The Birthday Party Study Questions & Topics for Discussion

The Birthday Party Topics for Further Study

Investigate the ways in which Pinter's ethnic background and his early years growing up in a working-class section of London helped shape both his pacifism and his craft.

Research the influence of Franz Kafka on Pinter's "comedies of menace."

Compare the style, structure, and techniques of Pinter's The Birthday Party with those of Eugene Ionesco' s Bald Soprano or Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

Investigate Pinter's own observations about language and silence as concerns in his early work.

Research the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the possibility that it may be interpreted as the organization betrayed by Stanley Webber in The Birthday Party.