A Slight or a Stinging Ache?: The Freudian Uncanny in Harold Pinter's a Slight Ache
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2016, Vol 56, Issue 2
Abstract
Set in a country house's relaxing atmosphere of a modest breakfast scene accompanied by a cup of marmalade, Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) seems to present a world of utmost simplicity over where a sense of complete tranquility and utter nakedness rule. However, as clarified by a reading of the play in the light of Sigmund Freud's “The Uncanny”, Pinter presents not a world of simplicity but a convoluted world of bewildering complexity, impending danger, and emotional repression, hiding beneath the 'slight ache' of its characters 'a stinging ache' that vigorously resists both definition and resolution. Based on this, the present study analyzes Pinter's one-act play A Slight Ache from the perspective of Freud's psychoanalytic concept of 'the uncanny' and aims to show that although the play gives the impression of reflecting simplicity for its such known characters as a married couple set at a modest breakfast table or a matchseller silently standing on their back gate, it arouses uncanny feelings beneath the surface because its 'familiar' characters are uncovered to be potentially dangerous and battling towards each other with their repressed intentions and evil thoughts relating to their blurred pasts guised in an illusionary veil of ordinary-looking words.
Authors and Affiliations
Merve GÜNDAY
Keywords
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