Chapter 3: Pinter’s Political Activism and Political Plays
Can art be separated from politics is a question which has been debated upon by many critics. Personally, I feel that since art is a representation of life, and politics in life begins when at least two individuals are involved, it can never be separated from politics. However hard an artist tries to separate his work from the tricky games of politics, his efforts turn out to be futile as the artist’s own idea in his work is a political act of persuading the readers to conform to his own viewpoint. Considering the impossibility of segregating art from politics, it can be said that Pinter’s works beginning from the early comedies of menace and ending with his later overtly political …show more content…
According to him the absence of these, would cause us to be doomed in an abyss. To comprehend better it is important to know what these terms refer to. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘politics’ as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power” (“politics”). Our society came into existence when small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers of the Neolithic age changed their lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, forming bigger groups of non-nomadic population. Densely populated settlements required centralized administrations and political structures to look into the governance of the area and thus power-politics came into existence. The ones to first become politically conscious or aware of the workings of the administrative governments, were the ones who became leaders of their groups. The structures of the political hierarchy were built with the mighty and intelligent taking the dominant power positions and the mediocre and the weak taking up subservient positions in the society. The leaders of these societal groups then devised ways of running the administration smoothly by looking for more economic resources in other areas and in the process expanding their geographical boundaries. For this they acquired political …show more content…
It may seem to some that the dictators, autocratic rulers and, the agents of state torture, do not suffer from guilt feeling and they are free from all the agony associated with it. But this is not true. Even they suffer from guilt feeling which is reflected through nightmares, sleeplessness, erratic behaviour and the defence mechanism called self-justification and self-legitimation. In the play One for the Road we find the state torturer, Nicholas, justifying his atrocious acts by saying that God spoke through him, he loved God and nature and that all his acts were motivated by honesty and patriotism for his country. By saying so, Nicholas not only tries to justify his acts but also proves that his acts were legitimate and concordant with the ideology of the totalitarian government. There is much truth in Michael Billington's
Can art be separated from politics is a question which has been debated upon by many critics. Personally, I feel that since art is a representation of life, and politics in life begins when at least two individuals are involved, it can never be separated from politics. However hard an artist tries to separate his work from the tricky games of politics, his efforts turn out to be futile as the artist’s own idea in his work is a political act of persuading the readers to conform to his own viewpoint. Considering the impossibility of segregating art from politics, it can be said that Pinter’s works beginning from the early comedies of menace and ending with his later overtly political …show more content…
According to him the absence of these, would cause us to be doomed in an abyss. To comprehend better it is important to know what these terms refer to. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘politics’ as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power” (“politics”). Our society came into existence when small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers of the Neolithic age changed their lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, forming bigger groups of non-nomadic population. Densely populated settlements required centralized administrations and political structures to look into the governance of the area and thus power-politics came into existence. The ones to first become politically conscious or aware of the workings of the administrative governments, were the ones who became leaders of their groups. The structures of the political hierarchy were built with the mighty and intelligent taking the dominant power positions and the mediocre and the weak taking up subservient positions in the society. The leaders of these societal groups then devised ways of running the administration smoothly by looking for more economic resources in other areas and in the process expanding their geographical boundaries. For this they acquired political …show more content…
It may seem to some that the dictators, autocratic rulers and, the agents of state torture, do not suffer from guilt feeling and they are free from all the agony associated with it. But this is not true. Even they suffer from guilt feeling which is reflected through nightmares, sleeplessness, erratic behaviour and the defence mechanism called self-justification and self-legitimation. In the play One for the Road we find the state torturer, Nicholas, justifying his atrocious acts by saying that God spoke through him, he loved God and nature and that all his acts were motivated by honesty and patriotism for his country. By saying so, Nicholas not only tries to justify his acts but also proves that his acts were legitimate and concordant with the ideology of the totalitarian government. There is much truth in Michael Billington's