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A Self Lost in the Discourse: A Critique of The Birthday Party

 200.00

Pages:170-172
Ginni Rani (Department of English and Foreign Languages, M.D.U. Rohtak)

The emergence of avant-garde forms, after traumatic experiences of two world wars was absolutely in keeping with the vagaries of these volatile times. To name a few, The Theater of the Absurd, the popping up of Lost Generation, Harlem renaissance movement, influx of theoretically charged conjectures, unique concision of language and lexical experimentation, newly found interest in psychological intricacies and (following Bergsonion ideas) fixation with the concepts of time and space, were some of the novelties that incorporated the literature of the time. All the Meta narratives like Marxism and Enlightenment values proved futile for humanity and a great skepticism wrapped all the literary genres. This skepticism resonated in variance: in angst, in antagonism and sometimes in lost sense of self in such an absurd world. Although the word ‘Absurd’ was first used by Albert Camus in his famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus , and element of absurdity can be traced back in ancient Greek literature too, but ‘Absurdity’ as a term flourished in fragmented and embittered post world war era. Martin Esslin coined this phrase in 1961 and categorized Harold Pinter in ‘The Theater of the Absurd’ along with Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Adamov. A winner of Nobel Prize (2005), Harold Pinter, a prominent British playwright, screenwriter, actor and director of post war era is considered a ‘teaser’ for his ambiguous, puzzling and mysterious plays. In a bleak, disrupted and skeptic society, the dreamlike characters of Pinter’s plays depict predicament of inscrutable and inexplicable existence with their simultaneous endeavors to uphold their individuality by rejecting conformity. Their frantic and collapsed psyches reveal their forlorn odyssey of self discovery. This paper focuses at unmasking the existential dilemma of all the characters of The Birthday Party (1957) who are lost in the post war political, social, religious and moral bankruptcy. In case of Pinter’s play, where an individual’s self is entangled in the authoritarian world and is not provided with a definite identity, this quest becomes all the more significant.

Description

Pages:170-172
Ginni Rani (Department of English and Foreign Languages, M.D.U. Rohtak)