Harold Pinter is a well-known British absurd playwright. He is a prolific writer
who has written extensively for film, radio and television, and won several awards.
He is known for the Theatre of the Absurd and the Comedy of Menace. His
plays consider human existence in terms of purposelessness, nothingness, suspended
sense, lack of meaning, and the challenge to one’s identity. The uniqueness of his style led
to the adoption of the term ‘Pinteresque’, commonly used to describe dark, threatening
situations in which people become victims of their own internal feelings, desires and guilt,
even though their lives seem superficially normal. Pinter’s later works have attempted to
arouse audiences “to recognize the realities” of the world, especially the grimmest and
most destructive realities. His work provokes more than intellectual or even emotional
response. It engages the audience as an equal participant in the play’s action by calling
for action. His work does so by forcing identification with both the torturer and the tortured
which is a familiar technique in his work.
Published in 1984, One for the Road portrays the element of torture. The play is set
in a small closed room and covers one day: “Morning”, “Noon” and “Night”. In the play,
Nicolas, a military officer, tortures a family. He captures the wife and son of Victor and
imprisons them in a room. The family members undergo the panic of isolation. Every
second, their souls are loitering in wilderness lacking confidence and awareness. Pinter
introduces two groups of people in One for the Road; one is from Great Britain or
America, and another is from an English-speaking country among civilized people. Pinter
focuses on political power, powerlessness and torture. He presents picturesquely the
torture and oppression of ordinary people in their everyday life. He brings out the impact
of power and violation of human rights on the common people onto the stage. One for
the Road is a powerful psychological drama with disturbing violent scenes of a rape and
a murder. Pinter clearly states that the members of the family are affected by the officer,
who is in command of the people. He tortures them and passes sexual comments. He
tortures not only these members but also the civilized people. Both these members and
the civilized people are obviously tortured, as their ‘clothes’ are ‘torn’ and they are ‘bruised’
(Pinter, 1984, p. 31, 61).
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