A Deconstructive Study On Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) is one of the most distinguished British dramatists. His play The Homecoming was published in 1965, which was one of his "memory plays." Scholars apply various critical theories to interpret The Homecoming, such as Psychoanalytic theory, Foucault’s Discourse Power theory, Feminism, and Postmodernism. However, there is a vacancy on the study of The Homecoming from the perspective of deconstruction theory. With the increasing attention to the research of deconstruction, binary opposition, differance and deconstmctive reading strategies have become the new focus on the study of literature in recent years. Through revealing the living and psychological state of female in the dominance of male world, the writer attempts to analyze this play from the perspective of deconstruction and aims to adopt a new perspective to explore the deconstruction characteristics in Pinter’s play, which provides a new angle and thought for the study of The Homecoming.This thesis adopts three chapters to interpret The Homecoming from the perspective of deconstruction. Chapter one starts from the structure of "home", focusing on the techniques of the subversion of binary opposition in The Homecoming to further reveal Pinter’s deconstruction toward the traditional home. The thought of Deconstruction is not simply to subvert the inferior one into the superior one, but to overthrow the hierarchy order until such levels are no longer established. Chapter two mainly concentrates on the differance of home and analyzes the uncertainty of "home" in the level of language meaning from the aspects of the role play, the character’s identity, the open ending respectively. That is to say that the "home" reconstructs and forms into the new language meaning in the process of differance and self-deconstruction. Chapter three applies the "Rhizome" theory by Deleu framework to demonstrate the dialectic relationship of the homecoming of the female character in this play that homecoming is home-out, and home-out is homecoming.To sum up, although Pinter’s The Homecoming deconstructs the structure of "home", it does not demolish the relationship of "home". On the contrary, The Homecoming is to differance the meaning of "home". The meaning and the relationship of "home" demonstrate the state of mutually interrelated and complemented and overthrow the logocentrism of "home" in western traditional metaphysics.