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Harold Pinter's Theatre of Power: Studying Space as a Motif for Authority and Identity in The Birthday Party, One for a Road and Mountain Language

Sina Tavassoli

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 27, Issue 1, March 2019

Keywords: Approval, authority, control, identity, pinter, space, theatre of power

Published on: 25 Mar 2019

The major motif in Pinter's drama is the desire for power, coupled with the achievement of dominance. Pinter attacks the policies of oppressive regimes practicing violence and torture, and his political dramas concentrate on the struggle between the individual and the authoritative power. Pinter's The Birthday Party (1957) examines the significance of power and identity in spaces of self and power relations. In One for the Road (1980) and Mountain Language (1988), Pinter deals with incarceration and torture, using the theatrical space of prison to highlight and examine the narratives of authoritative control and violation of human rights. Space as a motif in Pinter's plays, serves as a site for discourse and aims to mark the interaction between power and identity. In this paper, I will attempt to examine how Pinter uses the idea of space and to what extent space can be read and decoded as a site for struggle for power and identity. My aim is to show that how an ordinary physical space of a room become a site for recreation of new spaces for exercise of power and maintaining identity. However, I aim to delve into these spaces of conflict, exploitation and subjugation showing the significance of power and identity. This paper, therefore, concludes that Pinter's theatre of power constitutes a polyphony of political rhetoric within the spaces, all competing for approval or control.

ISSN 0128-7702

e-ISSN 2231-8534

Article ID

JSSH-2314-2017

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