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A Study on Pinter's The Collection: A Quest for Truth or Fantasy?

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2005, 18(3), pp.113-136
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Yeong-Yoon Seo 1

1한성대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Collection is essentially a mystery which involves four people in the dress business, James and Stella, Harry and Bill. Their relationships are entangled with each other when James seeks the truth about Stella's adultery with Bill in Leeds. James's task of discovering the truth is intrinsically frustrated because Bill has homosexual relations with Harry. During the play, five different versions of the happening in Leeds emerge and any of them may be true--or none. The action begins with an unidentified telephone call to Bill, but received by Harry, at four o'clock in the morning. It is revealed that the caller is James, but his nature remains a mystery. The most confused relationship in the play begins when James meets Bill and appears to be homosexually fascinated by the latter. The homosexuality may be a part of James that he wishes to suppress. His weakness is partly that he cannot face his desire. James's return visit to Bill may be is a desire to explore this aspect of himself. This meeting is interrupted by Harry, who came to see Stella. He tells them Stella's denial of the Leeds affair. He, however, creates another fantasy by making the affair her own fabrication, even though Stella said that James devised the whole fantastic story. Bill tries to shatter the fantasies of James and Harry about the Leeds affair with another narrative, but he doesn't verify whether it is true or not. At the end James returns to question Stella about the truth, but gets no satisfactory answer. By the end of the play, we cannot make a distinction between truth and fantasy because the four characters fabricate their own fantasy instead of seeking the truth. Ultimately Pinter reveals that men believe what they like and call it the truth through the relationships of these four persons.

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