ABSTRACT
The 1963 stage version of The Dwarfs, a one-act which derives from a 1960 radio version adapted from Pinter’s first and only novel written from 1952 to 1956 but not published till 1990, swings to the other extreme from Night School as the least realistic, most stream-of-consciousness of Pinter’s plays. It places ethical emphasis on the most private portion of the self: the nature of inner identity as a basis for action. The play, an inward journey to that private self through the character Len, returns to the outward world of action to dramatize the need for some balance between those two worlds. Len, a train station porter, and two boyhood friends Pete, an accountant, and Mark, an actor, meet to discuss subjects ranging from their close friendship to the church. When Len reveals he sees dwarfs, Pete confesses to nightmares. But Len, in his quest for verification and truth, betrays Pete to Mark. In doing so he destroys the friendship, rids himself of his imagined dwarfs, but also possibly exiles himself to a sanitized reality of mundane order.
