Identity In Narratives

This thesis is going to analyze Harold Pinter’s three early plays:The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and The Room, interpreting main characters’identity on basis of Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity. The purpose is to interpret the plays without considering their absurdity or "room play" features. Most characters in the three plays show up with mysterious past and the past reflected from their narratives consciously or unconsciously. In narrative identity, narrating capability and content are equally important for a character to configure identity. But personal recounting is based on memories, which might be ideal and fictional, so the attestation process needs supports from the outside world. The thesis begins with intruders’coming and the conflicts in the triad formed by intruders and other characters. Therefore, characters with the capable self go through different degrees of anxieties and trust crisis, and find their identity in personal as well as interactive narratives. They finally go back to what perplexes them most:the past self. According to Paul Ricoeur, every person’s life can be recounted in temporal continuity. Therefore, characters’recounting connects their past and present life, representing the identity that has long haunted them.