Memory, Identity and Crisis in Harold Pinter’s Old Times

Pages:215-217
Vandana (D.A.V. College Sector-10 Chandigarh)

Among the 20th century dramatists/writers influenced by Absurdism, Harold Pinter emerges as most remarkable for his experimentation in dramatic art. The common features of the theater of absurd are present in his early work, such as an absence of communication, problem of identity, pseudo-reality, cruelty, menace, and disturbing existential gnawing torment in man’s mind. Man’s confrontation with rootlessness, absurdity, the senselessness of life, devaluation of human values, beliefs, ideas and purpose, after WWI and II has been pictured in Pinter’s early works too like Birthday Party, the Dumb waiter, The Room, etc. Ruby Cohn rightly points out: “Pinter is not only