"Pinter's "Betrayal

Harold Pinter's Betrayal,' which has recently completed runs in London and New York, is virtually a catalogue of communication problems, apparent because in the end one must question whether the themes of the play really involve difficulties in communication or inadequacies of language as an instrument of communication. The real problem may be something quite different: that individuals see each other quite clearly and it is only with great difficulty that they manage to conceal themselves. The likelihood of being seen represents a threat of such intensity that individuals choose, partly through an unstated mutual agreement, to erect protective barriers between themselves, to utilize language in such a way as to emulate communicational failure, and to compete with each other in a game in which one scores when one does manage successfully to keep a secret

Art · Betrayal · Linguistics · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology