The Comparative Essay - My group and I are working on a play called the "Birthday Party" By Harold Pinter.

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Ryan Woods 11GG                                                                11A/Dr1

The Comparative Essay (Part 1)

My group and I are working on a play called the “Birthday Party” By Harold Pinter. The work is set in 1960’s. The scene we doing is about a man, names Petey returning home from some sort of morning to job to a boarding house where his wife, who’s called Meg and is the owner, fusses around him. We start to see that this routine is very basic and a sense of this what they do every day. As the scene goes on Stanley comes in and plays quite a grumpy teenager. I play the part of Petey.

At the time of this plays setting, men had more of a dominant role in society and the women didn’t work much and did more of the housework. This could mean that the male characters in plays around this time were more dominate and women did more housework and just like Meg, fussed around their husband as he was the only source of income, this could influence Meg as being fussy and concerning over Petey. The war would have been less than two decades ago so that may influence the characters in plays. Meg maybe fussing around he husband because he was a war-hero influencing her to very proud and caring of husband, or maybe Petey only has a morning job because he is slightly injured, this could influence his physical expression.

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This is different from the text that we have studied called Abigail’s Party because was set in the 1970’s where women had a more dominant role than in the 1950’s. The women were more out-spoken and more free to work have more social activities. In Abigail’s Party there was a lot more conflict and more fiery action between characters unlike in the Birthday Party it was Meg said a comment, which Petey may of thought was stupid, Petey just answered simply in a slow pace and showed no motivation to want to speak.

In Abigail’s Party when a ...

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