Commentary Writing: Betrayal by Harold Pinter
Wyrna Anggra P.
10/17/2013 06:13:00 pm
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Every
story has an ending, so has an affair. Betrayal is an epic play about love
story telling backward. There are a lot of interesting things to see in this
play-the performance; eventually the issue of the story which makes this play
has its soul. An issue of an affair between women, who’s eventually married,
with a man which is her husband’s bestfriend, where actually happens in our
real life. This writing will mostly talked about the issue which is considered
as the most interesting part of this play. Some of the content such as
character, theme and plot will be presented as supporting idea in writing this
commentary.
Betrayal
is an absolutely brilliant love story which is presented backward. The
characters which are presented here play the role perfectly and make this story
has its soul. Starting with Emma, Robert’s wife and an owner of art gallery,
her character is so much manipulative. She loves both Robert and Jerry but did
not want to let one of them go. Jerry, a literary agent and Emma’s affair, he
is a bestfriend of Robert. From the beginning to the end of the play, Jerry is
confused of his own feeling. He did married and had an affair, but he’s fine
with that. The last is Robert, a publisher, Emma’s husband and Jerry’s
bestfriend. Robert is depicted as a strong man, older than Emma and Jerry,
smart and bitterer. These three characters are not often in the screen
together; mostly the movie is told in encounters between two of the characters.
Emma
is a married women but she has an affair with her husband’s bestfriend. Let’s
say that Emma is a religious person whose faith with his husband, having affair
is disgraceful. Maybe, the story of “Betrayal” will have different ending, for
instance Emma will be the one who will be blamed of having an affair. Evidently,
there is no evidence of religion symbol presented here. We could say the main
point of this issue is not for the sake of religion. If we refer back to
American social life in 1980, there is a great increased influence of women.
Women expanded their influence in politic, they also surpassed men in college
enrollment. However, the rising divorce rate left an increasing number of women
as sole breadwinners and forced more and more of them into poverty. In line
with the issue of women’s affair, Emma is depicted as a traditional woman at
the very last scene of the play. She’s wearing pink dresses and formal hair and
it was happened 7 years before the divorced, or in other words it was happening
in 1968. Two years after Emma started the affair, Emma changed her look from
shy, traditional women into a shopaholic and hunting. And it’s continued until
seven years later.
The
structure of the scenes which is anachronological order, deliberately explore
the emotions of each character in each scenes. The very first scene shows the
ending of Emma and Robert relationship, Robert slapping Emma and eventually
they divorced. The last scene shows Emma and Jerry first met and started the
affair. Eventhough the play begins at the end and moving backward, Pinter could
make an atmosphere of quite tension between Emma and Jerry, or awkward relationship
between Emma and Robert. This is somehow reinforcing the issue of broken
marriage between Emma and Robert, Jerry and Casey. Although the play mostly
presented the joy of Emma and Jerry having an affair, we could not just make a judgment
that Robert is the one who get hurt. Refer back to the power of a man in a
family, Robert might be had betrayed someone. The evidence that we could see
here in the play is when Robert promotes the less talented Casey at the expense
of the more gifted Spinks.
Betrayal
is a realistic drama that highlighted the cultural conflict in 1980s especially
family life-broken marriage. Three major character of this drama are Emma,
Robert and Jerry where they all relate to each other. Emma is Robert’s wife and
having affair with Jerry, while Robert is Jerry’s bestfriend also. This conflict
is influenced by the cultural changes in America in 1980. The increased
influence of women in 1980’s and the great number of divorce are considered as
the background of Emma did so.
