'The Birthday Party' by Harold Pinter

Hello readers! This blog is written in response to a Thinking activity assigned by Bhatt Ma'am, English Department, MKBU. In this blog I am going to write about 'Comedy of Menace', characteristics of Comedy of Menace and the play 'The Birthday Party'.

'The Birthday Party' 

The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter’s best-known and most frequently performed plays. The play is actually the mingling of comedy with a perception of danger that pervades the whole play. The Birthday Party has been described as a comedy of menace because the consistent flow of fear and horror is symbolically presented in the characters mind. Pinter actually exposes the state of modern man and the idea of fear that exists in the human mind. Pinter characters struggle from the fear of society and the criticism of other people. The essence of the European Absurd theater finds a new dimension in the plays of Pinter. He has shown the inherent drawbacks and tension in the social life of today. His dramatic style and techniques have certainly given a novel direc­tion to the drama today. The theater with which are associated Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter, the stage is invariably occupied by a few characters and each one of them expresses his ideas vehemently. 

Pinter has maintained that his plays are not intricate and are easy to grasp. He has denied the presence of any allegorical mean­ing in his plays. Brevity is the hallmark of Pinter’s dialogue which naturally gives rise to many shades of meaning. The reader of Pinter’s plays cannot always arrive at the exact meaning of the cryptic sentences, and one can draw many alternative ideas from them. Pinter’s plays have a suggestive power which is missing in the works of many contemporary dramatists. Language plays a significant role when it comes to the comedy of menace. It exposes the fear, frustration and violence of the characters through language. There are so many repetitions, sounds , pauses in the play 'The Birthday Party' that gives insights into the flow of characters' fear and menace and delve deeper into their inner space. The loss of identity is observed when the powerful characters attack the weaker characters for instance Stanley suffers from loss of identity when he is attacked verbally. Writer's technique of dialogues between characters has an undertone of violence and domination which is evident in the interrogation scene.

Harold Pinter 

Harold Pinter exploited the possibilities of this kind of situation in his early plays like "The Room", "Birthday Party" and "A Slight Ache", where both the characters and the audience face an atmosphere, apparently funny but actually having suggestiveness of some impending threat from outside. Pinter himself explained the situation thus: "more often than not the speech only seems to be funny - the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life". He also said: Everything is funny until the horror of the human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions and self-deceptions, like Stanley’s dream of a world tour as a pianist, because it is built out of pretense.” In fact the play Birthday Party is built around the exchanges of words, which, though funny enough, contain hints that suggest the impending doom lurking around to them. The Birthday Party” has the effect of menace. From the very beginning till the end of the drama, there is lots of conversation between the characters like Mag, Nat Goldberg, Dermont McCann and Petey where Stanley stands for some countries which are silent or their voices are much damned, so that they could not argue against powerful nations like US, Germany, etc.

What is the Comedy of Menace?

Comedy = Humor

Menace = Threatening fear in mind

Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter. The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle, who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958. The audience is made aware of some menace in the very midst of its laughter. The actual cause of menace is difficult to define: it may be because the audience feels an uncertainty and insecurity throughout the play.

The phrase “comedy of menace” as a standalone description inspires both positive and negative feelings. Comedy is used during a dangerous situation to cause audiences to draw judgments about a particular character or communication. The words used are the focus of often powerful stories that create conflicting emotions from its audience. The title “Comedy of Menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind, because comedy is generally something that makes people laugh, and the word "menace" implies something threatening. Quite literally, then, this phrase involves laughing at an ominous situation. Comedy of Menace’ is much different from sentimental comedy and anti-sentimental comedy. The comedy of menace is a tragedy with a number of comic elements. Some elements of comedy of menace; it is a comedy which also produces an overwhelming tragic effect. This feeling of menace establishes a strong connection between the character's predicament and the audience's personal anxieties. 'The Birthday Party' is best example of comedy of menace. Here i would like to share one scene from movie 'The Birthday Party'.

Here is characteristic of the Comedy of Menace:

• comedy of menace is a play in which the laughter of the audience in some or all situations is accompanied ,or immediately followed, by a feeling of some impending disaster.
• In Comedy of Menace two contradictory ideas are juxtaposed, meaning it contains two opposite ideas in a single form. For example in Tragicomedy there is tragedy and comedy also. So like Tragicomedy, Comedy of Menace are based on two contradictory forms of literature.
• In this kind of play one or more characters feel that they are threatened by some obscure and threatening force, power, personality and so on. Here fear and menace becomes a source of comedy.
• In this kind of plays ironical language is used to build dramatic tension and through it writers attempt to convey certain social or political ideas to the audience.

• It suggests that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience is unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable.
• The menace evolves from actual violence in the play or from an underlying sense of violence throughout the play.
• It may develop from a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. The audience may be made to feel that the security of the principal character, and even the audience’s own security, is threatened by some impending fear.
• Throughout the play we are kept amused and yet throughout the play we find ourselves also on the brink of terror. We feel uneasy all the time even when we are laughing or smiling with amusement. This dual quality gives the play a unique character.

It deals with an individual’s personal anxiety and with their understanding. In anti-sentimental comedy. This play is almost tragic because at the end of the play we are not getting any clue why it was happening but indirectly we are getting many things like the master-slave relationship, in which slaves could not speak and can’t express his or her idea.

In conclusion, we may say that the absurdity of the play which is represented through a menacing effect has its own symbolic significance. It tries to explain the human predicament in this indifferent and hostile world. Means Pinter shows us the reality of life, one of the major points of view about the play is Meaninglessness and nothingness of human existence and Life under constant shadow of fear and menace.

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