Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Female Character in "The Swamp Dweller"

Name: Zarna Bhatti

Roll no.: 5

Paper no.: 14 , African Literature

Topic Name: Female Character in “The Swamp Dweller”.

Email Id: zarnabhatti10@gmail.com

Enrollment no.: PG15101005

Submitted By: Smt .S.B.Gardi Deparment of English MKBU

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Female characters in Swamp Dwellers:

Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever.

- Wole Soyinka (Brainy Quote)

Wole Soyinka is the first African writer who is awarded with Nobel Prize in 1986. He is basically Nigerian play writer and poet. Soyinka was basically born into Yoruba community and here also he try to depict the norms and regulations of his community. In this play he focuses on the problems of the youth of his time. Even today and during his time we can see the influence of the first world countries on the third world countries. He tries to bring those issues in his writing. The young people wanted to leave the village and the community and wanted start a ‘New’ life in the city. His one of the notable work is ‘Swamp Dwellers’, in which he discuss this issue at length.

Even the title of this play is very significant one. And as Derrida use to say that each and every word has free play of the words. Here also we will find the different free play of the words or particularly the word ‘Swamp’. Swamp means where nothing can grow. Here ‘Nothing can grow’ is also connected with the mental states, means new ideas. This shows the disturbed and fragmented mind set of the youth. The second meaning of the word swamp means the ‘City’. Where once someone goes never comes back. Swamp is a kind of muddy place where we cannot create a particular impression of a thing. Here Soyinka tries to give negative connotation to the word ‘City’.

“The Swamp Dwellers” by Wole Soyinka is placed in dackward village of Nigeria in the Delta region. But the character of the play often have important interaction with the town life. Because we can see the young man went for the city life because they have to hope and desire. So, called the “Gift of Colonization”. Here, we can say that,

“All Temtation in whole the world”.

We can compare this play with T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ where nothing grows and which also tries to depict the disturbed and fragmented psyche of the youth. At some extend this play is also absurd play like ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Birthday Party’ because as audience we are not provided the full information of the past of the characters. What next happened to the characters is also not much clear in the play. Throughout the play we can see the struggle between the tradition and the modernity because village and city these both are the opposite pillars and each represents one. But apart from this we can also see many other conflicts like the generation gap, fragmented mind set, and the suppression of the female in the male dominated world. Black are always considered as the inferior to the white people. Soyinka himself face many problems while writing and that is why it is said that when a black is writing he will never bring the change into the society rather he will try to change the mind set of colonizers with aggressive mood.

When black are writing their voice becomes the voice from the margin and white people are at the centre. And here also if we apply the theory of Derrida then we have to change the margin and periphery. White people at periphery and black people at margin. The same way women at the centre and the men at periphery.

Makuri says “There wasn’t a woman anywhere more faithful than you.”

Alu: “I never had a moment of worry in the whole of my life.”

These are some lines taken from the play ‘Swamp Dwellers’. Alu and Makuri are the husband and wife and they have twin sons named Igwezu and Awuchike. Apart from there is also another important character named as Desala. She is the wife of Igwezu. As above mentioned that this play is much like ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Birthday Party’ and that is why the past of the characters are not much clear in front of us. We come to know only as the play moves forward.

Alu:

Alu is the wife of Makuri. She is the mother of Igwezu and Awuchike. She is aged about sixty. She believes in the custom of the swamps. (Sites) . If we study the character of Alu then we come to know that she is the suppressed woman by his own husband. His husband Makuri always tries to feel inferior to Alu. Alu is like other female characters ordinary woman who lost her one child in the swamp means in the city and now she don’t want to lose his other child in the city. She always tries to fulfil every wishes of his husband as well as his sons. Sometime she also fight against her husband for his sons. So here we can compare the character of Alu with Mrs Ramsay in ‘To the Lighthouse’. She is faithful to her husband and to her duty. And that is how she emerges as the perfect woman in front of reader’s eye.

As already said that the one of the main theme of the play is the conflict between the tradition and the modernity. The play writer has depicted this conflict through the characters also because here Alu stands for the traditional mode of the time. She is against the current changes of the society. Because she was not in favour to send his sons to the city. We can say that she was denying may be because of her motherly love towards her sons.

Throughout the play Awuchike never comes on the stage but he remain present through the talk of the family. Alu use to remember him a lot. Because when he went there, in the city he was the different person and now he is the different person. From the talk of the Igwezu we can assume that he is now the successful person there and not intended to come back to his village. But as above mentioned that we can’t say anything about any character of the play.

Igwezu: “Awuchike is dead to you and to this house. Let us not raise his ghost in this house.”

Whenever his mother used to remember Awuchike, Igwezu used to speak this lines. From this lines we can also see the rivalry between this twin brothers. There are glimpse of everything not a single thing is clearly said by the writer. This lines also suggests the success of Awuchike over there in the city.

Desala:

Throughout the play she never appears on the stage like Awuchike. She married to Igwezu and went with him to the city but unlike him she never return to the village. This again indicated the modernity. As I above mentioned that play writer showed the modernity and traditional way of living the life through the characters also. Here Desala stands for the modern way of living the life. Again from the given fragmented information we can assume that Desala went there with Igwezu but there she married to Awuchike. May be because he is more successful than Igwezu there. Or there are other possibilities like Igwezu leaves all alone there in the city. The things are not much clear. But the chances of her marrying to Awuchike is more because whenever Alu heard about this she is not ready to accept the reality that Awuchike kicked his own brother. At some extent Desala becomes the reason for the rivalry between both the brothers.

But on the other hand we also can’t blame Desala because as a young girl when she married to Igwezu she also must be having some young dreams for her life and when she tried to fulfil all her dreams she is also not wrong. When Kadiye asks Igwezu about his wife Desala he becomes a bit angry upon Kadiye which shows that now he doesn’t care about Desala. From this point we come to know about Desala and Igwezu that may be something went wrong between this husband and wife.

The story is not unfolding ordinary in front of our eyes. The things are also not much clear about anything and which also shows the mental state of the characters. And because the things are not much clear in front of our eyes we have to relay much on the language used by the play writer. It is said that whenever from the margin, from the periphery the voice comes it is always harsh and aggressive here also the voice of Alu and Desala is much harsh and aggressive but unheard by the society.

Conclusion:

We can say that Soyinka is the bitter critic of his own time and culture. He depicted his culture as it is. He also present the negative side of his culture. Directly or indirectly through the character of Desala we compare the twin brothers that who is powerful?

And the relationship between Makuri and Alu is also broken one. Which also shows that females are the victim in the marriage system. Sometimes it also happened that Alu becomes so aggressive when Alu says that ‘Catch me if you can’ which again shows the power of the females. Alu emerges as both the way strong enough as well as weak enough that she don’t want to lose his second child. And Desala also emerges as both the way modern enough and independent enough to take her own decisions. And here we can say that no one can help each-other because at different level each characters are victim, and one victim can’t help the other victim.

Works Cited

Brainy Quote. 2001. 18 3 2016. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wole_soyinka.html>.

Site Google. One Heart. 21 03 2016. <https://sites.google.com/site/theswampdwellers/home>.

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Tuesday, 22 November 2016

"Teaching English as a Second Language in India; Focus on Objective" by Shivendra Verma

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Sunday, 13 November 2016

"The Old Man and The Sea": Hemingway's language styleand writing Technique.

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Name: Zarna Bhatti

Sem: 3

Paper: American Literature

Roll no.5

Email Id: zarnabhatti10@gmail.com

Assignment Topic: “The Old Man and The Sea”: Hemingway’s language style and writing Technique.

Submitted by: S.B. Gardy Department of English MKBU.

Year: 2015-2017

Introduction:

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 21^st July, 1899. He was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.

“The Sun also rises”

“A Farewell to Arms”

To have and have not

“The Nicks Adams Stories”

“The Old Man and the Sea”

Hemingway’s writing Style:

From almost the beginning of his writing career, Hemingway's distinctive style occasioned a great deal of comment and controversy. Basically, his style is simple, direct, and unadorned, probably as a result of his early newspaper training. Actually, a close examination of his dialogue will reveal that this is rarely the way people really speak.

Hemingway goes on at some length, but the essence of what he says may be in this paragraph:

“A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists”.

Definition of the Iceberg Theory:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

—Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon

In 1923, Hemingway conceived of the idea of a new theory of writing after finishing his short story "Out of Season". In A Moveable Feast, his posthumously published memoirs about his years as a young writer in Paris, he explains: "I omitted the real end [of "Out of Season"] which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything ... and the omitted part would strengthen the story." In chapter sixteen of Death in the Afternoon he compares his theory about writing to an iceberg.
Hemingway's biographer Carlos Baker believed that as a writer of short stories Hemingway learned "how to get the most from the least, how to prune language and avoid waste motion, how to multiply intensities, and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth." Baker also notes that in the writing style of the "iceberg theory" suggests that a stories narrative and nuanced complexities, complete with symbolism, operate under the surface of the story itself.
For example, Hemingway believed a writer could describe an action, such as Nick Adams fishing in "Big Two-Hearted River," while conveying a different message about the action itself—Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about the unpleasantness of his war experience. In his essay, "The Art of the Short Story," Hemingway is clear about his method: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit." A writer explained how it brings a story gravitas:

Hemingway said that only the tip of the iceberg showed in fiction—your reader will see only what is above the water—but the knowledge that you have about your character that never makes it into the story acts as the bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas.

— Jenna Blum in the Author at Work, 2013

From reading Rudyard Kipling Hemingway absorbed the practice of shortening prose as much as it could take. Of the concept of omission, Hemingway wrote in "The Art of the Short Story": "You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." By making invisible the structure of the story, he believed the author strengthened the piece of fiction and that the "quality of a piece could be judged by the quality of the material the author eliminated." His style added to the aesthetic: using "declarative sentences and direct representations of the visible world" with simple and plain language, Hemingway became "the most influential prose stylist in the twentieth century" according to biographer Meyers.
In her paper "Hemingway's Camera Eye", Zoe Trodd explains that Hemingway uses repetition in prose to build a collage of snapshots to create an entire picture. Of his iceberg theory, she claims, it "is also a glacier waterfall, infused with movement by his multi-focal aesthetic". Furthermore, she believes that Hemingway's iceberg theory "demanded that the reader feel the whole story" and that the reader is meant to "fill the gaps left by his omissions with their feelings".
Hemingway scholar Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details to work as framing devices to write about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out further with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" By separating himself from the characters he created, Hemingway strengthens the drama. The means of achieving a strong drama is to minimize, or omit, the feelings that produced the fiction he wrote. Hemingway's iceberg theory highlights the symbolic implications of art. He makes use of physical action to provide an interpretation of the nature of man's existence. It can be convincingly proved that, "while representing human life through fictional forms, he has consistently set man against the background of his world and universe to examine the human situation from various points of view." Early fiction and short stories
Gwendolyn Tetlow believes that Hemingway's early fiction such as "Indian Camp" shows his lack of concern for character development by simply placing the character in his or her surroundings. However, in "Indian Camp" the use of descriptive detail such as a screaming woman, men smoking tobacco, and an infected wound build a sense of veracity. In other words, a story can communicate by subtext; for instance, Hemingway's "Hills like White Elephants" does not mention the word "abortion", although in the story the male character seems to be attempting to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion. "Big Two-Hearted River" Hemingway explains "is about a boy...coming home from the war ....So the war, all mention of the war, anything about the war, is omitted." Hemingway intentionally left out something in "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River"—two stories he considered to be good.
Baker explains that Hemingway's stories about sports are often about the athletes themselves and that the sport is incidental to the story. Moreover, the story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" which on the surface is about nothing more than men drinking in a cafe late at night, is in fact about that which brings the men to the cafe to drink, and the reasons they seek light in the night—none of which is available in the surface of the plot, but lurks in the iceberg below. Hemingway's story "Big Two-Hearted River" is ostensibly about nothing, as is "A Clean Well-Lighted Place", but within nothing lies the crux of the story. Novels
Benson believes that the omission Hemingway applies functions as a sort of buffer between himself as the creator of a character and the character. He explains that as an author creates a "distance" between himself and the character he "becomes more practiced, it would seem." Benson says in Hemingway's fiction the distance is necessary, and successful in early fiction such as in The Sun Also Rises, but if he as "the author does not deliberately create such distance the fiction fails," as in the later works such as Across the River and into the Trees.
Baker calls Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees a "lyric-poetical novel" in which each scene has an underlying truth presented via symbolism. According to Meyers an example of omission is that Renata, like other heroines in Hemingway's fiction, suffers a major "shock"—the murder of her father and the subsequent loss of her home—to which Hemingway alludes only briefly. Hemingway's pared down narrative forces the reader to solve connections. As Stoltzfus remarks: "Hemingway walks the reader to the bridge that he must cross alone without the narrator's help."
Hemingway believed that if context or background had been written about by another, and written about well, then it could be left out of his writing. Of The Old Man and the Sea he explains: "In writing you are limited to by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to do something else. First I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he has read something it will become part of his experience and seem actually to have happened." Paul Smith, author of Hemingway's Early Manuscript: The Theory and Practice of Omission, believes Hemingway applied the theory of omission in effort to "strengthen [the] iceberg.
Technically speaking, it is perhaps Hemingway's most conventional fiction. None of the modernist— indirection, implication, allusion, omission, unexplained juxtaposition — that Hemingway so elaborately deploys in In Our Time (1925; see separate entry) and other works are used in this parable like tale, which helps to explain why it reaches the widest audience of any Hemingway work.
Consider, for example, his use of symbolism to suggest that Santiago is a Christ-figure or, at the very least, that Santiago's suffering is analogous to Christ's suffering. After the sharks attack his marlin, Santiago cries out "Ay"; then Hemingway writes that "there is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood”

http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/viewFile/470/479

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1082796

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Friday, 11 November 2016

The Birthday Party as comedy of Menace

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Name: Zarna Bhatti
Roll no: 5
Email Id: zarnabhatti10@gmail.com
Topic name: The Birthday as comedy of Menace
Submitted by: S.B.Gardy Department of English MKBU

Introduction:

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 Birthday Party has been described by Irving Wardle and later critics as a “Comedy of Menace” and by Martin Esslin as an example of the “Theatre of the Absurd” It also includes such features as the fluidity and ambiguity of time, place and identity and the disintegration of language.
About Harold Pinter and his writing style: He has presented the characteristics of the Absurd theatre in the background of the English ethos. The essence of the European Absurd theatre 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 theatre 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. The modern stage has taken many turns the main being the Poetic theatre, the Angry theatre and the Absurd theatre.

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. Following the traditions of the Absurd theatre Pinter has debunked the excessive stress on language and logic.
Pinter’s famous play The Birthday Party shows the attempts of Stanley to evade all the connections of his past life and begin a new life. But Stanley does not succeed in this attempt and he is literally dragged away by his erstwhile partners from whom he tried to escape. Stanley loses his will-power and becomes a pathetic figure, an embodiment of the anxiety and fear felt by the individual in the modern world. (Haroldpinterand the absurd theatre)

What is Comedy of Menace? Literal meaning of menace means person or thing likely to cause serious harm. Here we deeply understand that what is the meaning of comedy of menace and how it is related with the play.
Menace (a threat or the act of threatening)
A ‘menace’ is something which threatens to cause harm, evil or injury; which doesn’t seem like a logical idea to fit with comedy.
Violence and menace are mostly below the surface of the play. Mick moves swiftly and silently and is an unpredictable character.
The playwright’s objective in mixing comedy & the threat of menace is to produce certain effects (like set up dramatic tension or make the audience think a character is a weasel because they are acting nice or funny, but planning to do something evil) or to convey certain social or political ideas to the audience. (eliteratysociety.com, 2011)
The phrase comedy of menace as a standalone description inspires both positive and negative feelings. Title “comedy of menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind because comedy is generally something that makes people laugh. The word menace implies something threatening; this phrase involves laughing at an ominous situation.
Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Compton, Nigel Dennis, N.F. Simpson and Harold Pinter.
The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle; who borrowed it from the subtitle of Compton play: The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter’s and Campton’s plays in Encore in 1958.
Irving Wardle used ‘comedy of menace’ in a review of several of Pinter’s work.
Comedy of Menace and the play:

Pinter’s comedies of menace have a rather simplistic setting he might focus on one or two powerful image and usually are set in just one room The Birthday Party is one of them.
A powerful force that isn’t specifically defined to the audience threatens characters in the play. The dramatist exploits the kind of menace as a source of comedy. Harold Pinter exploited the positions of the kind of situation in his early plays like; “The Room”, “The Birthday Party”, and “A Slight Ache” where both the character 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 search 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 s a pianist, because it is built out of pretence”.
Some plays are able to successfully mingle; drama with comedy. One specific example from The Birthday Party is a character joking around about being in a menacing situation while cleaning his gun to deal with the threat.
Pinter himself has been quoted as saying that he is never been able to write a happy play and that situation can be both true and false.
However as The Birthday Party shows it is quite possible for a playwright to create both humour and menace in the same play, and even at a same time in order to produce certain effects and to transmit ideas to the audience.
Comedy is present in The Birthday Party from the very first scene; it is a way of gently introducing the audience to the world which Pinter is trying to create the humour is quite suitable at first for example the exchange between Petey and Meg about whether Stanley is up or not plays on the words up and down.
Meg: Is Stanley up yet?
Petey: I don’t know. Is he?
Meg: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him down
Petey: Well then he can’t be up
Meg: Haven’t you seen him down?
(Conversation between Meg and Stanley)

This type of dialogue creates humour at situation. Although the repetitions in this short exchange will not make the audience burst out with laughter they can make them smile and the humour also lulls them into a sense of comfort.
Pinter’s absurdist style has been called comedy of menace, some productions of his work concentrate primarily on the menace.
Comedy of menace in relation to the dramatic content of the play:
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.
Throughout the play we are kept amused and yet throughout the play we find over selves also on the brink of terror. We feel uneasy all the time even when we are laughing or smiling with amusement. That all things or elements which we feel are the effect of comedy of menace.
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 uncertain and insecurity.
This feeling of menace establishes a strong connection between character’s predicament and audience’s personal anxieties.
The atmosphere of menace: It also created by Pinter’s ability to drop suddenly from a high comic level into deep seriousness. By this technique the audience is made aware that the comedy is only at surface layer. The sudden outbreaks of violence (verbal/physical?) in the play confirm this and leave the audience unsure of what will come next.
There are so many questions arise in mind while reading of the play but there is no certain answer of this. May be because of that Pinter’s own comment like this; “more often than not the speech only seems to be funny- the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life.”
While we are talking about atmosphere there is some kind of fear in the play but that – fear for what? – By whom? But this type of question is remaining unanswered. Just as Stanley or Meg is the main vehicle for comedy in the play; so one more question arises that is he the main vehicle for the presentation of fear? Or is any other character frightened?
Answer of this question is yes because tone of the play is tragic or fearful but fear of what? It isn’t clear here. All the characters are suffering from the fear of unknown, may be possible that characters are laugh to forget their fear; they live in a past or avoid seeing in mirror because of fear. Means some unknowingly fear is here and that is the atmosphere of menace.
(Conversation between Goldberg- McCann and Stanley represent menacing effect)

The room or house represents security from the outside world but sadly it is impossible to sustain. The menace in the form of Goldberg and McCann represents a hostile outside world, they are the exception to the rule where life is normal and pleasant outside. The general setting of the play is naturalistic and mundane, involving no menace. However on of Pinter’s greatest skill is his ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object like a toy drum, appear strange and threatening.
In the plays of Pinter the atmosphere is charged with fear and threat to the natural harmony of life. Though Pinter depends on the form of comedy than that of tragedy, this does not decrease the hidden menace against the characters who want to escape from the forces of evil. Pinter likes to show the inevitable contradicions faced by people in today’s world. The tentacles of evil forces drag the individual into the mire of corruption and nefarious activitese. Pinter’s plays have been rightly called the comedies of menace. (Haroldpinterand the absurd theatre)
Pinter can summon forth an atmosphere of menace from ordinary everyday objects and events and one way in which this is done by combining two apparently opposed moods, such as terror and amusement.
Stanley is destroyed by ‘a torrent of words’ but mingled in with the serious accusations so Birthday Party is for both freighting and funny. For example: Stanley’s behaviour during the game- funny but terrifying because the audience is aware that much more is at stakes than appears on the surface. This is one source of menace, namely the audience’s awareness that trivial actions are often concealing thoughts and events of much larger significance. It may be that the audience feels a sense of guilt at their own laughter.
However Pinter makes sure that some things like the threatening ambience is leased by the use of humour. Pinter also makes sure that menacing atmosphere is elevated at times which actually emphasize how strong this atmosphere is. Whole length of the play was filled with menacing atmosphere we would know that Stanley will lose the power struggle from the beginning. The humour also brings a certain level of normality the menacing atmosphere can increase slowly and it is again creating more suspense. Here Pinter says that he completely agree the description of the Birthday Party as a Comedy of Menace. While comedy and menace both appear separately in the play it is together that they affect the audience most.
The association two seemingly in the play it is together that one play allows the audience to realize some of Pinter’s preoccupations conquering the inadequacy of language but also its power. As well as, the fact that we can associate these two terms; finding something menacing yet humorous at the same time could also be a way for Pinter to show the paradoxical nature of human beings.
Another technique that Pinter uses to create an atmosphere of menace to cast doubt on almost everything in the play. The play nature of reality here is confused the audience no longer knows what is true or what is not true and out of this comes an atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty.
Conclusion: Thus to conclude we may say that absurdity of the play which is represents through menacing effect has its own symbolic significance. It tries to explain the human predicament in this indifferent and hostile world. Means Pinter shows us reality of life, one of the major points of view about the play is;
Meaninglessness and nothingness of human existence.
Life under constant shadow of fear and menace.
These are similarity between both the plays which are very famous in modern time; one is waiting for Godot and another Birthday Party because they both are very much related and depended on human life. In Waiting for Godot Beckett often reduced character, plot and dialogue to a minimum in an effort to highlight fundamental question of human existence. The same characteristic in Birthday Party as well.
Because it is also unpleasant truth about human existence. At the end of the play in Act-3, Petey is tongue-tied and silent his emotions and thoughts remain unexpressed.
Pinter says: “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 pretence. In our present day world everything is uncertain there is no fixed point and we are surrounded by the unknown.”
This unknown occurs in many plays, there is no kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity go together. (From his interview: Wikipedia)
Pinter’s statement also shows hostile reality of life. One more thing is that here we are shown how nothingness is important for human predicament. “Nothing” means “Something” it is the main base of the play. Pinter has delicately deployed the theatre of absurd and his idiosyncratic theatre of comedy of menace so that he could forward solutions for the dominating existential problems of man entrapped in his era. Pinter was a leader in the theatre of menace.

Work Cite: http://drashtidave1315.blogspot.in/2014/10/paper-no-09-modernist-lit.html

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