A Study Of Pinteresque Unreal Reality From The "Alienation Effect" Perspective

The paradox of unreal reality is rooted in Harold Pinter's artistic personality. So far, there have been interpretations of it from four different angles, that is, the "Theatre of the Absurd", the symbolist, the psychoanalytic and the political, each of which provides distinct insight into the playwright's tour de force. But only under the title of the Absurdist has Pinter been related with Brecht, which undoubtedly loses sight of the playwright's versatility. Therefore, the present dissertation intends to fill the gap of the existing researches, to articulate Pinter's dramaturgy and literary features within the theoretical framework of "alienation effect" between the play and the audience, and thus to extend and enhance the appreciation of Pinter's plays.The dissertation employs four of Brechtian key concepts, i.e. illusion, street scene, entertainment and gestus to examine correspondingly the setting, the character, the plot and the language in Pinter's plays and to analyze how they engender respectively the alienation effect.The first chapter dwells upon the setting which includes the Pinteresque room, the props inside it and the world outside the room. The setting is easily recognizable and thus leads the audience into an illusion of real-life. Yet, such an illusion of real-life is soon shattered. The room bears so much ambiguity and perplexity that the audience is constantly alienated from the play. The props either fail in their functions, or exist in the characters'hallucination, or turn out to be a mysterious threat. The outside world, resulting from the characters'own mind, whose imperfection, based upon Brecht's assumption, is the root cause of chaotic reality, has its verity unestablished and its properties varying from one character's viewpoint to another's.It is argued in the second chapter that the playwright has played a role of "dispassionate observer" as in the notorious Brechtian "street scene", keeping a "respectful" as well as "legitimate" distance from his characters, the "driver or victim" in the street scene. The technique of stream of consciousness is brought into play, mostly in the form of monologues, to exhibit the multi-self in characters'inner landscape. The character relationship structure follows a triangular pattern that is characterized by the paradox of unstable stability. The audience, alienated from the play due to the three pairs of relationships concerning the character, has assumed a role further beyond that of the "bystander" in the street scene.The third chapter takes a close look at how Pinter's plot fulfills the essential function of theatre, that is, entertainment. Different from Brecht, Pinter seldom resorts to the staging techniques to arrange the plot. But similar to Brecht, Pinter maintains in his plot a non-Aristotelian quality to achieve the alienation effect. Two entertaining elements, humor and suspense, are brought to bear. Instead of the purification of the audience's emotions as prescribed by Aristotle, Pinter gives the rein to its intellect. What the audience experiences is an instructional entertainment, an epiphany based upon the whole plot, with a penetrating insight into the existential, domestic, temporal and political reality.The speculation of the final chapter is that Pinter's dramatic language possesses the "gestic" quality for it conveys much of the characters'attitude toward others as well as themselves. The seemingly colloquial speeches possess a poetic quality reflected mainly in two aspects:rhythm and image. The alienation effect is achieved when the rhythm is positioned at unexpected places in an unnatural way and images formed and displayed are at variance with the fact of the matter. And body language also has the capability to express the characters'frame of mind. Hidden underneath verbal speeches and physical movements are the characters'genuine motives and feelings, i.e. the subtext, which encourages the audience to move from the outward to the inward.The goal of alienation effect is by no means to hinder the audience'understanding of the world either on or off the stage. Quite on the contrary, Pinter, like Brecht, through alienation effect, urges his audience to participate, to ponder and to penetrate. With the intellect taking effect, the audience would acquire a clearer vision of the ultimate reality of humanity.