I think this is a brilliant observation that Pinter has made about society. Sometimes we can become so fixated on a goal that we end up never achieving it at all. The way I see it, when we become obsessed with something, we also become obsessed with the fact that we don't have it, which only strays us further from the goal.

This is really interesting. When someone lies to me, it's not so much the content of the lie that upsets me but the fact they were lying in the first place.

It's interesting that we live in a society obsessed with guilt and not necessarily justice. To not feel guilty is something we associate with psychopathy, so whenever I don't feel particularly remorseful for something that is socially considered "bad", I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. Perhaps this is why Stanley eventually conforms to what Goldberg and McCann label him as (a guilty person!!)? I'm not sure, but I think we could explore this.

I like this a lot. It's not about the plot or the characters, but rather a combination of the randomness of them both to contribute to a larger commentary on human nature and our existence. Everything in the play is pretty random at a first glance, but the more we discuss the play, the more I realize that everything is actually pretty deliberately placed by Pinter. Whenever something absurd happens, we never end up discussing what just happened, but rather what the meaning of it is. Somehow Pinter wrote a play that is sort of a "cover" for an underlying story that can only be understood through our own respective "visceral response" to the play.

Again, places emphasis on the "real-ness" of the absurdity of the play. Stanley's fear of the outside and eventual "conformity" to society does not need to be represented by some sort of fantastical image or supernatural thing, it's just real life.

This reminds me of what Max was saying about how we would expect allegories to be much more "fantastical" or whatnot. What "The Birthday Party" does instead is blends this existentialism with a sense of realism (as the article says), which makes it even more... absurd?