The Studies Of The "Silence" In The Plays Of Harold Pinter

This dissertation attempts to probe the issue of "silence" in Harold Pinter’s plays. Centering on this issue with the methods of discourse analysis, space theory and existentialism and the internal clue, which is "discourse-space-time", the dissertation concludes the skill of silence in Pinter’s plays on the basis of the formers, and discuss the meanings of silence in different contexts. The dissertation also reveals the ultimate meaning of silence, that the revealing of the life itself, anti-signifying the life and exceeding of the human finitude. This dissertation consists of three parts: introduction, text, and conclusion. The text consists of four chapters.The introduction shows a brief introduce about the values of the thesis and the present situation of this area, concludes the contexts and the point of view in Pinter plays’study.The first chapter shows the skill of silence has a high status in Pinter’s plays and defines the silence in this dissertation. The skill of silence is the essence of Pinter’s, it both has performance skills and emotional experience, which can expound in double ways. The dissertation also points out the silence can be found in the discourse, the stage and time of drama. The distinguishing features of Pintersque silence can be concluded in dialogic, initiative and incomplete.The second chapter shows the types and meanings of the "silence of discourse" The "silence of discourse" consists of two parts:voice and pause. The pause has three branches as pause in oneself speaking, pause in dialog, and noiseless men. They show the menace and noncooperation even breaking the silence. The voice consists of ambiguity, repetition, contradiction, and soliloquize. They show the subjects can’t touch the truth though the utterance, and lose themselves in the symbols of the utterance, with the failure of figure their history. In the meanwhile, this dissertation shows a fact in ontology:many symbols pile up the voice, the things-in-itself can only be found when the symbols dispel. The pause and silence the way of thing-in-itself speaking, it is eternal but never can be told. The third chapter shows the types and meanings of the "silence of space", which consists of visible backroom and invisible backroom. The former means the backroom on stage, and the later means the backroom in heart. In the visible backroom, Pinter shows the individuality in the room break with the outside, losing the cognition of existence. The invisible backroom in heart can be entered from the visible one. The invisible room cut off the communication between the individuality and others, making the individuality incomplete. The use of backroom creates a new Defamiliarization with the Suspension of Philosophy, and shows process of various beings who try to figure themselves, revealing that the essence of the silence of space is fragmentation.The forth chapter shows the types and meanings of the "silence of time", which consists of static time and circle time. The static time means the individuality’s time which for him or for others is not synchronization. The circle time means the time does not move on, and the subject can only exist by his memory. Both of the silence time denies the memory, and also denies the being existence indirectly. Through the introspection and forget, time internalizes temporalize, to be a necessity way to shape the subject. And, the individuality should recognize the human finitude, beyond the circle of time, re-structure himself in the side of life-and-death.The dissertation concludes the issues that Pintersque silence shows the meaning of the life in a lost way. Human beings should recognize the finitude can beyond the symbols’world. In the process of anti-signifying, the silence measure the value of the life, and give the life a chance to show the subject’s existence.