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The philosophy of Pinter

I gave her the best bleeding years of my life.".
             Max's use of derogatory adjectives such as "stinking" and "rotting" is very upsetting for the audience so early in the play. It creates a very acute sense of unease and is an unprompted verbal attack which has no build up to indicate any possible animosity may appear in his language. In fact he had just mentioned how "she wasn't such a bad woman". The paradoxical nature of his speech emphasises Pinter's belief that people can never be predicted or understood. This is further strengthened much later on in the play when he talks of his wife with great fondness. He tells his family of how she was the "backbone to this family", "she taught those boys everything they know" and how she had a "will of iron, a heart of gold and a mind." Clearly in the world of Pinter, people are rarely truly understood.
             Pinter also stated that as well as never being able to understand other people, we cannot even understand ourselves. This is also showed through the characters self contradicting nature. Pinter is perhaps implying that there are always thoughts inaccessible to us that lie in our subconscious and can reveal themselves from time to time and surprise us. This quite often happens to us in our dreams, which is very suitable in relation to Pinter's warped sense of reality in places, such as the frighteningly casual organisation of Max and his sons pimping Teddy's wife - Ruth. This scene definitely has a dream like quality to it, especially in regard to Teddy's reaction to the incident. He doesn't seems to care very much and leaves the house in good spirits, giving cheerful goodbyes to his family who have just stolen his wife to use as a prostitute and slave in the house. It seems strange that someone who once made vows with this woman is so willing to leave her to be treated subordinately and used for sex by his family. One could argue this is surely a case of a man who does not know himself.


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