EVOLUTION OF HAROLD PINTER’S PLAYS:

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEM

With this work, I am going to study Pinter’s evolution as a playwright.

The 3 plays I have chosen are: The Dumb Waiter (1957), The Collection (1961) and Party Time (1991).

First Pinter bases the subject of his plays in criticisms of English politics of the epoch. And in the plays that I have read, he reflects problems of the society.

To begin, I will speak about The Dumb Waiter (1957). Pinter offers with this play the relation between the two characters only (supposedly killers) who wait for their victim with their arms. In my opinion what Pinter wants to reflect with this, is the social and politic tension lived in this epoch. Characters are waiting without knowing what to do, they speak, discuss… to avoid the monotony and the tension silence. Pinter reflects in his play a reduced number of characters. Also, the silences and pauses predominate in abundance like the bad communication. (Ben: light the kettle; when the correct form is: light the gas). I can see that they aren’t communicating with the outside due to the fact that the characters are living in a room all the time.

To continue, I will speak now about The Collection (1961). Pinter continues faithful to his style, reflecting the problems and fears of society. Pinter with this play returns to tell us a confused history. In it, a woman with problems (I think that she has problems with her integration in the society) invents a relation with an unknown person. It generates a strong reaction in her husband. I think that Pinter with this history shows us how this woman perceives the reality in a distorted way. I think that the woman wants to attract attention, for that reason she invents this history, she wants to be the centre of the conversations and she needs to feel that she is important for the people. Like I already have said, Pinter doesn’t change a lot his way of writing (The Collection continues being a short and confused play, and it is full of pauses and silences). Nevertheless, I see that Pinter evolves as far as the number of the characters, it has increased in two characters.

To put in end, I will speak about Party Time (1991), the most recent play of the three plays I have read. Pinter reflects with this play current affairs such as the worry of the appearances, the materialism... In Party Time, we can see an evolution and some changes in the form of writing of Pinter. He has reduced the pauses and the silences that are almost nonexistent, and he has increased the number of characters (to 9 characters). Is this group of characters ( people of high class) who are obsessed with luxury, elegance, appearances...I think that they refuge in these material things in order to avoid the problems they are suffering in the society in which they live. As we can see, Pinter returns to name these social problems that appear in these three plays. I think that the author also reflects the mystery, and of course the confusion. He leaves an open end to different interpretations.

As we have observed, Pinter leaves readers to decipher by them self the messages of his plays, for that he looks for the confused and he limits the communication.

After reading these three plays, I have verified that the main subject of Pinter are the problems and fears of the society, nevertheless, the evolution of his plays depends on the form of life existing at the moment in which they have been written, it depends too on the lived situation in the epoch to which they belong, and it depends on the state of mind in which the author is in the moment in which he writes them.