Tension In Harold Pinter's Plays

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) has been recognized as the most brilliant English dramatist since George Bernard Shaw. With almost 50 years of productive writing, he has gained the reputation accompanied by fierce controversy. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. At the news some people are encouraged as to say he saves the reputation of NP but some people think it absurd, funny, or even disgusting.Like these extreme comments, his works are also full of distinct opposite, contradictory and complementary elements or forces—tension, in which two extreme poles coexist, collide and mix. Tension of stillness and dynamic, certainties and uncertainties, joy and grief are remarkable in his drama but seldom researched systematically. The thesis will elaborate these three kinds of tension in detail and illustrate them by close reading of masterpieces of his early drama The Room and later drama Moonlight and explore the charm of his drama briefly in three chapters respectively.Chapter one focuses on tension of stillness and dynamic. The thesis initially points out Pinter's theory of silence is the heritage and development of previous masters like Maurice Maeterlinck's theory about stillness and dynamic and argues further that still pause and silence can indicate true intension when no word is spoken while noisy, dynamic, endless speech may be a smokescreen to hide true intension.Chapter two is devoted to the analysis of tension between certainties and uncertainties. Firstly Pinter's tape-recorded everyday dialogue lead to ambiguity in that exact meaning can't always be discerned arising from irrelevancy, soliloquy, silence and pause, sentences of incoherence. Readers are thus attracted to explore the intension of his plays. Secondly, elusiveness of the past memory of real people is another element in presenting or leading to enigmatic, mysterious property—the mixture of uncertainty and certainty. The characters even cannot know exactly their origin and lodging in their recall. Lastly, his real setting—a confined room is intangible in that security in the room is violated by menace from dark world outside and strange intruders. Chapter three focuses on tension between joy and grief. Faced with the enigmatic, external world difficult to hold, characters indulge themselves in a self constructed ideal world, badly in search of a safe and comfortable territory or emotional harbor to escape threat from outside or loneliness of the real world. The hero's boasting the past honorable life is to hide realistic adversity while the heroine's excessive praising and treasuring the cosy room over and again is to confirm her only shelter in the bleak world. In the end they are resigned absurdly. Pinter's drama world is absurd but thematically serious in which the contrast between reality and ideal is remarkably tremendous.Tensions included in his plays explain in part why his plays are attractive. Tension improves Pinter's artistic appeal and highlight prominent serious social problems like apprehension, loneliness, love alienated which contemporary people generally face, and encourage readers to explore pathogenic origins. From the perspective of tension, this thesis is hoped to provide some reference for better and more comprehensive understanding and study of his two plays. It is also hoped that settlement of these plights highlighted by tension can draw more attention and find ways to live better.