SOURCE: “Gameplaying: Conventional and Narrative Games in Pinter's The Birthday Party,” in Massachusetts Studies in English, Vol. 11, Nos. 1 & 2, Summer, 1992, pp. 72-83.

In the following essay, Bogumil looks at the role and meaning of games in The Birthday Party.

The sense of post-war malaise and uncertainty is evoked through the use of gameplaying in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. Historically, this play was composed in 1957 during the “Diminishing Age” in English Literature (1940-1965), a time when this beleaguered nation was desperately struggling to re-establish itself, to re-assert its sense of nations and tradition after post war carnage. In the play, the characters are bewildered, and the plot seems incidental. The characters, particularly Stanley, struggle with the irrationality of experience while Meg, Petey, Goldberg, McCann and Lulu initiate games as a way to counteract or hold at bay their sense of detachment in a seemingly meaningless universe. Such games, whether...