A knock at the door: politics in the plays of Harold Pinter

Abstract

In many of Harold Pinter's plays, the conflict is set in motion by the arrival of a visitor at the door. With this unexpected admission a particular power struggle emerges, and by the end of the play, someone has lost the struggle and someone has won. It would be poetic to say that this very conflict mirrors the events of the Holocaust, that in the end, with the defeat of the Nazis, someone had won. Unfortunately, there were not any winners in the Holocaust, only victims. It is the memory of these victims that motivates Pinter to write the plays that he does, plays that are, at heart, addressing the corruption of mankind.