SOURCE: “Radical Mimesis: The ‘Pinter Problem’ Revisited,” in Comparative Drama, Vol. 26, No. 3, Fall, 1992, pp. 218-36.

In the following essay, Saltz examines the difference between concept and meaning in the language of Pinter's plays.

When Goldberg grills Stanley in The Birthday Party about whether “the number 849” is “possible or necessary,”¹ or Gus challenges Ben in The Dumbwaiter about whether one should say “light the kettle” instead of “light the gas” (I, 141), or Lenny battles with Ruth in The Homecoming over whether he will “relieve” her of her water glass (III, 49), the objects of the characters' discourse—a number, a figure of speech, a glass—hardly seem to warrant the intense interest the characters invest in them. One might try to explain the objects' significance by positing details of the characters' biographies that Pinter fails to make explicit. Perhaps Lenny's mother used to beat him severely for leaving dirty glasses...