ABSTRACT
The phatic mode is a customary opening gambit in many of Harold Pinter's early plays, where it typically involves a ritualized exchange over the breakfast table. The constant references to food and the physical presence of the serving-hatch seem to suggest a connection with the British 'kitchen sink' school of working-class realistic drama which rose to prominence in the 1950s with plays such as those by Arnold Wesker and Alun Owen. The abyss of physical space is filled with the eternal silences of Pascal. The play is very ungenerous with information, but very exuberant in terms of sheer mindless talk. In normal life, language ranges from a full sensual enjoyment of the phonetic articulation in our mouth, the voicing process in our throat, the mechanics in our brain and nervous system, to a purely repetitious production of alien sounds and alien concepts,as if the vocal apparatus were merely the loudspeaker of a cheap hi-fi system.
