Language and Rhythm in the Birthday Party and Betrayal - Essay Example

The use of language and rhythm in Pinter’s plays generally gives meaning to the plays, enhances tonalities, brings out the element of characterization, and helps in developing and strengthening the major themes in the subtexts. The language Pinter uses is highly performative, and this serves as a reinvention to subtext. The Birthday Party is Pinter’s play that mainly explores the absurd, mysterious, secretive, and insidious forces that underlie the lives of the main characters and their relentless efforts to find peace, normalcy, and acceptance in the natural order (Raby 41; Pinter 752).

Therefore, Pinter makes sure to use a language form that will bring out the state of the characters as they are. To achieve this, Pinter uses language aspects such as description, repetition, and syntax. All these in the subtext serve the purpose of bringing out the absurd and confusing elements of the main characters in the play (Pinter 750). By basing on syntax, as an element of language, the play achieves a good description of the relevant scenes. For instance, the playwright uses a combination of both short and long sentences in different scenes of the play.

The conversation between Petey and Meg is primarily composed of a short sentence: “What?, Is that you?, Yes, it's me., What? Yes,” (Pinter 751). This aspect of language use impacts the subtext in different ways. First, it helps establish the atmosphere in the couple’s house. To an extent, one might read the tension in this kind of conversation. Secondly, this aspect of language depicts the nature of the relationship between Petey and Meg, in addition to the calm or mundane nature of their existence.

The deceptive calm and tranquility are effectively brought out through language in order to be contrasted by the disruption and chaos that is to follow (Pinter 750). Moreover, the short sentences enhance the steady and relaxed rhythm of language, which enhances the description of the characters and the uninterrupted nature of their setting as the play unfolds. 

Today, most playwrights use simplistic dialogues, which make the scenes shallow and flat, and least capable of engaging the audience. However, the dialogues Pinter uses are terrific and ensure that the audience is engaged. His use of language and rhythm is considered to have taken language back to the basics. These plays were produced in a century where there were great attempts to revive poetry in drama. Pinter’s plays are exemplary in the way language and rhythm have been used to create that aspect of poetic drama.

Rhythm is an aspect of poetry, which Pinter has highly utilized in his subtext to make the plays be in form of poetic drama. In the play The Birthday Party, Pinter has used the aspect of rhythm in different ways to create different impressions on the subtext. For instance, one-word sentences, followed by lengthy sentences have been used to create a variation in rhythm.