Communicating torture. The dramatic language of Harold Pinter

Abstract

The starting point of this article is a discrepancy in opinion between Harold Pinter and his critics. Whereas the critics are unanimous in their opinion that the essence of Pinter's plays is “failure of communication”, the author himself disagrees. By a discussion of two plays, this article argues that contrary to the critics' belief, characters in Pinter's plays are experts in communication.

The first of these plays is The Birthday Party (1958), a play which has often been labelled as absurd drama, the main characteristic of which is failure of communication. The second play is One for the Road (1984), which belongs to Pinter's political drama. A major element in both plays is a scene in which an innocent victim is interrogated by a cruel torturer.

Analysis of the dialogues between interrogator and victim in both plays demonstrates that what the critics have labelled as failure of communication is in fact lack of semantic meaning. Although the words of the interrogators do not “mean” anything, they do succeed in communicating their message, i.e. by using verbal torture they better their victims into submission.

Pinter's characters demonstrate par excellence that dramatic meaning is an equally effective means of communication, if not more so, as semantic meaning.