Skip to main content

The Birthday Party.

The Birthday Party- Harold Pinter.



Plot Overview-

Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' tells the story of several characters at an English seaside boarding house. Seemingly innocent situations spiral out of control as the characters' monotonous lives descend into chaos. Here's how it goes.
Act I: Visitors to the Boarding House

The Birthday Party opens in the living room of a boarding house on the English seaside. Petey, a man in his 60s and one of the owners of the boarding house, sits reading his paper and eating breakfast. His wife, Meg, helps him run the house. Their life is boring, and their conversations are bland. Petey tells Meg that two men are coming to stay at the house.

Stanley, the house's only current guest, comes down for a breakfast of cornflakes at Meg's insistence. Meg flirts with him after Petey leaves for work. He seems annoyed by her advances. When Meg tells Stanley that the house is getting some new guests, he gets tense and weird. He has, after all, been the only boarder since he got there. Stanley's response is our indication that mystery surrounds him. He begins to hint as his departure, but eventually relents. The tension is broken when Lulu, a young woman, arrives with a package.

Meg leaves to go shopping, and after a brief exchange with Lulu, Stanley goes upstairs. The two men, Goldberg and McCann, arrive at the house, talking to each other about some mysterious job. Meg arrives and welcomes them, flirting and telling them that today is Stanley's birthday. Stanley reenters the room and interrogates the men about who they are and when they intend to leave. He's very upset when he hears Goldberg's name, and he denies that it's his birthday. To lighten the mood, Meg gives him the package that Lulu brought. It contains a toy drum, which he plays intensely as the curtain closes.
Act II: Party Time

Act II begins with McCann tearing a newspaper into strips, which is interesting, since reading it is part of Petey's morning routine. Stanley enters, and they start talking. Stanley believes they've met before, but McCann denies it. Petey arrives with Goldberg, then McCann and Petey leave the house.
When McCann gets back, he and Goldberg corner Stanley. They interrogate him and begin to verbally abuse him, asking questions about a woman he left at the altar and a wife he murdered by poison or beating. As their questions become more outlandish, they even ask, 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' They refer to an 'organization' he betrayed and say he's a walking corpse because he refuses to live. Stanley kicks Goldberg to stop the harassment, and the scene is interrupted by Meg coming downstairs to start Stanley's birthday party.
The party starts off innocently enough, but the characters start to couple up with each other: Lulu with Goldberg, Meg with McCann, and Stanley alone. The couples' conversations turn sexual, and Meg suggests they play Blind Man's Bluff. Stanley is eventually 'it,' and McCann gets him to step into the drum. Chaos ensues, with Stanley nearly strangling Meg. The lights go out, and when McCann finds a flashlight, Lulu is on the table with her legs spread. Stanley is standing over her, and he starts laughing hysterically.
Act III: The Next Morning
Act III is a parallel to Act I. It opens with Petey downstairs, reading his newspaper. Meg enters, frantic that she doesn't have any cornflakes to serve the guests. She tells Petey she has a headache and that the drum is destroyed. Petey tells her it's okay and she should let Stanley sleep. When she begins her usual chatter, Petey distracts her and she leaves. Goldberg comes downstairs and explains that Stanley had a nervous breakdown and must be taken away.
Petey leaves and McCann enters. He and Goldberg have a tense moment that descends into absurdity. Lulu arrives and yells at Goldberg for taking advantage of her. She leaves and McCann retrieves Stanley from upstairs. McCann and Goldberg mirror their interrogation of Stanley from earlier, this time promising him a better life with them. Stanley is unable to speak. They take him away, and Petey allows them to go. He yells after them, 'Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!'
The play closes on Meg and Petey talking. He lies to her, telling her that Stanley is still asleep, and she tells him what a nice time she had at the party. She was the life of the party, she says. He agrees, and the curtain closes.

 Reference-


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Old Stone Mansion.

Old Stone Mansion – Mahesh Elkunchwar. Plot Overview- The play, Wada Chirebandi, begins on the fifth day after the demise of Tatyaji (Venkatesh) the patriarch of the Deshpande family of Dharangaon. Dharangaon is a small hamlet in the interiors of   Maharashtra where the influences of commercial Bombay has slowly spread its tentacles. The play begins with Aai, the widow of Tatyaji, awaiting the arrival of her second son Sudhir and his wife Anjali from Bombay, to attend the 13th day rites. In the meantime, the eldest son Bhaskar and his wife, Vahini, has taken over the reins of the family by taking charge of the two objects of command, the keys and the ancestral jewellery box. Been a traditional Brahmin family, Bhaskar intends to conduct the rituals in full traditional fanfare even when the family has fallen in difficult lines.   Bhaskar expects Sudhir to bear the expenses, as his image of someone from a big city is that of been financially well off, whil...

The Dance of the Eunuchs.

The Dance of the Eunuchs - Kamala Das. Summary- Included in the collection Summer in Calcutta(1965), 'Dance of the Eunuchs' is one of the most remarkable poems of Kamala Das. This is another autobiographical poem written in confessional style that symbolically portrays the poetess's personal melancholy in her own life.  'Dance of the Eunuchs' vividly conjures up the atmosphere of a hot, tortured, corrupt, sterile and barren world through vivid symbols and images. The dance of the eunuchs whose joyless life reflects the poet‘s fractured personality is a noticeable piece of autobiographical poetry. Kamala Das has vividly visualized the world of vacant ecstasy and sterility through numerous functional images and symbols in her poetry. In fact Eunuchs try to eke out a livelihood by dancing. Their dancing is mechanical and painful. The conditions and the climate are forbidding. The spectators are merciless. Even God seems to add their woes. The eunuchs...

The Mystic Drum.

The Mystic Drum - Gabriel Okara. About Poet. Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist   Okara’s   Poetry  is based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are neatly balanced against each other. The need to  reconcile   the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. Summary. The drum in African poetry, generally stands for the spiritual pulse of traditional African life. The poet asserts that first, as the drum beat inside him, fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on the land to the rhythm of the drum. But standing behind the tree, there stood an outsider who smiled with an air of indifference at the richness of their culture. However, the drum still continued to beat rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the dead to dance and sing with their shadows. The ancestral gl...