Assignment Topic: Comedy of Menace in
Harold Pinter’s “Birthday Party”.
Name: Gohil
Khanjaniba Mahipatsinh.
Class: MA
(Part – 2).
Semester: 3.
Paper Name:
The Modernist Literature.
Paper Code:
3195.
Suggested
By: Dr.Dilip Barad.
Dedicated
To: The Department of English,
Smt.s.b.Gardi,
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar.
Year:
2013-2015.
Submitted
on: 4th October, 2014.
Harold
Pinter (1930 – 2008)
Harold Pinter was born on 10th
December, 1930 and he refers to the Jewish family. Although Pinter has not strong
relation with his father because his father was much conscious about discipline
and to some extent he believed in being perfectionist. Pinter’s was tailor. So
later Pinter said that “The condition of being bombed has never left me”. We
can see that Pinter mentally depressed because he was feeling some kind of
cravenness and isolation in his life. However Pinter was well with his mother
because she was not forcing him to do particular things or to live in a
condition in which his father wants to live him. So Pinter was much different
in his thought process.
He has got Nobel Prize in
Literature in 2005. One of the most famous British dramatist and he has made
silver jubilee in his writing career and known as a playwright, director and actor.
Thus it’s easy to guess that how much he was involved in all these fields with
a strong voice. He himself directed and has become actor in his productions.
As we knows about Charley
Chaplin; has directed his short films and has played main role into his
directed film. Pinter was multiple working people and was better in
representation of “Comedy of Menace”. Pinter’s
some manuscripts are in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre. Pinter has
begun his career as a playwright with a production of “The Room” (1975).
Thereby he has published his second play “The Birthday Party” (1975). Let us
introduce his work which was written during nineteenth century:
Ñ The Birthday Party (1975).
Ñ The Homecoming (1964).
Ñ Betrayal (1978).
Ñ The Servant (1963).
Ñ The Go-Between (1971).
Ñ The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981).
Ñ The Trial (1993).
Ñ Sleuth (2007).
Harold Pinter has been died from liver cancer on 24th
December, 2008. He also joined the political theatre and has indirectly
satirized on the so called political system, destruction and corruption in the
system with the help of his writings and representation of dramas.
Comedy of Menace
Comedy of menace has been started by David Campton. In
English literature we can find out literatures like Neo-classical age,
Victorian age, Romantic age, etc. But Harold Pinter criticizes some important
political, economical system of England. Now days it became more critical
because there is all around the world we can find out corruption anywhere, and
it is leading by noble people unknowingly. However they are also an important
part of the nation. Super nations have the concept of civilization,
privatization and liberalization in the nineteenth century.
Comedy = Humor.
Menace = Threatening fear in mind.
A
work of art of a play in which people feels fear or the situation may become so
much threatening that people or audience who watches the play may don’t know
that what is happening and why it falls under the category of terrific matter.
‘Comedy of Menace’ is much different from sentimental comedy and
anti-sentimental comedy. Comedy of menace is the phrase which was the part of
the book “The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace”, which was written by David
Campton. Irving Ward- a critic who quotes that In Harold Pinter’s play “The
Birthday Party” has the effect of menace.
From the very beginning till the end of the drama, there is lots of
conversation between the characters like Mag, Nat Goldberg, Dermont McCann and
Petey where Stanley stands for some countries which are silent or their voices
are much damned, so that they could not argue against powerful nations like US,
Germany, etc.
In ‘Comedy of
Menace’ there was another more distinguished interpretation is when
counter-argue between two characters takes place, there it creates a kind of
mental depression and we can’t say that we can make our self enjoying in that
situation. If we talk about conversation then we must look at the facial
expression as well as a thought process.
In
one of the blog I have read with the above title that from Saint’s day more
than surprising thing with them with its repetition. Definition:
It
suggests that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in
a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience is unsettled, ill
at ease and uncomfortable.
More
deeply if we concentrate over this idea then it deals with an individual’s
personal anxiety and with their understandings. In anti-sentimental comedy.
This play is almost tragic because at the end of the play we are not getting any
clue that why it was happening but indirectly we are getting many things like
master-slave relationship, in which slave could not speak and can’t express his
or her idea, second thing is that whose voice is too some extent is banned.
In the
local press, despite the understandable low, or hermeneutic earthquake, that
not only baffled the clueless philistine of the drama, but left in some of their
audience complaining. The writer also says that meanwhile, strangers without
conscience seemed to be the name of the game in another British play, “ The
Birthday Party “, which opened at the encore only two weeks later- the first
production in America of anything by Harold Pinter.
In
London “Comedy of Menace” merely titled with or excoriated like ‘Saint’s Day’
for mystification and sadism, the review so divesting those performances were immediately
canceled by the producers. There was a program has a brief not about the author
and a brief not on a play by Wickham (Glynne Wickham), which refers to Pinter’s
menacing effect and being an artist in a society that “Has little time for art
or artist”.
The above
reference refers to the controversy and damage which made to Harold Pinter.
Society does not have respect for an artist have to be a personal not
personified.
A Blog by an author Inesco, Genet and Pinter
(In a form of a book,
pg. No. 241)
Pinter’s
first long play “The Birthday Party” is a comedy of menace which tends to
sacrifice credibility to the horrors of the subconscious. At the end of the
play Goldberg and McCann reduced the voice of Sacrifice and made him totally
dumb. So here we don’t know what happened and it creates menacing effects.
Gangster Films- Wardle argues that
“The Birthday Party” exemplifies the title of the comic menace which gave rise
to this article: In Comedy of Menace as Merritt observes on the basis of his
experience of this play and other accounts of the other two plays. Wardle
proposes that comedy enables the committed agents and victims of destruction on
to come on and off duty; to joke about the situation while oiling a revolver. So
how Pinter uses game of ‘Blind man’s Bluff’ and Merritt suggest that ‘Comedy of
Menace’ in Pinter’s plays ‘stands for something more substantial: destiny’, and
that destiny handled in this way not as an austere exercise in classism but as
an incurable disease which one forgets about most of the time behavior in which
orthodox man is a willing collaborator in his own destruction. Whose lethal
reminders may take the form of a joke is an apt dramatic motif for an age of
conditional behavior. Thereby Merritt gives an example of a play “Uncle Vanya”.
Conclusion
In this play many events like a game, door’s knocking in the
darkness, Lulu and Mag’s giggling which sounds like a witch’s laugh. So here we
can say that all of these things stand for the menacing effect in this play.
Thus it is new genre of writing this play and the writer is consciously takes
part in the same ‘Comedy of Menace’.
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