Eng426 20th century english literature

Revelation of Man’s Inner Brutality: The play showed the inner tendency of man to be brutal; a characteristic veiled behind the appearance of civilisation and etiquette people portray. The audience expects lower-class people like Max and Lenny to be obnoxious and cruel but this is same of Ruth who appeared as a cultured lady of the upper-class. The play showed that humans are united in their evil nature beneath the facade of culture and class division that the society institutes.

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   Characterisation in The Homecoming
   

Ruth: She is a married woman who finds herself in a dysfunctional family set up, a family into which she is married but decides to make merchandise of her sexuality. When Ruth is first introduced to her husband’s family, we perceive that this is a male- dominated family that has no place for a woman. This perspective is reinforced when we notice the atmosphere of competition and hostility that the family lives in. The father and his sons and his brother that live with them compete, quarrel and fight over almost everything. When Ruth arrives in the house, she is quiet and passive, almost afraid of facing her husband’s family but she later decides to change her role from a victim to the challenger.

She is compared and likened to Max’s dead wife, Jessie, who was the only woman in the house before her death and before the arrival of Ruth. Jessie was also an unfaithful wife to the extent that the paternity of her sons was doubted. Ruth confronts Lenny especially his sexual confrontations and verbal assaults head on and till the end of the play she decides to change her role from the victimized heroine to a woman who exploits her circumstances to her benefit. This is not to excuse her chameleon-like or ambiguous behaviour especially her promiscuous tendency coupled with her disregard for her husband’s feelings or the future of her children. Pinter in a way depicts her as the image of an emancipated and freed woman in a male- dominated world.

Max: He is the father of the house and he seems to understand the psychology of women more than every other member of his house. From the beginning of the play it is evident that Max is abusive and does not respect women. The first time he sets his eyes on Ruth, he concludes that Ruth must be a prostitute. Max’s attitude of regarding women as sluts and whores rubs off on his family members, especially Lenny and they are encouraged by Max to verbally and sexually abuse women. It is Max who reads Ruth’s character correctly “Listen, I’ve got a funny idea she’ll do the dirty on us, you want to bet? She’ll use us, she’ll make use of us, I can tell you! I can smell it!” (81).


Teddy: He is Ruth’s husband who decides to take his wife home to his family without thinking of either protecting her or looking out for her best interests. He also does not care so much about his relationship with his wife. He is an academic in the city who has not been in touch with his family in a long time, probably because he is not in good terms with them. Pinter portrays him as a weak man who is not in control of his interests especially his marriage. Ruth’s decision to stand up for herself against his family’s insults could be as a result of the fact that her husband fails to do so. His brothers Joey and Lenny get intimate with his wife and he does nothing to restore his relationship with his wife. It is Teddy himself who tells Ruth that his family would like her to stay back knowing full well their plans for her.
Though he is weak, he tries to paint a different picture of himself to the audience; that he knows what is happening though he does nothing to change the situation. He tells us “I’m the one who can see. That’s why I can write my critical works... I can observe it... But you’re lost in it. You won’t get me being ... lost in it.”(62). Teddy thinks that being able to see as an academic and being able to write critical works about the nature or mind of men will make him understand what is going on his family or show him to be superior to everybody else. But the question one might ask is how superior is the man whose wife is merchandised by his own family and he does nothing about it but accepts the situation?


Lenny: He is portrayed as a bully in the play. He pairs up with Max as the greatest trouble makers in the family. Both of them fight over paper cutting, they both taunt Sam over being a good driver and like his father, Lenny sees women as sluts and whores and he blames them for giving him a disease. He later ridicules his father with questions about his paternity, making us doubt that Max is his true father. The character of Lenny is of importance in the play as it is through his assaults that Ruth becomes a changed woman. Though Ruth was quiet and passive at the beginning of the play, Lenny’s sexual advances and insults bring out a new perspective of Ruth’s character. She turns out to be a threat to Lenny’s masculinity and she dances and kisses Lenny, teasing Joey. Lenny later becomes Ruth’s pimp at the end of the play.