Silence in Pinter’s Silence and The Dumb Waiter

Abstract

The Silences and pauses, Harold Pinter has employed in his plays, have remarkably encapsulated his mastery of such theatrically effective techniques. It is not just a moment when characters keep silent and the audience cannot hear their utterances; it is a moment so pregnant with meanings that the reader finds it difficult to find his way to the final meaning. Silence in a Pinter play is unexpectedly never silent. When it pervades one has to think deeply of that moment. And when characters stop talking one needs to contemplate their unsaid thoughts. In his paper, I would like to make clear that my intention is to investigate the notions of fear, uncertainty, menace and death evoked when characters pause or keep silent in Pinter’s Silence and The Dumb Waiter. In other words, it is how those moments of silence mark a state of calmness on the one hand and how this state gives way to those of fear and eventually death on the other that I would like to explore and expound in the course of this analysis.