REPETITION

Student: María del Carmen López Albert

Group: A. Morning

Teacher: Dr Vicente Forés.

THE EVOLUTION OF PINTER IN HIS PLAYS

For this work, I choose “The Dumb Waiter”, “Party Time” and “Ashes to Ashes” by

Harold Pinter.

In this three plays we can´t see a clear evolution because the way to present the text is

very similar.

In the first play we can appreciate the little presence of characters. There are only two:

Gus and Ben. We can see the same situation in “Ashes to Ashes” where the characters

are only two too: Devlin and Rebecca.

But in the middle of this plays it is “Party Time”in which nine characters

appear. Although we could say that in this play there are a lot of dialogues where only

two characters speak (for example the conversation between Terry and Gavin in page

281 or the conversation between Liz and Charlotte pages 288 to 290)

Maybe the author prefers these conversations so that the spectator can follow the course

of the play.

Another aspect that lets us see the little evolution is the repetition of the use of the pauses and the silences in each one of the plays.

It is the resource that the author prefers maybe so that the public can assimilated what the characters say.

Like in the other case, the only play that escapes a little this aspect is “Party Time”. It is appreciable if we count the number of pauses and silences.

In “The Dumb Waiter” the quantity is more or less of 35 times, in “Ashes to Ashes” it increases and it is of 68 whereas in “Party Time” there are only 15.

If we baseo on these aspects, the number of silences, the number of characters... we could say that there is a small change in the middle of these plays, like if he wanted to change the way to introduce the play.

But this change returns to be lineal in “Ashes to Ashes” that has got lot of similarities with the first play “The Dumb Waiter”.

Finally if we concentrate in interior meaning of the play we can appreciate how Pinter treats political and violent themes.

In the three plays we can observe the presence of words like “killed” in “The Dumb Waiter” (page 131) and in “Party Time” (page288). And “Ashes to Ashes” begins when Rebecca relates a violent scene between herself and her possible lover what nowadays we could understand as a domestic violent scene.

The war is a topic that Pinter treats. In “Party time” there are many dialogues that made us undestand that the characters are in a war time. (page 286, Melissa: “ the town´s dead... there´s not a soul...apart some soldiers.” Page 292, Douglas: “...we want peace”)

And in “Ashes to Ashes” there is an image of a train that is separating some babies from their mothers. (pages 426 to 432) This image could be associated to the period of the Second World War where the nazis transport the jews by train.

With these analyzed characteristics I would say that the evolution of the author in his plays is been more or less lineal. Because he treats the same topics an the characteristics are very similar. The use of pauses and silences are abundant in all his plays.