Beyond Realism: The Plays of Harold Pinter

BEYOND REALISM: THE PLAYS OF HAROLD PINTER HAROLD PINTER, whose slice of British life would seem to be cut as thick as John Osborne's or Arnold Wesker's, is surprisingly enough among the least realistic of modern English dramatists. Pinter shares with his social realist contemporaries commitments to what seem totally realistic situations, characters, and language. His dramatic situations are commonplace: a tramp discusses with two brothers the possibility of his becoming caretaker for their ramshackle flat; a young man loses his composure at his birthday party because of the presence of two men he does not know; a couple speculate about a matchseller outside their bungalow and finally invite him inside. The characters are as commonplace as the situations: unheroic people from the urban middle and lower classes. And the dialogue is a meticulously accurate transcription of ordinary speech. Of such grain have the realists of the Osborne school concocted a yeasty bread of social protest. But beneath the realistic prose of Pinter's plays lurks the spirit of a poet, transmuting the same drab material into something more like poetry than anything else for which we have a name. Poetic qualities have been ascribed to other dramatists who wrote in prose. Shaw is called a "poet" because of the almost musical orchestration of his dialogue; Synge and O'Casey, because of the natural Irish lilt and imagery in their language; Tennessee Williams, because of his pervasive use of symbolism. With these playwrights, poetry is an unexpected by-product of their themes, settings, and linguistic agility. Pinter, however, consistently draws upon two chief sources of dramatic poetry: situations for which the ordinary meanings of words are inadequate and language that conveys something other than the meanings of its words. Situations that transcend the capacity of prose language are, of course, the very meat of poetry. T. S. Eliot has said, "... the poet is occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist."l Characters in Pinter's plays invariably live on these frontiers. Unlike the true social realists, with whom he shares many surface qualities, Pinter offers no solutions to the conflicts that pull at his characters. Unemployment, poverty, prejudice, and 1 T. S. Eliot, "The Music of Poetry," On Poetry and Poets (London, 1957), p. 30. (185) 186 MODERN DRAMA September mental illness figure in the plot of The Caretaker, for example, but the fight· for social progress is no part of the drama thus generated. Acceptance of the rules of the game, not anger with them, underlies the dramatic action. Problems do not exist to be solved, as in the plays of protest; they exist to release the characters' impulses toward the "frontiers of consciousness." Here there are no solutions or resolutions, but motives that defy definition and feelings that elude classification. Martin Esslin, noting Pinter's preoccupation with these frontiers, cites a radio interview in which Pinter located his characters "at the extreme edge of their living, where they are living pretty much alone."2 The language of symbols can be the most effective mode of communication at the "edge of living." Human fears and desires, hidden and half-understood, are difficult to convey in ordinary prose. Only an image that releases the appropriate emotion approaches communication . The dramatist, naturally, has recourse to nonverbal symbols, which often produce a strikingly "poetic" effect of their own. Many plays whose language itself is prosaic achieve a "poetry of situations" merely by gestures. Nonverbal passages in Pinter's plays often reveal symbolic meanings in the midst of seemingly realistic actions. We are tempted to call such passages "poetic" because of their unique ability to evoke unspoken attitudes. In one scene of The Caretaker, Davies tries futilely to retrieve a bag containing everything he owns, while Mick and Aston snatch it from him again and again. As the three of them continue the pantomime and the bag keeps eluding Davies' grasp, his struggle becomes more than a fight to hold on to a bag. Complete frustration is the feeling evoked, and the business with the bag serves as a symbol perhaps for the impossibility of preserving intact one's individuality in a hostile world. The...