Two Loves of Comfort and Despair: The Love Triangle in Harold Pinter

Abstract

<p>Using the poem "Afternoon", an early sketch, Dialogue for Three and a late play, Monologue, as a basis for discussion, this thesis attempts to locate the essential core relationship that lies at the heart, not only of the above three works, but the whole range of Pinter's work. The core relationship or pattern upon which Pinter's drama is arranged is revealed as a love triangle. Once we have isolated the triangle it is possible to identify the various corners of the triangle using both the symbolic vocabulary Pinter provides in the dichotomy between light and dark, between blindness and potence and the psychoanalytic terms, ego and id, which correspond exactly to the corners of light and dark, respectively.</p> <p>The Pinter protagonist is typically confronted with two psychosexual alternatives, one in the guise of a guardian and the other in the guise of a thief. The terms "guardian" and "thief" are taken from the poem "Afternoon" and they serve admirably as nominatives for the extremes of polarization in the bifurcated world of the plays. The plays are accounts of the various means by which those who confront these two disturbing and equally withering alternatives struggle to consolidate their identities.</p> <p>"Afternoon", Dialogue for Three and Monologue will provide the platform for a study that will make repeated reference to all but a few minor plays in the pinter canon. The thesis of the love triangle which emerges from these three little-discussed works is equally relevant to all of Pinter's work and accounts for the most important motifs of his plays.</p>