Betrayal Themes

The title of Pinter’s play leaves no room for uncertainty about its thematic focus. Moving in reverse-chronological order, the play traces the years-long affair between a married literary agent named Jerry and Emma, his best friend Robert’s wife. Their affair is a betrayal, simple enough: Jerry betrays his wife, and they both betray Robert—Emma as his wife and Jerry as his oldest friend. But the straightforward betrayal in their adultery only begins the…

The most striking formal feature of Betrayal is the reverse-chronological sequence of its scenes, beginning in the long aftermath of Jerry and Emma’s affair and moving backward through time to the moment of its inception. This simple but remarkably effective device instills these characters’ story with a tragic pathos, as their ignorance of the sad end awaiting them grows in proportion to the audience’s knowledge of it. The play’s reverse chronology strikes the audience…

Children never appear in Betrayal, but their existence at the margins haunts the action of the play, hinting at the unavoidable consequences the central affair has for the other people in Emma and Jerry’s lives. For Jerry, the presence of children defines a home: he tells Emma that their illicit love-pad “could never… actually be a home. You have a home. I have a home. With curtains, etcetera. And Children. Two children in…