Sem-3 Paper-12 Assignment

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Name: Kajal Keraliya

Topic: Language Acquisition

Roll no.: 18

Paper no 12: ELT-1

M.A: Sem-3

Enrolment no.:2069108420180030

Year: 2017-19

E-mail: Www.kajalk1@gmail.com

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B. Gardi Department Of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Language is a cognition that truly makes us human. Whereas other species do communicate with an innate ability to produce a limited number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g. bonobos), or even with partially learned systems (e.g. bird songs), there is no other species known to date that can express infinite ideas (sentences) with a limited set of symbols (speech sounds and words).

This ability is remarkable in itself. What makes it even more remarkable is that researchers are finding evidence for mastery of this complex skill in increasingly younger children. Infants as young as 12 months are reported to have sensitivity to the grammar needed to understand causative sentences (who did what to whom; e.g. the bunny pushed the frog (Rowland & Noble, 2010).

After more than 60 years of research into child language development, the mechanism that enables children to segment syllables and words out of the strings of sounds they hear, and to acquire grammar to understand and produce language is still quite an enigma.

Early Theories

One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of environmental influence.

Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.

For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011).

Universal Grammar

However, Skinner's account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous linguist to date. In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the 1950's, Chomsky argued that children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.

Consequently, he proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language processing in adults.

Universal Grammar is considered to contain all the grammatical information needed to combine these categories, e.g. noun and verb, into phrases. The child’s task is just to learn the words of her language (Ambridge & Lieven). For example, according to the Universal Grammar account, children instinctively know how to combine a noun (e.g. a boy) and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy eats).

This Chomskian (1965) approach to language acquisition has inspired hundreds of scholars to investigate the nature of these assumed grammatical categories and the research is still ongoing.

Contemporary Research

A decade or two later some psycho linguists began to question the existence of Universal Grammar. They argued that categories like noun and verb are biologically, evolutionarily and psychologically implausible and that the field called for an account that can explain for the acquisition process without innate categories.

Researchers started to suggest that instead of having a language-specific mechanism for language processing, children might utilise general cognitive and learning principles.

Whereas researchers approaching the language acquisition problem from the perspective of Universal Grammar argue for early full productivity, i.e. early adult-like knowledge of language, the opposing constructivist investigators argue for a more gradual developmental process. It is suggested that children are sensitive to patterns in language which enables the acquisition process.

An example of this gradual pattern learning is morphology acquisition. Morphemes are the smallest grammatical markers, or units, in language that alter words. In English, regular plurals are marked with an –s morpheme (e.g. dog+s). Similarly, English third singular verb forms (she eat+s, a boy kick+s) are marked with the –s morpheme. Children are considered to acquire their first instances of third singular forms as entire phrasal chunks (Daddy kicks, a girl eats, a dog barks) without the ability of teasing the finest grammatical components apart.

When the child hears a sufficient number of instances of a linguistic construction (i.e. the third singular verb form), she will detect patterns across the utterances she has heard. In this case, the repeated pattern is the –s marker in this particular verb form.

As a result of many repetitions and examples of the –s marker in different verbs, the child will acquire sophisticated knowledge that, in English, verbs must be marked with an –s morpheme in the third singular form (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Pine, Conti-Ramsden, Joseph, Lieven & Serratrice, 2008; Theakson & Lieven, 2005). Approaching language acquisition from the perspective of general cognitive processing is an economical account of how children can learn their first language without an excessive biolinguistic mechanism.

Conclusion

However, finding a solid answer to the problem of language acquisition is far from being over. Our current understanding of the developmental process is still immature. Investigators of Universal Grammar are still trying to convince that language is a task too demanding to acquire without specific innate equipment, whereas the constructivist researchers are fiercely arguing for the importance of linguistic input.

The biggest questions, however, are yet unanswered. What is the exact process that transforms the child’s utterances into grammatically correct, adult-like speech? How much does the child need to be exposed to language to achieve the adult-like state?

What account can explain variation between languages and the language acquisition process in children acquiring very different languages to English? The mystery of language acquisition is granted to keep psychologists and linguists alike astonished a decade after decade.

Work cited:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html

Sem-3 Paper-11 Assignment

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Name: Kajal Keraliya

Topic: Salman Rushdie’s view on “Attenborough’s Gandhi”

Roll no.: 18

Paper no 11:Post-colonial Literature

M.A: Sem-3

Enrolment no.:2069108420180030

Year: 2017-19

E-mail: Www.kajalk1@gmail.com

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B. Gardi Department Of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Salman Rushdie

             Salman Rushdie, (born June 19, 1947, Bombay [now Mumbai], India), Indian-born British writer whose allegorical novels examine historical and philosophical issues by means of surreal characters, brooding humour, and an effusive and melodramatic prose style. His treatment of sensitive religious and political subjects made him a controversial figure. His first published novel, Grimus, appeared in 1975. Rushdie’s next novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), a fable about modern India, was an unexpected critical and popular success that won him international recognition. A film adaptation, for which he drafted the screenplay, was released in 2012. He novel Shame (1983), based on contemporary politics in Pakistan, was also popular, but Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, encountered a different reception. Despite the standing death threat, Rushdie continued to write, producing Imaginary Homelands (1991), a collection of essays and criticism; the children’s novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990); the short-story collection East, West (1994); and the novel The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995). In 1998, after nearly a decade, the Iranian government announced that it would no longer seek to enforce its fatwa against Rushdie. He recounted his experience in the third-person memoir Joseph Anton (2012); its title refers to an alias he adopted while in seclusion.           

Imagery Homeland

       “Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”     

                                                                                           Imaginary Homelands is a collection of Salman Rushdie’s essays. These essays also a different collection of various articles, seminar papers, reviews published over a decade of his literary lifetime during 1981-1991.Imaginary Homelands is incisive, intellectual, probing, eloquent and lively. From this essay one can take issue with its wide scope. Salman Rushdie selects different subjects like political, social, and literary topics in this essay with various deals and critical approaches. After reading this book, the reaction to such book can only be personal and subjective and it is not a story that can be discussed with some degree of detachment. Imaginary Homelands is a personal conversation by Rushdie. From his writing we can see a power of Rushdie over media and he is that kind of a writer.Every reader has different view about this book. It is depend on our individual mindset. Rushdie’s literary style is full of innovation because of being a migrant and an author. It’s base on reality and Rushdie feels a kinship with the writers who writes their books with fantasy and reality.   

       ATTENBOROUGH’S GANDHI :-

About the Attenborough’s Gandhi

In the essay “Attenborough's Gandhi' in which salman Rushdie talks about the movie 'Gandhi'. The film is about a biography, not apolitical work. Even if one aspects this distinction, one must reply that a biography, it is not turn into hagiography(see only one side) aspect of the subjects as well as loveable side.

 Attenborough's Gandhi-essay deals with the Indian called Mohandas karamchand Gandhi.

  

 

·        #Why Should an Englishman want to deify Gandhi?
#The writer gives three board heading:

• First, the exotic impulse, the wish to see India as the fountainhead of spiritual-mystical wisdom.

• Second, there is what might be termed the, Christian     longing, for a 'leader' dedicated to ideals of poverty and simplicity, a man who is too good for this word and is therefore sacrificed on the altars history.

Third, there is the liberal-conservative political desire to hear it said that revolutions can, and should, be made purely by submission, and self-sacrifice, and non-violence alone.

      To make Gandhi appeal to the western market, he had to be sanctified and turned into Christ-an odd fate for crafty Gujarati-lawyer-and the history of one of the century's greatest revolutions had to be mangled. This is nothing new. The British have been mangling Indian history for centuries.

Amritsar massacre

We can say that Amritsar massacre is perhaps the most powerful sequence in the film. Both the massacre and the subsequent court-martial at which outraged Englishman question the unrepentant Dyer with basely suppressed horror are staged accurately and with passion. In this Dyer represents the cruel itself. The crowd sent him for the killing. But Dyer this two scenes mean is that Dyer’s actions at the Jallianwala Bagh where those of a cruel over jealous individual and that they were immediately condemned by Anglo-Indian.

         The court martial may have condemns Dyer but the colonist did not. He had taught the wags a lesson he was a hero. And when he returned to England he was given a heroic welcome. An appeal fund launch on his behalf made him a rich man. Tagore discussed by the British reaction to the massacre return his knighthood.

         In the case of Amritsar, artistic selection has altered the meaning of the event. It is an unforgivable distortion.

          Another example: the assassination of Gandhi. Attenborough considers it important enough to place it at the as well as the end of his film; but during the intervening three hours, he tells us nothing about it. Not the assassin’s name. Not the name of the organization behind the killing. Not the ghost of a motive for the deed. In political thriller, this would be merely crass; in Gandhi it is something worse.

          We all know that Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse, a member of the Hindu-fanatic RSS, who blamed the Mahatma for Partition of India. But in the film the killer is not differentiated from the crowd; he simply step out the crowd with a gun. This could mean one of three things: that he represents the crowd-that the people turned against Gandhi that the mob threw up a killer who did its work; that Godse was ‘one lone nut’, albeit a lone nut under the influence of a sinister–looking sadhu in a rickshaw; or that Gandhi is Christ in a loincloth. We know why Christ died he died that others might live. But Godse was no representative of the crowd. He did not work alone. And the killing was a political, not a mystical, act. Attenborough’s distortions mythologize, but they also lie.          

         Rushdie says that British have been mingling Indian history for centuries. Much of debate has been done about this movie that why Subhas Chandra Bose? Why not Tagore? Why not Nehru? The answer is the centre is important for any artistic work because that creates a well designed story.

         The film is a biography not a political work. Even if one accepts this distinction one must reply that a biography if it is not to turn into hagiography must tackle the awkward aspects of the subjects as well as the lovable side. The Bramcharya experiments during which Gandhi would live with young naked woman all night to taste his will to abstain are well known not without filmic possibilities and they are of course ambiguous events. The film omits them. It also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire industrialist so.

         This is a rich area for a biographer to mine the man of the masses, dedicated to the simple life, self-denial, asceticism, who was finance all his life by super capitalist patrons, and some would say hopelessly a compromise by them. a written biography, which failed to enter such murky water would not be worth reading we should not be less critical of a film.

         In the movie Godse was not representative of the Mob because he was not alone in his war the awkward aspects are there in the movie. The movie also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire industrialists. He died in Birla house in Delhi. Gandhi also represents the portrayal of most of leader who struggle for the independence. Sardar Patel is a hardworking man where he is like a clown here, Jinnah is portrayed as a count Dracula and we can see the most important change in the personality of Nehru.

         Nehru was not Gandhi’s disciple. There debate was central to the freedom movement-Nehru, the urban sophisticate who wanted to industrialize India, to bring it into modern age versus rural handicraft loving. And keep India in the modern age to increase industrialism. Sometime medieval figure of Gandhi: the country lived this debate, and it had to choose. In this film, Nehru becomes acolyte of Gandhi. Here Bose was evident. He improved the movie. The message of Gandhi was to fight against oppressors without weapon, without violence but it was all non-sense. The leader in India did succeed because they were moral then British. The British were smarter, craftier, better fighting politicians then their opponents. Gandhi shows as a saint who vanquished an Empire. This is a fiction.

          Rushdie says that it in a satirized manner that it was better film of 1983, according to hidden agenda Oscar sididh committee and god help the film industry. It was expensive movie.  Thus Rushdie gives his views about Attenborough’s Gandhi and at the end he significantly said that,

“What it is an incredibly expensive movie about a man who was dedicated to the small scale and to asceticism”.

Conclusion:

          A Few words more, we can say that Salman Rushdie has written an article about “Attenborough’s Gandhi” in which he has indicated about Gandhi and also made criticism on him. He didn’t write only good things about but also wrote and made mockery on him. He writes also about Nathuram Godse and told that he was right according to him and Gandhiji was also right at his place. Therefore Rushdie has given his views about Gandhi in this essay.

Work cited

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3377031?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://www.scribd.com/document/73141630/Attenborough-s-Gandhi

Ø A The essay starts with the word ‘Deification’, and Rushdie further said that deification is an Indian disease, as Attenborough might now about it and he has construct Gandhi as a ‘Mahatma’, as it is  

Ø  

Sem-3 Paper-10 Assignment

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Name: Kajal Keraliya

Topic:plot Theme in “The old man and the sea”

Roll no.: 18

Paper no 10: American Literature

M.A: Sem-3

Enrolment no.:2069108420180030

Year: 2017-19

E-mail: Www.kajalk1@gmail.com

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B. Gardi Department Of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.
During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman’s journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.
Hemingway – himself a great sportsman – liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters – tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.
Plot
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat. Nevertheless, the boy continues to care for the old man upon his return each night. He helps the old man tote his gear to his ramshackle hut, secures food for him, and discusses the latest developments in American baseball, especially the trials of the old man’s hero, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago is confident that his unproductive streak will soon come to an end, and he resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.
On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago does as promised, sailing his skiff far beyond the island’s shallow coastal waters and venturing into the Gulf Stream. He prepares his lines and drops them. At noon, a big fish, which he knows is a marlin, takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. The old man expertly hooks the fish, but he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish begins to pull the boat.
Unable to tie the line fast to the boat for fear the fish would snap a taut line, the old man bears the strain of the line with his shoulders, back, and hands, ready to give slack should the marlin make a run. The fish pulls the boat all through the day, through the night, through another day, and through another night. It swims steadily northwest until at last it tires and swims east with the current. The entire time, Santiago endures constant pain from the fishing line. Whenever the fish lunges, leaps, or makes a dash for freedom, the cord cuts Santiago badly. Although wounded and weary, the old man feels a deep empathy and admiration for the marlin, his brother in suffering, strength, and resolve.
On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness.
As Santiago sails on with the fish, the marlin’s blood leaves a trail in the water and attracts sharks. The first to attack is a great mako shark, which Santiago manages to slay with the harpoon. In the struggle, the old man loses the harpoon and lengths of valuable rope, which leaves him vulnerable to other shark attacks. The old man fights off the successive vicious predators as best he can, stabbing at them with a crude spear he makes by lashing a knife to an oar, and even clubbing them with the boat’s tiller. Although he kills several sharks, more and more appear, and by the time night falls, Santiago’s continued fight against the scavengers is useless. They devour the marlin’s precious meat, leaving only skeleton, head, and tail. Santiago chastises himself for going “out too far,” and for sacrificing his great and worthy opponent. He arrives home before daybreak, stumbles back to his shack, and sleeps very deeply.
The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old man’s struggle, tourists at a nearby café observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old man’s absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him sleep. When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa.

Major theme of old man and sea
Pride

Pride is often depicted as negative attribute that causes people to reach for too much and, as a result, suffer a terrible fall. After he kills the first shark, Santiago, who knows he killed the marlin "for pride," wonders if the sin of pride was responsible for the shark attack because pride caused him to go out into the ocean beyond the usual boundaries that fishermen observe. Santiago immediately dismisses the idea, however, and the events of The Old Man and the Sea support his conviction that pride is not the cause of his difficulties.

In fact, Santiago's pride is portrayed as the single motivating force that spurs him to greatness. It is his pride that pushes him to survive three grueling days at sea, battling the marlin and then the sharks. Yet it is important to recognize that Santiago's pride is of a particular, limited sort. Pride never pushes him to try to be more than he is. For instance, when Manolin tells him, "The best fisherman is you," early in the story, Santiago humbly disagrees. Rather, Santiago takes pride in being exactly what he is, a man and a fisherman, and his struggle can be seen as an effort to be the best man and fisherman that he can be. As he thinks in the middle of his struggle with the marlin, he must kill the marlin to show Manolin "what a man can do and what a man endures."

Friendship

The friendship between Santiago and Manolin plays a critical part in Santiago's victory over the marlin. In return for Santiago's mentorship and company, Manolin provides physical support to Santiago in the village, bringing him food and clothing and helping him load his skiff. He also provides emotional support, encouraging Santiago throughout his unlucky streak. Although Santiago's "hope and confidence had never gone," when Manolin was present, "they were freshening as when the breeze rises." And once he encounters the marlin, Santiago refuses to accept defeat because he knows Manolin would be disappointed in him.

Yet most of the novella takes place when Santiago is alone. Except for Manolin's friendship in the evenings, Santiago is characterized by his isolation. His wife has died, and he lives and fishes alone. Even so, just as he refuses to give in to death, he refuses to give in to loneliness. Santiago finds friends in other creatures. The flying fish are "his principal friends on the ocean," and the marlin, through their shared struggle, becomes his "brother." He calls the stars his "distant friends," and thinks of the ocean as a woman he loves. Santiago talks to himself, talks to his weakened left hand, and imagines Manolin sitting next to him. In the end, these friendships—both real and imagined—prevent Santiago from pitying himself. As a result, he has the support to achieve what seems physically impossible for an old man.

Unity

Hemingway spends a good deal of time drawing connections between Santiago and his natural environment: the fish, birds, and stars are all his brothers or friends, he has the heart of a turtle, eats turtle eggs for strength, drinks shark liver oil for health, etc. Also, apparently contradictory elements are repeatedly shown as aspects of one unified whole: the sea is both kind and cruel, feminine and masculine; the Portuguese man of war is beautiful but deadly; the mako shark is noble but cruel. The novella's premise of unity helps succor Santiago in the midst of his great tragedy. For Santiago, success and failure are two equal facets of the same existence. They are transitory forms which capriciously arrive and depart without affecting the underlying unity between himself and nature. As long as he focuses on this unity and sees himself as part of nature rather than as an external antagonist competing with it, he cannot be defeated by whatever misfortunes befall him.

Heroism

Triumph over crushing adversity is the heart of heroism, and in order for Santiago the fisherman to be a heroic emblem for humankind, his tribulations must be monumental. Triumph, though, is never final, as Santiago's successful slaying of the marlin shows, else there would be no reason to include the final 30 pages of the book. Hemingway vision of heroism is Sisyphean, requiring continuous labor for essentially ephemeral ends. What the hero does is to face adversity with dignity and grace, hence Hemingway's Neo-Stoic emphasis on self-control and the other facets of his idea of manhood. What we achieve or fail at externally is not as significant to heroism as comporting ourselves with inner nobility. As Santiago says, "Man is not made for defeat....A man can be destroyed but not defeated"

Manhood

Hemingway's ideal of manhood is nearly inseparable from the ideal of heroism discussed above. To be a man is to behave with honor and dignity: to not succumb to suffering, to accept one's duty without complaint and, most importantly, to display a maximum of self-control. The representation of femininity, the sea, is characterized expressly by its caprice and lack of self-control; "if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them" (30). The representation of masculinity, the marlin, is described as "great," "beautiful," "calm," and "noble," and Santiago steels himself against his pain by telling himself to "suffer like a man. Or a fish," referring to the marlin (92). In Hemingway's ethical universe, Santiago shows us not only how to live life heroically but in a way befitting a man.

Conclusion:-                 

                  

 There are many themes in this novella but the main theme is heroism. We can see some heroic deeds which are done by the character Santiago.

Work cited:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/hemingway/biographical/

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/themes

Sem-3 Paper-9 Assignment

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Name: Kajal Keraliya

Topic: Theme of “The Birthday party”

Roll no.: 18

Paper no 9: Mordenist Literature

M.A: Sem-3

Enrolment no.:2069108420180030

Year: 2017-19

E-mail: Www.kajalk1@gmail.com

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B. Gardi Department Of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter is a renowned British playwright who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. Born in London in 1930, Harold Pinter is a renowned playwright and screenwriter. His plays are particularly famous for their use of understatement to convey characters' thoughts and feelings. In 2005, Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Harold Pinter is known for his magnificent use of language, thus his style of writing was named after him "Pinteresque". His use of colloquial language, numerous clichés, unpolished grammar and illogical syntax create dialogues that reflect day-to-day speech.

Harold Pinter's style is characterized by the use of:

• pauses
• repetitions
• irony
• oxymoron, paradox
• vagueness
• reference failure
• semantic ambiguity
• de contextualization

Pinteresque atmosphere of horror ignites the feeling of anxiety, but also arouses interest – a spectator can sense that something is wrong, even though the dialogues do not directly state it. It is through the combination of long pauses, repetitive structures and the use of illogical vocabulary that Pinter exhibits his great mastery in writing realistic plays, with ambiguous meaning. Language is a means of communication that lost its meaning and purpose. Characters talk, but the words are often devoid of any content. The action does not proceed smoothly or in chronological order, sometimes even though some events take place, the audience is confused on the proceedings. Pinter innovativeness evinces in the special use of language. Language which is used as a tool for presenting the absurdity of human existence. A small talk or a lengthy monologue gain new meaning and have frequently different purpose. They work as an examples of human relationships, telegraph characters intentions and even negate the action.

Pinter’s plays usually take place on one-room stage, onto which a handful of characters enter and interact with each other. A constant feeling of threat can be sensed from the first words they utter, which emphasises the deliberate effect of conveying uneasiness, confusion and indifference. Power relations and problem of identity remain one of the most important themes, as well as people’s inability to communicate.

The Birthday Party

Ø List of characters

1.     Petey - Meg's husband, the owner of the boarding house, 60 years old

2.     Meg - Petey's wife, helps in the boarding house, 60 years old

3.     Stanley - tenant of the boarding house, around 30 years old

4.     Lulu - Meg's gullible and naive friend, in her twienties

5.     Goldberg - called also “Simey” or “Benny,” a Jewish gentleman working together with McCann for a suspicious organization.

6.McCann - Goldberg's helper

.

Ø Theme of absurdity:

According to Ionesco : “ Absurd is that which of purpose.... cut off from his religious metaphysical and transcendental root, man is lost, all his action become senseless absurd, useless”.The term is applied to many of the works of a group of dramatist of 1950s. The concept of absurdity defers person to person.  It expressed the belief that, in s godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communications break down. So, Absurdist theatre examines ideas of existentialism and the meaninglessness of human existence.   The theatre of absurd is characterized by dialogues senseless, repetitive those are able to give a comic view despite the tragic sense of drama. For the Theatre of the absurd, these events concerned life post World War II during which time many people began to question about the meaning of life.

“The Birthday Party” is an full of absurd drama. The Birthday Party has been described Martin Esslin as an example of the Theatre of Absurd. It includes such features as the fluidity and ambiguity of time, place, and identity and the disintegration of language.  “The Birthday Party” is a child of the theatre of the Theatre of Absurd, which explain why it feels like a plot less wonder. Like the rest of its ambiguous brethren, But it does make for a bumpy ride.So, Pinter in his play uses the theme of identity and absurdity that makes the characters ambiguous and their identity are unclear.  The theme of identity makes the play ambiguous. For example Goldberg is called Nat but in his stories of the past Simey and Banney. It is also McCann is called as a Dermot in talking to Petey and Seamus in talking to McCann.  Harold Pinter also uses a contradiction as we see in Act 1 when Stanley says “I have played the piano all over the world” then he says “ All over the country”. Then, after a pause he says “I once gave a concert”. It is also in Stanley’s birthday, Meg decided to celebrate but he tries to deny by saying “It is not my birthday no; it is not until next month”.

Ø Theme of Anxiety

The greatest quality of the play lies in the wealth and diversity of the comments which it seems to make on life, not explicitly but by implication. The play can also be regarded as an image or metaphor of the author's existential anxiety. The ravages of anxiety upon the human spirit is Pinter's perennial theme in his plays. He knows that anxiety is a primal force, one that can impel the mind into growth or into retreat. The Birthday Party portrays Stanley's psychological disintegration under the pressure of extreme anxiety. Stanley's neurotic anxiety is presented as one of a man in a trap. He is pursued by Goldsberg and McCann whom Martin Esslin calls "the team of terrorists". They appeared in Act-1 with the apparent purpose of "doing a job" on Stanley and of fetching him back at the behest of whatever organization they represent. The ambivalence between the two concrete reality of the two men and their simultaneous force as symbols or dream-images or thoughts is an important aspect of the play.

The deepest roots of Stanley's neurotic anxiety appear to be psychosexual and Oedipal. He is torn between the smothering attentions and ministrations of Meg, the mother figure and the threats of Goldberg, the punitive father whose purpose is to make a man of Stanley. Some of his gestures in Act-1 suggests as if he was a child. He "yawn broadly, his trunks falls forward, his head falls into his hands", and he lights a match and watches it burn, just as a child might do. At the end of Act-1, Meg gives him a boy's drum as his birthday present. The following lines conveys Stanley;s neurotic anxiety and his infantilism.
"Stanley looks into the parcel. He takes out drumsticks. He taps them together. He looks at her.
Stanley: Shall I put it round my neck?"
Stanley's wearing of the glasses, his removing them and their final destruction is suggestive of his darkening perception, his rising anxiety and his final breakdown. After the loss of his glasses, Stanley Quickly losses emotional control. He screams and becomes violent and inarticulate. The play is a tragedy of soul in extreme anxiety, struggling unsuccessfully to achieve a free and independent identity.

Ø Theme of Decadence

Other critics see in The Birthday party man's decay into death; life as a process of loss. Stanley first loses his sight, then his powers of speech and finally ceases to exist as a living man. He is taken away dressed in funeral clothes by two men in a large black hearse. As Goldberg says to him, "You are dead. You can't live, you can't think, you can't love. You are dead."

In this way the play depicts man's decay into death, and life as a process of loss. Goldberg's black car is like the black negro carrying a suggestion of death. The killers are devoid of human values; they are pathological terrorists deriving immense satisfaction from the distress of innocent, peace loving people. Stanley's correct dress, his blindness and his speechlessness makes an image of him as a dead body. Goldberg and McCann could then be messengers of supernatural powers sent to transposrt a human being into the realm of death.

Ø Violence

The Birthday Party is full of violence, both physical and emotional, overall suggesting that violence is a fact of life. The violence is doubly affecting because the setting seems so pleasant and ordinary. Most of the men show their potential for violence, especially when provoked. Stanley is cruel and vicious towards Meg, but much more cowardly against other men. Both McCann and Goldberg have violent outbursts no matter how hard they try to contain themselves. Their entire operation, which boasts an outward civility, has an insidious purpose, most violent for the way it tortures Stanley slowly to force him to nervous breakdown. In both Acts II and III, they reveal how language itself can be violent in the interrogation scenes.
Much of the violence in the play concerns women. Stanley not only intimidates Meg verbally, but he also prepares to assault Lulu. Goldberg in fact does assault Lulu. Finally, the threat of violence is ever-present in the play. Even before we realize that disaster might come, we can feel the potential through the many silences and tense atmosphere.

Ø Sex

Sexual tension is present throughout the entire play, and it results in tragic consequences. Meg and Stanley have a strange, possible sexual relationship that frees him to treat her very cruelly. The ugliness of his behavior is echoed when Goldberg calls him a “mother defiler” and “a lecher.” In fact, Goldberg suggests that Stanley's unnamed sin involves his poor treatment of a woman. Lulu seems interested in Stanley as well, but is quickly attracted to Goldberg in Act II. Her innocence makes her prey to men's sexuality. Her openness leads to two consecutive sexual assaults, and yet she is nevertheless upset to learn that Goldberg is leaving. All in all, it is a strange, perverse undercurrent throughout the play - sex is acknowledged as a fact of life, and yet does not ever reveal positive aspects of the characters.

Ø Theme of Social Pressures and Demands

Pinter's The Birthday Party, has been much interpreted. It has been seen as a social allegory. The artiste, Stanley a musician is forced to conform to the materialistic society which he had tried to reject. The values o society are voiced by Goldberg and its pressures applied by McCann. They offer Stanley, the benefits of belonging to a large corporation. Stanley will be "watched over" and "advised" which clearly denotes Stanley's terrible loss of freedom and breathing space. Stanley has been robbed off of all traces of individuality and turned into automation. They offer assurance that the company's benefits includes treatment in case of breakdown or industrial disease. And the statement made is that society simply does not understand individuality and cannot allow for it.

Stanley's submission is seen as he dons the uniform of a respectable, middle-class gentility – the well cut suit, the white collar and the bowler hat. Stanley was an artiste having doubts about his creative ability. Stanley has defied the conventions of society by his mod of living and he has refused to accept the values of society. Society would like to pull back this man from the mode of life which he has adopted because he might pose a threat to society and because his example might encourage other people also to revolt against the prevailing social standards of conduct and behaviour. The author's sympathies are naturally withy the artiste who has thus been treated by society with interests of conformity.
Conclusion: -
 These play showcased that what would later become known as “Painteresque.”Harold Pinter’s play is a unbounded by many facts. Any sort of single interpretation of Pinter’s play is not possible. He shows us in the play blindness, society’s treatment of an artist and growing up to adulthood from childhood. One can think of nothingness in every single possibilities. He is greatly respected in his field and the respect he’s earned shows just how affecting his plays. So, the play is the destruction of an individual the independent voice of an individual.
Work cited:
https://www.gradesaver.com/the-birthday-party/study-guide/themes

http://www.supersummary.com/the-birthday-party/summary/