Harold Pinter’in The Room Oyununda Tekinsiz ve Ötekilik

Abstract

Harold Pinter's first play The Room (1957) displays the characteristics of "the uncanny" (unheimlich) developed by Ernest Jentsch and Sigmund Freud. Jentsch's dichotomy between the concepts of "new, foreign, hostile" and "old, known, familiar", the tension between animate and inanimate entities, or machine-like beings have certain reflections in the play. His dichotomy is illustrated in the components of "the room", "the couples", "the man in the basement", and "the blind Negro". In a similar fashion, how Freud approaches to the concept of "the uncanny" resonates with the play. This is particularly clear in the components of "repressed feelings of earlier years", "involuntary repetitions", "the double pattern". Therefore, this article argues that Pinter's play portrays most of the characteristics of both Jentsch and Freud's interpretation of the uncanny. Besides, otherness as a term contributes to the formation of the feeling of uncanny throughout the text by providing a robust reinforcement for its perception.

Untitled

“…56 Šarić 2003. -Antonović, Vitezović, Šarić 2019 57 See, e.g., Perlès 2001, 202. 58 Andreeva, Stefanova, Gurova 2014. -Gurova et al 2022.…”