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Love, Jealousy and Betrayal
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Betrayal, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
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 as a return from guilt to innocence, as the characters shed layer after layer of the bitter taint of experience. However, the expected moment of purity toward which the action drives, when everything might seem possible for these characters again, turns out to be the moment of savage betrayal—Jerry’s betrayal of his best friend, and Emma’s betrayal of her husband. At the same time, the play’s reverse chronology makes the romantic promise and hopefulness of this moment of betrayal all the more pronounced, in contrast with the sad fallout that has narratively preceded it. In ending the play with this ambiguous moment, Pinter seems to deny the existence of a guiltless golden age of youth that is continuous with a person’s disillusioned adult identity. Though Jerry and Robert speak fondly of their salad days at Oxford and Cambridge, Pinter’s dramatic structure suggests that if a person could turn back time, they would discover that the moment they became who they are was the moment they betrayed the youthful ideals and naïve optimism that used to define those relationships.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Time, Perspective, and Identity ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Time, Perspective, and Identity appears in each scene of Betrayal. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Time, Perspective, and Identity Quotes in Betrayal
Below you will find the important quotes in Betrayal related to the theme of Time, Perspective, and Identity .
Scene 1
Quotes
EMMA: How’s Sam?
JERRY: You mean Judith.
EMMA: Do I?
JERRY: You remember the form. I ask about your husband, you ask about my wife.
EMMA: Yes, of course. How is your wife?
JERRY: All right.
Pause
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JERRY: The funny thing was that the only thing I really felt was irritation, I mean irritation that nobody gossiped about us like that, in the old days. I nearly said, now look, she may be having the occasional drink with Casey, who cares, but she and I had an affair for seven years and none of you bastards had the faintest idea it was happening.
Pause
EMMA: I wonder. I wonder if everyone knew, all the time.
JERRY: You didn’t tell Robert about me last night, did you?
EMMA: I had to.
Pause
He told me everything. I told him everything. We were up… all night. At one point Ned came down. I had to take him up to bed, had to put him back to bed. Then I went down again. I think it was the voices woke him up. You know…
[…]
JERRY: You told him everything… about us?
EMMA: I had to.
Pause
JERRY: But he’s my oldest friend. I mean, I picked his own daughter up in my own arms and threw her up and caught her, in my kitchen. He watched me do it.
EMMA: It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone.
Scene 2
Quotes
JERRY: [Casey’s] over the hill
ROBERT: Is he?
JERRY: Don’t you think so?
ROBERT: In what respect?
JERRY: His work. His books.
ROBERT: Oh, his books. His art. Yes his art does seem to be falling away, doesn’t it?
JERRY: Still sells.
ROBERT: Oh, sells very well. Sells very well indeed. Very good for us. For you and me.
JERRY: Yes.
Scene 3
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JERRY: We’re here now.
EMMA: Not really.
JERRY: Well, things have changed. You’ve been so busy, your job, and everything.
EMMA: Well, I know. But I mean, I like it. I want to do it.
JERRY: No, it’s great. It’s marvellous for you. But you’re not—
EMMA: If you’re running a gallery you’ve got to run it, you’ve got to be there.
JERRY: But you’re not free in the afternoons. Are you?
EMMA No.
Scene 4
Quotes
ROBERT: Well, to be brutally honest, we wouldn’t actually want a woman around, would we, Jerry? I mean a game of squash isn’t simply a game of squash, it’s rather more than that […] You really don’t want a woman within a mile of the place […] You see, at lunch you want to talk about squash, or cricket, or books, or even women, with your friend, and be able to warm to your theme without feat of improper interruption. That’s what it’s all about. What do you think, Jerry?
JERRY: I haven’t played squash for years.
Pause
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Scene 5
Quotes
[Jerry] used to write me at one time. Long letters about Ford Madox Ford. I used to write him too, come to think of it. Long letters about… oh, W.B. Yeats, I suppose. That was the time when we were both editors of poetry magazines. Him at Cambridge, me at Oxford. Did you know that? We were bright young men.
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I’ve always liked Jerry. To be honest, I’ve always liked him rather more than I’ve liked you. Maybe I should have had an affair with him myself.
Scene 6
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JERRY: She was so light. And there was your husband and my wife and all the kids, all standing and laughing in your kitchen. I can’t get rid of it.
EMMA: It was your kitchen, actually.
Scene 7
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I’m a bad publisher because I hate books […]. I mean modern novels, first novels and second novels, all that promise and sensibility it falls upon me to judge, to put the firm’s money on, and then to push for the third novel, see it done, see the dust jacket done, see the dinner for the national literary editors done, […] all in the name of literature. You know what you and Emma have in common? You love literature. I mean you love modern prose literature, I mean you love the new novel by the new Casey or Spinks. It gives you a thrill.
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Scene 9
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I should have had you in your white, before the wedding. I should have blackened you, in your white wedding dress, blackened you in your bridal dress, before ushering you into your wedding, as your best man.
[…] I’m madly in love with you. I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. Your eyes kill me. I’m lost. You’re wonderful
JERRY: I speak as your oldest friend. Your best man.
ROBERT: You are, actually.
