In Harold Pinter's Moonlight, discordant scenes create a state of transition for the characters, who face the death of family patriarch Andy. Throughout the play, Pinter sets up scenes that would not logically fit into a linear story. Old friends reappear and converse with Andy, his wife and their two sons. A girl, stuck at 16, delivers comments from a “third space”. Sons Fred and Jake deny the fact that their father is dying and ignore their mother's attempts to contact them. Pinter provides these scenes to suggest that death is a process of crossing a line -- death will be a "new horizon" for Andy, as Bel (twice) suggests (p. 46) -- but certain lines crossed in the past can never be crossed. be revisited. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The first suggestion of discordance is marked by Maria's appearance before Jake and Fred when she describes, in a long speech, her relationships with Bel, Andy and her husband Ralph (p. 15). Although the stage directions suggest that she is speaking directly to Jake and Fred, her words suggest otherwise. They do not interrupt her as she openly reveals a long-standing “great affection” for Andy (p. 16). “How he danced,” she said. "One of the great waltzers. An elegance and grace long gone. ...And he looked you straight in the eye. Unwavering. ...But I was young then" (p. 16). Maria, who had affairs with Andy and Bel, adds: "Your mother was wonderfully young and getting faster with every moment. I -- I must say -- especially when I saw your mother being whirled around on the floor by your father -- I buds were bursting everywhere" (pp. 16-17) At the end of his monologue, Jake and Fred leave the stage completely and the room returns to Andy's room. In fact, although Maria. speaks to the young men, there is no indication that they hear her, or even realize that she has entered the scene Given the magnitude of what she is telling them, one would expect. normally for the sons to react to his speech Yet they ignore him as they continue to pretend that their father is not dying. Ralph, Jake and Fred's next visitor, is aware that his. entry is equally absurd He, like his wife, also speaks to them in a long tirade, receiving neither interruption nor response He tells them that their father wasted his life as a "thinker", drawing attention to them. uncertainties in the piece that cannot be clarified through analysis (e.g. 28). He says: What do you think this thought purports to do? Eh ? It's pretending to clarify things, you see, it's pretending to clarify things. But what does he actually do? ...It confuses you, it blinds you, it makes your mind spin, it makes you dizzy, it makes you so dizzy that at the end of the day you don't know if you're on your ass or on your elbow, you don't know if you're coming or going. (p. 28) Death in Moonlight also challenges intellectual reasoning. If death is a new horizon, as Bel suggested, "Is it endless? What is the weather like?" (p. 46) Andy, the thinker, as he dies, seeks comfort and certainty as concepts become more difficult to grasp. A joint appearance by Ralph and Maria at Andy's bedside is as unreliable as their previous visits to the sons. This time, however, the couple is interested in the reactions of the dying man and his wife – but the interaction does not seem to fit into the rest of the play. For example, Andy tells Bel around thebeginning of the play that he “ran into Maria the other day, the day before his accident” and that she invited him to her apartment for “a slice of plumduff” (p. 18). ). However, when she and Ralph appear at his deathbed, Maria says, "It's been ages." We don’t live here anymore, of course” (p. 68). So Andy may be imagining Maria, at one point or both. It's more likely, however, that they seem to be talking about a gray area between reality and fantasy, appearing suddenly after Andy and Bel talk about it; the dying man seems to have evoked them while thinking of his affair with Maria, of Bel's affair with Maria and of his football matches with Ralph, the referee. The stage directions are vague as to when Maria and Ralph enter and where they are. And, when they arrive, Andy denies having a past with them. "I was a civil servant. I had no past. I don't remember any past. Nothing ever happened," he insists (p. 70). He does not behave as if he were in the presence of the woman “without whom he cannot die” (p. 38). The entrance of Maria and Ralph therefore serves as a direct analogue to the new, uncertain “horizon” of death. Andy asks: “The big question is: will I cross [the horizon] when I die or after I die? » (p. 46) As time passes in the play, Andy crosses boundaries. Bridget has also crossed a boundary and it is unclear where she is speaking from; Andy's youngest daughter is cast in shadow both by the stage lighting and by her enigmatic monologues. Additionally, although she is depicted as only four years younger than her older brother in one scene (a flashback), she is 12 years younger than him in the rest of the play. Bridget admits: “I am hidden…Hidden but free. No one in the world can find me” (p. 22). The hypothesis is that Bridget died at the age of 16. However, it is now available to Andy, who is also dying. Andy's last words are to Bridget. After asking for his deceased daughter throughout the play, wondering why she didn't come to him (and brought grandchildren who were never born), Andy asks Bel to "tell Bridget not to Don't be afraid. Tell Bridget I don't want her." be afraid” (p. 76). He doesn't share the same anger at her deathbed absence that he harbors toward Fred and Jake. Additionally, Bridget says her "job" is to make sure her parents "sleep peacefully and wake up refreshed. ... Because I know when they look at me, they see that I'm all they have left of their lives" (p.1). Bridget is indeed the link that unites the members of the family. Brothers adore their younger sister. "Bridget would understand. I was her brother. She understood me. She always understood my feelings," says Fred (p. 53). Jake adds, “She understood me too.” Bridget, however, is "hidden" from her brothers when they need her most. At the end of the play, Bridget provides a metaphor for the transition from life to death. She describes a house “bathed in moonlight.” The house, the clearing, the alley were all bathed in moonlight. But the inside of the house was dark and all the windows were dark. …I stood there, in the moonlight, and waited. so that the moon sets” (p. 80). Bridget, frozen in time, has the first and last word in Moonlight, and she speaks for Andy, waiting on his deathbed for enlightenment. Andy isn't even sure he's dying; "I don't know what it feels like to die. What does it feel like?" Andy asks Bel (p. 76). He expressed doubts throughout the piece, hypothesizing "Personally, I don't believe it will be black forever because if it's black forever, what would have been the point of going through all these annoying charades in the first place?” (pp...