HAROLD PINTER - Joshua Ruebl

the King, with the consciousness of that character spread throughout the three sons and
including the father. Marc Silverstein says in his book Harold Pinter and the Language of
Cultural Power:
“While the play clearly manifests Oedipal tensions,
I would argue that these tensions indicate a scenario more
Lacanian than Freudian. Lacan’s conceptualization of the
Oedipus complex emphasizes the family’s status as a
network of symbolic relations that must generate
appropriate subjects to occupy the positions these relations
designate, and thus provides an useful theoretical lens
through which to view The Homecoming. The
complexities of the Lacanian Oedipal scenario demand an
excursus into the realm of theory that, while somewhat
lengthy, will help clarify Jessie’s role in the crisis of family
structure Pinter dramatizes.
For Lacan, “father” and “mother” are signifying
spaces, symbolic positions that function as linguistic
categories, drawing their meaning from the play of
difference that defines their relationship within the closed
signifying system formed by the family. The mother’s
recognition of the father’s word promotes the elaboration of
difference within the family. Recognizing the father’s
discursive power, the mother proclaims her own
inadequacy- her “lack” thus defines his “potency,” and his
“potency” constitutes bother her necessary “lack” and her
desire for plenitude that will complete it.” (Silverstein pgs.
88-89.)
Through the non-realism of the stage, Pinter sets the scene for a ritual in which a
family of psychically depleted men gain power (or in Sam and Max’s case, wither away)
with a surrogate mother-figure being Ruth, who through her own ritualized initiation into
the role of the goddess, gains her signified potency as the ancient archetype of Lilith.
Silverstein asserts that the Lacanian Oedipal drives are a subconscious construct of every
family, that they are natural, and that they are perfectly illustrated in each character and
their relationships to women. Here, Pinter makes tangible in the stage reality and the
characters, the subconscious, and much of this is what drives the play’s heightened
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