The Birthday Party: Act Two Summary & Analysis

McCann’s pasttime of ripping newspapers represents the extent to which his—and Goldberg’s—presence destabilizes the boarding house. Their arrival has disrupted the prevailing sense of order, a fact embodied by his slow, methodical destruction of the newspaper. On another note, it’s strange that Stanley says he’d like to “celebrate” his birthday “quietly,” considering that he has previously suggested that it’s not his birthday at all. Once again, then, the details of The Birthday Party are ambiguous and even contradictory, leaving the audience with very little in the way of reliable information.

Yet again, Stanley presents his past life in a confusing, contradictory manner. This time, he suggests that he came to the boarding house because of “business,” but when McCann asks if he’s “in business,” he says, “No.” However, he then adds, “I think I’ll give it up,” a phrase that implies that he is, in fact, “in business.” Of course, he is perhaps purposefully contradicting himself in order to confuse McCann, but it’s safe to assume that Pinter is also hoping to confound the audience by withholding the actual details of Stanley’s life. In turn, viewers are left wondering what they actually know about the play’s protagonist—an experience that not only mimics what it would be like to encounter Stanley in real life, but also reflects the ways in which Stanley’s life of isolation has warped his sense of reality.

It’s worth noting that Stanley says he’s been drinking too much while living in the boarding house, effectively confirming the detrimental effect this life of isolation has had on him. Furthermore, he once again contradicts himself, this time reverting to his original assertion that it isn’t his birthday, ultimately reinforcing the sense of ambiguity that runs through the play. Lastly, by calling Meg “crazy,” he alerts the audience to one of The Birthday Party’s primary interests: exploring whether or not a person is sane.

Stanley becomes frantic and ridden with anxiety, as if he has a guilty conscience. His question, “Or hasn’t he told you?” implies that he wants to know if Goldberg has told McCann something unsavory about him. Stanley also reveals that he used to live in Basingstoke—the same place that Goldberg talked about when he first arrived and told a story about his uncle. As such, the audience learns that McCann and Goldberg most likely do know Stanley, despite the fact that McCann has insisted otherwise. This is how Pinter wants the audience to receive information: by piecing it together and struggling to make sense of the play’s ambiguity.

Pinter pushes the ambiguity of the play to a rather hilarious and absurd point, where even McCann gets confused about his own friend’s identity. “I thought your name was Nat,” he says, earnestly voicing what audience members are no doubt thinking to themselves. However, such details are unimportant in The Birthday Party and are especially insignificant to Goldberg, who seemingly has no trouble shifting in and out of the past and present, all the while allowing the specifics of his life to fluctuate according to the conversation he’s having. In this way, each character becomes estranged from everyone else in the play—no one can truly connect because they know nothing about one another.

Stanley’s anxiety in this scene comes to full fruition, as he pretends to be the manager of the boarding house, making it clear just how much he doesn’t want to be around Goldberg and McCann. However, what remains unclear is whether Stanley is afraid of Goldberg and McCann because they are bad men, or if he’s afraid of them because he himself has done something terrible and they’re here to punish him. It’s worth noting that Goldberg has told Stanley to sit down twice in a row; these commands hint at the fact that Goldberg and McCann are beginning to curtail Stanley’s freedom by ordering him around.

Once Goldberg and McCann finally succeed in forcing Stanley to sit, they begin to bombard him with questions. When they ask what Stanley was doing “yesterday,” it begins to seem more and more likely that Stanley has indeed transgressed in some way. However, the fact that they don’t wait for Stanley to respond—instead pushing on with their questions—indicates that they don’t actually care what he has to say. In turn, their interrogation loses some of its meaning, so that they’re simply going through the motions of questioning Stanley.

As Goldberg and McCann interrogate Stanley, their questions become not only more and more absurd, but more and more meaningless. It obviously doesn’t matter what kind of “fruit salts” Stanley takes for headaches or whether or not he properly stirs this medication. And yet, Goldberg treats this question with the utmost seriousness, as if it’s a matter of life and death. This makes the entire interrogation seem rather inconsequential. After all, if Goldberg and McCann think Stanley is guilty for failing to make his “fruit salts” fizz, then even the most banal actions can be considered sinful, meaning that everyone in the world should be condemned. Stanley also responds to these absurd questions as if they truly are serious, thereby validating the interrogation and confirming that he has a guilty conscience.

Although some of their questions are silly and seemingly inconsequential, Goldberg and McCann do accuse Stanley of a number of heinous crimes. They also suggest that he has “betrayed the organization,” though no one clarifies what organization they’re referring to. Similarly, they contradict themselves when talking about Stanley’s wife, simultaneously suggesting that he killed her and that he never got married in the first place. By rendering this interrogation a chaotic and ridiculous affair, Pinter shows the audience just how easy it is to force a person into guilt. In fact, the mere suggestion of guilt seems to be Goldberg and McCann’s most powerful advantage, since they apparently don’t care about the specific details of Stanley’s supposed crime.

Here Pinter riffs on a heady theological argument laid out by Thomas Aquinas that draws upon modal logic, which interprets the words “possible” and “necessary” in nuanced ways. In this context, the word “necessary” is used to describe things that could never be different—in other words, 2 + 2 is necessarily 4 because the sum of those numbers will never create a different total. Thomas Aquinas proposed a theory of possibility and necessity that he claimed proved the existence of God. This theological connection makes sense given the context of this interrogation, considering that Goldberg tells Stanley he “stink[s] of sin,” an accusation that again suggests he is guilty. When he says, “Do you recognise an external force, responsible for you, suffering for you?” he essentially calls into question whether or not Stanley believes in God, which is perhaps why he proceeds by referencing Thomas Aquinas’s proof of God. However, what Goldberg then says about the possibility or necessity of 846 is essentially nonsensical. Even with an understanding of Aquinas’s argument, it’s highly unlikely audience members would be able to make sense of what Goldberg says, especially since he applies it not to God, but to a random number. Again, Pinter confounds his audience with meaninglessness.

More than anything, Goldberg’s assertion that Stanley is “dead” is an acknowledgement of the negative effect isolation has had on him. “You can’t live, you can’t think, you can’t love,” Goldberg says, suggesting that the life Stanley has been leading in the boarding house has rendered him unable to function. And just when Stanley seems forced to face this fact, he lashes out, desperate to keep himself from coming to terms with the notion that he is essentially a broken person subsisting on nothing other than the weak semblance of order and sanity that Meg provides him. Given this sentiment, it’s quite fitting that Meg herself enters at this moment, banging Stanley’s drum—the very embodiment of this false sense of order.

As if they haven’t already made it clear to Stanley how much his isolated life has negatively influenced him, Goldberg and McCann single him out by forcing him to sit obediently under the harsh glow of McCann’s flashlight. In turn, the audience—and Stanley himself—feels just how alone he is, despite the fact that he’s surrounded by people who claim to be his friends.

Although Goldberg says Meg’s words are “beautiful,” her speech makes it obvious that she doesn’t truly know Stanley very well. After all, she mainly focuses on how happy she is “to be here tonight” in her own house, as if she’s actually celebrating the fact that her boarding house finally has more than one tenant. Furthermore, she doesn’t say anything about Stanley as a person, instead highlighting how long he’s been staying in her house. Though Meg and Stanley appeared to be close in the play’s first act, their relationship is superficial—a fact that only deepens Stanley’s sense of isolation.

Like Meg’s speech, Goldberg’s toast only accentuates how utterly alone Stanley is, even surrounded by people who claim to care about him and who want to celebrate his birthday. By speaking so admiringly about Meg’s speech—which was actually quite impersonal—Goldberg underhandedly emphasizes how pathetic her words were. What’s more, he reminds Stanley that “we all wander on our tod through this world” (“on our tod” is Cockney slang for “on our own”), which he insists is “a lonely pillow to kip on.” He is intentionally making Stanley feel alone and estranged from everyone else.

Yet again, the details of Goldberg’s past are difficult to discern, as he contradicts himself whenever he talks about his personal history. In this case, he presents himself as some kind of public intellectual or professor, though he recently told Meg that he used to work in fashion. He also again refers to himself as Simey, thereby destabilizing the audience’s feeling that they even know who he is. Lastly, it’s worth noting that Stanley sits in silence during his own birthday party, completely isolated as the other guests have private conversations.

“Blind man’s bluff” is a perfect representation of the isolation Stanley experiences in the boarding house. After all, the person who is “it” must wander blindly around a room while trying to find someone else, an act that embodies just how much Stanley is cut off from everyone around him.

Considering that Stanley tries to strangle Meg right after he’s been blindfolded and ridiculed in front of the entire party, it’s reasonable to assume that this act of aggression arises from the experience of being forced to fully inhabit the depths of his own isolation. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Goldberg and McCann bombarded him with a number of absurd and unanswerable questions directly before the party began, psychologically unhinging him and then acting as if nothing happened. In addition, McCann sets him up so that he breaks the drum, which represents perhaps the last vestige of order and sanity in the boarding house.

In keeping with the notion that order and sanity have been disrupted in the boarding house, Stanley begins to commit an egregious act. He has, it seems, finally broken. If he wasn’t guilty before this moment, it’s clear he has now become the sinful person Goldberg and McCann have always assumed him to be. What’s interesting, though, is that the play never clarifies whether or not Stanley has always been like this, so it’s possible to believe that Goldberg and McCann have changed him for the worse by treating him like a criminal.