AO3 Flashcards
Oliver - Goldberg and McCann
“avuncular Goldberg and unfrocked priest McCann”
Oliver - Stanley’s attempted rape & the blackout
“Whilst he may begin the game a pathetic figure of fun, the sudden plunge into darkness robs everyone of sight, affording Stanley a fleeting chance to become the aggressor.”
Oliver - breaking of Stanley’s glasses and puncturing of the drum
“Meg’s blindfolding of Stanley, the breaking of his glasses and puncturing of the drum can all be read as attempts to emasculate or even symbolically castrate him.”
Oliver - Stanley’s deterioration
“his defiant spirit seems to have been crushed by the forces of social conformity.”
Esslin - context of absurdism
“Unshakable basic assumptions of the former ages have been swept away … they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions.”
Ioneso on absurdism
“Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose … Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless”
Esslin - the purpose of the Theatre of the Absurd
“T.O.A seeks to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach”
Cohn - Act III
“Act III is a virtual post mortem”
Cohn - symbol of the van
“Act III is a virtual post mortem”
Cohn - the seaside boarding house
“they provide a temporary if tawdry refuge for Stanley”
Cohn - Meg
“Meg mother mistress”
Brown - Pinter’s ambiguity
“Pinter seems to play a game with his audience … Like his characters, he seems to evade, to obscure intentionally, to blaze false trails”
Brown - Pinter frustrating the audience
“Pinter’s two-pronged tactic of awakening the audience’s desire for verification and repeatedly disappointing this desire.”
Brown - tradition
“dead weight of custom and lethargy”
Alexander - Meg’s relationship with Stanley
“maternal sexuality in which her frustrations find expression is clearly dangerously unstable”
Alexander - Goldberg and McCann
“sentimental seduction and mindless violence, are the source of their power”
Alexander - Petey
“Petey, the only character without fantasies of the past or future”
Kennedy - circular structure
“‘ordinary’ conversational opening and ending are a frame for, a connivance at the ‘extraordinary’ events in the house.”
Kennedy - realism eases into the growing absurdism
“the gradual stylization prepares the way for the fully stylized ritual inquisition later in the play”
Kennedy - Goldberg’s speeches
“cumulative effect of Goldberg’s speeches is to parody a type of culture-patter;”
Kennedy - Goldberg’s nostalgia
“The farcical paean about the joys of boyhood”
Kennedy - Pinter and ritual
“Pinter’s attraction to the patterns and rhythms of ritual”
Kennedy - interrogation
“The pressure is induced through rhythmic intensification, through the paralyzing spell of a disconnected language”
Dukore - Goldberg’s speeches
“His speeches … overflow with the cliches of middleclass conformity”
