Paper -9 -The importance of the roles of Goldberg and McCann in The Birthday Party

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• Name:- Zankhana .M.Matholiya
• Roll.No:-36
• Paper No.-9-The Modernist Literature.
• Topic :- The importance of the roles of Goldberg and McCann in The Birthday Party.
• Class:-M.A. Sem-3
• Enrollment No:-2069108420180036
• College:- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English
• Email ID :- zankhanamatholiya96@gmail.com
• Submitted:-Department of English M.K.University, Bhavnagar

v  Introduction.

●      The Birthday Party Pinter’s first full-length play, [1958] This played to exactly six main characters. Harold plays critics, confusing, obscure, and unconvincing. There is most important play of the mid-twentieth century. The play “The birthday party” was divided Three Act.

●      Harold was used by term “Comedy of menace” and comedy is most important part of the play. The birthday party has been described as Irving Warble as a critic. This play different theme, symbol, character, Absurd all discuss of the Harold view.

●      Acts are rural and individual and sophisticated.  In the nature of reality is very confusing of the way. The play is Outdoor or texture of the play.

●      Abused are no beginning, no middle and not perfected end. There are related with the play on theme of Absurd. It very common words of the Pinter play but they can have use of different style or Absurd. The term applied to the different characteristic of the play.

●      Mainly it is found in the characters of Meg, Stanley and Lulu is unique character of the play. All character is very disappointed and complains in your life.
Goldberg and McCann

●      Two unknown characters are Goldberg and McCann. Both are “agents” and they have organist or unfamiliar presented to the party.  Goldberg and McCann are using the theme of ‘menace’ in the play. Stanley’ mysterious past and they journey are unsuccessfully or not good.  Goldberg and McCann was ask Stanley that time frost for the ridiculous, and Stanley was agree and destroy in a mind.

●      Goldberg and McCann are two of the four major characters in The Birthday Party, the other being Stanley and Meg. Goldberg and McCann create a powerful impression upon our minds. Not only are they formidable persons, beside whom Stanley and Meg seem insignificant, but they are absolutely essential to the design of the play as are Stanley and Meg.

●      Without Goldberg and McCann the play cannot stand on its legs. It we take them away, the play would fall to pieces. They lend solidity, weight, and depth to the play and they impart much to its significance.

●      What The Two Men Do or Say in act-1.

●      Before we go into the deeper significance of Goldberg and McCann, let us consider their role in the action of the play and the importance they seem to have on a superficial view of them. After arrival at Meg's boarding -house they have casual conversation in the course of which they talk about the job which they have come here to execute.

●      McCann is feeling uneasy about this job but Goldberg tries to allay his fears about it by assuring him that it is not risky or hazardous for either of them. Goldberg also here speaks to McCann about his past life and about a generous uncle who used to take him to various places for fun. It becomes apparent to us that Goldberg is the senior partner in this two-man team and that McCann has reason to feel grateful to Goldberg for latter's patronage of him.

●      This is followed by a dialogue between Goldberg and Meg, in the course of which Goldberg suggests that a birthday party be held at night in honour of her lodger, Stanley; and she readily agrees to suggestion. (lall)

Ø Their Role in Act-2.

·       In Act II, we find McCann blocking Stanley's way when Stanley wants to go out of the boarding-house, and then both McCann and Goldberg bullying Stanley because Stanley does not show himself to be a submissive sort of man and because Stanley wants the two men to leave the boarding-house. Once again Goldberg gets into a reminiscent mood and speaks of his mother who was one in a million, and of a sweetheart whose voice was as sweet as a nightingale's song.

·       Goldberg also tells Stanley that a birthday should always be celebrated zestfully. Then, finding Stanley defiant towards them, the two men subject him to virtual barrage of statements heart whose voice was as sweet asa and questions which have a demoralizing and devastating effect on him. When the birthday party begins, an Goldberg plays a leading role in it, asking Meg to propose a toast to Stanley making speech in appreciation of Meg's toast, speaking of his dead wife and the wonderful funeral she had got, and giving directions in game called blind man's buff.

·       At the end of this Act, the two men are seen advancing threateningly towards Stanley who has tried to strangle Meg and to rape Lulu.

Ø Both Role In Act -3

●      In Act III, we learn that the two men had played havoc with Stanley after of the barbarous treatment to the party had ended and that, as a result which they had subjected Stanley; their victim is suffering from a nervous breakdown.

●      The two men are themselves feeling badly shaken by the brutal torture which they had inflicted during the night. The two men again jointly subject Stanley to a volley of quick-fire statements, and a little later take him away with them despite Petey's effort to stop them.

Ø The Importance of Their Contribution to the plot of the play.

●      It is evident that these two men make an enormous contribution to the plot of the play. The very idea of holding a birthday party comes from Goldberg, and the birthday party constitutes the central episode in the play and gives to the play its title. The two men hold two brainwashing sessions with Stanley, each time overwhelming him with a flood of verbiage and leaving him broken and exhausted at the end. Goldberg orders whisky bottles and whisky-drinking has it own share in making Meg and Lulu behave as they do.

●      The two men's harassment and bullying of Stanley before the birthday party begins and their behaviour towards him during the game of blind man's buff has a lot to do with Stanley's desperation and his attempted strangulation of Meg and his attempted rape of Lulu. The torture, to which Stanley is subjected by the two men after the birthday party has ended, reduces him to a physical and nervous wreck so that he cannot speak a single word and can only produce some gurgling sounds from his throat.

●      Goldberg's seduction of Lulu comes as a blow to her self-esteem and disillusions her about the real character of the man who has 'used" her for a night in order to satisfy his "ugly thirst".

●      Eventually the two men take Stanley away by force, ostensibly for treatment, but actually to deliver him into the hands of the redoubtable Monty who will complete the process of the disintegration of Stanley's mind and personality and reduce him to an automation in his own hands.

Ø Their contribution to the Comedy in the play

●      Goldberg and McCann contribute much to the comedy of the play. McCann amuses us by his habit of tearing newspaper sheets into equal strips and also by some of the questions he puts to Stanley and the remarks he makes about that man. Towards the end of the play he speaks to Lulu in a tone of mockery, asking her to confess her sins to him.

●      Goldberg's sense of humour is also seen in the way in which he insidiously flirts with her and afterwards in the sarcastic remarks which he makes to her in connection with his seduction of her.

Ø The Symbolic significance of Goldberg and McCann.

●      Even if we were to stop here and say no more about Goldberg and McCann, we would have said enough to show how important they the play. But there is something more to be said. Apart from their obvious role as gangsters in a play which may by treated as a mystery-cum-thriller, they possess also a deeper significance. The two men can be looked upon as symbolic characters. symbolic significance depends upon the way we choose to interpret the symbolic significance of the play as a whole.

Ø Goldberg and McCann as Agents of Society.

●      One way of looking at The Birthday Party is to regard it as depicting the light of the artist in modern society. From this point of view Goldberg and McCann become agents of society at large. The artist Stanley, a musician, had fled from society in order to lead his own independent, but isolated, life. Society treats such an individualistic artist as a danger to itself and sends its agents to pull him back from this isolation.

●      The two agents use both coercion and persuasion to force the artist Stanley back into the fold of society and they succeed. The first brainwashing session represents coercion. The torture which is inflicted by the two men on Stanley a little later is coercion taken to its extreme extent. Then comes the second brain-washing session which contains an offer of materialistic rewards to the artist if he comes back and agrees to lead a normal life of conformity to the prevailing social code.

●      In this second session the two agents offer to Stanley the benefits of belonging to a large corporation. Stanley's "submission" is seen as he puts on the dress of bourgeois respectability-a dark suit and a white collar, besides a clean shave. The social pressures coercion, physical violence, and material temptations force Stanley back into the arms of society.

●      The artist, who had rebelled against society and had refused to lead a conventional life, has been tamed. All this reminds us also of the way in which the artist is treated in totalitarian States like Russia and China. Goldberg and McCann then become even more sinister as agents of the Secret Police.

Ø Goldberg as a Father-figure

●      There is yet another way of looking at Goldberg, If Meg be regarded as a mother-figure with a subconscious incestuous desire for Stanley, then Goldberg, with his exaggerated Jewish family feelings, is a father-figure par excellence. In that case Stanley's fear of the avenging agents sent by "the organization " would be an expression of his guilty feelings about his incestuous impulses, and dread of punishment by the father-figure.

Ø Goldberg and McCann, Symbolic of Animal Behaviour.

●      The Birthday Party has also been interpreted as showing that human beings behave very much like animals. Goldberg and McCann invade Stanley's territory. Stanley shows fear; he appease the invaders, struggles desperately, but finally surrenders. The development of relationship between these three characters seems to follow patterns of animal behaviour.

●      The conflict between Stanley and the two invaders is very similar to a conflict between animals under the same circumstances. Stanley's final submission to the enemy, once he realizes that escape is impossible, resembles the behaviour of a rat which, on seeing that it cannot save itself from the attack of fellow-rats, ceases to defend itself. (lall)

Ø Pinter'S  Opposition to Symbolic Interpretations of Characters.

●      Pinter himself might not endorse these various interpretations of the characters of Goldberg and McCann. Pinter is on record as having said that to interpret a character in symbolic terms is to emasculate him. But critics and readers cannot be prevented from interpreting the characters in a literary work just as they please if the author himself has offered no interpretation of his own.

●      The fact that The Birthday Party and Goldberg and McCann can be interpreted in so many ways shows how rich and complex the play is and how complex these two characters are. (lall)

v Conclusion :-

·       We can say that Harold Pinter’s plays have many interpretations. His plays cannot be bound in any single definition. When he get noble prize for it that time he spoke this lines:

“I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.”

·       In the last act Goldberg and McCann were seating and there Stanley comes and that time he is come with some changes, with clean cloths, shaving and looking like gentleman. That time Goldberg take his glass from his hand and give him offer that we will give you all the facilities and luxurious life, but behalf of that Stanley has to lost his creativity, freedom, his nature, his art, and we can say his vision towards life after that he cannot live his life on his own rules but he has to live on their rules. If he accept it than and then society or rigidity accept it.

Works Cited

lall, Ramji. The birthday party by harold pinter. Delhi: rama brothers india pvt.ltd, 2004.