Essay Questions

Show how the theme of death is brought out in Harold Pinter’s Moonlight.

Thoughts and personal feelings about death take a central stage in Harold Pinter’s play, Moonlight. For instance, Andy who is also the protagonist is constantly haunted by feelings of the torment of looming death. Andy manages to confront these feelings in the essence of horror and anxiety. On his deathbed, Andy has no one visiting or caring for him apart from Bel and another couple that visits. Also, death is brought out in the sense that the play is based on the memory of the couple’s dead daughter.

Show how the concept of conflict is brought out in Harold Pinter’s play Moonlight.

Even though Bel plays the duty of a wife lovingly, there is an imminent awkwardness that hangs about them in their relationship. Bel is quite unforgiving of Andy’s infidelities. In this way, the theme of conflict is brought out quite majorly in the work. It can also be argued as the writer’s way of bringing out the normalcy of such conflicts in relationships.

Explore ambiguity and mystery in Harold Pinter’s play, Moonlight.

In this work, the fact that Bridget has no common ground to which she belongs as she does not have a bedroom of her own like Andy and Fred is a clear and explicit indication of the corporeality of her status: she can be dead, a supernatural spirit or she might even be just a memory. All in all, ambiguity and mystery take centre stage in Pinter’s Moonlight, as he gives just about enough information to facilitate the development of the reader’s own interpretation, even though not enough to come up with a definitive answer.