Commentary Writing: Betrayal by Harold Pinter

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.