Show/Hide Menu
Hide/Show Apps
Logout
Türkçe
Türkçe
Search
Search
Login
Login
OpenMETU
OpenMETU
About
About
Open Science Policy
Open Science Policy
Open Access Guideline
Open Access Guideline
Postgraduate Thesis Guideline
Postgraduate Thesis Guideline
Communities & Collections
Communities & Collections
Help
Help
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Guides
Guides
Thesis submission
Thesis submission
MS without thesis term project submission
MS without thesis term project submission
Publication submission with DOI
Publication submission with DOI
Publication submission
Publication submission
Supporting Information
Supporting Information
General Information
General Information
Copyright, Embargo and License
Copyright, Embargo and License
Contact us
Contact us
The Kafkaesque theme of menace in Harold Pinter’s plays
Download
index.pdf
Date
2008
Author
Toprak, Elif
Metadata
Show full item record
Item Usage Stats
433
views
137
downloads
Cite This
Harold Pinter is deeply intrigued by Franz Kafka’s fiction. Both writers’ works are imbued with ambiguity or mystery, and the feelings of disintegration, evasiveness, and domination. The atmosphere of menace and terror permeate their works. Kafka’s fiction is characterized by the existence of an invisible guilt, a prevailing sense of ambivalence and the impossibility to obtain knowledge from the omnipotent sources. The mainspring of menace in Pinter is usually the outside forces, which are latent and invisible. In Pinter’s violent dramatic world, the individuals are subjected to an unreasonable treatment of torture, imprisonment and dehumanization. His recurrent theme of torture is in fact traceable to Kafka’s themes of punishment and execution. The characters can find comfort neither in their physical surroundings nor in an understanding relationship with others, and finally they are driven into a state of disintegration of self-image. Man’s predicament is reflected in a layered manner, embarking on his relationship with the outside world, and then moving towards his inner anguish about the self. This study focuses on the common aspects of the two literary figures in terms of the concept of menace. The sense of menace is reflected in certain human feelings like fear, insecurity and hopelessness. Menace may appear in a number of ways including physical, psychological and mental ways. However, the characters, in both Kafka’s and Pinter’s works, make use of some defense mechanisms to cope with menace. Evasiveness and inaction are efficient in situations where the dominant character exerts his power by means of the information obtained through questioning the victim. Pinter’s characters also remain silent to protect themselves from the torture and violence exerted by the mechanism. The characters also question the system to gain insight to its true nature. Lastly, the individuals seek relief in self-delusion and denial of reality as the reality itself is essentially ruthless. All these coping strategies, however, prove fruitless in the end, and both Kafka’s and Pinter’s characters become a victim of unspecified menace.
Subject Keywords
Teacher training.
URI
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12609509/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18065
Collections
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis
Suggestions
OpenMETU
Core
A Sartrean reading of John Fowles’s the collector and the french lieuteant’s woman
Karsli, Zehra; Korkut Naykı, Nil; Department of English Literature (2019)
This thesis is an attempt to explore how John Fowles’s protagonists in his two novels The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman experience Sartrean existentialism and their striving for freedom and authenticity. This study aims at the portrayal of these characters as inauthentic according to the themes and concepts of Sartrean existentialism along with Fowles’s view of the acclaimed ideology. The study purposes to draw the similarities and differences between Sartrean and Fowlesian understanding of fr...
A Hauntological Reading of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca
Korkut Naykı, Nil (2021-06-01)
This essay focuses on the way the main characters in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca (1938) cope with the haunting influence of the past and attempts to read their struggle through the theoretical approach developed by Jacques Derrida in his Specters of Marx (1993). This approach, termed “hauntology” by Derrida himself, revolves around the notion of the “specter” haunting the present and emphasizes the need to find new ways of responding to it, especially because of the existing ontological failure to do ...
An analysis of gender issues in the lost girl and the plumed serpent by D.H. Lawrence
Akgün, Ela; Çileli, Fatma Meral; Department of English Literature (2005)
This thesis analyzes the ways how David Herbert Lawrence advocates sexual politics in his novels The Lost Girl and The Plumed Serpent. The thesis argues that although D.H. Lawrence portrays modern women̕s search for identity in The Lost Girl and The Plumed Serpent, his attitude is that of a very conventional man who advertises his male fantasies through female characters; and the gender role that he finally assigns to women is unquestioning submissiveness to male authority. The power relations between sexes...
An Analysis of Julian Barnes' England, England & Kazuo Ishiguro's Never let me go in the light of Jean Baudrillard's simulacra and simulation
Kara, Emre; Öztabak Avcı, Elif; Department of English Literature (2019)
This thesis examines the novels England, England by Julian Barnes and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro from a theoretical background informed by the ideas proposed by Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation. The aim of the study is to compare these two novels thematically and examine the similarities and differences in the ways that they utilize, question and discuss the notion of simulation. Through this comparison, the study aims to contribute to current scholarship by thematically bringing closer t...
Edward Albee's drama under the influence of Samuel Beckett
Küçük, Hale; Norman, Ünal; Department of English Literature (2008)
Edward Albee is influenced by the Absurd Drama of Samuel Beckett whose works involve existential concerns. Albee follows Beckett’s traces in the dramatization of uncertainty, alienation and the question of freedom. Albee’s characters do not have fixed identities, and they suffer from their identity problems. The notion of Other enhances this uncertainty. The ambiguity of existence, whether they really are or not, presents another problem for these characters. Their lives are based on illusions, and the line...
Citation Formats
IEEE
ACM
APA
CHICAGO
MLA
BibTeX
E. Toprak, “The Kafkaesque theme of menace in Harold Pinter’s plays,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2008.