실존적 일탈과 사회적 한계의 연극화: 핀터(Harold Pinter) 초기 작품『생일파티』(The Birthday Party) 와『귀향』(The Homecoming)을 중심으로

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine existential anxiety and deviations in Harold Pinter’s two early plays, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, through the Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism. People were told what to do as well as how to react to social restrictions such as moral norms, social roles or classes that their society had made; even worse, people lived according to them without thinking whether it was right or wrong. After people experienced the confusion during the two world wars, however, they started to be aware that their behaviors were under social restrictions. In society people were assigned responsibilities by their social roles that society decided before they determined what roles they chose or wanted. That is, during the war people had to become soldiers or members of a certain country regardless of their own choices. According to their social roles, they were treated by others. Ironically, others were treated by ‘them’ in the same way. This meant that all of them mutually determined the identity of each other according to social roles; what is more, they could predict what each other did. After the world wars, nothing has changed. Society assigns people social roles such as mother, father, sister, brother, and so on, which constitute strict social norms; furthermore, these roles restrict both their freedoms and their own behaviors. But it means that they not only restrict their conducts but also confine their own emotions, needless to say, their actions, despite the fact that, according to Sartre’s words, people’s emotions are created by their behaviors. In his early plays Pinter expresses the existential anxiety of people who have experienced limitations of their actions in the relationships between society (or others) and them. According to Sartre, essence precedes existence, and for Pinter this essence means social restrictions such as social roles or moral norms. That is because Pinter himself experienced social force when he was young; he was once forced to be a solider right after the Second World War. When he resisted it, he was about to go to jail. This experience made him recognize the restrictions of the society. Before long he began writing plays based on his own experience, as many critics mention. In his early time, he witnessed social restrictions on individuals; however, as time went by, his interest moved on to politics as well as civil conflicts. Therefore, his early plays, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, are related to social restrictions, such as social roles and moral norms. In The Birthday Party, Pinter deals with social restrictions by using the superficial relationship between people both inside and outside place, the disconnection of the language, and violence. In The Homecoming, he reveals social restrictions hidden in the human mind through social roles, particularly, in the relationships of the family; furthermore, he shows characters in The Homecoming experiencing inner conflicts and suppression because of the moral norms of family rather than other restraints. Thus, Pinter focuses on social restrictions in his two early plays, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, to show people in reality experience both superficial and internal restraints as well as contradictory emotion because of these social restrictions.