Harold Pinter의 The Hothouse에 나타난 권력담론 분석

The Power Structure in Pinter's The Hothouse

Harold Pinter often deals with the characters who try to escape from the institutions, in vain. For example, Stanely in The Birthday Party or Gus in The Dumb Waiter attempts to avoid the mysterious and destroying pressure from the society but fails to do. Likewise, in The Hothouse, the patients are perished under the claustrophobic atmosphere, and their desperate revolt against the power of the hospital is of no avail. In that respect, Pinter is deeply concerned with the relationship between an individual and the society in which he or she lives. One of the main aims of the power of any society is to produce obedient people to maintain its rules and tendencies. Therefore, any individual is likely to be punished as a scapegoat to restore the order of the society, if she or he tries to transgress against the institutions. Michel Foucault who is one of the most outstanding thinkers of the contemporary world tries to analyze the interactive relationship between an individual and the society. The major purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of the power game among the ruling class themselves, and between them and the ruled in The Hothouse, on the basis of the discourses on power by Foucault and others. In The Hothouse, there are two classes; Roote and the intermediate staff are the ruling class and the subordinate staff and the patients are the ruled. The ruling class wants to control the ruled to the nail; however, the controlling group is the body of irresponsible and immoral people who have brought about problems, such as 6457's death and 6459's childbirth. They pick up a new-comer, Lamb, to impute their wrongdoings. As a result, Lamb gets an electric torture and gone to pieces, being falsely accused of the murder and the rape. At the same time, the patients rebel against the power, and most of the staffs get killed in the process. However, everything seems what it used to be in the end. Pinter tries to show the audience how difficult for people to live with human dignity and genuine feelings in an inhuman society is. Lamb who is trapped in the torture room is the symbol of the modern man who is destroyed under the great wheel of social institutions.