The Bases of Postmodernism in Harold Pinter’s play “The Homecoming”

Abstract

Abstract The modern world, in which we live, is regarded as the period of postmodernism. In this period it is hard to perceive the reality in a right way. So are Harold Pinter’s plays. Mostly they are somewhere between reality and absurdity. Based on his writings, he is considered to be, one of the first postmodernist authors. The simplicity of the dialogues makes the feeling that the play is easy to understand, but after reading/watching all the relationships between the characters you feel a bit confused. Nothing is real, and exactly this is the reality of their world, not to be real. And not only the relationships but the characters themselves do not know who they are in reality and it is hard for them to identify their own personality. As it has been already mentioned above, in Pinter’s plays, we can easily find the elements of postmodernism. In the given papers this idea will be expressed depending on the play “The Homecoming”, where Pinter presents us so-called “family”, the group of people, and shows us their emptiness from the family relationships. Even relationships between father and sons, and wife and husband are not real. All this are presented with the very simple language and this is also the essential characteristic of the postmodern world, also the difficulty of understanding each other, and almost meaningless words. Pinter uses other forms of communication such as pauses and silences, in a manner typical of postmodernism. There should be also noted that “the homecoming” the title itself, makes the reader/audience confused, the expectation about perceiving the title at the beginning does not coincide the perception of it in the ending part. The aim of this paper is to highlight the key elements of postmodernism in Harold Pinter’s play “The Homecoming” and to show us once again, that Pinter’s works are really important in our postmodern world.