Harold Pinter’s A Night Out is a significant but rarely produced piece of drama. Therefore, there is very little criticism to support or contradict my argument. The reason why I chose to do my essay on this particular play is to open doors for academic research and to try and make it an equal to its sister plays. I will raise questions and topics to prove the play is worth the readers’ time and effort and that A Night Out is a sharp piece of political theatre. Although at first glance it is a simple enough story, a straightforward tale of the nasty consequences of motherly love when it is pushed to the limit, on deeper inspection, a more far reaching and complex analysis of the abuse of power can be observed. The play offers a variety of themes, including: interpersonal power struggles, failed attempts at communication, antagonistic relationships, the threat of impending or past violence, the struggle for survival or identity, domination and submission, politics, lies and verbal, physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The prevailing theme in the play is the abuse of power: powerful parties oppressing weaker ones, and the results of the oppressed party looking for a vent in someone even weaker than themselves.

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Thesis (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (Dept. of English) / Simon Fraser University.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2008. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Le présent travail s’intéresse à une sélection de pièces de Harold Pinter comprises entre Landscape (1968) et Ashes to Ashes (1996) et généralement regroupées par la critique sous le terme « pièces de la mémoire ». Si ces œuvres sont souvent évoquées en raison de leur préoccupation pour le passé et de leur qualité intime et méditative, une approche sous l’angle de la spectralité révèle en quoi elles dépassent une présentation du souvenir afin de mettre en lumière l’impact du passé sur le présent et, de manière plus générale, l’impact des vies sur d’autres vies. Grâce aux diverses manifestations spectrales, l’image du personnage pinterien solitaire et fonctionnant de manière autonome laisse place à une conception du sujet prenant en compte les rapports de dépendance et d’interdépendance le reliant à autrui.Dans une exploration de la dépendance par son négatif, une première partie examine les formes de ruptures instaurées par la spectralité, observant en quoi les fantômes s’inscrivent à première vue comme radicalement autres, à la frontière entre le visible et l’invisible, le passé et le présent, le représentable et l’irreprésentable. Toutefois, une seconde partie analyse en quoi la spectralité ne peut en fait se comprendre que comme profondément liée : ce qui paraissait étranger se révèle familier, l’absence se lit comme deuil et les obstacles à la représentation fonctionnent comme indices de la nature orectique du sujet. Une troisième partie analyse la vulnérabilité révélée au-delà de cette dépendance essentielle : en soulignant la passivité du corps et les échecs de la connaissance, la spectralité ne cesse de mettre en relief les limites du sujet. Pourtant, cette vulnérabilité n’est pas perçue comme paralysante mais au contraire comme le fondement possible d’une éthique dans laquelle le sujet prendrait en charge une responsabilité envers l’autre auquel il est inévitablement lié. / This study focuses on a selection of Harold Pinter’s plays, from Landscape (1968) to Ashes to Ashes (1996), commonly referred to by critics as “memory plays”. Their emphasis on the past and their meditative dimension is often commented on, but tackling these plays through the notion of spectrality reveals how they go beyond a representation of memory to highlight the impact of the past on the present as well as the impact of lives on other lives. The image of the solitary and independent Pinterian character gives way to the vision of a subject taking into account his/her dependence and interdependence and the links uniting him/her to others.The first part explores dependence through its opposite, rupture, looking at how ghosts may seem radically other, in between the visible and the invisible, past and present, representation and the failure of representation. Nevertheless, the second part suggests that spectrality can actually only be understood as necessarily linked: what seemed foreign is revealed as familiar, absence is perceived as loss and the obstacles to representation become clues hinting at the orectic nature of the individual. The third part focuses on the vulnerability revealed beneath dependence: by highlighting the limits of embodiment as well as of rational knowledge, spectrality repeatedly emphasizes the limitations of the subject. However, this vulnerability lays the foundation for an ethics in which the subject would accept to bear responsibility for the other to whom s/he is inevitably related.

ETSU Patchwork Players will perform a staged reading of Other Places – 3 Plays by Harold Pinter in Studio 205 of Campus Center Building at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. The reading is under the direction of Theatre & Dance faculty member Melissa Shafer and advising of Department of Literature & Language Chair Dr. Katherine Weiss, acting as dramaturg.

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Este estudo tem como objetivo central propor uma leitura diferente para a peça The Homecoming, escrita por Harold Pinter. Desde sua estreia nos palcos ingleses, em 1965, a fortuna crítica da obra tende a partir de dois diferentes vieses para analisá-la: por um lado, parte da crítica enxerga a peça através das características do Teatro do Absurdo termo estabelecido por Martin Esslin para um grupo de peças do período pós-guerra europeu em seu livro The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) ; por outro, um grupo de críticos tenta definir a peça através dos conceitos da psicanálise freudiana enfocando o Complexo de Édipo. Nossa proposta de leitura para a peça contrapõe o texto teatral a seu momento sócio-histórico e cultural, tentando relacioná-los e indicar de que modo estes se influenciam mutuamente. Uma breve contextualização geral das obras de Harold Pinter e das características que a tornaram tão célebre, assim como um breve panorama do teatro inglês nas décadas de 1950 e 1960 iniciam nosso estudo para que a importância de Harold Pinter seja compreendida. A partir daí, o texto de The Homecoming será analisado tendo como ponto de partida a teorização de Peter Szondi (2001) acerca do drama burguês, do Teatro do Absurdo e do contraste com o momento sócio-histórico da Inglaterra na década de 1960. Por fim, um levantamento acerca da primeira montagem de The Homecoming no Brasil, traduzida como A Volta ao Lar em 1968, e de seu processo de censura durante a Ditadura Militar será fornecido, retomando a importância da obra para o teatro brasileiro e sua história. / This study proposes a different interpretation of Harold Pinters play, The Homecoming. It premiered in 1965 and most of the critical works on it usually tend to examine the play through two different biases: on one hand, some critics use the theory established by Martin Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) where he evaluates a group of post-war European plays to analyze the play; on the other, different critics apply concepts from Freudian psychoanalysis especially the ones related to the called Oedipus complex to comprehend the play. Our proposed interpretation analyzes the dramatic text considering its socio-historical and cultural moment, relating such fields and identifying how they influence one another. A brief overview on Harold Pinters works and their celebrated characteristics, as well as a panorama on British drama in the 1950s and 1960s decades will open our study, so that Harold Pinters significance can be understood. Later, The Homecoming will be analyzed through the ideas of Peter Szondi (2001) on bourgeois drama, the concept of the Theatre of the Absurd and the relations between the text and the British socio-historical moment during the 1960s. Finally, a survey on the first Brazilian production of The Homecoming, translated as A Volta ao Lar in 1968, and on its censorship by Brazilian military dictatorship will be presented in order to stress the importance of the play to Brazilian theater\'s history.

This essay examines how the meaning of an absurd play may be affected by how the reader understands the text. To address this problem I have turned to Wolfgang Isers theory of reception. Primarily I have taken on that the creation of meaning comes about when the reader fills in blanks in the text. I have also used Martin Esslins work on the theater of the absurd. I have mainly studied his research on Harold Pinter. Based on these two theories I have suggested a interpretation model that focuses on the interaction between reader and text. The interpretation model contains how the reader analyses blanks through observing the wandering view alternatively understanding the implied reader. The interpretation model also discusses how the reader can fill in blanks by using the relationship between character and environment, the final junction, turning points and uncertainties. I tested this interpretation model on Harold Pinters play A kind of Alaska. In my ideation of the play I realized it was about the loneliness of ageing and changing. I used these results to evaluate the usefulness of the interpretation model. / Denna uppsats undersöker hur läsarens uppfattning av en absurdistisk pjäs påverkar dess betydelse. För att angripa det här problemet har jag dels vänt mig till Wolfgang Isers receptions teori. Jag har främst tagit fasta på hur meningskapande sker när läsaren fyller i luckor i texten. Jag har även vänt mig till Martin Esslins forskning om den absurdistiska teatern. Där har jag främst studerat hans undersökning av Harold Pinters dramatik. Utifrån dess två teoretiska ingångar la jag fram ett förslag till en tolkningsmodell som utgår från läsarens interaktion med texten. Tolkningsmodellen innehåller bland annat hur man kan analysera luckor utifrån läsarens rörliga perspektiv alternativt utifrån en underförstådd läsare. Tolkningsmodellen tar också upp hur läsaren kan fylla i luckor genom att använda sig av karaktärens relation till rummet, knutpunkter, vändpunkter och osäkerheter. Jag har testat tolkningsmodellen på Harold Pinters pjäs A kind of Alaska. I min ideation av pjäsen kom jag fram till att den handlade om ensamheten i åldrande och förändring. Jag använde resultatet av analysen för att utvärdera tolkningsmodellens användbarhet.

Este estudo tem como objetivo central propor uma leitura diferente para a peça The Homecoming, escrita por Harold Pinter. Desde sua estreia nos palcos ingleses, em 1965, a fortuna crítica da obra tende a partir de dois diferentes vieses para analisá-la: por um lado, parte da crítica enxerga a peça através das características do Teatro do Absurdo termo estabelecido por Martin Esslin para um grupo de peças do período pós-guerra europeu em seu livro The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) ; por outro, um grupo de críticos tenta definir a peça através dos conceitos da psicanálise freudiana enfocando o Complexo de Édipo. Nossa proposta de leitura para a peça contrapõe o texto teatral a seu momento sócio-histórico e cultural, tentando relacioná-los e indicar de que modo estes se influenciam mutuamente. Uma breve contextualização geral das obras de Harold Pinter e das características que a tornaram tão célebre, assim como um breve panorama do teatro inglês nas décadas de 1950 e 1960 iniciam nosso estudo para que a importância de Harold Pinter seja compreendida. A partir daí, o texto de The Homecoming será analisado tendo como ponto de partida a teorização de Peter Szondi (2001) acerca do drama burguês, do Teatro do Absurdo e do contraste com o momento sócio-histórico da Inglaterra na década de 1960. Por fim, um levantamento acerca da primeira montagem de The Homecoming no Brasil, traduzida como A Volta ao Lar em 1968, e de seu processo de censura durante a Ditadura Militar será fornecido, retomando a importância da obra para o teatro brasileiro e sua história. / This study proposes a different interpretation of Harold Pinters play, The Homecoming. It premiered in 1965 and most of the critical works on it usually tend to examine the play through two different biases: on one hand, some critics use the theory established by Martin Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) where he evaluates a group of post-war European plays to analyze the play; on the other, different critics apply concepts from Freudian psychoanalysis especially the ones related to the called Oedipus complex to comprehend the play. Our proposed interpretation analyzes the dramatic text considering its socio-historical and cultural moment, relating such fields and identifying how they influence one another. A brief overview on Harold Pinters works and their celebrated characteristics, as well as a panorama on British drama in the 1950s and 1960s decades will open our study, so that Harold Pinters significance can be understood. Later, The Homecoming will be analyzed through the ideas of Peter Szondi (2001) on bourgeois drama, the concept of the Theatre of the Absurd and the relations between the text and the British socio-historical moment during the 1960s. Finally, a survey on the first Brazilian production of The Homecoming, translated as A Volta ao Lar in 1968, and on its censorship by Brazilian military dictatorship will be presented in order to stress the importance of the play to Brazilian theater\'s history.