Mountain Language

Part ll. Mountain Language
It is a four-scene political play written in 1988.The play opens with
a very painful scene . A line of women have been waiting outside a prison
for eight hours in snowy weather to see their men. Those women are
not to use their own language spoken in their city ( the mountain )
because the political authorities consider it dead . The captors keep some
dogs to bite any person who tries to speak the mountain language .
The intermediate setting of the play suggests that Harold Pinter is
condemning any government that oppresses its citizens .The author does
not mention any particular country to give the play universal political
dimensions .15 In this respect it is similar to One for the Road because
they could happen in any country . Both plays reflect the ugly mechanisms
of political cruelty.16
Pinter's visit to Turkey in 1985 inspired him to write the play. He
saw the inhuman suppression of the Kurds there . However , the play
is not only about the Kurds as a minority in Turkey ; it has a wider
scope as Harold Pinter explains :
From my point of view , the play is about suppression of language
and the loss of freedom of expression . I feel ,therefore , it is as
relevant in England as it is in Turkey . A number of Kurds have said
that the play touches them and their lives . But I believe it also reflects
what's happening in England today _ the suppression of ideas , speech
and thought. 17
9
In Mountain Language Pinter attacks the systematic oppressions
of the governments against people. Commenting on the wide range of the
political oppression depicted in the play , Mark Batty concludes :
Pinter in Mountain Language suggests that repressive zeal was not
the discourse solely of military and fascist dictatorships , but is in
operation in the corridors of power of all Western democracies ,
those self-proclaimed pioneers of a just New World Order . 18
What is true in Batty's view with regard to the political...