Page 328 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes 29.1 Characterization

29.1.1 Meg and Petey Boles

Petey’s wife, Meg Boles is a good-natured woman in her sixties. If only from a lack of any reference
to offspring of her own, it is implied that she and Petey are childless, thus she fills a void in her life
by turning the Boles’s boarding-house tenant, Stanley Webber, into a kind of surrogate child. She
insists on calling him “boy” and mothering him. She even takes liberties appropriate to a parent—
though not to the landlady of an adult roomer—by invading his privacy to fetch him down to
breakfast.
Like his wife, Petey Boles is in his sixties. He is a deck-chair attendant at the unidentified seaside
resort where he and Meg own their boarding house, which, although it is ‘‘on the list,’’ has seen
much better days. Petey is dull and ambitionless, no more inclined than his wife to find challenges
beyond the confines of their rooming house. The pair have simply settled into a humdrum existence
appropriate to their mundane minds.

Illustrate the events in the play Birthday Party that proves Meg Boles a good natured
woman.

29.1.2 Goldberg and McCann

Goldberg and McCann represent not only the West’s most autocratic religions, but its two most
persecuted races. Goldberg goes by many names sometimes Nat but when talking about his past he
mentions that he was called by the names Simey and also Benny. He seems to idolise his Uncle
Barney as he mentions him many times during the play. It is thought that Goldberg is a Jewish man.
McCann is an unfrocked priest and has two names. Petey refers to him as Dermot but Goldberg
calls him Seamus. McCann seems to think that Goldberg is a Christian man but this seems not to be
the case as Goldberg is a typically Jewish name.
Nat Goldberg, in his fifties, is the older of the two strangers who come to interrogate and intimidate
Stanley before taking him away. He is a suave character, a gentleman in appearance and demeanor.
He also seems to exude superficial good will, inclined to give kindly advice to both his henchman,
McCann, and the other characters. He is nostalgic, too. He fondly and affectionately recalls his
family and events in his early life. He also insists that Meg and the others honor Stanley with a
birthday party.

Goldberg and McCann represent both west’s most autocratic religions and persecuted
races. Analyse this statement in context of Birthday Party.

29.1.3 Stanley Webber

Stanley Webber is a palpably Jewish name incidentally is a man who shores up his precarious sense
of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment
of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing, ... but once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation—
‘I’ve got to get things ready for the two gentlemen’—he’s as dangerous as a cornered animal.

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