Harold Pinter: “Ashes to Ashes” (tragedy in an only act), ed. Faber

and Faber, 1996, London.

Consuelo Hernández Rubio: Grup B

In “Ashes to Ashes”, Harold Pinter show up us two characters, Rebecca and Devlin, both in their forties. Rebecca, , gives her husband, Devlin, a explanation about her involvement, through her love, in wartime atrocities ( pag. 406: Rebecca: “He did work for a travel agency. He was a guide. He used to go to the local railway station and walk down the platform and tear all the babies from the arms of their screaming mothers”; pag. 413: Devlin: “I inferred from this that you were talking about some kind of atrocity” ).

They keep an only interesting and long dialogue in the development of the play. This conversation is started in a room into a house in the country when Devlin “sanding with drink” and Rebecca “sitting” in a armchair (pag. 393).

On the other hand, “the room darkens during the course of the play” (pag.393).

So, through this only closed place, through this kind of dim illumination and through a intriguing dialogue and violent and colloquial vocabulary between the two characters, the author induces the receptor ( spectator or reader) to feel oppressive and insecure sensations:

-Insecurity:

-pag. 399: Devlin: “I know nothing…about any of this. Nothing. I’m in the dark. I

need ligh”

-pag. 407: Rebecca: “By the way, I’m terribly upset”.

-pag. 408: Rebecca: “No! It makes me feel insecure! Terribly insecure.”

-pag. 412: Devlin: ”It’s dangerous. Do you notice? I’m in a quicksand”.

-Violence:

-pag. 398: Rebecca: “I think you’re a fuckpig”

-pag: 408: Rebecca: “It just hit me so hard”

-pag. 413: Devlin: “…reference a your bloke…”

-pag:414: Devlin: “I’m talking about your lover. The man who tried to murder you”

Rebecca: “Murder me?”

Devlin: Do you to death. …

Devlin: “He suffocated you and strangled you”

-pag. 415: Devlin: “A man who doesn’t give a shit”

-Intrigue:

-pag. 409: Devlin: “They’re very busy people, the police….They’ve got so much to

take care of, to keep their eye on. They keep getting signals, mostly in code”; “By

the way, there’s something I’ve been dying to tell you”.

-Oppression and suffering:

-pag. 399: Devlin: “I need light”

-pag. 408: Rebecca: “You see…as the siren faded away in my ears I knew it was

becoming louder and louder for somebody else”; “I hate it fading away. I hate it

echoing away. I hate it leaving me. I hate losing it…”.

-pag. 418-419: Rebecca: “And my best friend, the man I had given my heart to, the

man I knew was the man for me the moment we met, my dear, my most precious

compain, I watched him walk down the platform and tear all the babies from the

arms of their screaming mothers” .

-pag. 423: Rebecca: “Other people laughed”

-pag. 427: Rebecca: “She listening to the baby’s heartbear”

“The light in the room has darkened. The lamps are very bright”,

however, pag. 393: “…but does not illumine the room”

-pags. 429-432: ECHO emphasizing the suffering of Rebecca when she remembers:

pag. 429: “taking the babies away”.

With all of the aspects explained, Harold Pinter has pretended guide us to think about the oppression and the GENOCIDE (pag. 429: Rebecca: They took us to the trains”; “They were taking the babies away”) giving a interesting explanation, at the same time, about the title of the play “Ashes to Ashes” (pag. 417: Rebecca:” This mental elephantiasis means that when you spill an ounce of gravy…. You are not the victim of it, you are the cause of it….”)

The author also criticizes the genocide with a metaphor about a game when Devlin talks about “the game of the century. Absolute silence….for time without end. Absence. Stalemate. Paralysis. A world without a winner” ( pag. 412)

OPINION

In my opinion “Ashes to Ashes” is an excellent play that keep the intrigue during all the time because the “genocide” is suggested, but not directly named, when Rebecca explains what kind of work has her love (pags: 496-407), when she says “They took us to the trains” (pag.429) or the author doesn’t give us any solution to the atrocity when, by the end of the play, “The lamplight has become very bright but does not illumine the room” (pag. 393). However, through Devlin with a metaphor, the author suggests a ideal thought: “A world without a winner “ (pag.412)

This intrigue is kept through the dialogue between the two characters without being necessary any kind of action. Only the words. The action is the word.