“The Birthday Party” reflects the plight of the artist in modern society.

NAME: BHATT URVI P.

ROLL NO. : 31

STD: M.A. (SEM-3)

SUB: THE MODERNIST LITERATURE

PAPER NO. : 9

TOPIC: “The Birthday Party” reflects the plight of the artist in modern society.

SUBMITTED TO: DEPT OF ENGLISH M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

 

                                 

Harold Pinter was born in 1930, in Hackney, in a working-class neighbourhood in London’s East End, the son of a tailor. He suffered from traumatic war events. 

“The condition of being bombed has never left me,” Pinter later said. At school one of Pinter’s main intellectual interests was English literature. He was a playwright, actor, poet, theatre director and also a screen writer. A major influence on Pinter was his inspirational English teacher Joseph Brearley, who directed him in school plays and with whom he took long walks, talking about literature. At the age of twelve he started writing poetry in school. To supplement his income from acting, Pinter worked as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer, and a snow-cleaner. He also performed on TV and wrote for TV and radio. His works won many awards.

                                “I have often been asked how many plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that is what they did.”

                                        

 In 1950 Pinter started to publish poem under the name Harold Pinta. After some years in provincial reported writing for the stage. His career as a playwright began with a production of “The Room” in 1957 .he wrote a lot. Some of his works are:-

The Room (1957)                                            Tea Party (1964)

The Birthday Party (1957)                            The Homecoming (1964)

The Dumb Waiter (1957)                              The Basement (1966)

A slight Ache (1958)                                        landscape (1968)

Silence (1968)                                                   Old Times (1970) 

                     

                                                                     

“Everything is funny until the horror of the humansituation 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 my plays. There is a kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity go together.”

    Harold Pinter was working as an actor in England when he stayed briefly at a dilapidated boarding-house that would serve as his inspiration for The Birthday Party.

The Birthday Party begins in the living room of an English seaside boarding-house in the 1959s Petey, a man in his sixties, enters the living room with his newspaper, Meg, his Wife, also in her sixties, greets him and asks about the breakfast. They talk about weather and birth of a girl child whether Meg opines she would rather have a little boy than a girl. Petey told Meg that two men asked for room. Then she goes to “wake that boy”,(Stanely). Stanely, a scruffy, bespectacled, unshaven man in his pajamas, enters and flops down in his seat at the table. He eats and talks with Petey. Stanely after Petey is gone tease calling her bad wife. Meg informs him that two gentlemen were to arrive at the boarding, Stanely doesn’t like this and both shout at each other. Stanely, very quietly asks her,

                                                   “Who do you think you’re talking to?”   

                                This is the first indication that makes us doubt Stanley’s past. He tells Meg that he has got a job, is going to play piano as he once had. He describes the concert as a great success, but claims his next show was disastrous.  He says,

               “They wanted me to crawl down on my bended knees. Well I can take a tip.”

                This way with bafflement he leaves. Lulu, a young girl in her twenties arrives then. She flirts Stanely. She affectionately calls him a ‘washout’. They exit and enter Goldberg and McCann. McCann is nervous but Goldberg assures him that they were at right house. Goldberg insists. McCann is the best in his profession, and they settle into a discussion about the mysterious job they have to perform. Meg, who went for shopping now, enters.While they are talking we learn that Goldberg was interested in Stanely. He suggests that they should have an impromptu birthday party for Stanely. Meg is thrilled. She showed them their room. Stanley bombards her with questions related to the newcomers. She gives him the package that it his birthday, but Meg doesn’t listen to him. Meg asks him to play the drum. He taps a merry beat but suddenly starts banging the drums erratically. He bangs the drums harder and harder as if he was possessed. Here, the act-I ends.

                       Act-II mainly deals with the mysteries of Stanley, Goldberg and McCann. Stanley’s past is mysterious. But we learn that he used to play piano in the concerts. He might have been a very good pianist. Something went wrong with him. Owing to some unknown reasons somebody spoilt his show and he was forced upon.

                                 Act-II is set later that night. At the beginning, we see McCann tearing the newspaper in five equal strips. Stanley is started to see McCann but greets McCann. Stanley, though tried to escape could not but had to engage himself in talking. Stanley insists that they have met before but McCann denies twice. They argue and McCann savagely hits Stanley. Still they continue talking. Petey and Goldberg arrive. They all talked. We learn something about him here. Goldberg talked about his mother and his girlfriend. Goldberg asked about Stanley’s childhood but he doesn’t respond. McCann and Goldberg interrogate Stanley with a series of unnerving and unrelated questions. Through their questions we come to know Stanley’s past. They accuse him of betraying their “organization”, of being a traitor to the cloth, and of changing his name. They claim he left a girl at the altar, but also claim that he once had a wife whom he killed either by poison or by beating her to death. Stanley denies all these claims. They insist he is dead because he does not truly live. Stanley suddenly comes to life and kicked Goldberg in the stomach. Before they react Meg comes dressed for the party. The party starts. Lulu enters. They are drunk. McCann finds Stanley and ties the blindfold on him. He stumbles. McCann breaks Stanley’s glasses. Confusion ensues. Lulu screams and faints. In the dark, Stanley places him on the table but then he retreats towards kitchen. Amid confusion and chaos the Act-II ends. In Act-II, the past of Stanley is somewhat discovered, though Stanley denies behaviour of Stanley. Goldberg and McCann seem to be there with some secret plan. Stanley’s mystery here deepens. His character and past is revealed more clearly.

                            Act-III is out she sees a car parked s set the next morning. As in first Act the third one also starts with Petey sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper, Meg goes for shopping, but as she movesoutside, she I worried and asks about the car. When Petey informs her that it was Goldberg’s car she is relieved when she sees Goldberg, she asks about car but he ignores her. After Meg leaves, Peter asks Goldberg about Stanley suffered a nervous breakdown at the party. Goldberg assures Petey that they will connect Stanley with a followed name Monty, whom he considers the best doctor available. Also, Petey worried about the chaos at his house. Petey wants Stanley to stay at the boarding but Goldberg and McCann were in hurry. Both of them wanted Petey to go away from there. McCann and Goldberg argue with each other. McCann calls him by the names “Nat” and then by “Simey”. Hearing this names Goldberg reacts immediately and violently at this name, screaming –“never call me that” as he seizes McCann by the throat. Meanwhile Lulu enters. McCann leaves them. They enter into the conversation. She accuses Goldberg of using her for his perverse, sexual games. Goldberg insists their liaison was consensual, but she believed did not believe him. She is sent away by McCann and then he brings clean-shaven Stanley, who holds his broken glasses in his hands. They told him to go with them. They promise they want to care for him. To save him from a fate worse than death and to make a man out of him, they promise to gift him ear plugs, stomach pumps, and crutches while they help him skip rope. Stanley remains silent, when asked just made gurgling sound. He tried his level best to be away from the people but at last they caught. We don’t know who were Goldberg and McCann, who sent them in quest of Stanley, why Stanley lived at the boarding house if he silent, why can’t he speak while going, who are “they” that Goldberg reflects while talking to Stanley etc.

                                   Now, Goldberg gently takes Stanley’s hand and leads him towards the door. Meanwhile Petey arrived, unnoticed, and insist they leave Stanley alone with him. Here, again we are not what Petey knows about Goldberg and McCann’s mission. Whether he was aware of their secret or not, whether he knew about any past that surrounded Stanley and of course, we don’t know anything about Stanley’s plight from the reality.

                                   Petey could not stop Goldberg and McCann talking Stanley away but they suggested him to accompany them. Though he did not stop them from leaving the hose, he does shout, “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!”Petey’s boarding was empty now. He sat alone reading newspaper. Meg enters and directly asks about Stanley. Petey tied that she had lovely time in the party and insisted that she was the bell of the ball and Petey agrees with her assessment.

                                 In Act-III, Petey is the central character. At the beginning when Meg realizes that the drum has broken but does not remember how it happened, Petey consolidates her saying she could buy another one. Here, the dramatic irony is that the drum represents Stanley. As the drum is broken so is the condition of Stanley. He is mentally unstable.

                                      Again, in this act we see three breakdowns-

Seeing black car she breakdown. She remembers Stanley’s threat to have her taken away in a wheelbarrow, and worries that the car is intended for the same purpose. Actually, wheelbarrow is a device used to remove debris-from place to place. But the irony here is Stanley’s threat has come true not for her, but for himself.

                        At the end of the play, Goldberg is no more dominating person but it is McCann whom we saw disturbed in the act-I every person is reliant upon his own delusion, and hence subject to pain and difficulty when that delusion falters.

Stanley is an artist, who should not be afraid of anything, but in the play is the most frightening. Any reader could compare. Stanley’s breakdown with that of their own. When one is forced to comfort his or her past sins and delusion too forcibly, one can suffer from the same nervous breakdown.

               

              Stanley Webber is palpably Jewish name. He is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing…but once she makes the fateful mood-changing relation-“I’ve got to get things r  eady for the two gentlemen-he’s as dangerous as a cornered animal.”

“The Birthday Party appears to be a straightforward story of a former working pianist now holed up in a decrepit boarding house.”                                                by Bob Bows

                    Stanley is in his late thirties. He indulges himself in fantasies about exotic cities in which he had performed as a concert pianist. In Kafkaesque fashion, he speaks of a career that was ended by persons he refers to as “them”. Filling his landlady’s need for a lodger and a surrogate son, he is comfortably ensconced as a member of the household until his position is threatened by the arrival of two strange, surrealistic guests, Goldberg and McCann. He suggests that the two have come to cart away Meg, his landlady, in a wheelbarrow. In the climactic scene, at his birthday party, Stanley beats the drum Meg has given him as a present, the tempo savagely increasing as he marches around the room. During a game of blind man’s bluff, the lights go out. When the lights come back on, he is standing with his glasses broken over Lulu, who lies spread-eagled on a table. The next morning he appears in striped trousers, black jacket, while collar, and bowler hat, and is carted away by Goldberg and McCann to a mysterious healer, “Monty”, for treatment.

“One feels like saying that the two executioners, Goldberg and McCann, stand for all the principles of the state and social conformism. Goldberg refers to his “job” in a typically Kafka-esque official language which deprives the crimes of all sense and reality.” 

“Maybe Stanley will met his death there or maybe he will only receive a conformist brainwashing after which he is promised…many other gifts of civilization….”                                                                                            -Sinko 

                   

                                                   The play leaves many questions unanswered. Stanley is an artist who might have amused a lot but now he is spending his life in isolation. Many questions are brainstorming. For example,  

Ø Why are Goldberg and McCann anger on Stanley?

Ø Where did Stanley come from?

Ø What has Stanley done so that he fears Strangers?

Ø Why has Stanley developed sense of guilt?

Ø Why isn’t he now playing piano

Ø Where do the two men take Stanley?

                                            The mystery and ambiguity of Stanley’s character goes deeper. We may think that it presents an image of man’s fear of being driven out from his warm place of refuge on earth when Stanley is taken away from boarding house. It can be considered as a metaphor for the process of growing up, of expulsion from the cozy world of childhood.

                                We can also think that the artist (Stanley) whom the society claims back forms a comfortable, bohemian existence and who is compelled by society to conform to its own standards of conduct and behaviour.

                               Goldberg and McCann can be taken as the representatives of Stanley’s own sub-conscious mind of which he is afraid of. he is running away from his own past.

                               Lulu can be considered to be the inspiration of an artist who is seduced by the agents of society or evil forces working to curb the freedom of working to curb the freedom of speech of expression of artist.

                               Stanley is without work. His mysterious past and his feelings of menace move us. His aloofness and strange behaviour puzzles us. While playing drums, he beats savagely. He attempts to abuse Lulu physically at the partly. His behaviour with Meg is beyond comprehension. His curious fear of strangers and his behaviour before they arrived strangle us.

                             Stanley’s changed appearance towards the end of act-III, when he is wee-dressed and clean-shaven, seems to symbolise an artist’s eventual submission or surrender to society. He is an artist who had rebelled against the mode of life which society tries to impose upon its members but the pressures of society make the artist conform to the prevailing social manners and mores. Society could not tolerate the, free-thinking individualistic artist because it own stability. Society symbolised by Goldberg and McCann has destroyed the artist’s individuality. Petey’s feeble attempts the apathy and timidity to the force of dictators and totalitarians.

                               Our modern society has innumerable artists; some are painters, some writers and so on. Sometimes they don’t get the freedom where they can develop. We have many examples of such artist in our society who has to leave their own motherland and shelter elsewhere in order to preserve their art. They are force to leave as refugee in other countries to save their art. Same way Stanley might leave his place and boarded in a boarding house in order to save his life. He stopped playing piano. The reason might be plight from the society, may someone recognize and he could have to face trouble. I think the artist, Stanley tried to run away from his art but society wanted him back.