Betrayal Literary Elements

Drama

English

The play is set between 1969 and 1977. Mostly set London, the play also includes a scene in Venice, Italy.

As a work of drama, the play does not have a narrator or singular point of view.

Forlorn, cynical, regretful, nostalgic, bitter, conflicted

The play uniquely has three protagonists – Jerry, Robert, and Emma – who also double as antagonists to one another.

The play's primary conflict stems from Jerry and Emma's affair. It brings Jerry and Robert – as well as Emma and Robert – into conflict with one another.

Pinter's unique narrative structuring defies the traditional dramatic features of climax. One possible point of climax, however, occurs in Scene Five when Emma reveals to Robert that she has been having an affair with Robert. While the reader has known about the affair since the beginning of the play, it is only then that Robert learns of the betrayal.

In the opening moments of the play, Pinter foreshadows the history shared between Emma and Jerry. For example, shortly after they meet, Emma remarks that it feels "just like old times" and says that "it's nice, sometimes, to think back" (p. 4). By the end of the scene, it is made clear that Emma and Jerry once engaged in an extramarital affair.

It is heavily intuited throughout the play that Emma and Casey are having an affair. In the first scene, Jerry asks about the affair, and Emma says "we have the occasional" (p. 16). Knowing Emma's history of deceit and infidelity, we can assume this was an understatement about the seriousness of her relationship with Casey.

Pinter makes several allusions to the work of Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Robert reads him while visiting Torcello, and he mentions that he and Robert discussed Yeats in the letters they sent to each other during their time in college. While Pinter does not mention any of Yeats's work specifically, it is perhaps worth mentioning that Yeats was known to have had several extra-marital affairs, just like the characters in the play.

Pinter only provides skeletal stage setting throughout the play, and offers no physical descriptions of any of the principal characters. Curiously, the only character who is provided with physical imagery is Spinks. In Scene Six, Jerry says that "he's a very thin bloke. About fifty. Wears dark glasses day and night' (p. 81). This physical imagery is especially vivid given the lack of description given to every other character in the play.

As Jerry and Emma's affair reaches its conclusion in Scene Three, Jerry says to Emma, "I don't think we don't love each other" (p. 44). Paradoxically, he admits neither to loving her outright nor to not loving her. It's a tricky form of non-answer that represents the characters inabilities to express themselves clearly and honestly.

On a narrative level, there is parallelism between the infidelity that Emma and Robert simultaneous commit against one another. Pinter also includes an example of grammatical parallelism in Scene Eight, when Jerry, speaking of Judith, says "She's busy. She's got lots to do. She's a very good doctor. She likes her life. She loves the kids" (p. 109).

Pinter is a writer of famously sparse and unadorned dialogue, and he generally avoids using techniques like personification.

Pinter makes use of unseen characters; that is, characters who are mentioned in dialogue but never appear onstage. Both Judith and Casey are discussed in detail, but never actually appear. The reader is thus left to imagine what these characters might be like in person.