Reading Order
The Homecoming Reading Order
The Homecoming (1964) by Harold Pinter is the most disturbing play in the British post-war tradition — Teddy, a philosophy professor at an American university, brings his wife Ruth home to visit his North London family: his father Max, his uncle Sam, and his brothers Lenny and Joey. The play's central movement — in which Ruth is gradually absorbed into the family, proposed to as a prostitute to finance her living arrangements (replacing Teddy's late mother Jessie), and Teddy returns to America alone — is one of the most analyzed in post-war theater. Pinter never explains the characters' motivations or provides the psychological backstory that would make their behavior 'understandable' in the conventional sense; the play operates through menace, implication, and the peculiar logic of power that determines who wins any given exchange. The Homecoming is about the relationship between sexuality, family power, and the violence that these relationships contain; it is also about the impossibility of knowing another person's inner life, and about the way that language is used not to communicate but to dominate.
Where to start
The Homecoming (1964) — the complete text. Best Pinter reading order: The Birthday Party → The Caretaker → The Homecoming → Betrayal → Old Times → No Man's Land
Complete The Homecoming Book List
- 1Buy
The Homecoming
Harold Pinter·1965·The most disturbing play in the British post-war tradition — Teddy, Ruth, Max, Sam, Lenny, Joey. The 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company premiere with Paul Rogers and Ian Holm; Pinter's most analyzed play and the one that most fully develops the themes of menace, power, and the impossibility of psychological explanation - 2Buy
The Birthday Party
Harold Pinter·1958·The earlier companion — Stanley in his seaside boarding house, the arrival of Goldberg and McCann, and the birthday party that destroys him. The Birthday Party and The Homecoming are companion investigations of the same Pinter theme: the arrival of people who reorganize the power dynamics of a confined space, and the violence (actual or implied) that follows - 3Buy
Betrayal
Harold Pinter·1978·The later companion — the seven-year affair between Emma and Robert's best friend Jerry, told in reverse chronological order from 1977 to 1968. Betrayal and The Homecoming are companion explorations of the relationship between sexual power and family/friendship loyalty, but where The Homecoming is organized around dominance and submission, Betrayal is organized around the quieter violence of infidelity - 4Buy
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee·1962·Albee's companion in the tradition of the play about domestic power and the violence concealed in family relationships — George and Martha's night of games and warfare. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Homecoming are companion plays about the violence of family life: both are organized around an evening of escalating confrontation, and both use the presence of outsiders to expose the dynamics of the central relationship - 5Buy
Endgame
Samuel Beckett·1957·Beckett's companion — Hamm and Clov in their room, Nagg and Nell in their ashbins. Endgame and The Homecoming are companion explorations of the same post-war British theatrical theme: the confined space, the group of people who are stuck together, the power dynamics that determine who serves whom, and the violence that is always present even when it is never acted on - 6Buy
The Servant
Robin Maugham·1948·Maugham's companion in the tradition of the British literary investigation of the relationship between master and servant and the violence it conceals — Tony and his manservant Barrett. The Servant and The Homecoming are companion investigations of the British class relationship between the person who gives orders and the person who serves, and the way that the servant's knowledge of the master can become a form of power - 7Buy
Oleanna
David Mamet·1992·Mamet's companion in the tradition of the play about power, its redistribution, and the violence that accompanies it — the professor John and the student Carol. Oleanna and The Homecoming are companion investigations of the dynamics of power in a confined relationship: both are organized around the moment when the person who appears to have less power reveals that they have more - 8Buy
Steptoe and Son
Ray Galton·1962·Galton and Simpson's British television companion in the tradition of the investigation of the relationship between a father and his adult son, and the violence of dependence — Harold Steptoe's attempts to escape his father Albert's emotional tyranny. Steptoe and Son and The Homecoming are companion investigations of the same North London working-class family dynamic: the son who cannot escape, and the family that will not let him go
The Homecoming — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Homecoming by Pinter about?
The Homecoming is organized around a single event: Teddy, a philosophy professor at an American university, brings his wife Ruth back to his North London family home for a surprise visit. His family — his father Max (a former butcher), his uncle Sam, and his brothers Lenny (a pimp) and Joey (a boxer) — have never met Ruth. Over the course of the play's two acts, something happens that is difficult to describe without it sounding impossible: the family absorbs Ruth into their world, proposes that she should stay in London as a prostitute (to finance her accommodation and maintenance) while Teddy returns to America, and Ruth accepts. The play ends with Max on his knees in front of Ruth and Teddy walking out the door. Pinter never explains why Ruth accepts, or what she wants, or what the family sees in her that makes this proposal imaginable. The play is deliberately constructed to prevent any simple psychological explanation: we do not know what Ruth and Teddy's marriage is like, we do not know what Ruth's history is before she met Teddy, and we do not know what the family's women (Max's late wife Jessie, Sam's unmentioned past) were like. What we do know is the dynamics of power in the room: who speaks, who listens, who initiates, who retreats, and who wins any given exchange. Those dynamics determine everything.
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