Spatial Study Of Harold Pinter’s Exploration Into Absurdity

The abnormality of Harold Pinter’s characters in the familiar daily living space is throughout his plays and attracts many scholars to interpret it from different perspectives.However,the focus of most scholars is on the characters either based on the psychological analysis,philosophical explanation,or the playwright’s experience.The present thesis sheds light on the concrete space and argues that Harold Pinter uses space as a technique to present his theme of absurdity.Under the guidance of Lefebvre’s spatial triads,Margaret R.Higonnet’s generic space,and Michel Foucault’s power space,this thesis makes a study of Pinter’s three plays from his different creation phases and demonstrates how space is used as a dramatic device by Pinter to show the theme of absurdity in his plays.According to various forms of spaces,this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter one discusses Rose’s fragmented everyday life in the enclosed room and alienated neighborhood in Pinter’s first play,The Room.Regarding Lefebvre,Rose’s attachment and fear are reasonable because the room is the only shelter for people and the only familiar place where they can identify their existence in the homogenized abstract space.Thus,Rose attaches to the tiny living room and is afraid of outside space,such as the mysterious basement,the home Riley calls her to return to,and the cold outer world,which makes her everyday life fragmented and absurd.Chapter two discusses the indoor space the couple is physically in,the outdoor landscapes they are longing for,and the confined living experience in one of Pinter’s memory play,Landscape.According to Higonnet,the traditional territorial arrangement confines the female in domestic areas and encourages the male to conquer the broad land,so Duff’s mind travels from the park to Beth’s body is to conquer territory,and Beth’s romantic vacation on the beach is to rebel against the domestic confinement.Confined by the territory arrangement,their living experience is incomplete.Chapter three studies the power arena in Pinter’s political play Mountain Language,the prison,and the tamed mountain people’s absurd living conditions.The prison unfolds the profound political purpose inbuilt in the space.From enclosure and partitioning to encoded functional sites,the techniques of regulation are inbuilt in these walls.For Foucault,the final process to regulate people is using the mind as the prison of the body;therefore,the extended social contract towards the whole society is the ultimate purpose of building the prison.Tamed by the strict mechanism in prison,the mountain people’s living condition is hopeless and meaningless.After examining different forms of space in our daily lives,this thesis concludes that Harold Pinter uses space as a dramatic device to present the sense of fragmentation,confinement,and hopelessness of his characters and show the absurd living condition of modern people.