Repetition in Beckett, Pinter, and Albee

Abstract

When critics talk about the use of language in Theater of the Absurd plays, they often mention that part of its effect comes from its similarity to everyday talk. One of the key features in both everyday conversation and the dramatic conversation in the Theater of the Absurd is repetition. In the plays of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Edward Albee, repetition is a central stylistic feature of the dialogue. It operates on two levels in their texts: the micro level, between the characters, and the macro level, between the performance or text and the audience/reader. On both levels repetition creates both harmony and disharmony. On the micro level, repetition functions to create meaning and promote interaction between the characters, but it also signals discord between characters as well, because they use repetition to evade giving pertinent responses, to verbally dominate other characters, and to show contrived involvement. On the macro level, repetition creates harmony by involving us emotionally in the musical patterns of the dialogue, by bonding with the repetition of our everyday speech to produce dialogue that feels comfortable, and by making us laugh. Yet, repetition on the macro level also creates disharmony through too much repetition, or noise, and repetition that illustrates communication systems in a state of collapse. Repetition in the dialogue mimics the repetitive nature of ordinary talk and makes dialogue that should feel comfortable seem threatening, and it unsettles the spectator/reader because it captures our ambivalence about the communication process. What the spectator/reader remembers from this dialogue is not the rapport building nature of repetition but repetition that creates more distance between interlocutors in conversation, that feigns conversational involvement but actually brings anxiety.