The Birthday Party
List of Possible Questions
1. Drama is something conceived specifically for performance in a theatre, in front of an
audience. This in turn suggests the importance of movement, gesture,costume,
lighting, scenery and props. Discuss how Pinter uses the above dramatic elements
such as setting, props and gestures
Answer:
Setting: Dining room-This is a place where meals are consumed and family is forced to
come together in conversation.The kitchen hatch symbolizes division in family
communication where a physical barrier prevents face to face communication.The
centralized table and chairs on stage provides a symbolic representation of how words alone
may savage a person into compliance as the table and chairs are used to confine and
imprison a person while two others verbally savage Stanley.
Setting: Seaside Town-Pinter deliberately sets his play in a house in a seaside town as if
to emphasise the dilapidated mood of a tired old seaside town where nothing much seems
to happen and then suddenly a lodger disappears into the night after two strangers come
into the seaside town.The seaside town acts a convenient tool for strangers to appear and
whisk away people as a seaside town has no fixed community except for some
individuals.
Movement:Petey comes in with a paper. The paper signifies information which
governments may use to twist and manipulate citizens into compliance. Papers have been
used as a tool of misinformation and manipulation by governments for years; thus Pinter’s
distrusts the written word especially if it is written by so-called authorities who profuse to
the public that they are experts in their fields.Pinter uses the newspaper as a selfreflective tool. He shows his audience that they have to make judgments and not expect
clear, clever answers to all their questions even in the form of so called communicative
tools like the newspaper. His drama does not have neat endings and explanations like
newspapers and the written word. He expects his audience to find their own answers.
1. Explain the conflict between the individual and his ideas or values, the individual and
his environment or the individual and other individuals.
Answer
Conflict between individual and his ideas or
values
Individuals value independence but feel they
are powerless against greater forces
Individuals generally value their
independence except for the following
circumstances:
-Individuals feel they are powerless against
the government
Reasons for the conflict
Petey’s values derives from the belief that
ordinary individuals are powerless against
forces greater than themselves, such as the
inability of going against the government. He
is unable to change even when his is in
obvious conflict. This is seen in the scene
where Goldberg tells Petey scarily “Why
don’t you come with us…” and Petey
(broken) can only ineffectually say “Don’t let
them tell you what to do Stan”
Conflict between individual and environment
Reasons for this conflict:
Women are powerless against the male
chauvinist environment of the 1950s
Meg’s role as nurturer vs her need to feel
womanly and attractive.
This is emphasized through her frequent
enquries on how nice her food is but it is
clear that she resents this role as seen in her
prodding Stanley to validate her as an
attractive woman
Conflict between individuals and other
individuals
Dominance vs Subjugation
Individuals have power over other individuals
due to age, gender and manipulative
behavior.
This is seen in Goldberg’s dominance over
Lulu. He makes her sit on his lap and he
goes into her room in the middle of the night.
He then quietens her by suggesting that she
is a whore as seen in the lines “You have
profaned the soil…”
Male desire to hold on to power as they feel
afraid of women’s inborn power to create life.
Stanley puts down Meg’s mothering because
he is afraid of her power over him as
surrogate mother and creator of life.
Male individuals have power over females on
the basis of gender and its suggestion that
women are inherently evil as religious
dogmas have it that women profane the soil
by their mere presence.
Mccann takes on the role of a priest and
assumes the dominance of religious
authority over the younger and more
vulnberable Lulu.
2. Drama has evolved over the centuries. Greek drama deals exclusively with myths
and legends. Shakespeare makes use of magic and the supernatural. Beckett
(modern dramatist) has characters living wholly in dustbins or buried up to their waist
in earth. Given this kind of liberties, how do dramatists maintain a sense of
realism?They resort to psychological realism where it is the thoughts, emotions,
desires, needs and fears-the inner life of human beings-that the dramatist wants to
be realistic about..
Explain where Pinter lets go of surface realism and gets us to examine psychological
realism.
Answer
Surface realism disappears and
psychological realism takes its place.
Reasons for this:
1. On the surface the play takes place in
a room. However this room becomes
a place of imprisonment.
Psychologically the dining room
transforms itself into a place for
interrogation.
-Room depicts imprisonment
2. On the surface Goldberg and Mccann
are typical visitors to a seaside town,
taking part in a birthday celebration
for Stanley. Psychologically, both the
visitors have fluid occupations and
variously take on the role of
seducer/priest/music hall players etc
to question and threaten Stanley
about his worth as an individual.
-The visitors who do not have fixed identities
threaten and keep Stanley imbalanced with
their various roles.
3. On the surface, the games played
during the birthday party are mere
party games such as Blindman’s Buff.
However, the symbolic use of the
games creates a sense of terror and
menace to the party atmosphere and
brings out truths about the various
characters in the play.
-The idea of using a length of cloth to close
one’s eyes is dramatically and
psychologically significant. The Blindman’s
Buff pictorially depicts torture and
interrogative victims. Closing of one’s eyes
plunges one into darkness and fear. The
subject hears various voices coming out of
nowhere and loses his sense of position;
creating fear and horror in the mind of the
-Room confines individual for ready
interrogation and the chairs are used to cage
Stanley or violate his physical space to
dominate him.
-Visitors use Birthday Party to question
Stanley’s birth and his worth/value to society.
They question his worth as an individual and
seem to suggest that Stanley would be better
off dead than living a pointless and rebellious
existence. The psychological fear of
birthdays are used to stunning effect by
Pinter to question our worth as social
creatures or individuals in our own right.
subject.
4. On the surface, the music hall
routine during the party seems funny
and part of the party atmosphere.
MC-You look anaemic
G-Rheumetic
M-Myopic
G-Epileptic
However the music-hall words are
infused with symbolic weight.
Anaemic suggests the almost
vampiric feeding off Stanley and
other vulnerable people. Myopic
suggests that the vulnerable do are
willfully blind to the seemingly clever
and funny duo making up clever
phrases and yet threatening Stanley
with the very same funny phrases.
-The surface funniness makes us the
audience complicit in the torture of Stanley.
We laugh at this funny routine just like the
other characters in the drama laugh. This socalled funny routine is a way for the two
interrogators to get into the mind of Stanley
and into the lives of the other characters like
Lulu and then going on to destroy them. As
we unknowingly laugh with the blind
characters, we too are accomplices in the
torture of Stanley.
5. Pinter’s plays are variations on the subjects of :Dominance vs Subjugation, Control
vs Losing Control and Victor vs Victim. These are all models of power structures.
Provide examples from The Birthday Party on all of the above.
Answer
Dominance vs Subjugation
-Characters are dominant on the following basis-age, gender and occupation
-McCann takes on the role of assistant to Goldberg as he is younger than Goldberg.
Assistant here takes on a less authoritative function.
-Lulu and Meg are both submissive to the men in the play. This submission is due to
religious dogma that women are profane and due to the idea that age somehow diminishes
the terrible powers that women have over men as mothers and creators. The motherly Meg
who attempts to change the power structure is put in her place by Stanley who calls her
‘succulent old washbag”
Control vs losing control
-Characters control through words and actions-Meg tries to control Stanley by tickling him
and ‘’mothering’’ him. She loses her control over Stanley as soon as he labels her ‘’old ‘’
-Characters are shown to lose control by the metaphorical losing of glasses or being
blindfolded.
-Stanley tries to control the situation with Mccann and Goldberg by accusing them of fraud
but they turn the table on him by blindfolding him and then taking away his glasses and not
letting him see clearly.
-Characters lose control against powerful institutions like religion and the government. -Lulu
tries to control Goldberg by accusing him of rape/ molest and yet he turns the table on her by
accusing her of being a whore and shutting her up when Mccann asks her to confess and
kneel as if he is a priest in the presence of a whore.
Victim-Victor
-The irony of seeing Goldberg as victim comes in the scene where he was saved by his own
assistant Mccann. Lulu confronts Goldberg about coming to her room at night but Mccann
steps into the breach by victimizing Lulu and painting her as a whore. The victim Goldberg
suddenly becomes victor as he joins his assistant in tormenting Lulu.
6.
In The Birthday Party, the growing atmosphere of menace and the destruction of
Stanley’s personality is conveyed by riddles, children’s games, music-hall cross-talk
routines. Provide examples and explain how these contribute to the theme of
dominance and victimisation
Menace and destruction of Stanley conveyed
through:
Riddles
G to S-is the number 846 possible or necessary?
S-Neither
G-Wrong. Is the number 946 possible or
necessary?
S-Both
G-Wrong. It is necessary but not possible.
G-Wrong! It’s only necessarily necessary! We
admit possibility only after we grant necessity.
2nd Riddle
M-What about Albigensenist heresy?(This
leads to a Christian crusade against socalled infidels and was a subject of the
Spanish Inquisition)
3rd Riddle
G-Why did the chicken cross the road?
S-He wanted to-He wanted to…
G-Why id the chicken cross the road?
S-He wanted
M-He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know which
came first?
But the riddle that G asked was not “which
came first; the chicken or the egg’’
-Idea of miscommunication. Not answering
questions because it is wrongly put or
questioners quickly change the question and
change the agenda to suit their own purpose.
Contributions to theme
7. Discuss Pinter's dramatisation of menace in The Birthday Party
8. How far can words alone create menace and fear in the play, The Birthday Party?
9. Discuss how language is used to intimidate and terrorise the individual in The
Birthday Party
Points to help you answer the above questions
Language Devices
Their functions
the rhythms of colloquial speech
“Why do you pick your nose?”
repetitions of colloquial speech
S-What succulent?
M-you should not say it to a married woman
seeming submissive agreement to her
demanding empty speeches.
M-Are they nice
P-very nice
- an interrupted monologue through the
partial disconnection this entails ("Petey: I
don"t think you know her. / Meg: What"s her
name? / Petey: Lady Mary Splatt. / Meg: I
don"t know her.") Pinter has skilfully
captured exactly the dialogue of two elderly
people talking, but not listening.
Petey who controls information in such a way
as to manage his wife as he sees fit to do:
the almost complete absence of concrete
reference points: nothing truly tangible,
physically or mentally, is under discussion.
all he can do is ask for clarifications and
explanations, automatically feeding
interrogatives back to Goldberg having been
reduced to a infantile state of
uncomprehending bewilderment
loquacious extravagance with which Pinter
imbues many of his characters
The more common is that of Goldberg in The
Birthday Party, dubbed by Pinter in his 1962
speech to the National Student Drama
Festival "a torrent of language".
One way of looking at speech is to say
that it is a constant stratagem to cover
nakedness.
Regardless of the context in which these
monologues take place, the universal lack of
the pronoun 'you' in them creates their
internalised, confessional tone.
Goldberg and McCann allude to what they
perceive Stanley's failings to be, both
sexually and financially, to break him down
through the dramatic principle underlying the
process –
In The Birthday each victim is reduced to a
verbally nonsensical state.
With five pauses in his last speech, Stanley
recognises the total futility of verbal
communication against Goldberg’s resolve.
He is left without any means of expressing
himself,
Goldberg: Well, Stanny boy, what do you
say, eh?
They watch. He concentrates. His head
lowers, his chin draws onto his chest, he
crouches.
Stanley: Ug-gughh ... uh-gughhh. ...
McCann: What's your opinion, sir?
Stanley: Caaahhh... caaahhh... .
McCann: Mr Webber! What's your opinion?
Stanleys body shudders, relaxes, his head
drops, he becomes still again, stooped.
Goldberg: Still the same old Stan. Come with
us. Come on, boy.
Checklist of possible questions for The Birthday Party
Thematic Questions
Setting
1. The real key to The Birthday Party's survival capacity: it is set in a seaside boarding-house
and opens the door to terrible happenings.” How far do you agree with this reading of The
Birthday Party?
2. In what ways and how effectively does Pinter manage to jolt his audience ‘from their zone of
comfort through the manipulation of setting.
Power /state/authority/dominance
3. How effectively does Pinter “ruthlessly criticise social institutions” in The Birthday
Party?/Dominance/State
4. How effectively does Pinter present individual characters in the play as ‘victims of forces
greater than themselves’?
5. Discuss Pinter’s dramatisation of the relationship between language and power in The
Birthday Party
Women
6. How far do you agree that Meg is always the victim of other characters’ aggression?
7. What, in your view is the significance of the women characters in The Birthday Party?
History and Memory
8. How effectively does Pinter examine memory and history in The Birthday Party?
Language Questions
9. Pinter’s plays focus on characters who deliberately evade communication. In what ways and
how effectively does Pinter present this deliberate evasion of communication?
10. Discuss how effectively Pinter dramatises characters’ intolerable wrestling with words and
meaning in The Birthday Party
11. Discuss Pinter’s dramatisation of the relationship between language and power in The
Birthday Party
Characterisation Questions
12. By what means and how effectively does Pinter get his audience to ‘invest in his
characters in The Birthday Party?
13. How far do you agree that Meg is always the victim of other characters’ aggression?
Dramatisation Questions
14. What is surprising about The Birthday Party is that, even if it leaves much
unexplained, it still boasts familiar landmarks : it has a traditional three-act structure.
It is also full of mystery and suspense. Discuss Pinter’s use of familiar dramatic
landmarks in The Birthday Party
15. By what means and how effectively does Pinter merge the comic with the tragic?
16. To what extent do you see Stanley as being a victim of circumstances beyond his
own control?
17. How effectively does Pinter use comedy to heighten terror in The Birthday Party?
Context Questions
18. With close attention to language and tone, discuss the effectiveness of the passage
as a dramatic ending to the play.
19. Write a critical appreciation of the following passage, highlighting the ways in which
Pinter creates tension and mystery at this point of the text.
20. Write a critical appreciation of the following passage, relating it particularly to the
dramatisation of dominance and subjugation here and elsewhere in the text.