Harold Pinter | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 21 pages of analysis & critique of Harold Pinter.
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Harold Pinter | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 21 pages of analysis & critique of Harold Pinter.
This section contains 5,750 words
(approx. 20 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Ruby Cohn

SOURCE: “The World of Harold Pinter,” in The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 6, No. 3, March, 1962, pp. 55-68.

In the following essay, Cohn discusses the retributive role of villains in Pinter's plays

Each of Harold Pinter's four plays ends in the virtual annihilation of an individual. In Pinter's first play, The Room, after a blind Negro is kicked into inertness, the heroine, Rose, is suddenly stricken with blindness. In The Dumb Waiter, the curtain falls as Gus and his prospective murderer stare at each other. Stanley Webber, the hero of The Birthday Party, is taken from his refuge for “special treatment.” In The Caretaker, the final curtain falls on an old man's fragmentary (and unheeded) pleas to remain in his refuge.

As Pinter focuses more sharply on the wriggle for existence, each of his successive hero-victims seems more vulnerable than the last. Villain assaults victim in a telling and murderous...

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This section contains 5,750 words
(approx. 20 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Ruby Cohn
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Critical Essay by Ruby Cohn from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.