by Sadeep Man Tulachan

Created on: June 15, 2009   Last Updated: June 16, 2009

Life and His Works

Harold Pinter, one of the most famous English playwrights of the twentieth century was privileged the Nobel Prize in literature in December 7, 2005. After years of struggle with cancer he passed away in December 24, 2008, carving his name in the history as the most influential dramatist of his time.

He is best known for his cryptic plays. As a modern dramatist, he always gave the impression to focus on the daily clutter of the individual mind of a modern man, who is wrapped up in tension and confusion because of growing desire. So, throughout his plays, he seems to plea his readers and viewers to focus on the causes of daily tension and confusion of a modern man, indicating the lack of communication among characters by using so many pauses and silences. But, Pinter's pauses and silences still do have meanings, as Peter Raby opines that unspoken thoughts in Pinter's plays are equally important as spoken (147). He was always against the evils of the society. He also opted to go against the traditional literary drama and violated it by his creative mind postulating newness in the English theatre, which becomes his originality with the name 'Pinteresque'.

Pinter started his career as a playwright when he first published The Room (1957). It was followed by his first full-length play The Birthday Party (1957), and was produced in 1958. Though Pinter wrote The Dumbwaiter along with The Room in 1957, it was produced in 1960, with his second full-length play The Caretaker (1960), which made his reputation as a major modern talent and another practitioner of the 'The Theatre of the Absurd' after Samuel Beckett, an Irish dramatist. It was followed by A Slight Ache (1961), The Collection (1962), The Dwarfs (1963), The Lover (1963) and The Homecoming (1965). He wrote all together twenty-nine plays and made a full stop to involve his remaining life in politics.

Most of the Pinter's works are influenced by the bitter experiences of his early life. So, Pinter's works are somehow related to his life. After the World War Second, the time was highly frustrating; sense of loss, separation, violence and sexual frustration whipped the human condition. Like many of Pinter's plays, The Birthday Party was also inspired by an experience from his life. Ryan Mckittrick's "Preparing for the Party" provides useful information about Pinter's bitter experiences of life that influenced most of his works. As in the play "The Homecoming," we can find the same qualities

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