The use of memory in Harold Pinter's Landscape, Silence, Night, Old Times, and No Man's Land

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2007

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Ayken, Edibe Serra

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Harold Pinter’s concern with memory and the verification of the past have been ever-present since his early writings. Although these themes have been explored by Pinter in his early works, they have become dominant in his interim plays, which have been named by critics as his memory plays. In these plays, the characters evoke the past to such an extent that the past virtually co-exists with and influences the present. The characters’ recollections of the past may be real, or they may be partially or even completely altered during the process of remembering. However, since verification of the past is impossible, whether these memories are real or confabulated remains unknown. The motives underlying these characters’ utilization of memories deserves investigation. This paper ventures to examine the reasons why the characters in the memory plays exploit recollections of the past. It focuses on the characters’ use of memory with the aim of asserting and perpetuating identity and existence, of exerting dominance over others, and of coping with their dissatisfaction with the present. To this end, the characters in Pinter’s Landscape, Silence, Night, Old Times, and No Man’s Land will be studied respectively.

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Modern European Languages.

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12608491/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/16882

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

E. S. Ayken, “The use of memory in Harold Pinter’s Landscape, Silence, Night, Old Times, and No Man’s Land,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2007.