Abstract
The intruder figure that made menace synonymous with Pinter’s plays is most famously typified in The Birthday Party. Goldberg and McCann arrive at Meg and Pete’s seaside boarding house to take Stan, a long-term resident there, by force. The mysterious pair plays the role of the intruders: they arrive uninvited, their identities and motivations are questionable, and they disrupt the peace that Stan hopes to find in the house. This chapter problematizes our perceptions of the intruder and proposes that Stan is in fact as dubious as Goldberg and McCann, and his behavior in the house, particularly towards Meg, marks him as an intruder figure as well. In removing him from the house, Goldberg and McCann inadvertently liberate Meg from Stan’s tyranny.
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Notes
Act I, Scene IV of Richard III, when Clarence, imprisoned in the Tower, first discovers the intruders sent by the king to kill him (ll. 72–74).
Pinter’s 1958 letter to the editor of The Play’s the Thing entitled “On The Birthday Party II” (Various Voices 14).
Knowles’s reading of the questions posed by Goldberg and McCann in the famous interrogation scene (Plays 1 41–46) has also led to a magnificently cogent study that details the sources of the play to specific events that headlined IRA activism in the 1950s. Citing Winston Churchill’s 1945 speech in the House of Commons, Knowles suggests that the play is underscored by the vulnerabilities of European countries under “police governments”: The family is gathered around the fireside to enjoy the scanty fruits of their toil... Suddenly there is a knock at the door, and a heavily armed policeman appears... It may be that the father or son, or a friend sitting in the cottage, is called out and taken off into the dark, and no one knows whether he will ever come back again, or what his fate has been. All they know is that they better not enquire. (73) Knowles’s reading is rooted in Goldberg and Stan’s interrogation of Stan; when Goldberg accuses Stan of “playing a dirty game” (Plays 1 42) on him, McCann agrees: “That’s a Black and Tan fact” (42). The ruthlessness of the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence is well documented. Towards the end of the conflict, allegations of IRA men who sought out individuals with whom they bore grudges were widespread.
All references to Pinter’s manuscripts ho ? used in the British Library will be hereafter be cited as PA (Pinter Archive), followed by the box number. The catalog of the box numbers may have changed since the viewing of the manuscripts between June 18 and 21, 2007, when they were listed as a loaned collection (from Pinter) to the library. The loaned archive was officially purchased by the British Library on December 11, 2007 and may be re-catalogued in a different order. See “Pinter Archive Saved for the Nation.”
Because Pinter does not state whether or not Stan is trying to rape Lulu, some critics may disagree with the assumption that rape is intended. However, Pinter’s directions provide us with an image does not leave much room for other speculations: “LULU is lying spread-eagled on the table, STANLEY bent over her” (Plays 1 59). Martin Esslin believes that Stan, “having tried to rape Lulu, seems to have gone out of his mind” (Peopled Wound 77).
Though textual material does not state whether torture is used, productions of The Birthday Party can, however, make a case for torture, especially if Stan exhibits signs of physical abuse in the form of cuts or bruises in the final act of the play.
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© 2013 Jane Wong Yeang Chui
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Wong, J.Y.C. (2013). Intruders as Liberators in The Birthday Party. In: Affirming the Absurd in Harold Pinter. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343079_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343079_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46641-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34307-9
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