It's funny. It seems like Pinter is using the elements of live drama, such as the set, to continue the theme of entrapment and isolation talked about in the article: Stanley is trapped in this house, as is the audience. The set remains the same throughout, and we never leave the house, unlike both Macbeth and Death of a Salesman.

This reminds me of that Ray Bradbury story, 'There Will Come Soft Rains.' It's basically about an automated house (in the future) that's going through all of its daily routines; however, something catches on fire, and the house starts to burn down, but the house continues going through its motions, and reads the poem 'There Will Come Soft Rains' before burning down completely. Similarly, Meg is stuck in a burning house, but is intent on going through all of her routines as if nothing has happened. Might this be a commentary on the nature of conservatism? Of not embracing change? For isn't every revolution, whether it be social or political or environmental, a new kind of chaos that eventually becomes the norm, paving the way for more revolutions, more sea changes, and more chaos?

I don't know how I feel about this analysis. For a lot of the article, the play is being treated like an actual play with actual themes: oh, this is about guilt, moral corruption and this and that and whatever. The analysis reminds me of something to do with Kafka's The Trial, about a man being incarcerated for a crime that they're not even disclosing to him. But Kafka was trying to make a point about guilt there. I don't reckon that Pinter's doing the same. I believe that Pinter's making a point about absurdity, about the lack of meaning even in a play, and he doesn't have much regard for other themes. It calls to mind this (mildly relevant) review I read about Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "I see what Joyce is doing; he is fucking around with words and having a blast, but I don’t want any part of it." See, I don't think we can analyse The Birthday Party as we can other plays, just like one can't analyse Joyce as one can other novels.

I really love this idea. It kind of sounds like what Camus tried to do with The Stranger, but Pinter is taking a different tack. Instead of showing us a strange, unfeeling man confronted by a very mundane setting, Pinter is placing a normal man in the most extraordinary setting, a setting that could not exist in the real world. This article seems to be saying that Pinter is making the environment of the play, supported by the zany dialogue, the plot holes, and the inconsistencies in characterisation, to really show us the absurdity of a meaningless universe, rather than having us try to sympathise with a character who makes the realisation that, 'oh, everything is meaningless.' It's like Inception: Pinter is trying to plant that realisation of meaningless into our own heads.

On the other hand, I really like some pieces of art that eschew plot and work as mood pieces, like many of Wong Kar-Wai's films, or Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. It's all about the feeling of the audience, as the article says, and at the end of the day, I firmly believe that an audience will recall the feeling during a play, book, or film much more strongly than what occurs during the plot. And this might be contrary to what Bea wrote, when she said above that she didn't think the audience would have that strong an emotional response. Maybe it's not emotional, but something deeper...like a lingering feeling, a sour taste in your mouth, or a lightness of spirit.

So I suppose he's likening the torture methods of Goldberg and McCann with the kind of torture and waterboarding in Guantanamo.

Hmmm! Like we theorised in class...

Interesting--reminds me of our class discussion, with Annika saying Stanley's more annoyed than terrified, and most other people saying he was terrified. But how does he represent defiance? He's a broken character by the end. What does he do to defy conformity?

I think this is key to the strangeness of The Birthday Party: it initially looks familiar. We have three acts, we have these hints of mystery and suspense, which, according to the article, were popular genres at the time. Maybe it's a bit like the Uncanny Valley effect: we see something that we should recognise as familiar, but there's just something a little bit off about it that we can't identify. Perhaps it was part of Pinter's goal to venture outside the box while staying in the box, if you catch my drift.

This is like what we were discussing in class--rational answers were demanded from works of art by the public, and in the vast majority of cases, they still are today. So I wonder why modern audiences are more responsive and welcoming to plays like The Birthday Party, even though we seek rationality most of the time. Is it because we've become more open to these new ideas? Or has our society, in some senses, become more accustomed to disorder and mania?