Subject: # 14227 Teatro Inglés Siglos XIX y XX Grupo A

Student´s name: Cristóbal Borillo, Pablo

Title of the paper: Harold Pinter: a mixture of human relationships and violence

Author or topic: Harold Pinter

Abstract : 543 words exactly

This paper is based on three plays written by Harold Pinter: The Dumb Waiter(1957), Party Time(1991) and Ashes to ashes(1996).

Before starting the exposition, I would like to explain that, although human relationships and violence should be separated topics, in the case of Harold Pinter’s plays it is quite difficult. I will consider violence as physical violence and focus the human relationships paper on the fact of having violence even in intimate or close relationships and on the different levels of violence we can find.

First, we can see a big change between the relationship of Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter and the relationship of Dusty and Terry in Party Time. In The Dumb Waiter, the relationship was not very good, even after being friends for a long time, Ben grabs Gus by his throat after a little unimportant argument; furthermore, in we can see how Ben and Gus hide information to each other, when Ben does not want to talk about the mission to Gus and Gus does not say anything about the food he had. When we read Party Time, which comes after The Dumb Waiter in time among the three I have chosen, we find a great change in human relationships, in bad human relationships. The “attacks”, to give them a name, among characters are not so physical, not so direct, but much subtler. We find many clear cases of psychological attacks: when Terry constantly forbids Dusty to speak about “Jimmy”, when he also denies that Dusty could have an agenda and when he uses the irony to remember Dusty not to talk about “Jimmy” in public. Finally, we find a mutual affective - psychological attack between Dusty and Terry talking in a private conversation, it seems they like provoking each other. All this proves the change but also the permanence of the bad relationships between main characters, who are supposed to have a kind of affective feeling towards each other.

Although Party Time and Ashes to ashes are near in time, there is a clear difference between them. While in Party Time, all the problems came from the interaction between the main characters, in Ashes to ashes they come from the non interaction between them. In the latter, Rebecca is not paying much attention to what Devlin is asking her (something similar to what happened in The Dumb Waiter between Ben and Gus). While Party Time’s characters agreed men should govern women, in Ashes to ashes the opposite attitude is clearly seen when Devlin wants her to kiss his fist and she does not kiss it and he can do nothing to change that. So, we could say the point here is to underline how human relationships will not work by showing opposite viewpoints.

Finally, we may say Harold Pinter aim is to show the reasons why some relationships do not work, according to the year the play is written, he goes from totally violent relationships in The Dumb Waiter(1957) to more subtle problems which are related to human rights in Party Time(1991), and then, to situations where those problems related to human rights are solved but others arise, too. We might learn from this that extreme points are not the right choice but a balanced one.

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr. Vicente Forés López
© Pablo Cristóbal Borillo
pacrisbo@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press