Vol. 1 No. 2 (2024): Harold Pinter and the Theatre of Menace
Articles

How Franz Kafka and Harold Pinter use Themes of Torture, Religion, and Colonization to Show how Governments Abuse Power

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  • Jaxson Goldsmith
Harold Pinter

Published 2024-04-29

Keywords

  • political plays,
  • torture,
  • colonization,
  • religion,
  • abuse of power

How to Cite

Goldsmith, J. (2024). How Franz Kafka and Harold Pinter use Themes of Torture, Religion, and Colonization to Show how Governments Abuse Power. Wings of Fire: Proceedings, 1(2). Retrieved from https://proceedings.francescacoppa.bergbuilds.domains/index.php/WOFProceedings/article/view/34

Copyright (c) 2024 Jaxson Goldsmith

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Harold Pinter has often cited Franz Kafka as influential on his own writing. Both writers are interested in questions of power: Why do people believe that they have power? Why do people have power over others? How do those people lose their own power? This essay will also show how  Kafka’s 1919 short story “In The Penal Colony'' laid the groundwork for the themes that would dominate Pinter’s later works, particularly the one act plays One for the Road (1984) and Mountain Language (1988).

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