddy moves a step towards him. Come on. Pause. MAX: You still love your old Dad, eh? They face each other. TEDDY: Come on, Dad. I'm ready for the cuddle. Max begins to chuckle, gurgling. He turns to the family and addresses them. MAX: He still loves his father! Curtain, (p. 44) For Max, Teddy's willingness to reinforce his status as head of the household and his readiness to uphold the importance of family ties is justification enough for complete acceptance. But Teddy's role in this reconciliation brings to culmination a series of steps toward the rediscovery of his former home. In encouraging this rather excessive male greeting he is try­ ing to re-immerse himself in a past that he once quit. Basic to that past is a home dominated by a father figure—a role that he himself is now called upon to play in his American family. As the two male heads of the two households kiss and cuddle in the old family room, Teddy's identification of father and home is complete. But in the startling revelation

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that Teddy, like Max, has three sons, the significance of the continuity that Teddy has come home to find is clarified. There is a strong implication that Teddy's deference to the authority of the father-figure is born, not of a wish to shore up his father's status, but to shore up his own. Teddy's homecoming, it seems, has a motive that is consistent with those underlying the behavior of all the members of this household—a manifest self-concern. There is, however, a potential counterpoint to this recon­ ciliation between the male heads of the two households. In the background, two characters in dressing-gowns stand, ob­ serve, and do not participate. The welding of the two families has yet to take account of the two members who remain on the periphery of these households but are con­ spicuously and unmistakably there: Lenny and his sister-inlaw, Ruth. SECTION 9: MAX AND THE Two FAMILIES (PP. 45-51)

In the second act of the play, Pinter's basic duologue struc­ ture undergoes a further transition. With the two families now mingled together onstage, new possibilities for alliances are present, and the characters move back and forth between different possibilities of combination and permutation. But the dialogue does retain a situational focus as first one of the characters and then another becomes the center of attention in the effort to assert control. The second act begins with Max as the first focus of atten­ tion. His awareness of the incomplete nature of the family reconciliation is evident as he seeks to include Ruth in the alliance that concluded the previous act. But his view of that alliance meets immediate resistance from Ruth, who is no more willing to alleviate Max's domestic burdens than any­ one else is:

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MAX: I've got the feeling you're a first-rate cook. RUTH: I'm not bad. MAX: NO, I've got the feeling you're a number one

cook. Am I right, Teddy? TEDDY: Yes, she's a very good cook.

Pause, (p. 45) In spite of the broad hint, Ruth makes no offer to take on this domestic role, but it is noticeable that Teddy enthusias­ tically affirms what Ruth merely concedes here, that she is, indeed, "a very good cook." The common ground between Teddy and Max evidently includes a common attitude to­ ward the domestic role of women, and in Ruth's resistance to Max in this respect there is also an indication of one of the bases for her resistance to her role as Teddy's wife. Encouraged by Teddy, if not by Ruth, Max launches into an extensive description of the wonderful home that existed when Jessie was alive. He gives strategic emphasis to the ad­ mirable part played in that successful home by his wonderful, dutiful wife, and to the equally admirable part he played in contributing to the home from outside. But his efforts to manipulate Ruth are no more successful than Lenny's were earlier. As Ruth ignores his lengthy portrait of a happy woman in her domestic role, Max turns his ire once more on his favorite target, Sam. In doing so, he paints a very different portrait of family affairs than the one he just drew for Ruth: "My mother was bedridden, my brothers were all invalids. . . . A crippled family, three bastard sons, a slutbitch of a wife—don't talk to me about the pain of childbirth—I suf­ fered the pain, I've still got the pangs" (p. 47). Far from doing their duty in the family home, the women in Max's family, his mother and his wife, are now pictured as abdi­ cating their responsibilities to him—a further indication that Max's family problems predate the death of his wife. In this

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light, the new problems presented by Ruth provide distinct echoes of situations Max has confronted before. As those echoes register in Max's psyche, he turns to his new ally, the other family head, Teddy. And Teddy, sharing Max's interests in this respect, is quick to support his efforts to characterize Ruth as an eminently suitable wife. But Ruth has no intention of allowing her role in this situation to be settled by proxy. As Max and Teddy cement their growing alliance with an enthusiastic endorsement of Ruth's credentials as a wife, she pointedly remarks that this is some­ thing of more concern to Teddy and Max than it is to her. Instead of remarking on her own pleasure at the compliment, she directs a barb at her husband. I'm sure Teddy's very happy . . . to know that you're pleased with me. Pause.

I think he wondered whether you would be pleased with me. (p. 49) With this indication that her prowess as wife is of more interest to them than it is to her, Ruth manifests a deter­ mination to resist the attempts of Max in the London home to impose upon her the role that Teddy imposed upon her in the American home. The reconciliation of Max and Teddy has produced a united front against her, but here in London she is ready to fight against it. It is important to note in this respect that the commonplace critical remark that Ruth, as well as Teddy, has a homecoming here, is more complicated than it seems at first glance. While Ruth is indeed coming home to a former self, she does not come home to a situation in which that self can easily flourish. Her task here is to create the home in which that self might operate, and she, like Teddy, needs an ally here to achieve that goal. Moving from defense to attack, Ruth begins to seek out

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that ally by hinting that there is more to her than the "nice girl" image that it currently suits Max and Teddy to bestow upon her. RUTH: I was . . . different . . . when I met Teddy

. . . first, (p. 50) As Teddy hastily denies this, we perceive once again the battle over role-assignment that has characterized both fam­ ily groups. Ruth's interest in her former self clashes with her current family role as markedly as Teddy's interest in his former self had done earlier in the play. When Max raises the issue that concerned Ruth earlier, the extent of her on­ going change is further revealed. She leaves it to Teddy now to concern himself with the welfare of the American home: MAX:

Eh, tell me, do you think the children are miss­ ing their mother? She looks at him. TEDDY: Of course they are. They love her. We'll be see­ ing them soon. Pause, (p. 51) There is another dimension to this brief exchange, how­ ever. While Teddy regards the question as solely concerning the family in America, it seems that Ruth, in her silent gaze at Max, is aware that more than one set of children is at issue here. As it becomes increasingly evident that Ruth's role in this environment is by no means circumscribed by the family role Teddy has assigned to her, Ruth's situation begins to align itself with that of the other character who has con­ sistently resisted his family role, Teddy's younger brother, Lenny. SECTION 10: LENNY AND THE TWO FAMILIES (PP. 51-53)

Max's opening efforts to organize the new family group conclude without success, but with the role of Ruth estab-

THE HOMECOMING

lished as a major factor in the development of any new framework. As Lenny takes over from his father to explore the possibilities that the new situation presents for him, he comes up against the unexpected problem being presented by Ruth. Like Max, he seeks for a while to direct his atten­ tion elsewhere, but finally he, too, has to focus his attention firmly upon the enigmatic Ruth. Lenny's earlier efforts to compete intellectually with Teddy were displaced onto Ruth; Lenny, by this time, is ready to take on Teddy directly. Having noted Teddy's inability to deal successfully with his wife in domestic affairs, Lenny is encouraged enough to risk taking Teddy on in his area of professional expertise—philosophical discussion: "Well, I want to ask you something. Do you detect a certain logical incoherence in the central affirmations of Christian theism?" (p. 51). Teddy's evasive response that the question doesn't fall within his province encourages Lenny to go even further in the hope of discovering exactly what does lie within Teddy's province. But this competition between the brothers is shunted to one side by a blunt interruption from Ruth. She cuts short the developing discussion on the ontology of tables and devastatingly demonstrates that from her point of view such issues (and, of course, Teddy's whole career) are monumentally irrelevant. Word games, she suggests, are much less important than the fact that the mouth lives and the lips move. The physical world and, of course, her physical charms stand in need of physical, not mental exploration. RUTH : You've forgotten something. Look at me. I . . .

move my leg. That's all it is. But I wear . . . underwear . . , which moves with me . . . it . . . captures your attention. Perhaps you mis­ interpret. The action is simple. It's a leg . . . moving. My lips move. Why don't you restrict

THE HOMECOMING

. . . your observations fact that they move is than the words which You must bear that . mind. Silence, (pp. 52-53)

to that? Perhaps the more significant . , . come through them. . . possibility . . . in

This dismissal of Teddy and its accompanying stress on her physical existence are clear signals to Lenny that he is com­ peting with the already defeated. Teddy, threatened, rises to his feet, but his helpless silence broadens the issue Lenny has raised about what precisely does lie within Teddy's province. The successful philosopher seems to lack weapons with which to deal with either Lenny's query about a standard philo­ sophical issue, or Ruth's sudden demonstration of the irrele­ vance of all such issues to her. The threats presented to Teddy in this scene and his inability to cope with them provide a striking parallel to the difficulties encountered by Max. If the mutual disequilibrium promoted by the two families' interaction has further loosened Max's hold on Lenny and provided him with a new adversary in Ruth, it has likewise further loosened Teddy's hold on Ruth and pro­ vided him with a new adversary in Lenny. The two heads of the two families find that their problems are not alleviated by their alliance at all, but are instead moving toward a crisis. Ruth, who has become increasingly the center of attention in the new situation, continues to make explicit the unrecon­ ciled differences that have remained latent in her relation­ ship with Teddy. Her efforts to reexamine that relationship now take precedence over the London family's efforts to re­ examine their relationship with Teddy. As Teddy stands silent and helpless before her, Ruth dwells with repugnance on the transformation of her life when she went with Teddy to America.

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I was born quite near here. Pause. Then . . . six years ago, I went to America. Pause. It's all rock. And sand. It stretches . . . so far . . . everywhere you look. And there's lots of insects there. Pause. And there's lots of insects there. Silence. She is still, (p. 53) The London family shuffles out of the room as their efforts to control the role of their guests are interrupted and sup­ planted by the efforts of the guests to control each other. For Teddy, who identifies home with Max, that identifica­ tion has taken on an ironic twist. Teddy, it seems, has come home not to a new solution but to an old family problem. And while this clearly fills him with dismay, his nervous un­ certainty is in marked contrast to the growing relaxation of his enigmatically smiling wife. SECTION 11: TEDDY AND RUTH (PP. 53-55)

Teddy and Ruth are alone together onstage only twice. In this second appearance the contrast is striking as we observe the full extent of the impact that the homecoming has had upon the American family. The issues that had been para­ mount in the opening dissension between members of the London family now become explicit in the dissension be­ tween the visitors. One by one, the problems of mutual ex­ ploitation, role assignment, and domestic versus extradomestic concerns take on a critical significance in the American family, too. Earlier it was Teddy who wished to stay and Ruth who

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wished to leave; now it is Teddy who suggests leaving and Ruth who queries the necessity for it. Earlier Teddy was ready to put his obligations to the London family above those to his American family; now it is Ruth who asserts that order of priority. For the first time, the central issue of the play, the conflict between chosen modes of family allegiance, becomes explicit. RUTH: Don't you like it here? TEDDY: Of course I do. But I'd like to go back and see

the boys now. Pause. RUTH: Don't you like your family? TEDDY: Which family? RUTH: Your family here. TEDDY: Of course I like them. What are you talking about? Pause. RUTH: You don't like them as much as you thought you did? TEDDY: Of course I do. Of course I . . . like them. I don't know what you're talking about. Pause, (p. 54) But Teddy does indeed know what Ruth is talking about, and Ruth has once again zeroed in on the most vulnerable point in an adversary's position. Teddy, trapped in a con­ flict between personal need and family duty, is confronted with the reverse of the situation he had envisaged on return­ ing home. Instead of a reinforcement of his role as head of the family, he is discovering a further weakening of it. But equally important is Ruth's awareness that, in the London home, she now has Teddy in the very dilemma that has dominated her life in the American home. Remorselessly, Ruth forces Teddy to face up to an un-

THE HOMECOMING

reconcilable duality within himself. As Teddy stresses the advantages of their American home, she demands that he concede the implicit criticism of his London home. TEDDY: It's so clean there. RUTH: Clean. TEDDY: Yes. RUTH: IS it dirty here? (p. 54)

Teddy's attempt to fudge this issue soon founders, and he finds himself angrily asserting: Here, there's nowhere to bathe, except the swimming bath down the road. You know what it's like? It's like a urinal. A filthy urinal! (p. 55) In this remark Teddy concedes the inconsistency between the self that he envisages operating in the London home and the self that now operates outside it. And in this clash between his role as son and his role in America, Teddy comes home to his father's basic problem of an inability to recon­ cile domestic and extradomestic roles. But Teddy, unlike Max, has two homes to choose from, and he tries to save the situation by suggesting that the welding of the two kinds of roles can be achieved for both of them in America: "You can help me with my lectures when we get back. I'd love that. I'd be so grateful for it, really" (p. 55). Ironically, this effort to persuade Ruth to his point of view brings to a crisis her opposition to it. For Teddy in this proposal suggests as a solution a continuation of the situation that has for Ruth been the root problem of her American existence. Teddy seeks to integrate in their American life not Ruth's domestic and extradomestic interests but his own. In his ignorance, even at this point, of the nature of Ruth's discontent, Teddy confirms for Ruth the hopelessness of that situation and the uselessness of returning to it once more.

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As Teddy, like Max earlier, seeks to deceive Ruth into compliance with an idealized portrait of family life, Ruth responds with a remark that makes clear to the audience a decisive shift in her allegiance. Teddy's stress on the value of his intellectual and family life, and on the fringe benefits of international travel is greeted with an oblique response: TEDDY: You liked Venice didn't you? It was lovely,

wasn't it? You had a good week. I mean . . . I took you there. I can speak Italian. RUTH: But if I'd been a nurse in the Italian campaign I would have been there before. Pause, (p. 55) Teddy is totally nonplussed by this remark, but its signifi­ cance is evident to the audience, which recalls in the open­ ing confrontation between Lenny and Ruth, Lenny's mock­ ery of the kind of life Teddy is now affirming: LENNY: You know, I've always had a feeling that if I'd

been a soldier in the last war—say in the Italian campaign—I'd probably have found myself in Venice. I've always had that feel­ ing. (p. 30) The first act of the play dealt with the conflict between ancl subsequent reconciliation of the heads of the two families; the second act, at the instigation of Ruth, begins to focus on a potential alliance between the two characters least at home in their respective families. Ruth, slowly coming to terms with a self she had abandoned, is now in the process of creating the environment in which that self might flourish. As Teddy exits in disarray, Ruth closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, Teddy, the major interruption in her life, has been replaced by Lenny.

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SECTION 12: LENNY AND RUTH (PP. 56-58) Just as the previous scene presented Ruth alone for the second time with Teddy7 this scene presents her alone for the second time with Lenny. The contrast between the earlier and later scenes is again crucial. Where the previous scene between Lenny and Ruth was a struggle for control, moti­ vated primarily by Lenny, this one is a pursuit of common ground motivated primarily by Ruth. She is quick to point out that this common ground could not exist in the environ­ ment she shared with Teddy in America: RUTH: DO you like clothes? LENNY: Oh, yes. Very fond of clothes. Pause. RUTH: I'm fond . . . Pause. What do you think of my shoes? LENNY: They're very nice. RUTH: NO, I can't get the ones I want over there. LENNY: Can't get them over there, eh? RUTH: NO . . . you don't get them there, (p. 56) This brief dialogue is as crucial to these two characters as the brief harmonious interchange with Riley was to Rose in The Room. In these remarks both characters reveal facets of their personality that have not been in evidence elsewhere. Ruth openly seeks approval from Lenny for her clothes, and Lenny, for once, shows no sign of the habitual mockery that characterizes his relationship with everyone else. A tentative mutual sympathy is exhibited here, and with it an embryonic mutual trust. Homemaking as an activity involving reci­ procity of concern is in operation in the London home, and it takes place between the two characters who had thus far

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seemed most on the periphery of their respective family structures. But in moving from the periphery of two struc­ tures toward the center of a third, Ruth and Lenny do so in terms that countenance an ironic solution to the problem of domestic and extradomestic roles. Encouraged by Lenny's sympathetic response, Ruth begins to explore a further potential common ground between them: a shared professional interest. After years of sub­ ordinating her professional expertise to Teddy's, Ruth is now able to discuss that expertise with a listener who does not regard it as unmentionable at all. For Lenny, whose profession has also seemed unmentionable in the family home, this is likewise a major breakthrough. A new and embryonic family is emerging here with the possibility of achieving what none of the other families have thus far achieved—the welding of domestic and extradomestic concerns. RUTH:

I was a model for the body. A photographic

model for the body. LENNY: Indoor work? RUTH: That was before I had . . . all my children. Pause.

No, not always indoors. Pause.

Once or twice we went to a place in the country, by train. Oh, six or seven times. We used to pass a . . . a large white water tower. This place . . . this house . . . was very big . . . the trees . . . there was a lake, you see . . . we used to change and walk down towards the lake . . . we went down a path . . . on stones . . . there were . . . on this path. Oh, just . . . wait . . . yes . . . when

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we changed in the house we had a drink. There was a cold buffet. Pause.

Sometimes we stayed in the house but . . . most often . . . we walked down to the lake . . . and did our modelling there, (p. 57) This halting recollection is evidence of the gradual re­ creation of an experience whose value to Ruth can only be judged by the context in which she is now raising it. Far from being "dirty" or a topic to be avoided, this career and her success in pursuing it mean as much to Ruth as Teddy's belief in his success as a philosopher means to him, as much as Sam's belief in his expertise as a chauffeur means to him, as much as Joey's success as a boxer and Max's as a butcher mean to them. The value of these activities to the individual characters lies not so much in the intrinsic worth of the activities but in the confidence they derive from an achieved or assumed competence in a public sphere. The identification of this house with Ruth's emotional roots is stressed as she goes on to picture it, rather than any other place, as the major focus in her memory of the life she abandoned to take up a new role with Teddy. "Just before we went to America I went down there. I walked from the station to the gate and then I walked up the drive. There were lights on . . . I stood in the drive . . . the house was very light" (pp. 57-58). In her growing alliance with Lenny, Ruth is beginning to discover what Teddy had hoped to discover in returning home to Max: the mutual reinforcement of a couple with shared concerns. Teddy and Ruth have both returned to the same house in London, but the kind of home they discover here is not the same for both of them, and the difference between the two kinds of home corresponds closely to the difference in their choice of shared authority figures

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in this home—Max and Lenny. But as quickly as this difference becomes apparent, so also does a query about the degree to which this difference could be regarded as substantive. SECTION 13: RUTH/LENNY AND THE REST OF THE FAMILY (PP. 58-62) When Teddy returns he finds himself ignored. Faced with a choice between leaving at Teddy's request or dancing at Lenny's, Ruth makes her new allegiance public by rising and embracing her brother-in-law. When Max and Joey return they are confronted by an explicit demonstration of the changed allegiances in the room they quit earlier in the day: "Lenny kisses Ruth. They stand, kissing" (p. 58). But it is important to note that, though Ruth has turned from Teddy to Lenny, neither she nor Lenny regards their relation­ ship as that of potential man and wife. That seems not to be the kind of relationship that either character envisages. As Joey steps forward to embrace Ruth, Lenny willingly shares her with his brother, and Ruth shows no reluctance about being shared. Significantly, in this new situation, it is the former centers of family attention, Max and Teddy, who now find themselves on the periphery while the focus of family attention is now clearly Ruth. As Max talks to Teddy about the virtues of marriage and family life, the words are strongly counterpointed by the bodies of Joey and Ruth, which roll, clasped together, from the sofa to the floor. But, while Max's and Teddy's control of family affairs is largely vitiated by this new development, there is a new character ready and willing to step into the power vacuum. There is a major irony in the subsequent development of this scene. Ruth, having steadily opposed the rights of Max and Teddy to dictate her roles to her, suddenly switches from

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opposing that control to exerting it herself. As bestower of sexual benefits upon the assembled males, she is quick to assert the other side of the domestic coin. If she is to be the major supplier of domestic benefits, she is thereby the wielder of domestic power, too. In a move that strikingly recalls Max's opening scene with Lenny, Ruth begins to order Lenny about; but Ruth, unlike Max, is successful in her efforts to do so. Having ascertained that there is whisky in the house, she demands of Lenny: RUTH : Well, get it.

Lenny goes to the sideboard, takes out bottle and glasses. Joey moves towards her. Put the record off. He looks at her, turns, puts the record off. I want something to eat. Pause, (p. 60) With masterly irony, Pinter concludes Ruth's first usurpation of Max's power position with a reversal of the conflict that had prompted Ruth's rebellion against him at the beginning of the second act. As Ruth demonstrates her control over Max's sons, she also seeks to impose on him the domestic role he had tried to demand of her—that of the house cook. But in Max's silence there is a further parallel to that scene: not only is Ruth usurping Max's position of power, Max is also taking over Ruth's role of noncompliance. Neither opposing nor endorsing this turn of events, Max awaits further developments. Having turned the tables on one axis of the power system in the two families, Ruth now switches to the other. And in her new tactical approach to Teddy, we see what Ruth has learned or relearned in her homecoming. Just as Lenny had earlier taunted Max for his inadequacies, Ruth now begins

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to taunt Teddy for his. Her mockery of Teddy in the new situation simultaneously allies her with Lenny and underlines the basis of the incompatibility between herself and her husband. With the power of her sexuality now paramount in the London home, Ruth needles Teddy by drawing an implicit contrast between the power of her professional expertise and the power of his in the current situation. RUTH (to Teddy): Have your family read your critical MAX:

works? That's one thing I've never done. I've never read one of his critical works, (p. 61)

For too long Ruth has had to submerge her professional abilities in the demands of her role as wife and mother in the American home. Her professional expertise has been subordinated to the need for Teddy to pursue his. Now the situation is reversed, and it is Teddy's professional abilities, not Ruth's, that are redundant here. Ruth, a model for the body, is dominant in an environment that has no use for the man with a model mind. Teddy, backed into a corner, is not without resources in this situation. But, ironically, his mode of saving his profes­ sional face here inadvertently involves him in abandoning all that he came home to preserve on the domestic front. Unable to compete with Ruth, he tries, like his father before him, to characterize a position of weakness as a position of strength. The limitations, he suggests, lie not in his works, but in the family's ability to cope with them. As the speech progresses, however, it confirms what has already become apparent—that the key limitation is in Teddy himself: You're way behind. All of you. There's no point in sending you my works. You'd be lost. It's nothing to do with the question of intelligence. It's a way of being

THE H O M E C O M I N G

able to look at the world. It's a question of how far you can operate on things and not in things. . . . You're just objects. You just . . . move about. I can observe it. I can see what you do. It's the same as I do. But you're lost in it. You won't get me being . . . I won't be lost in it. Blackout, (pp. 61-62) The blackout that concludes this speech helps undermine an argument that has already been heavily undermined by the action of the play. Teddy is indeed lost in the professional world he retreats to, and that retreat seems no less a failure than any he might endure in operating in things rather than simply on them. Teddy's stress on the importance of "intel­ lectual equilibrium" (p. 62) helps clarify his inability to cope with Ruth in the American family, his inability to cope in the London home, and, in particular, his refusal to act when Ruth begins to abandon her wifely role in favor of one that includes acceding to the advances of Lenny and Joey. Teddy, like Ruth, carries with him the psychological home that he has embraced, and this psychological home effectively cuts him off from control of family affairs. In this speech we see most clearly in the play the nature of "home" as both a mode of liberation and a mode of restriction. To be at home in one sphere is necessarily to be a stranger in another—the concept is double-edged. In this clarification we perceive the generalization that has lain behind the conflict between domestic and extradomestic roles throughout the play. Just as Max was unable to reconcile the MacGregor within him and the father within him, just as Jessie was unable to reconcile the whore within her and the mother within her, and just as Ruth has been unable to reconcile her career as nude model with her role as wife and mother, so Teddy has now come to the point of

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facing up to his inability to reconcile the self that is the successful professor of philosophy and the self who is either a dutiful son in London or a dutiful father and husband in America. The problem with these conflicting roles is that they are of their nature irreconcilable. Each of the characters has contrasting internal needs, and each must make his choice of priorities. Ruth, in the course of the play, has made hers, and Teddy is now forced to make his. Determined to maintain the importance of operating on things rather than in them, Teddy gives priority to his professional rather than his domestic concerns. But what presents itself to Teddy as a mode of defending himself against Ruth presents itself to his family as a mode of attack upon them.

SECTION 14: TEDDY AND THE LONDON FAMILY (PP. 62-74)

Teddy's claim to superiority in the London home is a dangerous tack. Both Max and Lenny have earlier revealed their defensiveness about such possible claims, and Teddy's defiant assertion serves only to bring about a new alliance in the London family that reverses the role he hoped they would play in his life. Instead of supporting him in con­ trolling Ruth, they now oppose him. Teddy directs his anger at the turn of events solely upon Lenny (and somewhat ineffectively steals his cheese roll), but the London family begins a gradually escalating attack on him. Joey disappears upstairs with Ruth, Lenny taunts Teddy about his expecta­ tions in the London home, and Max joins with Lenny in affecting moral outrage at the limits that Ruth seems to put on Joey's two hours of sexual enjoyment: "My Joey? She did that to my boy?" (p. 68). The evident aim of the family attack is to make Teddy break and force him to concede that he is not as impervious

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to their wiles as he has tried to claim. The attack escalates extravagantly in the face of Teddy's determined imperturba­ bility, and Max eventually suggests that the family simply keep Teddy's wife when he leaves. Teddy is finally forced to protest that this is not what Ruth would want, but, in doing so, he leaves himself open to an attack that Max launches with devastating accuracy: "What do you know about what she wants, eh, Ted?" (p. 70). Teddy can win here neither by silence nor by participation. The attack upon him culminates with a key suggestion by Lenny that Ruth be retained for both her domestic and professional expertise. Ruth will be allowed to earn her keep "on the game" (p. 72). Teddy can only listen in silence as the full significance of this strikes home. What Lenny is proposing here is a masterly reversal of the process Ruth went through in leaving London to take up a new life in America. The pattern developing in the play approaches completion as Lenny's professional expertise, like Ruth's, for the first time finds an outlet and a role in family affairs. It is Lenny's suggestion that Ruth become a prostitute, and it is to Lenny that the family now turns in seeking advice on the work­ ability of the arrangement, As Max raises doubts about Ruth's professional abilities in view of her performance with Joey, it is Lenny's opinion that proves decisive. Teddy, struggling for control, responds weakly to his father's query about Ruth's sexual abilities, and Lenny steps into the breach with all the conviction of a man speaking with professional authority: LENNY: I don't think we've got anything to worry about

on that score, Dad. MAX: How do you know? LENNY: I'm giving you a professional opinion, (p. 73)

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SECTION 15: RUTH/LENNY AND THE REST OF THE FAMILY (PP. 74-82)

Teddy, withdrawing further and further into his psycho­ logical home, manifests the strength of negation. Unable to cope with the domestic scene, he concedes what he cannot control. In his culminating effort to remain personally above all of these emotionally charged issues, he treats the family's invitation to Ruth as a mere business proposition. Ironically, the tactic serves only to make Ruth's acceptance of it all the more likely. In response to the choice between the family's offer and Teddy's indication that she could still "come home" (p. 76) with him, Ruth turns decisively to Lenny and turns their fantasized offer into a realistic alternative. RUTH:

How many rooms would this flat have?

LENNY: Not many. RUTH:

I would want at least three rooms and a bath­

room. LENNY: YOU wouldn't need three rooms and a bath­

room. (p. 76) In a calm, businesslike manner, Ruth insists not only on the rooms but also on a personal maid, a fully supplied wardrobe, and a contract. The negotiations, significantly, are carried on solely by Lenny and Ruth in the home that neither controlled at the start of the play. In the new home developing here, all of the characters defer to the professional expertise of Lenny and Ruth. But, with agreement finalized on the flat, attention switches to Ruth's role in domestic affairs. Once again Max raises the issue of Ruth doing the cooking, and this time he is supported by Lenny. Ruth, as before, remains silent. In keeping with her role as a "model for the body" Ruth allows

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promises to be read into her: promises that she makes no commitment to keep. As she has already demonstrated in her sexual episode with Joey, Ruth seeks to control the family by appearing to promise more than she ever intends to deliver. As Teddy departs with a photograph of his father, he confirms his fundamentally selfish nature in his reaction to the sudden collapse of Sam. He laments this development, not in terms of the consequences for Sam, but in terms of the consequences for himself—a lost ride to the airport. Ruth's ironic farewell to Teddy, "Don't become a stranger" (p. 80), underlines the fact that, in this respect at least, Teddy still has roots in the home he is once again quitting. But it also suggests that Ruth bears no great animosity toward Teddy for her years in America. Unpleasant they may have been, but she chose to accept what Teddy chose to offer. Her move to set up a new home in London seems to be regarded as she now regards her previous home with Teddy—an option to be tried, rather than an assumed solution to all future problems. The conclusion of the play emphasizes the validity of her approach. Just as the opening of the play revealed fixities and instabilities in the domestic scene, so, too, does the closing situation. As everyone else is still and silent and grouped around the new family focus, Ruth, a new figure wanders uncircumscribed on the periphery of family affairs: "Max begins to move above them, backwards and forwards" (p. 80). In growing fright, Max reacts to a sudden awareness that Ruth's resemblance to Jessie in some beneficial areas might extend also to a resemblance in less desirable areas. Fearing that unpleasant domestic duties might once more devolve upon him, he gives voice to fears that Ruth might indeed seem to promise more than she ever intends to deliver:

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Listen, I've got a funny idea she'll do the dirty on us, you want to bet? She'll use us, she'll make use of us, I can tell you! I can smell it! You want to bet? Pause. She won't . . . be adaptable! He falls to his knees, whimpers, begins to moan and sob. He stops sobbing, crawls past Sam's body round her chair, to the other side of her. I'm not an old man. He looks up at her. Do you hear me? He raises his face to her. Kiss me. She continues to touch Joey's head, lightly. Lenny stands, watching. Curtain, (pp. 81-82) Ruth's lack of response to Max's concluding order suggests that she does indeed intend to renege on her promises, but the significant fact is that Max, in spite of his posture, is trying once more to deliver orders in the household. There is no reconciliation at the end of this play, only the sugges­ tion that new conflicts now face those involved in the new family situation. The family unit has undergone another major change, and the result has been not a final resolution but a further mutation in the nature of its development. The arch that had framed the opening family situation now frames the closing family situation, too. It predicts for the latter, as it did for the former, a struggle between continuity and change. But in reversing the characters on the periphery of the family with those at the center, something fundamental has changed here. With an agreement to have a prostitute at the core of the family and a resident pimp as her sponsor, the family has brought home the one set of extradomestic

THE HOMECOMING

roles that is consistent with the foundation of its domestic roles. In the location of the prostitute-pimp system of mutual exploitation at the center of the domestic scene, the ultimate homecoming is manifest in the play, for the London family as a whole has come home to its ultimate self. For Ruth, too, the ending is of uncertain value. There is an element of desperation in her efforts to transcend the worst this family can do to her. In quitting her life with Teddy, she returns to an aspect of self she had rejected, with some qualms, once before in her life. Whatever the reason for that earlier rejection, it is evident that there is more to Ruth than the side of self to which she once again gives priority at the conclusion of the play. As Pinter has remarked, Ruth has achieved "a certain kind of freedom" 5 at the end of this play, but, as the play has demonstrated in a variety of ways, a certain kind of freedom is also a certain kind of captivity. Because of Teddy, Ruth has had to relinquish the side of self that chose to be a mother and to bring up children. Because of his father, Ruth faces in her new life problems that promise to be not entirely unlike those she encountered with Teddy. There is a final irony in the repeated suggestion of cycles in this play, for if the London family is confronted once more by the power of a Jessiefigure, so, too, is that Jessie-figure confronted once more by the power of the London family.® 5 H. Pinter, "Probing Pinter's Play" (interview with H. Hewes), Saturday Review, L (April 8, 1967), 58. 6 I am grateful to my colleague Edward Berry for a helpful discussion of some of the issues raised by this play.

VI LANDSCAPE

. . . my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination—And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss­ cross in every direction—The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings. The same or almost the same points were always being ap­ proached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made . . . which now had to be arranged and sometimes cut down, so that if you looked at them you could get a picture of the Iandscape. 1

THE CONCLUSION of a Pinter play is a topic worthy of study in its own right. The combination of completion and continuity achieved in these conclusions is itself an impor­ tant characteristic of the kind of drama he is writing. Some­ thing final occurs in the pattern of group activity, something that closes off certain possibilities and momentarily excludes awareness of acceptable alternatives. But the characters do not die; the finality is not that of death. On the contrary, the impact of the conclusions is derived in large part from the realization that, though the end of a way of life is clearly signaled, the life itself must go on; the very fact that a character must face up to life without that which has hitherto sustained life is a central factor in the impasse that 1 L.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (London, 1969), preface, p. ixe.

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is repeatedly confronted. The recognition of irrevocable loss is matched by recognition of an inescapable future. From his very first play, The Room, this pattern has been in evidence, though subsequent plays went only so far as confrontation with disaster, omitting any violent reaction to it. The gun does not go off at the end of The Dumb Waiter. Meg and Petey do not pursue Stanley at the end of The Birthday Party. Davies does not ask the useless question at the end of The Caretaker. The irrevocable and the ines­ capable are held in eloquent balance. The consequences of this kind of conclusion gradually became more explicit in Pinter's work. The early Pinter dealt with an episode in which one character supplants another (A Slight Ache); the later Pinter added to this theme the dimension of circularity. In The Basement the play ends as it begins but with the supplanter and supplanted in reversed roles. When the action of the play is complete a change has occurred, but the situation is, in one sense, the same. A Night Out con­ cludes with Albert's mother beginning to reestablish her role relative to him as if the night out had never happened. Likewise, Len, at the end of The Dwarfs, is once again striving to establish the accepted boundaries of perception that had eluded him during the play. Looking back at The Birthday Party in this light we note that the play concludes with Meg and Petey beginning to readjust to a life without Stanley as if the events of the play had never happened. In one sense everything is changed; in another, everything is the same. This common denominator is not evidence that Pinter writes to a recurring formula; the connection is at a wide degree of generalization and could be phrased simply as a recognition that life goes on. There may be a mutation, but the process of living is uninterrupted. In a more romantic age George Eliot wrote: ". . . it is with men as with trees:

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if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical, misshapen trunk." 2 We have seen in Davies the mutated, "misshapen" individual, and we have seen in Rose's and Bert's behavior the "misshapen" relationship. At an earlier stage of development we have noted Mr. and Mrs. Sands battling for positions, and we have watched Aston, Mick, and Davies negotiating their relationships. But while we have seen the early battles of a relationship and the un­ stable fixed point of maladjustment in a relationship, Pinter, up to 1967, had taken his characters only to the point of confrontation with drastic change and ended his plays at that point of impasse. "I'm not suggesting that no character in a play can ever say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a moment when this happens, where he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back." 3 The next stage —what happens after the irrevocable is spoken, after the irretrievable has occurred—has not been dealt with at length. But from the conclusions of plays like A Night Out, The Birthday Party, and The Basement we can perceive something of what the next stage might be. Whatever the nature of the disasters that occur, people will go on as before. Certain things will be lost to achieve this, but there is no other way. When Aston and Davies reach their inescapable point of confrontation their relationship dissolves into silence. But beyond the silence lies only what 2 G. Eliot, "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," in Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's Works (New York), iv, 199-200. 3 H. Pinter, "Between the Lines," The Sunday Times (London), March 4, 1962, mag. sec., p. 25.

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was there before it. The concluding postures chart their future courses: Aston stands gazing at the site of the unbuilt and unbuildable shed; Davies halts, uselessly, in the midst of another rehearsal of the projected but unachievable journey to Sidcup. The lesson of the action of the play is that they must change; the impasse of the conclusion indicates that they will not, indeed, cannot. To extend George Eliot's metaphor, another branch has been lopped off, but the battered trunk survives. Characters like Aston and Davies must go on as be­ fore, meeting other people, but making the same gestures and the same mistakes. If allowed to, Rose and Bert will go on together, for they have nowhere else to go. The various failures bring characters face-to-face with knowledge—but the pattern of their lives suggests that the knowledge will be circumvented if at all possible. "If the choice is between love and safety, between making the connection with another human being and ensuring that some core of the self will remain inviolable, Pinter's characters almost invariably will choose the latter." 4 Confronted with self-knowledge and the awareness that the self is somehow inadequate, the charac­ ters are left at a point of crisis. But we suspect that new ways will be found to ward off new knowledge. By 1966 Pinter had taken a variety of characters along the road to Sidcup, and, no matter what their route, they dis­ covered at the end of , the road the silence of failure or the imminence of circularity. The need to go beyond this, to dramatize what lies beyond the silence, became a matter of concern for a new form: I started something last year in Boston, but that was no bloody good. I'd done it before. Now I've started a couple of pages of something quite different. A new 4 C. Hughes, "Pinter is as Pinter Does," Catholic World, ccx (December 1969), 126.

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form, and I'm diving. It's simply, as it stands, about a woman around fifty. And she's talking. That's all I bloody well know. I don't know where she is. Certainly it's not a room. So the characters can't open a door and come in, but I think they're there. 5 As it turned out, the woman Pinter mentions was in a room after all. But the room in which Landscape takes place is not the same kind of room as that of his earlier plays. Gone is the clutter of tangible objects which fill the room of The Care­ taker, and gone, too, are the crude but necessary objects that define Rose's life in The Room. Here we are much closer to the setting of Aston's mental hospital speech when the lights darken and the background fades in favor of a purely verbal activity. The objects in the Landscape room suffice to indi­ cate the locale, but their impact on the action is as minimal as the stage direction implies: "The background, of a sink, stove, etc., and a window, is dim" (p. 8). In the foreground there is simply a table and two chairs occupied by Duff, in his early fifties, and Beth, in her late forties. If the dim back­ ground indicates their separation from their environment, the foreground does likewise for their separation from each other. The table is described as "long" with Duff sitting at its right corner. Beth, meanwhile, sits in an armchair "which stands away from the table, to its left" (p. 8). Another stage direction projects this physical isolation one step further in categorizing the verbal activity to come: Dujf refers normally to Beth, but does not appear to hear her voice. Beth never looks at Duff, and does not appear to hear his voice. Both characters are relaxed, in no sense rigid, (p. 8) 5 H. Pinter, " 'Funny and Moving and Frightening': Pinter," interview with K. Halton, Vogue, CL (October 1, 1967), 245.

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The final sentence is important. Whatever has happened here, and whatever is happening here, this is not a sudden crisis or an unusual occasion for them. A reviewer remarks that, in performance, "Somehow, it all seems very natural, a situation they appear to accept and live within." β However strange their behavior may seem at first, we have to come to terms with their acceptance of the situation and all that this implies. But in spite of the changes from previous plays, is this all really new? Pinter certainly saw it as a "new form" in 1967, and his position is supported by Hayman, Esslin, Kauffman, Gordon, and others.7 Some critics, however, are less certain. Hollis concedes only a difference of degree rather than kind,8 Hughes believes that this is "not really an exception," 9 and Nightingale would have it that "he has nothing new to say: he's simply saying the old things more starkly." 10 Though critical disagreement about Pinter's work is by now a com­ monplace, in this case it is particularly significant. In out­ lining the setting of this play we have noted the new charac­ teristics indicated by the stage directions. At the same time, a comparison has been suggested with the long speech of Aston in The Caretaker. What we have here, in fact, is a form that is both new and the same as before. To go beyond the silence that succeeds the irrevocable, Pinter was seeking a new form for a new situation. To match the inescapable limitations of 6

Hughes, "Pinter is as Pinter Does," p. 125. R. Hayman, Harold Pinter (London, 1970), p. 81; M. Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (New York, 1970), p. 179; S. Kauffmann, "Landscape and Silence," New Republic, CLXII (April 25, 1970), 20; L. G. Gordon, "Harold Pinter—Past and Present," Kansas Quarterly, HI (Spring 1971), 96. 8 J. R. Hollis, Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 112. 9 Hughes, "Pinter is as Pinter Does," p. 124. 10 B. Nightingale, "To the Mouth of the Cave," New Statesman, July 11, 1969, p. 57. 7

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his characters he also needed a form in which everything could be on another level the same. For the next stage of a relationship the characters who must change, cannot change and yet must go on; likewise, the form of the drama is from one point of view the same, from another, something new. The successful form would inevitably draw contrasting criti­ cal estimates of its relationship to preceding plays. To indicate how Pinter achieved the solution to this prob­ lem we must begin by avoiding one error that is alreadywidespread. There is a small but significant gap between Pin­ ter's direction that Duff and Beth do "not appear to hear" each other's voices, and Lahr's conclusion that "Duff and Beth speak, but do not listen to one another." 11 Once again we must pay precise attention to the language to discover "what is being done with the words." The play begins with a series of utterances from Beth. Just over forty sentences are punctuated by no less than thirteen pauses. Duff does not step in to comment on, query, or confirm the statements made. Beth does not appear to find this significant. But it must be noted that when he does start talking, she stops. Her opening sentences set the focus of her concerns: I would like to stand by the sea. It is there. Pause.

I have. Many times. It's something I cared for. I've done it. Pause.

I'll stand on the beach. On the beach. Well . . . it was very fresh. But it was hot, in the dunes. But it was so fresh, on the shore. I loved it very much. Pause. 11 J. Lahr, "Pinter the Spaceman," Evergreen Review no. 55 (June 7 1968), 50.

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Lots of people . . . Pause. People move so easily. Men. Men move. Pause. I walked from the dune to the shore. My man slept in the dune. He turned over as I stood. His eyelids. Belly button. Snoozing how lovely. Pause. Would you like a baby? I said. Children? Babies? Of our own? Would be nice. Pause, (p. 9) The recurrent "I," as subject, and the imprecise identification of others is again reminiscent of Aston's long speech. He, too, referred to others mainly through pronouns and general nouns rather than names. The verbal activity is essentially self-oriented. Others are important only in their effect on the self; their autonomous existence is largely glossed over. Even the lover is nameless, referred to simply as "my man." His specification relative to Beth is given priority over his name. This is not simply a local occurrence. Beth never uses a proper name at any point in the play. Looking further at this opening speech we note another peculiarity: the verb tenses switch rapidly. The generalized wish for the future "I would like" changes quickly to "I have" and then to "I'll stand" and finally to "it was." The recur­ rent action of the past moves to the prospective future and back to a particular point in the past that is then developed. But even that development is talked of alternately in terms of participation and recollection: "Women turn, look at me" (p. 9) and "Two women looked at me . . ." (p. 10). The re­ sulting comment on the self is held in ambiguous relation­ ship to time past and time present when Beth concludes: "I am beautiful" (p. 10). There are elements here of language

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being used to "draw observations together and make a tenta­ tive hypothesis," 12 but the connection between the two is associative rather than logical. The leap from the observa­ tion to the conclusion serves the needs of the speaker better than it serves the necessity of the argument. But more im­ portant, this mingling of tenses adds another dimension to the imprecise specification of people referred to. As names are not given and time is not fixed, people like "my man" can take on the characteristics of several people who have filled this role, and, also, invented characteristics. Beth's past, present, and future unite in this fragmentary creation and re­ creation of life-sustaining episodes. As she does not look for Duff's confirmation, Beth's verbal world seems self-sufficient. Creatively linking memories of the past and wishes for the future, she seems sublimely independent of the mundane present. But is she? Does Duff have no part in her life at all? Onstage, only verbal activity occurs. There is no physical contact, no change of positions and no intrusion of new people or new events. Dixon provides a useful statement on the kinds of verbal activity which we might suggest pre­ occupy Beth: "Recalling experience, getting it clear, giving it shape and making connections, speculating and building theories, celebrating (or exorcizing) particular moments of our lives—these are some of the broad purposes that language serves and enables." 13 But if this is all that Beth is doing, Duff's contribution to her life would appear to be minimal. The element of interaction indispensable to drama would appear to be missing. A reviewer of the first production criticizes the play on just this point: In the end, Landscape, like Silence, offers only what it offers in the beginning: skillful but schematic juxtaposi1 2 J. 13

Dixon, Growth through English (Reading, England, 1967), p. 5. Ibid.., p. 7.

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tions of crudity and tenderness, aspiration and loss, memory and desire. Their meaning may be clear, but when they are left undeveloped and unresolved, such juxtapositions are all workmanship and no play. The audience gets the point—but it gets very little else.14 But if the point the audience gets is merely one of evocative juxtaposition, then it has missed the full experience of the play. The two characters are not independent of one another, and their verbal relationship is more subtle than simple juxtaposition. If due attention is given to the sequence in which the statements occur, it becomes possible to perceive not only contrast but development in terms of an oblique cause and effect. And it is this element of cause and effect that substantiates their attention to, and interaction with, each other. If we look at the first statement by Duff we will get an indication of the way their relationship functions. His re­ mark is not just an arbitrary one, it has a link with what Beth has just said: BETH: I walked back over the sand. He had turned.

Toes under sand, head buried in his arms. DUFF: The dog's gone. I didn't tell you. (p. 10) The posture of Beth's lover as she describes it is close to that of a dog sleeping in the sand; that Duff should pull that resemblance out of that context into a very different one is suggestive of the gap between the two, but the link, how­ ever imprecise, indicates that what she says does, in some form, get through to him. Similarly, when he finishes speak­ ing, his last words are— 14 "The Latest Pinters·. Less is Less," anon, review, T i m e , July 18, 1969, p. 67.

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DUFF: DO you remember the weather yesterday? That

downfall? BETH: He felt my shadow. He looked up at me stand­ ing above him. (p. 10) The word "downfall" is jerked from Duff's context back to Beth's, and it is the delicacy of her shadow falling down on her lover that replaces the weight of rain falling that Duff had mentioned. In both cases the connection is tenuous, but it is there. At other points we have Beth talking about the sea and Duff thereupon talking about fish; we have Beth talking of going to a hotel for a drink and Duff recalling a visit to a pub; we have Duff saying "There wasn't a soul in the park" and Beth remarking, "There wasn't a soul on the beach" (p. 13). These connections are of many kinds, but they make it clear that the language of each character is both self-sustaining and mutually generated. Not everything they say derives from what the other has said—indeed, it derives often from what they themselves said in their pre­ vious remark—but the words the other person speaks do affect the development of each individual's speech. There is verbal contact, albeit rather oblique. But in returning to that word "oblique" we make an im­ mediate link with what we have been saying of Pinter's dialogue all along. The "connection between what one character says and what another says afterwards" 15 has been our constant concern in analyzing Pinter's work. Here the connection has taken on another degree of complexity, but the problem is the same. If we look more closely at the open­ ing statements of Beth and Duff, we find the following com­ parisons and contrasts: 15

The Times (London), quoted by Esslin, The Peopled Wound, p. 13.

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Beth stands on the beach by the sea dry, hot weather goes for walk talks of child/parenthood mingles verb tenses addresses absent people does not report responses

Duff stands under a tree by a pond wet, cold weather goes for walk talks of youngsters/unknown keeps one orientation on time addresses Beth gets and expects no direct re­ sponse

These intertwined speeches set the pattern for the rest of the play. The verbalized concerns of each sparks related but different concerns in the other. We have here another means of exploiting the fluidity and flexibility of language that has been discussed throughout this work. But instead of this aspect of language being the manifestation of a barrier be­ tween people struggling to impose common verbal ground (e.g., "light the kettle" vs. "light the gas"), it has now be­ come the only safe means of contact between people largely committed to their own individual worlds. It is important to grasp the significance of this fact. We have in this play almost the converse of the linguistic usage in Pinter's previous work. Instead of extended verbal reverie directed solely toward a desired relationship with another person (as in Mick's and Davies' longer speeches), we now have minimal verbal connections seized upon as starting points for, or elaborations of, a purely personal vision of life. When the above-mentioned reviewer attacked Pinter's new work he noted that the silences were even more prevalent than before. He then made the humorous but disparaging remark that whereas in the past Pinter used silences to sug-

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gestively fill out the words, "Now . . . Pinter has in effect written the silences and let the words fill in suggestively." 10 The reviewer was much nearer the mark than he knew. The "new form" employed by Pinter has the kind of inverse rela­ tionship to his previous work that a photographic negative has to a photographic print. Instead of dialogues so oblique as to look at times like monologues juxtaposed, we now have monologues intertwined so subtly that they take on a similar function to dialogue. Instead of suggestive silences filling out words, we now have suggestive words triggering the filling out of silence. Instead of verbal reverie leading to interper­ sonal connection, we now have interpersonal connection lead­ ing to private reverie. Like the negative and the print, the old and the new are related to each other by links which demonstrate that while everything is different, everything is the same. The Beth/Duff relationship is the next stage in the pattern that Pinter has been weaving—it follows on from the occurrence of the irrevocable to a separation that is at once different from before and the same as before. Aston and Davies struggling to relate were no closer and no more in tune than Beth and Duff, who are no longer committed to that goal. Yet the Beth/Duff relationship continues. The fluidity of language is now the saviour of their relationship rather than a barrier to it. They can now connect verbally without having to sacrifice a core of the self to the demands of the other. Each transforms the utterances of the other into a personal context and thus maintains contact while preserv­ ing, and at times celebrating, the needs and concerns of the self. Paradoxically, however, even this form of independence is a form of interdependence. Each can only perform this lan­ guage game if the other is ready to go along with it. And as we shall see, the two characters are ready to do this only when 16

T i m e , July 18, 1969, p. 67.

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it serves more subtle needs in their relationship. This verbal contact is also a process of interaction—the participation re­ quired of both imposes demands of its own. Hollis, reviewing Pinter's work from the viewpoint of Landscape, finds an as­ pect of consistency: "Throughout the corpus, characters try and ostensibly fail in their efforts to fling linguistic bridges across the abyss." 17 "Failure," however, is not quite the right word. More often than not the bridge is withdrawn because the price of maintaining it is too high. As this play progresses, we discover the needs implicit in this new form of bridge and the inevitable price that it, too, exacts. The conflicting individualities of Beth and Duff are evident not only in the topics they discuss extensively but also in the other ways in which they manifest their attitudes to each other. Beth "never looks at Duff" (p. 8) at all but Duff "re­ fers normally to Beth" (p. 8). He directs questions to her and refers to her directly as "you." In reconstructing the scenes he recalls, he is aware of a need to communicate sufficient data for her to understand. DUFF: Yes, I've forgotten something. The dog was with

me. (p. 11) Beth, in contrast, seems to recall scenes largely for her own needs and is frequently engaged in a dialectic solely with her­ self. BETH: Did those women know me? I didn't remember their faces. I'd never seen their faces before.

I'd never seen those women before. I'm cer­ tain of it. Why were they looking at me? There's nothing strange about me. There's nothing strange about the way I look. I look like anyone, (p. 11) 17

Hollis, Harold Pinter, p. 112.

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Coming soon after her attempt to link their staring at her with the fact that she is beautiful, we get a glimpse of the movement of her thoughts in her constant reassessment of her needs—a revealing interaction of the self and the data projected by the self. It undergoes revision and readjustment as the demands of the self shape its course. Duff, in contrast, revises and adjusts partly according to the needs that he projects as being Beth's: Do you like me to talk to you? Pause. Do you like me to tell you about all the things I've been doing? Pause. About all the things I've been thinking? Pause. Mmmnn? Pause. I think you do. (p. 21) But Duff's unwillingness to talk about things that Beth re­ veals an interest in and his readiness to talk crudely of things that cannot interest Beth, make us realize that it is his need to talk that is being met, as much as her need to listen. His concern for her attention is as much self-oriented as her apparent unconcern for his attention. Indeed, there is no victimizer and victim here; as in Pinter's earlier plays, the victimizer and the victimized are mutually afflicting. Both suffer from being different from the other and from having irreconcilable needs; the degree of irreconcilability is more obviously acknowledged than in previous plays, but the prob­ lem is the same. The incompatibility of the two characters is not, however, something that they have become indifferent to. Certainly Beth seems to have abandoned hope for any fruitful change

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in Duff. Instead of attempting to sustain her individuality by imposing a structured relationship on Duff, she seeks rather to invest in a mixture of memory and fantasy in a largely private world. But Duff, thus rejected, alternates constantly between trying to undermine that world, trying to break into it, and trying to live in spite of it. But whatever he does, the contrast between their attitudes constantly reveals to the audience their basic incompatibility: "Both Beth and Duff use words very effectively to create their own personalities, defining themselves both by the words they choose and by the pictures they paint with them." 18 Beth's world is one of beautiful sights, graceful movements, gentle loving contact, and short intimate conversations. Duff's is much more vari­ able than Beth's but does tend to lean toward the opposite poles. He sees more of the mundane and ugly things, in a more violent, more randomly noisy world of blunt speaking and blunt action. Nevertheless, the potential closeness of their present relationship is dwelt upon more directly by Duff in spite of his more coarse attitudes toward it. Beth's recol­ lection of their intimacy is projected away from the present Duff onto the fantasized "my man." With creative memory available Beth can synthesize the best of her memories with her most needed fantasies. Where Beth is preoccupied with a day of love at the beach, moments of intimacy with com­ panions, and an explicit concern for her own physical charms, Duff's preoccupations range over the filth of the park, their lives as servants, the crudities of barroom relationships, and the merits and needs of his relationship with Beth. The intertwined recollections and fantasies also provide us with some knowledge of their roles together. They have been employed by a Mr. Sykes in a large house that they now occupy alone. Beth was the housekeeper and Duff a chauffeur and handyman. He recalls an episode of confessing being 18

Hayman, Harold Pinter, p. 81.

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unfaithful to her and her forgiveness of him. She does not talk of the episode, but her current behavior is a comment on all of their past. He also recalls an episode of violence between them when he came upon her banging the gong in an empty house. How much of the violence was physical and how much verbal we do not know. Again, however, their current relationship is a comment on the few events recalled from their past. But only by looking closely at the way in which these recollections and fantasies are interwoven will we get in close contact with the play. The abstracted episodes are important not simply for the events described in each but for the way the interaction of these recollections pro­ vides a deeper insight into the relationship itself. Unlike the three previous plays we have dealt with, Land­ scape does not break down so easily into successive duologues that chart the development of the play. In this respect, the recurring motifs that linked and interwove the duologue blocks of previous plays now take on greater importance and become major structural elements of the play. The repetition, elaboration, correction, and recontextualization of a small number of central motifs is what unifies the diverse episodes. Though these motifs now predominate over the conversation units as the basic structural elements of the play, the duo­ logue as a block of development still exists in a muted form. Instead of these blocks being marked off by time changes or character presence changes, they are divided quite simply by silence. The occurrence of silence becomes a minor struc­ tural division of the play and charts important points in the development of the motifs that form the core of the drama.

SECTION 1: PP. 9-12 The preoccupations that dominate Beth's internal world are immediately in evidence as she dwells on a romantic

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moment on a lonely beach. The needs of her self-image are revealed by her concerns as surely as Rose's concerns revealed her needs. Like Rose, Beth returns obsessively to certain topics in repeated efforts to shape and reshape their signifi­ cance to her life. The importance of the idealized lover is mingled with a hope for children, a concern for being looked at, and a savoring of the delicacy and gentleness of sexual contact. But the fragile refinement of Beth's world is by no means a naive escapism. Like Rose's opening monologue, it mingles conflicting attitudes: her need to be admired and her need to be beautiful are intertwined with fears of being seen and of being different from others. In contrast to the largely ethereal nature of Beth's vision and underscoring its more realistic elements, Duff's account of a visit to a park reveals a different perspective on life. As Beth's current "lover," Duff speaks matter-of-factly about youngsters, revealing an attitude very different from the one Beth has revealed toward a potential child of her own. But his mention of children at this point is not a random occurrence. The whole of his account of the walk in the park is crosscut with echoes of their past life together. Many of the things he mentions have their parallels with Beth's day on the beach and with a previous day when he and Beth walked in the park together. Duff's later account (p. 19) of that walk with Beth picks out similar events and similar scenes for com­ ment, and, significantly, that walk was part of the process of adjusting their relationship after he had confessed his un­ faithfulness to her. Duff's current account of a walk in the park alone mentions those scenes with as little apparent awareness of their significance as he reveals for the signifi­ cance of the youngsters. Whether this is deliberate or not is unclear at this point, but the separation of the characters on­ stage is underscored by Duff's apparent insensitivity to this

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incident in their past. But the insensitivity is not total; the memories of that day are not obviously evident in his cur­ rent emotional attitudes, but they are nonetheless indicated by the things he selects to mention. Sheltering from the rain, some people on the far side of the pond attracted his atten­ tion: "There was a man and woman, under the trees, on the other side of the pond" (p. 11). But though they attract his attention they do not appear to jog his memory into recol­ lecting that this is just where he and Beth stood on that day of potential crisis in their past. Likewise, he talks of feeding the birds in terms of rejecting the ducks in favor of the spar­ rows without recalling Beth's preference for feeding the ducks. The extent to which Beth is aware of Duff's account is by no means obvious but is nevertheless subtly indicated. Their alternating statements are a mixture of responses to the self and responses to the other, and it is important to note the points at which reaction to what the other has just said be­ comes the major factor in what is said next. Such a point comes when Beth makes a remark that seems unrelated to her account of the day on the beach or to what Duff has just said: DUFF: The dog wouldn't have minded me feeding the

birds. Anyway, as soon as we got in the shelter he fell asleep. But even if he'd been awake Pause.

BETH: They all held my arm lightly, as I stepped out of

the car, or out of the door, or down the steps. Without exception. If they touched the back of my neck, or my hand, it was done so lightly. Without exception. With one exception, [my emphasis] (pp. 11-12)

LANDSCAPE The connection between what Duff has just said and Beth's response to it is not immediately apparent. But when we hear Duff's later account of his visit to the park with Beth, the connection is made clear: DUFF: I was very gentle to you. I was kind to you, that day. I knew you'd had a shock, so I was gentle with you. I held your arm on the way back from the pond. You put your hands on my face and kissed me. [my emphasis] (p. 22) However oblique their "conversation" appears, it is clear that Duff's account of his visit to the park has sparked this recollection of Beth's. It is also hinted that the one occasion when she was handled roughly is associated with Duff, too. His reaction to her ethereal recollection takes the form of such extreme grossness that it suggests not mere insensitivity but actual resistance of the earthy side of his nature to her constant romantic idealism: "Mind you, there was a lot of shit all over the place, all along the paths, by the pond. Dogshit, duckshit . . . all kinds of shit . . ." (p. 12). In con­ trast to the idealized beauty of Beth's reminiscences he goes on to undermine the significance of their moment of recon­ ciliation by demonstrating his insensitivity to the episode of feeding the birds. Beth, in turn, continues to cling to her ethereal world, and in this juxtaposition we can perceive the growth of the pattern of separation that dominates their lives: BETH: I could stand now. I could be the same. I dress differently, but I am beautiful. Silence, (p. 12) Beth is not out of touch with the present. Her response is very much from the vantage point of the present moment and is a clear resort to shoring up a much needed self-image.

LANDSCAPE Far from being immune to Duff's world, Beth seems to im­ merse herself in fantasy as a reaction to that world. The silence that greets this statement of need registers a with­ drawal from contact by both characters as Beth's needs be­ come dangerously explicit. SECTION 2: pp. 12-14

When Duff resumes, he changes his tack from simply re­ jecting her world to inviting Beth to take part in his world. But the well-established tracks of their verbal interchanges lead inescapably back to the past. DUFF: I sometimes run into one or two people I know.

You might remember them. (p. 12) Beth's memories of people in the past are much more selec­ tive, and she is immediately restored to her habitual concern for episodes between herself and the partly recalled, partly fantasized "my man." Again the dominant motifs of sight, touch, and water interlace her romantic memories·. When I watered the flowers he stood, watching me, and watched me arrange them. My gravity, he said. 1 was so grave, attending to the flowers, (pp. 12-13) That Duff himself is one component in Beth's synthesized ideal of the perfect man and the perfect relationship is indi­ cated by Duff's later remark: "I was thinking . . . when you were young . . . you didn't laugh much. You were . . . grave" (p. 18). But Duff does not respond to this link at this point. Instead, a peculiar kind of circularity develops in the "conversation." Beth goes on to reiterate her concern for light, gentle, physical contact, and the resultant sequence of topics reworks the episodes and issues both have already raised:

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BETH: He touched the back of my neck. His fingers, lightly, touching, lightly, touching, the back, of my neck. DUFF: The funny thing was, when I looked, when the shower was over, the man and woman under the trees on the other side of the pond had gone. There wasn't a soul in the park. BETH: I wore a white beach robe. Underneath I was naked. Pause. There wasn't a soul on the beach, (p. 13) This pattern of alternation between Duff's mention of the park episode and Beth's reiteration of the beach episode occurs repeatedly in the first half of the play. It appears first on page 10, again on page 13, on page 17, page 19, and finally on page 22. On the first three occasions Duff brings up the topic of the park as a direct response to Beth's immer­ sion in her memory/fantasy recollection of a lover. The con­ nection between the episodes in the park and the episode on the beach seems to be based on forms of infidelity to each other. Duff's preoccupation with certain details of the park is clearly based on details that he recalls from the time he and Beth visited the park after he had confessed his unfaith­ fulness to her. Likewise, Beth's persistent rejection of the current Duff in favor of a fantasized recollection of love is as effectively an act of infidelity to Duff as anything he might have done with another woman. It appears that Duff uses the reminder of his "confession" as a defensive counter to her ongoing infidelity. But, as the play progresses, it becomes in­ creasingly obvious that Beth is impervious to whatever use he hopes to make of this recollection. Eventually, Duff aban­ dons the topic, and the last two times he raises the issue it is not so much a defensive reaction to Beth as a puzzled con-

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templation of her limited initial reaction to his "confession." The consequences of this become clearer later. Here, Duff's resort to the "park" topic seems to be an unsuccessful at­ tempt to strike back at Beth for her current rejection of him. While Beth seems impervious to Duff's needling her, she is not ignorant of it. She almost seems to taunt Duff with her immunity to his threat by transmuting his phrase "There wasn't a soul in the park" to "There wasn't a soul on the beach." This switch of context is achieved via a remark that further emphasizes her sensuous immersion in a world from which the older Duff is excluded: "I wore a white beach robe. Underneath I was naked" (p. 13). But Beth is by no means fully immersed in a dream world of escapist perfection. The fragility of her romantic fantasies is suggested here by her retrospective comment on the episode she describes: Snoozing how lovely I said to him. But I wasn't a fool, on that occasion. I lay quiet, by his side. Silence, (p. 14) Silence descends as Beth's fantasy/memory is subjected to the harsher perspectives of the present. Seeking to live and relive moments when relationships were full of grace and promise, Beth cannot escape the self of the current relation­ ship that is never explicitly acknowledged but never finally evaded. SECTION 3: PP. 14-15

The extent to which Beth's bitter comment was directed at Duff is not finally clear. But his defensive reaction to her in this section is clear. His matter-of-fact recounting of his current ability to sleep well is not the neutral topic it might seem. Rather, it recontextualizes the topic of sleep that Beth had just used in recalling a remark to her supine lover. From

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the romanticized intimacy of a young lover "snoozing" on the beach, the topic is transmuted into a health problem for the middle-aged Duff. His defensiveness on this point sug­ gests that the things that Beth enthuses over in her fan­ tasized lover are partly based on their contrast to Duff's limitations. The latter's mundane reduction of the topic is set against Beth's efforts to reinstate the romance of the recollected episode. For the first time there is an echo of the battles over conversation topics and relationships in the earlier plays. For the first time, too, Duff and Beth interrupt one another as the recurrent pause momentarily disappears. DUFF: Anyway . . . BETH: My skin . . . DUFF: I'm sleeping all right these days. BETH: Was stinging. DUFF: Right through the night, every night. BETH: I'd been in the sea. DUFF: Maybe it's something to do with the fishing. Getting to learn more about fish. (p. 14) Beth holds tenaciously to the topic of her day on the beach, and Duff is led first to move from talking of sleep to talking of fish and then to talking of fish in romantic terms: DUFF: They're very shy creatures. You've got to woo them. You must never get excited with them. Or flurried. Never, (p. 14) Beth's romanticizing influence on Duff's words here is as clear as his earlier earthy undermining of her romanticized recollections. In talking of his capacity for gentleness and understanding, Duff is making an indirect attempt to assert his worthiness to enter Beth's world. His comments on fish also follow directly upon Beth's description of being in the sea herself so this sympathy and gentleness is obliquely di-

LANDSCAPE rected toward Beth. Beth7 however, remains totally unim­ pressed by Duff's image-projection and counters it by de­ veloping her fantasy in terms of a visit to a hotel: a place where someone of Duff's social status would be very insecure: BETH:

I knew there must be a hotel near, where we

could get some tea. Silence, (p. 15) Duff, for the moment subjugated, lapses into silence. SECTION 4: PP. 15-16

The development of the relationship in the last section from one of passive opposition toward one of active conflict is extended further here, as Duff picks up on the buying of drinks. It becomes increasingly clear that their widely con­ trasting attitudes toward reported relationships and events are not only attempts to maintain a private world and a private self but also to influence a joint perspective on the present of their relationship. The tendency of both charac­ ters toward opposite poles is not a chance difference of per­ spective but a process of reaction to interaction. Earlier, DufFs preference for feeding sparrows rather than ducks seemed merely a matter of insensitivity to Beth's prefer­ ences; it now becomes apparent that, like this emphatic reaction to Beth's fantasy of cocktail-bar romanticism, it was one of conscious opposition. As Beth projects her fantasy relationship beyond the reach of one of Duff's social status, he reacts by reverting once more to attacking her world. Beth's savoring of the delicate conversation of social de­ corum contrasts strongly with Duff's account of a barroom argument: BETH: But then I thought perhaps the hotel bar will be

open. We'll sit in the bar. He'll buy me a

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drink. What will I order? But what will he order? What will he want? I shall hear him say it. I shall hear his voice. He will ask me what I would like first. Then he'll order the two drinks. I shall hear him do it. DUFF: This beer is piss, he said. Undrinkable. There's nothing wrong with the beer, I said. Yes there is, he said, I just told you what was wrong with it. It's the best beer in the area, I said. No it isn't, this chap said, it's piss. (p. 15) Comparing this section with the previous one we see clearly Duff's alternation between attempts to maneuver into Beth's fantasy world and attempts to destroy it. Beth's romanticism gained the upper hand in the previous section, but Duff's earthy perspective on life reduces Beth to silence in this. He elaborates at some length on the barroom anecdote with its mundane arguments. But once again, the topics that Duff dwells upon echo recurring concerns of his relationship with Beth. His mention of the stranger's lack of children and of his rejection by the opposite sex reveals the locus of Duff's problems as clearly as Beth's craving to be admired and revered reveals hers. This craving of Beth's is what is being opposed as unrealistic by Duff's barroom anecdote with its rather primitive male relationships. Men in this guise are not acceptable inhabitants of Beth's world, and it is she who now lapses into silence. SECTION 5: P. 16

In reaction to Duff's stress on the more sordid side of social drinking activities, Beth's romantic recollection switches to an episode in which men were not important. Her obsession with refined sensual pleasure is nonetheless manifest as she

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recounts an episode in which it was the sea, not men, who caressed her: Suddenly I stood. I walked to the shore and into the water. I didn't swim. I don't swim. I let the water billow me. I rested in the water. The waves were very light, delicate. They touched the back of my neck. Silence, (p. 16) This reinforcement of the possibility of a delicate sensuality even in a world without men undermines the effectiveness of Duff's rejection of that world. This purely private vision leaves Duff with no point of contact and no response. SECTION 6: PP. 16-18

With Beth's ethereal nature undaunted by the account of the pub episode, Dufl switches once more to trying to get Beth directly involved in plans for participation in his world. The suggestion of that joint activity is, however, calculatedly unromantic. He recommends a walk in the garden, suggesting that she would enjoy it because "The dog liked it" (p. 16). The terms of the comparison directly attack Beth's vision of humanity and substitute a much more lowly estimate of mankind. The past tense of this verb also serves to remind Beth of Duff's first statement in the play: "The dog's gone" (p. 10). Duff seems to believe that this reminder, like that of the "confession" episode, may have the power to shake Beth out of her fantasy world. It is never finally clear why Duff mentions it so much, but the dog seems to function partly as a reminder of their lack of children and partly as a sub­ stitute for them, thus becoming a possible focus of Beth's affection in preference to Duff. But whatever hopes Duff has for using the dog's absence to break down Beth's fantasy, they are soon demolished. His satisfied mention of the quiet

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isolation of their lives ("no-one to bother us/' p. 17) turns Beth back to her day of more ideal isolation on the beach with a lover. Again the "conversation" slips into the counterpointing of that day on the beach with Duff's walk in the park, but this time the sequence of page 13 is reversed: BETH:

I slipped out of my costume and put on my

beachrobe. Underneath I was naked. There wasn't a soul on the beach. Except for an el­ derly man, far away on a breakwater. I lay down beside him and whispered. Would you like a baby? A child? Of our own? Would be nice. Pause. DUFF: Yes, it was funny. Suddenly I realized there wasn't a soul in the park. The rain had stopped. Pause. What did you think of that downfall? Pause. Of course the youngsters I met under the first tree, during the first shower, they were larking about and laughing. I tried to listen, to find out what they were laughing about, but I couldn't work it out. [my emphasis] (p. 17) This pattern of response to certain topics reveals the centrality of certain issues and attitudes in their relationship to each other. If she talks of an empty beach, he talks of an empty park; if he brings up the empty park, she links it to the beach. If she talks intimately of a possible child with her lover, he talks of the youngsters whom he can't quite get in touch with in the park. And the motif of downfall/fall down synthesizes the opposition between the romantic young couple lying down together and the estranged relationship

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that ensued. "Downfall" variously covers a shadow cast on the lover (p. 10), a shower of rain (p. 10), Beth's lying down beside her lover (p. 17), and Beth's being "a fool" (p. 14). The triggers on memory and fantasy that operate between the two are clearly signaled in the above quotation. Beth talks of (1) self, (2) isolation on the beach, (3) an elderly man in the distance, (4) lying down by her lover, (5) a baby. Duff's response follows the same sequence with oblique reactions to the topics: (1) self, (2) isolation in the park, (3) (4) downfall of rain, (5) youngsters. Signifi­ cantly, the youngsters stand under a tree as he and Beth once stood, and their estrangement from him links with the problem of Beth's lost hope for children "of our own." In the above sequence, one important motif operates differently from the others. Instead of triggering a response in Duff, the elderly man in the distance is simply ignored. If we look more closely at the various times Beth and Duff go through this pattern we find that this motif, instead of accompanying another, alternates with mention of a couple sheltering under the trees in the park. When Duff first mentions them (p. 11), Beth ignores them. But the second time he refers to them it is to recall that they had dis­ appeared from where he had seen them. . . . . when I looked, when the shower was over, the man and woman under the trees on the other side of the pond had gone. There wasn't a soul in the park. (p. 13) It is in response to their absence in Duff's report that Beth first mentions the old man: There wasn't a soul on the beach. Very far away a man was sitting, on a breakwater. But even so he was only a pinpoint, in the sun. And even so I could only see him when I was standing, or on my way from the shore to

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the dune. When I lay down I could no longer see him, therefore he couldn't see me. Pause.

I may have been mistaken. Perhaps the beach was empty. Perhaps there was no-one there. Pause.

He couldn't see . . . my man . . . anyway. He never stood up. (p. 13) The suggestion of a youth/age and past/present contrast between these motifs is unmistakable. The significance of this man in the distance is, in this section, further specified by the indication that he is "elderly" (p. 17). Once again a reference to him by Beth accompanies Duff's omission of the couple under the trees. Instead, Duff's mention of the youngsters includes a reference to their position under the trees—again linking youth with the tree location. It is apparent, too, that Beth's, "I lay down beside him and whispered. Would you like a baby?" (p. 17) blurs the distinction between the lover and the old man as antecedent to the pronoun; the latter's distance away on the beach is matched by the former's distance since previous mention in the text. It is not necessary to identify this man as the older Duff or the couple under the trees as the younger Beth and Duff. People in these fantasies and recollections merely focus the needs and fears of the two characters, and one of the functions of the contrast set up between the couple and the old man is to echo the different aspects of their relationship over a period of time and to indicate how much of the change was simply an unrecognized aspect already present. It is partly the younger Duff whom Beth relates to as lover, and on lying down next to him on the beach she can no longer see or be seen by the man in the distance. The elderly man is visible, in fact, only when she is between the sensual

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contacts with her lover and the sea: "I could only see him when I was standing, or on my way from the shore to the dune" (p. 13). This partial hint of their isolated future is based on his partial representation of the elderly Duff and the only partial confirmation of his very existence that day: "I may have been mistaken. Perhaps the beach was empty. Perhaps there was no-one there" (p. 13). The essential youth/age nature of this opposition between the couple and the old man is, however, even more strongly suggested by Duff's final remark in this section. Moving on from the laughing youngsters who have replaced the couple under the trees, Duff talks of Beth as she was when she was young: I was thinking . . . when you were young . . . you didn't laugh much. You were . . . grave. Silence, (p. 18) In the course of this section the "conversation" has moved from conflict over the terms of the relationship to exploration of its nature and its growth. Duff's tentative, but direct, comment on the younger Beth produces momentary silence as both ponder where to go next.

SECTION 7: P. 18

Beth's initial comment seems like a total dislocation from what has gone before—as if we had come in halfway through a conversation with someone else: That's why he'd picked such a desolate place. So that I could draw in peace, (p. 18) But the connection with the topic of laughter that Duff has just dwelt upon becomes gradually apparent:

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BETH: Could have drawn him. He didn't want it. He

laughed. Pause. I laughed, with him. Pause. I waited for him to laugh, then I would smile, turn away, he would touch my back, turn me, to him. My nose . . . creased. I would laugh with him, a little. Pause, (p. 18) Beth responds to Duff's tentative exploration of her past by taking the topic one stage further, but once more in terms that exclude Duff in favor of another episode with her fantasy lover. The episode confirms Duff's belief that she was rather grave when she was young, but it makes very clear the fact that Beth did laugh—in the past. The slight emphasis given by the comma to the second half of the sentence "I laughed, with him" makes the present/past contrast more specifically a Duff/him contrast. Beth's myopic dwelling on the pleasure of moments of shared laughter is tinged with the sadness of their brevity: "I would laugh with him, a little." As she extends this exploration of her youthful character, Duff, once more rejected, remains silent. SECTION 8: pp. 18-20

Whether the "him" of the previous section was or was not the younger Duff, Beth's attention remains centered on a world that continues to exclude the reality of the older Duff. The recurring puzzlement that Duff has registered in his mention of youngsters laughing (p. 17), the couple disappearing (p. 13), and the peculiarities of fish (p. 14) now focuses explicitly on his inability to understand Beth. His

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uncertain reactions to her in their present situation lead him back to a puzzled recollection of her initial response to his confession of unfaithfulness: DUFF: I told you that I'd let you down. I'd been un­

faithful to you. Pause. You didn't cry. We had a few hours off. We walked up to the pond, with the dog. We stood under the trees for a bit. . . . You fed the ducks. Then we stood under the trees and looked across the pond. Pause. When we got back into this room you put your hands on my face and you kissed me. BETH: But I didn't really want a drink. Pause, (p. 19) His account of her reaction suggests some puzzlement at her lack of discomposure: "You didn't cry." But Beth's response to his current recollection seems only different in degree from her reaction to his first confession. This unemotional response was not one that Duff expected nor one that he could understand. But whatever Beth's inner response to Duff's unfaithful­ ness, her reaction at this point reveals a desire to withdraw from an alien reality. Duff's confession seems not to have caused a major change in her estimate of Duff but merely to have confirmed her association of him with a world she would rather avoid. Immersing herself once more in fantasy, she talks of escape from the terrors of a reality that threatens her ethereal needs: I buried my face in his side and shut the light out. Silence, (p. 20)

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SECTION 9: P. 20

Duff's puzzlement over Beth's minimal reaction to his "confession" develops in terms of an uneasy recollection of their employer's relationship with them. His mention of Mr. Sykes' "lonely life" is followed by a self-convincing "explanation" of Sykes' concern for Beth's appearance: Pause.

That nice blue dress he chose for you, for the house, that was very nice of him. Of course it was in his own interests for you to look good about the house, for guests. BETH: He moved in the sand and put his arm around me. Silence.

Beth's response does nothing to allay Duff's uneasy fears. The antecedent of the pronoun "he" is ominously ambigu­ ous. Without confirming an affair with Sykes, her response renews once more her ongoing fantasy of infidelity to the present Duff, and the gap between them seems wider than ever.

SECTION 10: p. 21

Ironically, at this point of impasse between the two characters, Duff decides to congratulate himself on his importance to Beth and on the importance of his telling her about his thoughts and activities. But once again the speech says more about his own needs than those of Beth. He refuses to acknowledge Beth's renewed rejection of him, and the manifest goodwill of his attitude here is ironically contrasted with the actual effect his words have on Beth.

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The very thing for which he seeks her affirmation is the thing that most threatens Beth's ethereal world: DUFF: DO you like me to talk to you?

Pause. Do you like me to tell you about all the things I've been doing? Pause. About all the things I've been thinking? Pause. Mmmnn? Pause. I think you do. BETH: And cuddled me. Silence, (p. 21) Beth's continuation of her previous sentence, as if Duff had not spoken at all, provides an emphatic counterconclusion to Duff's self-convincing "I think you do."

SECTION 11: pp. 21-23

Duff's uncertainty about Beth's relationship with Sykes is once more in evidence as he tries to reinforce by repetition his belief that Sykes only wanted her to look attractive for the sake of his visitors. The occurrence of "of course" again here is itself indicative of Duff's need to convince himself; if the point were so matter-of-fact and obvious it would not need stating at all: "Of course it was in his own interests to see that you were attractively dressed about the house, to give a good impression to his guests" (p. 21). Duff's indica­ tion of his worries about Beth's fidelity at the time when he made his "confession" provides a new light on its significance. These worries suggest a motive for his confession that casts

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doubt upon the authenticity of the episode that Duff confessed to prior to their walk together in the park. This doubt is reinforced by his further statement: "The girl herself I considered unimportant. I didn't think it necessary to go into details. I decided against it" (p. 22). Such lack of detail is by no means characteristic of Duff, and if it proceeded from a sympathetic concern for Beth's feelings then it would have been more consistent not to mention the episode at all. In fact, Duff's constant reminders to Beth of the scene in the park suggest a rather different kind of concern for her feelings. This mention of "the girl" in his life begins to look rather like an invented counter to the "my man" in Beth's life. Similarly identified only by gender, they appear to share the common status of inventions to cope with the problems Beth and Duff have with each other. And this raises the question of who looked elsewhere first. The question is never explicitly answered, but their current behavior provides a strong indication. Beth's use of "my" in "my man" contrasts with Duff's use of "the" in "the girl" to underline the fact that Beth's invention is a continuing source of escape from Duff while Duff's "confession" invoked a temporary unfaithfulness in the context of a hoped for reconciliation. As Duff continues his preoccupation with Sykes, Beth simply adds to his uneasiness by reporting her fantasy lover as a man who came and carried her off to the beach in a car; a man much closer to the social status of Sykes than that of Duff. Duff in turn feeds his own fears when he recalls how late Beth came to bed one night soon after the "confession": . . . . I woke up when you got into bed. You were out on your feet. You were asleep as soon as you hit the pillow. Your body . . . just fell back.

LANDSCAPE BETH: He was right. It was desolate. There wasn't a

soul on the beach. Silence, (p. 23) Again Beth's response does nothing to allay his fears. What­ ever the motive for the "confession," the aftermath does not suggest that it helped Duff to break into Beth's world or to clear up his fears of her relationship with Sykes. When Beth once more repeats the trigger sentence, "There wasn't a soul on the beach," Duff does not reply in kind. Her fantasized infidelity is no longer countered by Duff's reminder of the "confession" scene. The anticipated, "There wasn't a soul in the park," remains unspoken, and from this point on the attempt to use the "confession" episode to get through to Beth is abandoned. SECTION 12: PP. 23-24

Still exploring the possibilities of Beth's link with Sykes as an explanation of her withdrawal from him, Duff begins to dwell on the state of the house. Far from being a "firstrate housekeeper" (p. 18), Beth seems to have neglected the house for some time. Her lack of concern for the details of their current situation contrasts significantly with her myopic concern for the details of her fantasy world: DUFF: I had a look over the house the other day. I

meant to tell you. The dust is bad. We'll have to polish it up. Pause. . . . I think there's moths. I moved the curtain and they flew out. Pause, (p. 23) Beth's reaction is to deny that time has moved on by regard­ ing change as something to be faced in the future rather

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than in the present. Her use of "of course" here is very similar to that by Duff in the previous section: an attempt to control a fear by asserting as obvious the contrary of that fear: Of course when I'm older I won't be the same as I am, I won't be what I am, my skirts, my long legs, I'll be older, I won't be the same, [my emphasis] (p. 24) This concern for her own appearance rather than for the appearance of the house, which Duff had directed her toward, is a double negation of the reality of Duff's world. She not only refuses to acknowledge the disarray of the home they share as an older couple, she also refuses to acknowledge that the moment of being older has arrived. Duff's exasperated reaction takes the form of an attempt to minimize the significance of her persistent withdrawal. He hesitates momentarily as he searches for a way of registering indifference and then lamely relies on a version of Beth's past that seems very much at odds with probability: At least now . . . at least now, I can walk down to the pub in peace and up to the pond in peace, with no-one to nag the shit out of me. Silence, (p. 24) The impatient remark registers more pique than indifference as Duff tries to describe as beneficial the thing that irks him most—Beth's refusal to participate in the world as he defines it. SECTION 13: p. 24

The coarse brutality of Duff's last remark promotes the inevitable reaction in Beth. His earthy world is supplanted by her celebration of delicacy, beauty, and tactile rather than

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verbal contact: "All it is, you see . . . I said . . . is the lightness of your touch, the lightness of your look, my neck, your eyes, the silence . . . (p. 24). Duff cannot respond in kind, but surprisingly, while his next comment emphasizes once more the gap between their attitudes, it affirms the relationship in spite of Beth's fantasies, and in spite of his uneasiness about her relationship with Sykes: That's what matters, anyway. We're together. That's what matters. Silence, (p. 24) For a moment, Duff seems ready to accept the status quo and make the best of it. But his momentary readiness to rest satisfied with what he cannot change is greeted with an ominous silence.

SECTION 14: PP. 25-27 The impact of Duff's remark on the fundamental impor­ tance of their being together is remarkable. Beth, who had seemed quite impervious to Duff's remarks since he men­ tioned the unfaithfulness incident, suddenly abandons her reverie about the lover and the beach and begins to give her version of the aftermath of Duff's "confession." Her remark on page 25 picks up the account of the dinner party at pre­ cisely the point at which Duff had left it on page 23. He had ended his comments with the mention of Beth's exhaustion after she had attended to the guests: You were out on your feet. You were asleep as soon as you hit the pillow. Your body . . . just fell back. Now Beth continues the account: But I was up early. There was still plenty to be done and cleared up. I had put the plates in the sink to soak.

LANDSCAPE

They had soaked overnight. They were easy to wash, (p. 25) The motif of "water" that has intertwined the diverse episodes of their relationship (sea/pond/rain) now becomes the basic motif in a "conversation" that raises once more the doubts Duff had just decided to ignore. And increasingly Beth's reminiscences begin to appear like deliberate attempts to taunt the unhappy Duff. She dwells at length on the beauty of the morning and shows no sign of remembered grief. This seeming indifference to Duff's "confession" serves to reawaken his fears, and Beth gives them a further prod­ ding by recalling what she wore that morning: the blue dress that Sykes gave her. Her comments here seem to be a deliberate attempt to deny Duff his resort to peaceful accept­ ance of things that he is unable to understand or control. The disturbing effect of her effort is immediately apparent as Duff begins to shore up his self-esteem with stories of his male prowess. Ironically, when under threat, he takes refuge in a memory/fantasy world as necessary to his security and needs as Beth's is to her. As she talks of the morning mist coming from the river, Duff dwells extensively on the details of his competence as a cellarman: BETH: I opened the door and went out. There was

no-one about. The sun was shining. Wet, I mean wetness, all over the ground. DUFF: A cellarman is the man responsible. He's the earliest up in the morning. Give the drayman a hand with the barrels. Down the slide through the cellarflaps. Lower them by rope to the racks. Rock them on the belly, put a rim up them, use balance and leverage, hike them up onto the racks. BETH: Still misty, but thinner, thinning.

LANDSCAPE DUFF: The bung is on the vertical, in the bunghole.

Spile the bung. Hammer the spile through the centre of the bung. That lets the air through the bung, down the bunghole, lets the beer breathe. BETH: Wetness all over the air. Sunny. Trees like feathers. DUFF: Then you hammer the tap in. BETH: I wore my blue dress, (pp. 25-26) The crudely aggressive defensiveness of Duff's remarks is spiced with sexual innuendo which is as obviously directed at Beth as his earlier comments on the delicate handling of fish. But Duff's claim to male expertise in the world of beer is devastatingly undercut by Beth's reaction to him in terms of the world of the female. Her strategic mention of wearing the dress Sykes gave her is reinforced by her unhappy reminder of their lack of children: The dog sat down by me. I stroked him. Through the window I could see down into the valley. I saw children in the valley. They were running through the grass. They ran up the hill. Long Silence, (p. 27)

This is the only point in the play where the stage-direction "Long Silence" occurs, and the importance of the "children" motif is thereby underlined. The children mentioned here are not "our" children, but simply "children"—other people's. This is also the only time Beth mentions children outside of her fantasy/memory experience of suggesting a baby to her lover; her posture here, gazing at other people's children and stroking the dog, is an eloquent image of unfulfilled hope—an image that radically undermines Duff's efforts to vaunt his male prowess.

LANDSCAPE

SECTION 15: P. 27 The isolating impact of the mention of the children (who might have united them but instead divide them) is reg­ istered in Duff's reverie. The motifs of "water" and "down­ fall" again recur, but now in the context of Duff's recurring puzzled bewilderment at Beth's activities. Once more there is a strong contrast between Beth's ethereal concerns and Duff's more earthy preoccupations. As Beth is pictured gazing at and through the rain-lashed windowpane, Duff is contrasted with the gentle lover who might have entered to lightly stroke her neck: There must have been some kind of light somewhere. Perhaps just your face reflected, lighter than all the rest. I stood close to you. Perhaps you were just thinking, in a dream. Without touching you, I could feel your bottom. Silence, (p. 27)

SECTION 16: PP. 27-29 Beth, following her account of the unknown children, develops Duff's description of light and dark in another direction. The lack of the children that might have given structure to her life is reflected in an effort to locate shape and pattern through an analogy with the problems of draw­ ing—a comment which relates directly to the title of the play and the new method of presentation that Pinter has adopted here: I remembered always, in drawing, the basic principles of shadow and light. Objects intercepting the light cast shadows. Shadow is deprivation of light. Tlie shape of the shadow is determined by that of the object. But

LANDSCAPE

not always. Not always directly. Sometimes it is only indirectly affected by it. Sometimes the cause of the shadow cannot be found. Pause, (pp. 27-28) In this play it is Beth and Duff who shed light on each other and who thereby define each other as far as definition is possible for them. But though we can see the results of this defining, no ultimate cause of the shape of the contrasting properties is available. It might be tempting to see the "confession" episode as the cause of Beth's immersion in a fantasy world, but the tendency toward fantasy was present in Beth even in her recollections of her youth. The beach episode itself is partly made up of fantasies about possible children and possible visits to a hotel. The gravity and seriousness that underlie Beth's character were also not caused by Duff, though they were extended by him. The "shadow," which is both the shape and the problem of her life and his, is linked to all the episodes the play interweaves, but it is not finally explained by them. The play leaves us, as Beth leaves herself here, with the knowledge that final knowledge is never achieved. Sometimes the cause of the shadow cannot be found. Pause. But I always bore in mind the basic principles of drawing. Pause. So that I never lost track. Or heart. Pause, (p. 28) In painting the landscape of the lives of Beth and Duff the play does not finally explain them. No single cause has set the current pattern of their lives, though many causes have contributed to it.

LANDSCAPE

The principle of definition by contrast that Beth mentions here guides our response to the final scene. Duff reverts to one extreme and Beth to another, but though the contrast says much about their relationship, it is in terms that fail to do justice to their individual potentials. Duff for the first time recalls a past event in Beth's manner of participation as well as recollection. He mentions Beth's peculiar behavior, presumably after their employer's departure: You stood in the hall and banged the gong. Pause. What the bloody hell are you doing banging that bloody gong? Pause. It's bullshit. Standing in an empty hall banging a bloody gong. There's no one to listen. No one'll hear. There's not a soul in the house. Except me. There's nothing for lunch. There's nothing cooked. No stew. No pie. No greens. No joint. Fuck all. Pause, [my emphasis] (p. 28) Different stages of their relationship are manifest in the play through progressive statements in the form "There's not a soul in the ." For the first time it moves into the present tense as a culmination of three distinct stages in their rela­ tionship: There wasn't a soul on the beach, (p. 17) There wasn't a soul in the park. (p. 17) There's not a soul in the house, (p. 28) The romantic sensuality of the moment on the beach pro­ gressed through the uncertain moment of his confessed un­ faithfulness to the isolating crudity of his violent "fuck all." Duff, having tried to join Beth's world and to ignore Beth's world, now engages in a fantasized destruction of it. The

LANDSCAPE

moment of Beth's offering herself to her lover on the beach is echoed in the harsh needs of Duff as he looks for sex and for support for his male ego: I booted the gong down the hall. The dog came in. I thought you would come to me, I thought you would come into my arms and kiss me, even . . . offer your­ self to me. I would have had you in front of the dog, like a man, in the hall, on the stone, banging the gong, mind you don't get the scissors up your arse, or the thimble, .... you'll plead with me like a woman, I'll bang the gong on the floor, if the sound is too flat, lacks resonance, I'll hang it back on its hook, bang you against it swinging, gonging, waking the place up, call­ ing them all for dinner, lunch is up, bring out the bacon, bang your lovely head, mind the dog doesn't swallow the thimble, slam— Silence, [my emphasis] (p. 29) This fantasized attack on what he admires but cannot un­ derstand leads him only to where he began—in silence. The urge to desecrate, to violate the ethereal and beautiful Beth ("bang your lovely head") is clearly a basic drive in Duff and a basic problem in their relationship. But so also is the now absent Mr. Sykes. The structure that their employment gave to their lives was apparently a vital loss and seemed to be succeeded by an inability to find an easy substitute. The con­ nection is only hinted at, but Beth's wild swinging at the dinner gong in the empty house is suggestive of despair at Sykes' departure. Whether this was based on her regard for Sykes or on her distaste for being left alone with Duff is un­ knowable. But either way it strongly emphasizes the failure of the Duff/Beth relationship for her. Duff's removal of her domestic equipment as a first step in the imminent physical violation seems very much an attempt to be rid of Sykes'

LANDSCAPE

influence: "I took the chain off and the thimble, the keys, the scissors slid off it and clattered down" (p. 29). But Sykes' removal could not solve a problem that was based in their relationship. The inevitable "stage four" of the relationship seems to be Beth's reversion to a fantasized re-creation of "stage one." SECTION 17: PP. 29-30

In the light of what has preceded this final speech, its significance is much more obvious to the audience than the same episode that Beth describes in the first speech of the play. But its repetition here lends a final circularity to the events. Part of our new understanding of its meaning is an awareness of the inescapability of the situation that gives rise to its utterance. The contrast between the unbearable present and the irretrievable past is piquantly underlined in the past tense conclusion on a moment of interpersonal union: BETH: SO sweetly the sand over me. Tiny the sand on

my skin. Pause. So silent the sky in my eyes. Gently the sound of the tide. Pause. Oh my true love I said. (p. 30) The synthesized sensitivity of Beth's awareness of taste, touch, size, sound, and sight is an ideal combination that Duff could never achieve and would never need. The con­ flict of demands on relationships that has characterized all of Pinter's plays is as eloquently manifest in this play as in the more naturalistic plays of his earlier work. With its greater departure from naturalistic sequence it is more com-

LANDSCAPE plex than before but not less successful in conveying temporal development. But as so often in Pinter's work, development on one level leads only to awareness of circularity on another. The relationship lives in desperate movements from past to present, from memory to fantasy, from hope to despair. The motifs that provide temporary liberation have their founda­ tion in the confining present to which every mental excur­ sion finally returns. The basic movement of the play is one of expansion and contraction of vision set against a temporal progress which reminds the audience repeatedly that while, from one point of view, everything changes, from another, everything remains the same.

VII CONCLUSION

I N CONTRAST to the overwhelmingly unfavorable re­ sponse to Pinter's first London presentation, The Birthday Party, many of the reviews of his latest stage play, Old Times, are equally overwhelming in their praise. In the thirteen years that have elapsed between the two plays, Pinter's suc­ cess has been such that it comes as no surprise to find a reviewer of Old Times remarking that "the most eagerly awaited event on the English-speaking stage is a new major work by Harold Pinter." 1 Of the dramatists who came to the fore in what seemed a great resurgence of the English theater in the late fifties, only Pinter has consistently main­ tained a momentum of achievement. Where Osborne, Wesker, Simpson, Arden, and even Beckett have gradually faded as playwrights, Pinter increasingly attracts the attention of scholars, critics, and audiences alike. But it is by no means uncommon to find in responses to his recent work the same elements of uncertainty that characterized the early criticism. The time is long overdue for Pinter criticism to move be­ yond the problems that have dominated the field since the first appearance of Pinter's work on the London stage. For such an advance to occur it is essential that perceptive com­ ments on local details in Pinter's work be allowed to interact with theoretically adequate linguistic generalizations. Only then will it be possible for data and hypothesis to interact in ways that will generate further thought and further dis1 J. Kroll, "Past, Present and Pinter," Newsweek, June 14, 1971, p. 70.

CONCLUSION

coveiy. Without such generalizations, interim comments will attain the status of definitive conclusions and sight will be lost of their original status as stepping-stones on the way to more accurate understanding. Attempts to categorize Pinter's plays have given rise to two descriptive terms: "comedy of menace" and "Pinteresque." The former was retracted by its author 2 soon after its initial usage, but like the latter it remains in operation in the ab­ sence of more useful alternatives: "What can be said with assurance is that when anyone uses the word Pinteresque—a word Pinter hates—it is because there is no adequate sub­ stitute." 3 Pinter's own reaction to such categorizations is cer­ tainly extreme: "That word! These damn words and that word "Pinteresque" particularly—I don't know what they're bloody well talking about! I think it's a great burden for me to carry. . . ." 4 The great danger with such terms is that they tend to become institutionalized when they are not transcended. And as they interact only minimally with the details of the plays, they tend to obscure the subtlety and variety of Pinter's work and contribute to the impression that his experimentation reduces to the mere repetition of a con­ sistent formula. At a certain level of abstraction, Pinter's work does deal with recurring problems: the problem of interrelational adjustment being a major one. But to give stress to less central generalizations at the expense of an acknowl­ edgment of the great variety of his work is to promote the kind of circularity of thought that this study seeks to tran­ scend. The point which is basic to this approach to Pinter is that 2 I. Wardle, "There's Music in that Room," in The Encore Reader, eds. C. Marowitz, T. Milne, and O. Hale (London, 1965), p. 130. 3 T . E . K a l e m , " T h e R o o m e r , " Time, October 12, 1970, p. 61. 4 H . Pinter, "The Art of the Theater, III" (interview with L. M. Bensky), Paris Review, χ (Fall 1966), 34.

CONCLUSION

which should be basic to any approach to language. Far from being a monolithic unity, language is an essentially pluralistic activity. Even within a certain general function, such as its interrelational use, language is characterized by variety and adaptability as well as by recurring patterns. The diversity of the four plays studied here exemplifies this point. The subtlety and variety of the linguistic interaction of the char­ acters is clearly revealed by analysis that focuses upon the appropriate area in which the language is operating. Only if this area is not fully understood do the plays seem largely similar and repetitive. Once this area is fully understood, it can be recognized that the common ground shared by these plays is not an obstacle to growth and novelty but a founda­ tion for new kinds of growth and new kinds of novelty. What is needed, therefore, is a criticism capable of doing justice to these and other new developments on the English stage. In the light of literary criticism's neglect of the importance of the functional plurality of language, it is disappointing to note that the recent history of linguistic study in general is characterized by a similar neglect. Most of recent linguistic theory has concentrated on generalizing upon the syntactic patterns that occur within individual sentences. The relation­ ship between sentences in discourse and the relationship be­ tween syntactic form and semantic function have been largely ignored. More recently these trends have begun to be re­ versed, and as research grows in these areas, the long-promised interaction between linguistics and literary criticism may finally come about. As this study of Pinter's drama indicates, an awareness of, and an ability to describe, the interaction of sentences in dialogue is indispensable. In one sense, this is almost too trivial to assert. Yet, in reviewing the criticism of Pinter's work, this truism has presented theoretical problems that have proved largely insurmountable. Certain semantic as-

CONCLUSION

sumptions about language seem to be built into literary criticism and into our culture. Because of this, the approach to language exemplified in Wittgenstein's later work is as yet unassimilated. Pinter himself makes no claims to being a theorist,5 yet his own comments on the relationship between language, time, and reality show a much greater awareness of the problems than that which recurs in the comments of many of his critics: "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 doesn't seem to be, and in my opinion it's no worse or better for that. . . . I think there's a shared common ground all right, but that it's more like a quicksand." 6 The establishment of such "common ground" is a recurring preoccupation of his characters and a recurring problem for critics in approaching the plays. If one approaches the plays with a belief that truth, reality and communication ought to conform to cer­ tain norms, then the plays will remain tantalizingly enig­ matic. But once it is realized that all of these concepts are, like any others, moves in language games, the barrier to an understanding of Pinter is removed. In striving to adjust to one another, Pinter's characters are negotiating not only truth and reality but their very free­ dom to engage their preferred identities in the environments that surround them. Their linguistic battles are not the prod­ uct of an arbitrary desire for dominance but crucial battles for control of the means by which personality is created in the social systems to which they belong. As they struggle to cope, their misunderstandings and miscalculations provide a great deal of amusement for any audience, but invariably desperation and terror are eventually revealed as the linguis5 H. Pinter, "Between the Lines," The Sunday Times (London), mag. sec., March 4, 1962, p. 25. 6 Ibid.

CONCLUSION

tic warfare becomes increasingly crucial. An exposure to Pinter's plays might well have tempered Firth's enthusiastic approval of civilized man's advance on his predecessors: Quite often, of course, a quarrel is a fundamental clash of animal feeling of personal or tribal interests and we quarrel with words instead of with our fists. It is a good thing that most civilized men accept the ordeal by words and both parties in most of our duels name either silence or words as the weapon.r The weapons may have changed, but the strategies seem no less complicated and the injuries no less severe. 7 J. R. Firth, "The Tongues of Men" and "Speech" (London, 1966), p. 95. See also Pinter's comment quoted by K. Dick in "Mr. Pinter and the Fearful Matter," Texas Quarterly, iv (Autumn 1961), 264-265: "I don't think there's an inability to communicate on the part of these characters. It's rather more that they communicate only too well in one sense. Their tentacles go out very strongly to each other, and I think communication is a very fearful matter, to really get to know someone, to participate with someone." [my emphasis]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PINTER'S PLAYS

"The Room" and "The Dumb Waiter." London: Methuen, 1966. The Birthday Party. London: Methuen, 1966. The Caretaker. London: Methuen, 1967. "A Slight Ache" and Other Plays. [A Night Out, The Dwarfs, Revue Sketches] London: Methuen, 1966. "The Collection" and "The Lover." London: Methuen, 1966. "Tea Party" and Other Plays. [The Basement, Night School] London: Methuen, 1967. The Homecoming. London: Methuen, 1967. "Landscape" and "Silence." [Night] London: Methuen, 1969. Old Times. London: Methuen, 1971. [The plays are published in the U.S.A. by Grove Press.]

ON PINTER

Amend, V. E. "Harold Pinter—Some Credits and Debits." Modern Drama, χ (September 1967), 165-174. Amette, }. P. "Osborne, Pinter, Saunders & Cie." La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, no. 205 (January 1970), 95-99. Angus, W. "Modern Theatre Reflects the Times." Queen's Quarterly, LXX (Summer 1963), 255-263. Armstrong, William A., ed. Experimental Drama. London, 1963.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashworth, A. "New Theatre: Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter." Southerly, XXII (1962), 145-154. Bernhard, F. J. "Beyond Realism: The Plays of Harold Pin­ ter." Modern Drama, vin (September 1965), 185-191. Boulton, J. T. "Harold Pinter: The Caretaker and Other Plays." Modern Drama, vi (September 1963), 131-140. Brine, A. "Mac Davies is no Clochard." Drama, LXI (Sum­ mer 1961), 35-37. Brown, J. R. "Dialogue in Pinter and Others." Critical Quar­ terly, VII (Autumn 1965), 225-243. , ed. Modern British Dramatists. New Jersey, 1968. . "Mr. Pinter's Shakespeare." Critical Quarterly, ν (Autumn 1963), 251-265. , and B. Harris, eds. Contemporary Theatre. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, iv. London, 1962. Brustein, R. "A Naturalism of the Grotesque." New Repub­ lic, CXLV (October 23, 1961), 29-30. . Seasons of Discontent: Dramatic Opinions, 1959-65. New York, 1965. Bryden, R. "A Stink of Pinter." New Statesman, June 11, 1965, p. 928. . "Pinter's New Pacemaker." The (London) Observer, June 6, 1971. . "Three Men in a Room." New Statesman, June 26, 1964, p. 1004. Burkman, Κ. H. The DramaticWorld of Harold Pinter. Ohio State University Press, 1971. . "Pinter's A Slight Ache as Ritual." Modern Drama, χι (December 1968), 326-335. Caine, C. S. A. M. "Structure in the One-Act Play." Modern Drama, xn (February 1970), 390-398. Callen, A. "Comedy and Passion in the Plays of Harold

ON PINTER

Pinter." Forum for Modern Language Studies, iv (July 1968), 299-305. Canaday, N. "Harold Pinter's Tea Party: Seeing and Not-Seeing." Studies in Short Fiction, vi (1969), 580-585. "Caretaker's Caretaker." Anon., Time, November 10, 1961, p. 76. Chiari, J. Landmarks of Contemporary Drama. London, 1965. Clurman, H. The Naked Image: Observations on the Mod­ ern Theatre. New York, 1966. . "Theatre." The Nation, CLXLIII (October 21, 1961), 276. . "Theatre." The Nation, cciv (January 23, 1967), 122-123. Cohen, Mark. "The Plays of Harold Pinter." Jewish Quar­ terly, VIII (Summer 1961), 21-22. Cohen, Marshall. "Theater 67." Partisan Review, xxxiv (Summer 1967), 436-444. Cohn, R. "The absurdly Absurd: Avatars of Godot." Com­ parative Literature Studies, π, iii (1965), 233-240. . Currents in Contemporary Drama. Indiana Univer­ sity Press, 1969. . "Latter Day Pinter." Drama Survey, in (Winter 1964), 367-377. . "The World of Harold Pinter." Tulane Drama Re­ view, vi (March 1962), 55-68. Cook, D. and H. F. Brooks. "A Room with Three Views: Harold Pinter's The Caretaker." Komos, ι (1967), 62-69. Curley, D. "A Night in the Fun House." Midwest Mono­ graphs, i, i (1967), 1-2. Davison, P. Contemporary Drama and Popular Dramatic Forms. (Offprint of Aspects of Drama and the Theatre). Sydney University Press, 1965.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dawick, J. " 'Punctuation' and Patterning in The Home­ coming ." Modern Drama, xiv (May 1971), 37-46. Dick, K. "Mr. Pinter and the Fearful Matter." Texas Quar­ terly, iv (Autumn 1961), 257-265. Donoghue, D. "London Letter: Moral West End." Hudson Review, xiv (Spring 1961), 93-103. Downer, A. S. "Experience of Heroes: Notes on the New York Theatre." Quarterly Journal of Speech, xlviii (October 1962), 261-270. Douglas, R. "The Failure of English Realism." Tulane Drama Review, vn (Winter 1962), 180-183. Dukore, B. F. "A Woman's Place." Quarterly Journal of Speech, lii (October 1966), 237-241. . "The Theater of Harold Pinter." Tulane Drama Re­ view, Vi (March 1962), 43-54. "Eccentrics in the Attic." Anon, rev., Newsweek, October 16, 1961, p. 101. Esslin, M. The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pin­ ter. New York, 1970. . "Pinter and the Absurd." Twentieth Century, clxix (February 1961), 176-185. . "Pinter Translated." Encounter, xxx (March 1968), 45-47. . The Theatre of the Absurd. New York, 1969. Feynman, A. E. "The Fetal Quality of 'Character' in Plays of the Absurd." Modern Drama, ix (May 1966), 18-25. "Finger Exercises in Dread." Anon., Time, December 18, 1964, p. 86. Fletcher, }. "Confrontations: Harold Pinter, Roland Dubillard, Eugene Ionesco." Caliban, πι, ii (1967), 149-152. Franzblau, A. N. "A Psychiatrist Looks at The Homecom­ ing." Saturday Review, l (April 8, 1967), 58. Free, W. J. "The Treatment of Character in Harold Pinter's

ON PINTER

The Homecoming." South Atlantic Bulletin, xxxiv (November 1969), 1-5. Gale, J. "Taking Pains with Pinter." The (London) Ob­ server, June 10, 1962, p. 19. Gallagher, K. G. "Harold Pinter's Dramaturgy." Quarterly Journal of Speech, lii (October 1966), 242-248. Gassner, J. "Broadway in Review." Educational Theatre Journal, xm (December 1961), 294-296. Gillen, F. " . . Apart from the Known and the Unknown': The Unreconciled Worlds of Harold Pinter's Charac­ ters." Arizona Quarterly, χχνι (Spring 1970), 17-24. Gilman, R. Common and Uncommon Masks: Writings on the Theatre, 1961-70. New York, 1971. . "Pinter's Hits—and Misses." Commonweal, LXXVII (December 28, 1962), 366-367. — . "The Pinter Puzzle." New York Times, January 22, 1967, p, Dl. . "Straightforward Mystification." Commonweal, Lxxv (October 27, 1961), 122-123. Goodman, F. J. "Pinter's The Caretaker: The Lower Depths Descended." Midwest Quarterly, ν (Winter 1964), 117— 126. Gordon, L. G. "Harold Pinter—Past and Present." Kansas Quarterly, in (Spring 1971), 89-99. . "Pigeonholing Pinter: A Bibliography." Theatre Documentation, ι (Fall 1968), 3-20. . Stratagems to Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas of Harold Pinter. University of Missouri Press, 1969. Gross, J. "Amazing Reductions." Encounter, September 1964, pp. 50-51. Hall, J. "British Drama in the Sixties." Texas Quarterly, χ (Summer 1967), 15-19. Hall, R. "Theatre in London." Westerly, October 1964, pp. 57-60.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hayman, R. Harold Pinter. London, 1970. Hays, H. R. "Transcending Naturalism." Modern Drama, iv (May 1962), 27-36. Henry, P. "Acting the Absurd." Drama Critique, vi (Winter 1963), 9-19. Hewes, H. "Nothing Up the Sleeve." Saturday Review, XLIV (October 21, 1961), 34. -. "Matched Pairs." Saturday Review, xlvii (Decem­ ber 26, 1964), 33. . "Probing Pinter's Play: The Homecoming." Satur­ day Review, l (April 8, 1967), 56. ."Thought Games." Saturday Review, liii (April 25, 1970), 16. Hinchliffe, A. P. Harold Pinter. New York, 1967. . "Mr. Pinter's Belinda." Modern Drama, xi (Septem­ ber 1968), 173-179. Hobson, H. "Remembrance of Things Past." The Sunday Times (London), June 6, 1971. Hoefer, J. "Pinter and Whiting: Two Attitudes Towards the Alienated Artist." Modern Drama, iv (February 1962), 402-408. Hollis, J. R. Harold Pinter: The Poetics of Silence. Southern Illinois University Press, 1970. Hughes, C. "Pinter is as Pinter Does." Catholic World, ccx (December 1969), 124-126. Hutchings, P. "The Humanism of a Dumb Waiter." West­ erly, April 1963, pp. 56-63. Kalem, Τ. E. "The Roomer." Time, October 12, 1970, p. 60. Kaufmann, S. "Landscape and Silence." New Republic, CLxii (April 25, 1970), 20. Kerr, W. Harold Pinter. Columbia University Press, 1967. Kitchin, L. Mid-Century Drama. London, 1962. Kleinman, N. "Naming of Names." Midwest Monographs, i, i (1967), 4-5.

ON PINTER

Knight, G. W. "The Kitchen Sink." Encounter, xxi (Decem­ ber 1963), 48-54. Kroll, J. "Past, Present and Pinter." Newsweek, June 14, 1971, p. 70. Kunkel, F. L. "The Dystopia of Harold Pinter." Renascence, XXI (1967), 17-20. Lahr, J. "Pinter and Chekhov: The Bond of Naturalism." Drama Review, xm (Winter 1968), 137-145. . "Pinter the Spaceman." Evergreen Review, LV (June 1968), 49. , ed. A Casebook on Harold Pinter's "The Home­ coming." New York, 1971. "Land of No Holds Barred." Anon. Time, January 13, 1967, p. 43. "The Latest Pinters: Less is Less." Anon. Time, July 18, 1969, p. 67. Lewis, P. "Fascinated by Unsatisfactory People." Time and Tide, XLIII (June 21, 1962), 16-17. Lumley, F. New Trends in Twentieth Century Drama: A Survey Since Ibsen and Shaw. New York, 1967. "Malice Domestic." Anon, rev., Newsweek, December 21, 1964, pp. 75-76. Mannes, M. "Just Looking, Thanks." Reporter, XXIII (Octo­ ber 13, 1960), 48-49. Manvell, R. "The Decade of Harold Pinter." Humanist, xxvni (April 1967), 112-115. Marowitz, C., T. Milne, and O. Hale, eds. The Encore Reader. London, 1965. . " 'Pinterism' is Maximum Tension through Mini­ mum Information." New York Times, October 1, 1967, mag. sec., p. 36. Mast, G. "Pinter's Homecoming." Drama Survey, vi (Spring 1968), 266-277.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McLaughlin, J. "Harold Pinter and PBL." America, cxvm (February 10, 1968), 193. McNay, M. "Producing Pinter." Guardian (England), June

I, 1971. Minogue, V. "Taking Care of the Caretaker." Twentieth Centurf, CLXVIII (September 1960), 243-248. Morrison, K. "Pinter and the New Irony." Quarterly Journal of Speech, LV (December 1969), 388-393. Morris, K. "The Homecoming." Tulane Drama Review, xi (Winter 1966), 185-191. Mortimer, J. "Ben and Gus." Review of Esslin's The Peopled Wound. New Statesman, November 27, 1970, pp. 718—

720. Nelson, G. "Harold Pinter Goes to the Movies." Chicago Review, xix, 1 (1966), 33-43. Nightingale, B. "Outboxed." New Statesman, September 25,

1970, pp. 394-395. . "To the Mouth of the Cave." New Statesman, July II, 1969, p. 57. . "Three's a Crowd." New Statesman, June 11, 1971,

p. 817. Oliver, E. "On Landscape and Silence." New Yorker, XLVI (April 11, 1970), 84. . "On The Room and A Slight Ache." New Yorker, XL (December 19, 1964), 68-70. Palmer, D. S. "A Harold Pinter Checklist." Twentieth Cen­ tury Literature, xvi (October 1970), 287-296. Panter-Downes, M. Review of The Caretaker. New Yorker, xxxvi (July 9, 1960), 60-61. Parker, R. B. "The Theory and Theatre of the Absurd." Queen's Quarterly, LXXIII (Autumn 1966), 421-441. Pesta, J. "Pinter's Usurpers." Drama Survey, vi (Spring 1967), 54-65.

ON PINTER

Pinter, H. Interview with J. Crist. "A Mystery: Pinter on Pinter." Look, xxxn (December 24, 1968), 77. . Interview with W. Packard. "An Interview with Harold Pinter." First Stage, vi, ii (1967), 82. . Interview with L. M. Bensky. "The Art of the Theater, III." Paris Review, χ (Fall 1966), 13-37. . "Between the Lines." The Sunday Times (London), March 4,1962, mag. sec., p. 25. . Interview with K. Halton. " 'Funny and Moving and Frightening': Pinter." Vogue, c l (October 1, 1967), 194. . Interview with K. Cavander. "Harold Pinter and Clive Donner on Filming The Caretaker." Transatlan­ tic Review, xm (Summer 1963), 17-26. . Interview with H. Thompson. "Harold Pinter Re­ plies." New Theatre Magazine, xi (January 1961), 8-10. . Interview with M. Dean. "Harold Pinter Talks to Michael Dean." The Listener, March 6, 1969, p. 312. . Interview with M. Pugh. "Trying to Pin Down Pin­ ter." Daily Mail, March 7, 1964, p. 8. . Anon. Interview. "Two People in a Room." New Yorker, xliii (February 25, 1967), 34-36. . Interview with R. Findlater. "Writing for Myself." Twentieth Century, CLXIX (February 1961), 172-175. . "Writing for the Theatre." Evergreen Review, xxxm (August-September 1964), 80-82. (Revised version of The Sunday Times (London) article, March 4,1962.) Re­ printed in Modern British Drama, ed. H. Popkin, New York, 1969. Rubens, R. "Donald McWhinnie." Transatlantic Review, XII (Spring 1963), 34-38. Schechner, R. "Puzzling Pinter." Tulane Drama Review, xi (Winter 1966), 176-184. Schroll, Η. T. Harold Pinter: A Study of His Reputation (1958-1969) and a Checklist. New Jersey, 1971.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sheed, W. "Absurdity Revisited." Commonweal, lxxxii (April 30, 1965), 193-194. Simon, J. "Theatre Chronicle." Hudson Review, xiv (Win­ ter 1961-62), 590. . "Theatre Chronicle." Hudson Review, xx (Spring 1967), 105-107. Sprague, C. "Possible or Necessary." New Theater Magazine, VIIi (1967), 36-37. States, B. O. "The Case for Plot in Modern Drama." Hud­ son Review, xx (Spring 1967), 49-61. . "Pinter's Homecoming: The Shock of Nonrecognition." Hudson Review, xxi (Autumn 1968), 474-486. Storch, R. F. "Harold Pinter's Happy Families." Massachu­ setts Review, vra (Autumn 1967), 703-712. Styan, J. L. The Dark Comedy. London, 1962. . "The Published Play After 1956, II." British Book News, no. 301 (September 1965), 601-605. Sykes, A. "Harold Pinter's Dwarfs." Komos, ι (1967), 70-75. . Harold Pinter. New York, 1970. Taubman, H. "Shared Quicksand." New York Times, De­ cember 9, 1962, sec. π, p. 5. Taylor, J. R. "Accident." Sight and Sound, xxxv (Autumn 1966), 179-184. . Anger and After. Middlesex, 1968. [The Angry Theatre. New York, 1962.] . Harold Pinter. Essex, 1969. Thornton, P. C. "Blindness and the Confrontation with Death: Three Plays by Harold Pinter." Die Neueren Sprachen, xvn (May 1968), 213-223. "Unwrapping Mummies." Anon.,Time, October 13, 1961, p. 58. Walker, A. "Messages from Pinter." Modern Drama, χ (May 1967), 1-10.

THEORETICAL

Wardle, I. "Revolt Against the West End." Horizon, ν (January 1963), 26-33. . "Old Times." The Times (London), June 3, 1971, p. 9. Warner, J. M. "The Episteniological Quest in Pinter's The Homecoming." Contemporary Literature, xi (Summer 1970), 340-353. Wasson, R. "Mime and Dream." Midwest Monographs, i, i (1967), 7-8. Wellwarth, G. Theater of Protest and Paradox. New York, 1964. Williams, R. Drama: From Ibsen to Brecht. New York, 1969. Worsley, T. C. "A New Wave Rules Britannia." Theatre Arts, XLV (October 1961), 17-19. Wray, P. "Pinter's Dialogue: The Play on Words." Modern Drama, xm (February 1971), 418-422. THEORETICAL

This section of the bibliography includes only those works that are referred to in the text or directly inform this approach to Pinter. A great deal of recent work in linguistics is therefore excluded as not immediately relevant to this study. A comprehensive bibliography of theoretical ap­ proaches to literary language is available; see R. W. Bailey and D. M. Burton, English Stylistics: A Bibliography (M.I.T. Press, 1968). Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. New York, 1965. . Philosophical Papers. New York, 1970. Bazell, C. E., J. C. Catford, M.A.K. Halliday, and R. H. Robins, eds. In Memory of J. R. Firth. London, 1966. Casey, J. The Language of Criticism. London, 1966.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dixon, J. Growth through English. Reading, England, 1967. Ellis, J. M. "Great Art: A Study in Meaning." British Journal of Aesthetics, hi, ii (1963), 165-171. . "Linguistics, Literature, and the Concept of Style." Word, XXVi (April 1970), 65-78. . The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Anal­ ysis. University of California, 1974. Firth, J. R. "The Tongues of Men" and "Speech." London, 1966. . Papers in Linguistics, 1934-1951. London, 1969. Forster, Ε. M. Aspects of the Novel. Middlesex, 1963. Fowler, R., ed. Essays on Style and Language. London, 1966. Freeman, D. C., ed. Linguistics and Literary Style. New York, 1970. Haas, W. "The Theory of Translation." Philosophy, xxxvii (July 1962), 208-228. Halliday, M.A.K. "Categories of the Theory of Grammar." Word, XVIi (1961), 241-292. . "Linguistic Function and Literary Style." In Literary Style: A Symposium, ed. S. Chatman. New York, 1971. , A. Mcintosh and P. Strevens. The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching. London, 1968. . "Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English" (Parts 1, 2, 3). Journal of Linguistics, hi and iv (1967—

1968). Hasan, R. Grammatical Cohesion in Spoken and Written English. University College, London, 1968. Hudson, R. A. English Complex Sentences: An Introduction to Systemic Grammar. London, 1971. Kermode, F. The Sense of an Ending. New York, 1967. Lee, B. and A. E. Rodway. "Coming to Terms." Essays in Criticism, xiv (April 1964), 109-125. Lyons, J. Structural Semantics. Oxford, 1969.

THEORETICAL

. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, London, 1969. , ed. New Horizons in Linguistics. Middlesex, 1970. Mcintosh, A. and M.A.K. Halliday. Patterns of Language. London, 1966. Ogden, C. K. and I. A. Richards. The Meaning of Meaning. New York, 1956. Quirk, R. "Descriptive Statement and Serial Relationship." Language, XLI (June 1965), 205-217. Richards, I. A. Principles of Literary Criticism. London, 1967. . Practical Criticism. New York. 1969. Righter, W. Logic and Criticism. London, 1963. Sartre, J. P. What is Literature? Trans. B. Frechtman. London, 1967. De Saussure, F. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. W. Baskin. New York, 1966. Sebeok, Τ. A., ed. Style in Language. M.I.T. Press, 1968. Sinclair, J. McH. A Course in Spoken English, 3—Grammar. London, 1965 and 1972. Sontag, S. Against Interpretation. New York, 1970. Spencer, J., ed. Linguistics and Style. London, 1964. Spitzer, L. Linguistics and Literary History. New York, 1962. Weitz, M. Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism. Chicago, 1964. Wellek, R. and A. Warren. Theory of Literature. Middlesex, England, 1968. Wittgenstein, L. The Blue and Brown Books. New York, 1965. . Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. London, 1969. . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London, 1969.

INDEX Amette, J. P., 19 Anscombe, G.E.M., 32, 113, 226 Arden, J., 168, 273 Ashworth, A., 131 Basement, The, 135, 227, 228 Baskin, W., 59 Beckett, S., 5, 6, 9, 10, 131, 273 Bensky, L. M., 47, 48, 151, 274 Bernhard, F. J., 7, 15, 25, 35 Berry, E., 225 Birthda y Party, The, 11, 59, 60, 64, 65, 78, 111, 130, 173, 227, 228, 273 Brecht, B., 6 Brine, A., 14 Brooks, H. F., 165 Brown, J. R., 8, 11, 14, 19-22, 25, 32, 40, 71, 110 Brustein, R., 32, 35 Burke, K., 16 Burkman, K. H., 7, 17, 77 Caine, C.S.A.M., 6, 29 Caretaker, The, 1, 8, 10, 12, 17, 113-172, 173, 196, 227, 230, 231 Casey, J., 45 Chatman, S., 43 Chekhov, A., 6, 25 Cohen, Mark, 19, 36 Cohen, Marshall, 19 Cohn, R., 10, 29, 73, 78 Collection, The, 69, 173, 174 Cook, D., 165 Coward, N., 6 Davison, P., 51 Dick, K., 277 Dixon, }., 66, 67, 234

Donoghue, D., 7 Dumb Waiter, The, 6, 9, 29, 61-63, 227 Dwarfs, The, 9, 29, 51, 54, 56, 227 Eliot, G., 227-229 Ellis, J. M., 34, 37, 45 Esslin, M., 3, 4, 6, 7, 19, 22, 24-29, 32, 35, 50, 72, 76, 87, 231, 236 Findlater, R., 8 Firth, J. R., 50, 51, 55, 76, 112, 277 Fletcher, J., 19 Forster, E. M., 68 Frechtman, B., 57 Free, W. 3, 5 Genet, }., 6, 13 Gilman, R., 29-31, 149 Golding, W., 43 Gordon, L. G., 65, 79, 111, 145, 146, 231 Hale, O., 149, 274 Halliday, M.A.K., 43, 44, 53 Halton, K., 112, 230 Harris, B., 19, 110 Hayman, R., 129, 130, 231, 241 Hewes, H., 225 Hinchliffe, A. P., 7, 8, 17, 76, 77, 86, 87, 168 Hollis, J. R., 5, 9, 12-14, 25, 35, 55, 77, 165, 166, 170, 231, 239 Homecoming, The, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 17, 20-22, 29, 31, 36, 40, 53, 173-225 Hughes, C., 229, 231 Hutchings, P., 9

INDEX Ionesco, E., 6, 13, 16, 131 Jacobsen, J., 13 Jakobson, R., 42-44 James, H., 6 Johnson, S., 108, 109 Joos, M., 42 Kafka, F., 5, 6, 9 Kalem, T. E., 3, 274 Kauffmann, S., 231 Kerr, W „ 77, 85 Kroll, J., 273 Lahr, J., 5, 6, 17, 24, 232 Laing, R. D., 35 Landscape, 226-272 Last to Go, 58 Leech, C., 19, 110, 111 Lyons, J., 44 Marowitz, C., 11, 149, 274 McLaughlin, J., 9 McLuhan, M„ 173 Milne, T., 149, 274 Minogue, V., 13 Morris, K., 36 Morris, W., 54 Mueller, W . R., 13

Pirandello, L., 6 Popkin, H., 8 Rattigan, T„ 7, 8 Richards, I. A., 27, 41-45 Righter, W „ 45 Room, The, 1, 9, 12, 62, 74, 76-112, 113, 114, 123, 126, 127, 178, 213, 227, 230 Sapir, E., 43 Sartre, J. P., 57 Saunders, J., 19 Saussure, F. de, 59 Schechner, R., 17, 18, 26 Schroll, H. T., 4 Sebeok, T. A., 43 Sheed, W., 12 Silence, 231, 234 Simon, J., 17, 19, 30 Simpson, N. F., 6, 273 Slight Ache, A, 1, 51, 56, 58, 78, 111, 227 Sontag, S., 33 States, B. O., 11, 16, 30, 31 Storch, R. F„ 12, 26 Svkes, A., 5, 9, 10, 17, 18, 74

Taubman, H., 17 Taylor, J. R., 4-6, 12, 18, 23, 24, Nelson, H„ 8, 17, 20-22, 32, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 77, 90, 125, 40, 53 149 Nightingale, B„ 18, 231 Tea Party, 17 Night Out, A, 12, 227, 228 Thompson, H., 170 Thornton, P. C., 17, 18, 77 Old Times, 273 O'Neill, E„ 6 Walker, A., 76 Osborne, J., 19, 273 Wardle, I., 5, 6, 149, 274 Weitz, M., 45 Panter-Downes, M., 149 Wesker, A., 19, 110, 273 Pinter, H., critical comments of, Wilson, M„ 109 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 47, 52, 87, Wittgenstein, L., 32, 37-43, 45, .111, 112, 125, 151, 161, 170, 46, 113, 226, 276 225, 228, 229, 274, 276, 277 Wray, P., 26 294

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Quigley, Austin, 1942— The Pinter problem. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Pinter, Harold, 1930- —Criticism and interpretation. PR6066.I53Z76 822'.9'14 74-25627 ISBN 0-691-06281-1

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