In Time with Harold Pinter: The Homecoming

Abstract

Abstract To be in time with playwright Harold Pinter is to experience his characters struggling with power and love. Looking at his play The Homecoming, one can see his characters inhabiting a kind of Eliotic, Beckettien wasteland, making them very contemporary, but like his other plays that are informed with ancient rituals and myths, a biblical myth makes this play timeless. The Homecoming reverberates with myth, this time the biblical story of Ruth. In the play Ruth as alien comes home and her return holds the promise of renewal as almost no other character does in modern drama. Ruth would seem to be victimized by her new family, who expects her to tend them sexually and provide income, but she takes over the family in a “ruthless” fashion, disposes of her virtually dead husband, and promises renewal for herself and a family who have been lost without the mother/wife who has died. Chekhov took us on the road, but Pinter brings us home.