Pinter Pause/Silence

Pinter Pause and silence and "The Birthday Party" by Harold Pinter, Pintersque elements

1. Pinter Pause/Silence & The Birthday Party Name: Vishva Gajjar Email: [email protected] Department of English (MKBU) Paper-9 The Modernist Literature

2. Harold Pinter: Born: October 10 th , 1930 (London England) Died: December 24 th , 2008 In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Major Works: The Birthday Party (1957) The Dumbwaiter (1957) The Caretaker (1959) The Homecoming (1964) Old Times (1970)

3. Pinter Pause: A  Pinter Pause  is a radical device that Pinter frequently incorporated into his plays. He felt that theatre neither accurately depicted the unpredictability of human discourse, nor the complexities found in carefully constructing an utterance. Often when we search for the right words, we pause. S ometimes , we have no comment at all, remaining completely silent. This is exactly what Pinter pursued in his plays – a rejection of perfection in favor of realism.

4. Types of Silence: ELLIPSIS: Denoted by three dotes (…). Indicates slight hesitation. PAUSE: Character in middle of deep thought process. Create tension and unsettling atmosphere. SILENCE: Dead stop   Character has encountered a conflict so absurd that they have nothing to say.

5. Examples from The Birthday Party: MEG. Is that you, Petey? Pause Petey, is that you? Pause Petey? PETEY. What? MEG. Is that you? PETEY. Yes, it’s me (Page-3) Pinter is not merely withholding, for the repetition of words has been carefully judged. Meg’s first three questions seems at first to repeat the same inquiry, but the slight changes in the uses of words reveal progressively that the questions she asks are not truly questions at all, but a challenge. ‘ Petey ’ is first placed at the end of the sentence, then more commandingly at the beginning and then becomes the single questioning word. Her questions, statements and action all establish that she wishes to make him acknowledge her presence and his dependence.

6. Continue… GOLDBERG. Still the same old Stan. Come with us. Come on boy PETEY. Where are you taking him? They turn. Silence . GOLDBERG. We’re taking him to Monty. PETEY. He can stay here. GOLDBERG. Don’t be silly. PETEY. We can look after him here. GOLDBERG. Why do you want to look after him? PETEY. He’s my guest. GOLDBERG . He needs special treatment. PETEY. We’ll find someone. GOLDBERG. No, Monty’s the best there is. Bring him McCann. (Page-79) The silence in itself is highly meaningful. The response that comes after the prevailing silence is equally mysterious. Both ‘Monty’ and ‘special treatment’ create a menace of their own, meaningful only to the careful audience. As soon as Petey intervenes in the smooth operation of Goldberg and McCann, the situation becomes grim with serious implications. It is the play’s final moment of recognition. The clean-shaven, well-dressed Stanley is being forcibly taken to unknown destination. The henchmen encounters the very first resistance ever, from Petey ‘where are you taking him’, from the time they have came to the lodge. The stunning silence helps the audience to have a feel of the crucial moment-the moment of recognition before the end.

7. The Why Question: The use of Pinter Pauses is often likened to the original Surrealist movement. Where Surrealism sought to tap the subconscious and illustrate the randomness of our dreams through means of automatism, Pinter sought to tap the randomness of ‘the conversation‘ in order to paint, in an often exaggerated manner, the irrationality of human speech and its nuances. In doing so, he created a wealth of psychological drama filled with suspense, pathos, anxiety and tension that distanced him from other playwrights of his time . Through three dots, pauses and silence Pinter transports the audience to the world of horror by making them share the psychological stress and tension of his characters.

8. Conclusion: Pinter summed up his concept of silence in this quote of his, which can be considered his Pinter Pause manifesto: ‘ I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. ‘ - Harold Pinter

9. Works Cited Bradford, Wade. The Best of Harold Pinter's Plays . 28 March 2019. web. 29 September 2019. <https://www.thoughtco.com/best-harold-pinter-plays-2713618>. Daniels, Nicholas Ephram Ryan. What are Pinter Pauses? And other Pinteresque Devices . 14 May 2018. web. 29 September 2019. <https://www.londontheatredirect.com/news/what-are-pinter-pauses-and-other-pinteresque-devices>. George, Dr. Mercy. "Language of Silence in the plays of Harold Pinter." International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities 2.6 (2014): 9. web. 29 September 2019. <http://ijellh.com/papers/2014/October/09-79-87-october-2014.pdf>.

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