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- Although Pinter does not address any political system in his play, The Homecoming explores the politics of family dynamics and gender relations. The play powerfully depicts these interactions. Audiences can draw parallels between these family politics and broader contexts, such as organizations and even states.
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The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 and published in 1965 by Harold Pinter. Its premières in London (1965) and New York (1967) were both directed by Sir Peter Hall. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Harold Pinter was born in the northern borough of Hackney, a working-class section in London, England, on October 10, 1930. Pinter’s father, Hyman (Jack) was a hard-working tailor of women’s apparel and his mother, Frances, a homemaker. The Pinter family was part of the immigrant wave of Jews that arrived in London around the turn of the century. P...
The Homecomingis set in a large room in an old house in working-class North London. This is the home of Max, a retired butcher; Sam, his brother, who drives for a car-hire (cab) service; and two of Max’s sons: Lenny, a successful pimp, and Joey, a dullard who works on a demolition crew during the day while trying to become a professional boxer.
Jessie
Jessie is Max’s late wife and the mother of Teddy, Lenny, and Joey. Though she never appears in the play, she is mentioned frequently and her presence is felt throughout. She is praised by Max in saintly terms as being “the backbone of the family” and also condemned by him as a “slutbitch.” She had a close relationship with Max’s friend MacGregor.
Joey
Joey is a rather stupid man in his mid-twenties and the youngest of the three sons. He wants to be a professional boxer and to that end works out in a gym. His regular job is as a demolition laborer. Joey is delighted when he sees Ruth and Lenny dancing and kissing and immediately takes Ruth to the sofa where he begins to “make love” to her. Later, he spends two hours with Ruth alone in his room but does not “get all the way,” and he seems content with that. At the end of the play, Joey sits...
Lenny
Lenny is in his early thirties and is the second son. He is a successful pimp with a string of prostitutes. Lenny is the first of the sons introduced in the play, and he seems to dominate the household with a cold, quick wit. He is also the first of the family to meet Ruth, and he immediately attempts to dominate her. He tells two long stories, one about being propositioned by a prostitute by the harbor front and the other about going to help an old lady; both end with his beating the women....
Alienation and Loneliness
A family lives in the same house and though they live side-by-side physically, their emotional alienation and consequent loneliness is palpable. Perhaps the most alienated of all the characters are Teddy and Ruth. They seem to have chosen to remain emotionally separate from the others. Teddy very clearly states this when talking about his “critical works.” He says that it is a question of how far one can operate on things and not inthings. He has chosen not to be emotionally involved with any...
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Pinter believes that social violence is due to resentment. Research the break-up of the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina), or other areas of late-twentieth century civil strife (such as Rwanda). Consider what part long-standing resentments played in the events. Compare them to the personal strife that occurs in Pinter’s play. 2. Research the feminist movement of the 1960s and after. Does Ruth answer the feminist definition of a free woman? Or is she a man’s (Pinter’s) idea of a free w...
Anger and Hatred
Anger abounds in The Homecoming. The play opens with Max looking for scissors and Lenny ignoring him. Lenny then responds with, “Why don’t you shut up, you daft prat?” Throughout the first scene, as the family of men are introduced, anger and hatred seem to be the main traits of their relationships and their preferred modes of conduct. Lenny calls Max a “stupid sod,” and Max responds with, “Listen! I’ll chop your spine off, you talk to me like that!” Even when talking about the past, Max reca...
Setting
The setting of The Homecomingis realistic. It consists of a large room with a window, an archway upstage where a wall has been removed, stairs up to a second floor, a door leading to outside and a hallway leading to interior rooms. The furnishings, too, are realistic: two armchairs, a large sofa, sideboard with a mirror above it, and various other chairs and small tables. The set stays the same throughout.
Plot
The play takes place over a period of approximately twenty hours and there is one basic plot with no subplots. Here are all the requisite unities of time, place, and action that Aristotle put forth as the ideals for constructing a tight, powerful drama. Why, then, were audiences, including many critics, disturbed not only by the content but also by the form of the play? Part of the answer is in the audience’s expectation that they will somehow be told about the characters in clear-cut exposit...
Language
Another of the disturbing elements of Pinter’s plays is his use of language. Pinter’s characters speak with the all the hesitations, evasions, and non sequiturs of everyday speech. Moreover, the characters do not respond to questions with obviously logical answers, as would happen in a “realistic” play. Pinter’s characters do not use language to communicate directly and logically; they use language to attack, defend, and stall while seeking out the motive rather than the direct meaning of the...
While The Homecoming is grounded in the specifics of setting and family relationships, there is very little reference to the world at large: Nevertheless, the strife within the play’s family reflects a turbulent time in the world in the year of its debut, 1965. The United States was being sucked deeper and deeper into the war in Vietnam. U.S. bombe...
When The Homecoming opened in London on June 3, 1965, Harold Pinter was already considered a major playwright in England, and his new play was eagerly awaited. Harold Hobson, critic for the Sunday Times, who alone had championed Pinter’s debut The Room and his 1958 The Birthday Party, had said then that “Mr. Pinter . . . possesses the most original...
Terry Browne
Browne is a noted drama authority. In this essay he discusses the power of Pinter’s language as action and weapon. Harold Pinter has stated unequivocally many times that “I do not write theses: I write plays.” He says that his personal judgments are reserved for the “shape and validity” of his work. He is concerned with expressing his vision in a way that communicates directlyto the audience. Audiences in 1965 (and to a large degree even today) were used to realism with its specific biographi...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Two of Pinter’s early plays provide background to The Homecoming: The Birthday Party (1958), Pinter’s first full-length play, contains all the hallmarks of Pinter’s style and concerns; The Caretaker, which opened April 17, 1960, at the small Arts Theatre Club in London, explores loneliness and power struggles among three men. Centered on a tramp who is given a place to stay by a mentally damaged man, this play was Pinter’s first major commercial success. 2. Pinter’s Old Times (1970), delve...
Maggie Gee
Gee reviews a 1997 London production of Pinter’s play. Praising both the text and the new performance, the critic contends that thirty-two years afters its debut, the play “still has the power to shock.” A beautiful, elegant woman, Ruth, sprawls on a sofa in a drab working-class front room which contains five men: her husband, Teddy, her husband’s two brothers, her elderly father-in-law and his brother. Her husband’s youngest brother, Joey, lies heavily on top of her, grinding his pelvis into...
Elsom, John. Postwar British Theatre Criticism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 155-60. Gottfried, Martin. Review of The Homecoming in Women’s Wear Daily, January 6, 1967. Grecco, Stephen. “Harold Pinter” in Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 8: Contemporary Writers, 1960 to the Present, Gale (Detroit), 1992, pp. 315-36. Ker...
Billington, Michael. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter, Faber & Faber, 1996. Burkmann, Katherine H. and John L. Kundert Gibbs, editors. Pinter at Sixty, Indiana University Press, 1963. Esslin, Martin. Pinter: The Playwright, Methuen, 1982. Gussow, Mel. Conversations with Pinter, Grove Press, 1994. Knowles, Ronald. Understanding Harold Pinter, Univ...
Critical Overview. When The Homecoming opened in London on June 3, 1965, Harold Pinter was already considered a major playwright m England, and his new play was eagerly awaited.
Despite shifts in the moral, social, and political climate since 1964, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming remains a challenging work of theatre. It is complex, confrontational, and casually brutal about human nature.
Dive deep into Harold Pinter's The Homecoming with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion
Nov 3, 2023 · 'The Homecoming' analysis. Characters and Their History. The play takes place in a house of four very strong-willed and often violent men. Max is the father of the three boys, Lenny, Sam, and Joey, and the family's patriarch. Lenny is extremely violent, and it's suggested that he is a pimp.
The main action of The Homecoming begins when Teddy, a profes- sor of philosophy, arrives home in England to introduce Ruth, his wife of six years,6 to his father Max, his uncle Sam, and his brothers Lenny and Joey. The play ends shortly after Teddy leaves for America with- out Ruth.
