The Birthday Party

“They just talk. […] You like a song eh, Meg?”

Petey mentions a show that is coming to town but tells Meg that it isn’t a musical. Meg doesn’t understand what the performers do and finds it disappointing that they just talk. Meg prefers music and the rhythm of music, as well as the cheerful sense of illusion that musicals can bring. This presents a meta-irony; the play in which these characters exist is “just talk,” but Meg creates romance and illusion to make her life more exciting and fulfilling than what it is.

“Those flakes? Those lovely flakes? You’re a liar, a little liar. They’re refreshing. It says so. For people when they get up late.”

When Stanley insults the cornflakes, Meg refuses to accept that he means it. Cornflakes are a fairly lackluster and low-effort breakfast, but Meg has built up the breakfast as a part of the excellent hospitality she believes she provides. She oversells them, using the advertising language of the cereal that also oversells them, to feed her delusions of being an excellent hostess in the boarding house.

“You won’t find many better wives than me, I can tell you. I keep a very nice house and I keep it clean.”

Meg and Stanley present opposite views of Meg’s life and her work in the boarding house. Meg believes she is an excellent wife and hostess. Her efforts are questionable, however, since the boarding house has no guests other than Stanley, she serves only cornflakes and fried bread for breakfast, and she dusts the kitchen around Stanley while he’s trying to eat. The play continually blurs the line between truth and perception, particularly within the dialectic between Meg’s relentless optimism and Stanley’s perpetual pessimism.

“Tell me, Mrs. Boles, when you address yourself to me, do you ever ask yourself who exactly you are talking to? Eh?”

When Stanley becomes annoyed after Meg clears his tea from the table without asking, she is afraid of him and refuses to go near him when he beckons her. The question of Stanley’s identity is never answered; he may, in fact, be dangerous. This interaction suggests that Meg’s understanding of the world and of the people around her may be less deluded than it appears, although she will ultimately maintain her illusions about Stanley.

“Do yourself a favour. Learn to relax, McCann, or you’ll never get anywhere.”

Goldberg’s advice to McCann sounds supportive and sometimes almost fatherly, but Goldberg always has ulterior motives. He manipulates McCann because he wants him to stop asking questions about their mysterious job. This means, however, that the audience never gets direct information about the men’s mission and true motives.

“You’ve always been a true Christian.”

McCann, moved by Goldberg’s professed faith in him, calls him a true Christian, even though Goldberg is certainly Jewish, as shown in many of his stories and statements. But Goldberg accepts the praise with little comment, obscuring real information about his personal life. Goldberg perpetuates this obfuscation throughout the play, even as he pontificates frequently about his childhood and family. For his part, McCann’s labeling of Goldberg as a Christian suggests he either does not know, or does not wish to know, Goldberg’s real identity.

“You’re right. How often do you meet someone it’s a pleasure to meet?”

Goldberg’s question to Meg straddles the line between pleasant and menacing, as does much of the language and action in the play. Goldberg clarifies that “today is different” (30), implying that he does find Meg to be a pleasure to meet, but his question also suggests that most of his meetings and interactions are unpleasurable. This foreshadows that his business there will be unpleasurable and encourages the play’s general atmosphere of anxiety about the outside world.

“We’ll bring him out of himself.”

Goldberg suggests that a party will bring Stanley out of himself, which Meg hopes will be just what Stanley needs to be more cheerful. But because Meg is oblivious to the threat that Goldberg and McCann present, she doesn’t discern their words’ sinister sense: They will elicit Stanley’s primality and the part of him that is dangerous but largely buried.

“I wouldn’t call it an honour, would you? It’ll just be another booze-up.”

Stanley attempts to casually convince McCann to allow him to leave instead of attending the party. His language indicates that these parties are not uncommon, and perhaps Stanley has even had multiple birthday parties in the year since his arrival. However, Stanley also knows that Goldberg and McCann make this party different and that if he is forced to stay, he will be in danger. Therefore, he tries to talk McCann out of the significance of the event.

“You never get used to living in someone else’s house.”

Stanley tries to make it clear to McCann that he is innocent and undeserving of whatever Goldberg and McCann intend for him. Stanley explains that he has always kept to himself but that isolating himself away from home has taken a toll on him. Stanley’s sense of self has been inconstant, but he wants to go home.

“Because it’s not a boarding house. It never was.”

Stanley uses several tactics to try and convince McCann that he and Goldberg should simply leave—that the boarding house is not the place where they want to be. Though this dialogue appears to be a flat-out lie, Stanley might be describing the way the house actually functions. There are no other guests, and it seems unlikely that there will be. Even Stanley is no longer a guest; Meg has turned him into a dysfunctional family member.

“There’s a lot you don’t know. I think someone’s leading you up the garden path.”

Stanley calls Meg “crazy” and tells Goldberg and McCann they are being led up the garden path, which is an idiomatic expression for being deceived; in other words, he suggests that Goldberg and McCann are only at the boarding house because someone has lied to them. However, McCann refuses to believe anything he says, including his assertion that it isn’t his birthday. McCann insists that Stanley is the one who is “crazy”; this plays into Goldberg and McCann’s attempts to compromise Stanley’s sense of reality.

“Yes, we all remember our childhood.”

Petey’s assertion is in response to Goldberg’s very specific story about his mother, who called him “Simey.” As a follow-up to Goldberg’s wordy orations, Petey’s response highlights his own tendency toward sparse language. Likewise, Petey gives very little information about himself or his experiences, and this exchange demonstrates how people can talk at each other and fill the silence with nonsense. The statement is also significant for its irony; memory and identity are actually quite fluid in the play, and the characters do not necessarily remember their childhood—or anything else about their lives—with strict accuracy.

“Let me—just make this clear. You don’t bother me. To me, you’re nothing but a dirty joke. But I have a responsibility towards the people of this house. They’ve been down here too long. They’ve lost their sense of smell. I haven’t. And nobody’s going to take advantage of them while I’m here.”

Stanley’s threat indicates that he has affection for the Boleses and that he cares enough about them to protect them. Meg and Petey—particularly Meg—don’t sense danger the way Stanley does, and they both allow Goldberg and McCann into their house. Notably, Stanley is saying there is something about the town that causes people to become complacent and unable to recognize threatening people, and it raises the question of why and how Stanley’s deteriorating sense of self relates to his presence in the boarding house.

“Do you recognize an external force, responsible for you, suffering for you?”

In the middle of rapid-fire questioning, Goldberg asks about an external force that almost resembles an idea of a god or higher power but presented in secular language. Perhaps the external force is the organization he mentions, or perhaps it is family or society, or even Meg. The question attaches no moral or prescriptive value to such recognition of an external power. It’s one of their many questions that imply their intentions for Stanley are not retributive in any normal sense; they seem to intend his reformation for more existential ends.

Well—it’s very, very nice to be here tonight, in my house, and I want to propose a toast to Stanley, because it’s his birthday, and he’s lived here for a long while now, and he’s my Stanley now. And I think he’s a good boy, although sometimes he’s bad.”

Meg’s toast is odd for a birthday since it’s rather tepid about Stanley. She essentially infantilizes him, and she refers to him as “my” Stanley, framing him as her child whom she has incorporated into the family. While she recognizes that he sometimes treats her badly or acts cruelly toward her, she asserts that he is a good person. In other words, Meg’s perception of Stanley is very much based on who she wants him to be to her.

“I’ve always liked older men. They can soothe you.”

Lulu and Goldberg are flirting with each other, and her statement reveals something about her ideals for a romantic partner. Lulu wants neither excitement nor passion but someone who is calming and stable. Perhaps this is why she declines Stanley’s offer to run away somewhere when he has no idea where to go, even though Stanley is closer to her in age. Lulu is drawn to Goldberg as someone many years her senior, although his behavior will prove to be distressing instead of soothing.

“Are you going to go for a ride?”

Meg rarely betrays a sense of unease in the play, but in Act III, she knows that something is wrong, even though she pretends she doesn’t. Seeing Goldberg’s car outside reminds her of Stanley’s ominous suggestion that a van could arrive with a wheelbarrow in it to take one of them away. Although the car is not a van, Meg asks if there is a wheelbarrow inside. She keeps asking Goldberg if he is going for a ride, but Goldberg doesn’t answer, which only escalates the sense of unease.

“A good woman. A charming woman. My mother was the same. My wife was identical.”

Goldberg gradually and indirectly exposes his fractured and polarized view of women. He speaks often about his mother and his late wife, extolling the virtues of good women—and his similar treatment of Meg suggests that he categorizes all older women as mothers and wives who are domestic, charming, and eager to care for men. Lulu, however, is young, so he treats her like a sexual object to be used and discarded. He is concerned for neither her feelings nor how her moral standards affect her sense of self.

“Anyway, he was telling me, you see, this friend of mine, that sometimes it happens gradual—day by day it grows and grows and grows… day by day. And then other times it happens all at once. Poof! Like that! The nerves break. There’s no guarantee how it’s going to happen, but with certain people… it’s a foregone conclusion.”

Rather than take responsibility for his actions or acknowledge that he and McCann may have pushed Stanley over the edge, Goldberg reassures Petey that Stanley’s psychological break from reality is only the natural progression of events. Moreover, he obliquely shuffles the blame onto Stanley, equating him with an imaginary group—“some people”—whose psychological inferiority all but ensures their dissolution. It’s another case of questionable reality: It is uncertain whether Stanley’s crisis is due to Goldberg and McCann, or whether Goldberg and McCann simply arrive in time to take Stanley away after his crisis. The ambiguity of Stanley’s predicament also suggests the fragility of an intact sense of reality, and it implies that someone’s sense of reality may falter arbitrarily.

“Questions, questions. Stop asking me so many questions. What do you think I am?”

Goldberg snaps at McCann, who asks Goldberg why he seems off that day. The irony of this statement is not only that it ends with a question; further, Goldberg himself has participated heavily in the constant stream of questions throughout the play. These questions begin with Meg’s first lines and continue through everything from innocent questions to stark interrogation, some of which is nonsensical. The characters ask constant questions, and they almost never get satisfactory answers.

“That’s what you did. You quenched your ugly thirst. You taught me things a girl shouldn’t know before she’s been married at least three times!”

As a young, unmarried woman, Lulu has a certain image of herself and of appropriate behavior. She flirted with Goldberg, sat on his lap at the party, and seems to have been willing to have sex with him—but, in Lulu’s mind, whatever occurred between them afterward crosses the line between appropriate and inappropriate. Although neither character explicitly describes the encounter—they don’t even say that they had sex—the interaction involved a briefcase, and Goldberg insists that Lulu is the one who opened it. Lulu is distraught to have learned things that she sees as the purview of women who have been “married at least three times,” suggesting that whatever happened has seriously undermined her desired sense of self.

“Between you and me, Stan, it’s about time you had a new pair of glasses. […] You’ve been cockeyed for years.”

Goldberg promises that he and McCann will replace Stanley’s glasses that they broke. It’s never clear whether Goldberg and McCann are there to punish Stanley or to save him from himself, but the glasses are a cipher for their proposal: They promise that new glasses will rehabilitate him and that he will be better than ever, but the promise could as easily be a threat. Stanley has been confused and angry in his stagnant life, and he barely fights them before giving in. Their breaking of his glasses is what breaks him. Perhaps Goldberg is right about the inevitability of Stanley’s “breakdown,” and perhaps Stanley really can be made better with a new pair of glasses and a new outlook. The sense of menace and coercion in their behavior and speech toward Stanley does, however, maintain the sense of uneasiness and ambiguity even as they promise new beginnings.