The Homecoming Study Guide

Harold Pinter was a British playwright best known for his association with the Theatre of the Absurd, though he also saw a successful career as a director and actor. Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in London to working-class Jewish parents. His father was a tailor and his mother was a housewife. Pinter studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art starting in 1948 but dropped out to pursue an acting career. He spent the next several years touring Ireland and England with various repertory companies. Pinter began his career as a playwright in the mid-1950s with the one-act drama The Room, which was first produced in 1957. His first full-length play, The Birthday Party, was first produced in 1958 and left initial audiences perplexed due to its absurdist themes and experimental features. Pinter’s second full-length play, The Caretaker, was first produced in 1960. His next major play, The Homecoming, was first produced in 1965. These major plays helped solidify Pinter’s reputation, both as a key player in the Theatre of the Absurd and as a notable artist in his own right. In addition to his plays, Pinter also wrote for radio, television, and film, including the screenplay for the film adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) and for the film adaptation of one of his own plays, Betrayal (1983). Regarded as one of the most important British playwrights of the 20th century, Pinter has received numerous accolades for his work, including the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. Pinter died on December 24, 2008 at age 78 of esophageal cancer. He was survived by his second wife and numerous step-children and step-grandchildren.

Harold Pinter’s stage works  have been associated with the Theatre of the Absurd, a style of drama that emerged in the wake of World War II, primarily in Europe. They largely focused on existential themes, examining questions of what it means to be human in the absence of effective communication, a lack of purpose, or both. To achieve their characteristic absurdist tone, these plays tended to blend elements of comedy with tragedy, placing characters in irrational or impossible conflicts with no clear solutions. The term “Theatre of the Absurd” was coined by critic Martin Esslin in his 1960 book “The Theatre of the Absurd,” which focuses on the works of notable absurdist playwrights. Esslin derived the phrase from the French existential philosopher Albert Camus’s essay “Myth of Sisyphus,” in which Camus characterizes the human condition as absurd in its fundamental lack of inherent meaning. With this definition of absurdity in mind, the absurdist plays that came out of the 1950s may be seen as playwrights’ response to the pervasive sense of disillusionment that overtook Europe as a whole in the aftermath of World War II, as people were left to grapple with great social change amid the overwhelming loss of life, the destruction of cities, and the shattering of once-revered institutions and values that resulted from the devastating war.

Critics have associated Harold Pinter with two literary movements that emerged in the 20th century: Theatre of the Absurd and comedy of menace. Theatre of the Absurd refers to a style of plays that emerged in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. These plays, most of which were written in the late 1950s, borrow from genre conventions of absurdist fiction and often involve existentialist themes. Critics tend to tie many of Pinter’s works to this genre, including The Homecoming. Other playwrights associated with the genre include Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot; Endgame) Eugène Ionesco (Rhinoceros), and Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). “Comedy of menace” is a play on “comedy of manners,” a genre of realistic, satirical comedies from the Restoration period. Drama critic Irving Wardle used the term in his 1958 review of the plays of Pinter and British dramatist David Campton. Wardle borrowed the phrase from the subtitle of Campton’s play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace. As a genre, comedies of menace tend to blend elements of comedy and tragedy, building tension by maintaining a tonal atmosphere of dread even as the plot employs comedic or absurd elements. Comedies of menace tend to have simple plots, often focusing on characters as they contend with frightening but indefinable forces of danger or existential threats. In addition to Campell’s play from which the term originates, Pinter’s The Homecoming is a prime example of this genre. Many of his other major plays, including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, and The Dumb Waiter, are also considered comedies of menace.