Harold Pinter – Previous Year UGC-NET | GATE Questions

1. Match List – I with List – II according to the code given below :
(Dramatists)
i. Arnold Wesker
ii. Harold Pinter
iii. Joe Orton
iv. Tom Stoppard

(Plays)
1. Jumpers
2. What the Butler Saw
3. The Room
4. Roots

Codes :
i ii iii iv
(A) 3 2 4 1
(B) 1 2 4 3
(C) 4 3 2 1
(D) 4 3 1 2
Ans: (C)

2. What game do the characters play in Act II of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party?
(A) A game of chess
(B) A game of cards
(C) Blind man’s buff
(D) Musical chairs
Ans: (C)

3. In Pinter’s Birthday Party Stanley is terrorised by two visitors to a seaside boarding house. Identify the two
(a) McGrath
(b) Goldberg
(c) McCann
(d) Robinson
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d)
(D) (b) and (d)
Ans: (B)

4. In Pinter’s Birthday Party, Stanley is given a birthday present. What is it?
(A) A toy
(B) A piano
(C) A drum
(D) A violin
Ans: (C)

5. Aston is a character in Pinter’s
(A) The Birthday Party
(B) The Caretaker
(C) The Dumb Waiter
(D) The Homecoming
Ans: (B)

6. In which of the following texts do Aston, Davies and Mick appear as characters?
(A) Wyndham Lewis’s Enemy
(B) Harold Pinter’s Caretaker
(C) Katherine Mansfield’s “Life of Ma Parker”
(D) Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock
Ans: (B)

7. The tramp in Pinter’s first big hit,
The Caretaker, often travels under an assumed name. It is
(A) Bernard Jenkins
(B) Roly Jenkins
(C) Jack Jenkins
(D) Peter Jenkins
Ans: (A)

8. “When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness”.
Identify the playwright who underlines the significance of silence thus.
(A) Samuel Beckett
(B) Harold Pinter
(C) Luigi Pirandello
(D) Joe Orton
Ans: (B)

9. What is the occupation of Max’s son, Lenny, in Harold Pinter’s The Home Coming ?
(A) boxer
(B) butcher
(C) pimp
(D) cab driver
Ans: (C)

10. Pinter once admitted that he first became aware of the dramatic power of the pause from seeing a popular American comedian. Which one ?
(A) Bob Hope
(B) W. C. Fields
(C) Jack Benny
(D) Charlie Chaplin
Ans: (C)

11. Who among the following English playwrights wrote screenplays on novels such as Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale ?
(A) John Arden
(B) Edward Bond
(C) Harold Pinter
(D) David Hare
Ans: (C)

12. Which one of the following statements is appropriately true of Harold Pinter’s plays?
(A) Menace is in the air and it leads to bloody violence.
(B) Menace is in the air and it is realized through the female characters.
(C) Menace is in the air, but it is not pinned down, or explained.
(D) Menace is in the air and anarchy follows in a systematic manner.
Ans: (C)

13. Which is the correct sequence of publication of Pinter’s plays ?
(A) The Room, One for the Road, No Man’s Land, The Homecoming
(B) The Homecoming, No Man’s Land, The Room, One for the Road
(C) The Room, The Homecoming, No Man’s Land, One for the Road
(D) One for the Road, The Room, The Homecoming, No Man’s Land
Ans: (C)