Wealth and Poverty
The play begins as a study of contrast between two writers. One enjoys the spoils of success while the other has not been so fortunate. The description of the setting in the stage directions written by the author is a catalog of imagery specifically designed to convey to the audience this distinction through the almost crass display of ostentation in the wealthy writer’s home. “A wall of bookshelves, with various items of pottery acting as bookstands, including two large mugs. Heavy curtains across the window. The central feature of the room is an antique cabinet, with marble top, brass gallery and open shelves, on which stands a variety of bottles, spirits, aperitifs, beer, etc.” This visual presentation of almost overbearing wealth describe the very same that is also noted in the stage direction as being “sparsely furnished.” The huge gaps of emptiness juxtaposed against the displays of comfort thereby become imagery that conveys the poverty in the writer’s personal life that fails to align with the success of his professional life.
The Rich are Different
When the wealthy author drunkenly crawls out of Act One on his belly, he is replaced by two younger and strangely menacing men. Their exact role in the household is not made precisely clear to the audience, but they are intent on making it very clear to the houseguest that he is out of his element. “This is another class. It’s another realm of operation. It’s a world of silk. It’s a world of organdie. It’s a world of flower arrangements. It’s a world of eighteenth-century cookery books. It’s nothing to do with toffee apples and a packet of crisps. It’s milk in the bath. It’s the cloth bellpull. It’s organization.” The reference to silk and organdie and bathing in milk and a cloth pull to ring the bell for the servants all reinforce the portrayal of this house as a symbol of financial privilege and business success. The reference to toffee apples and crisps meanwhile is intended to be not just reminders of the economic disparity between the host and his guest, but imagery that dismisses the guest’s very state of existence. Kind words are being used to inform him in the unkindest way that he does not belong there. It is a threat using the language of décor.
Foreshadowing
The actual relationship between the two younger men and the wealthy writer starts to become clearer as the play moves deeper in the second act. Eventually, the hierarchy of power will be revealed, and it is one that comments upon the poverty in the writer’s emotional life. This revelation of the true dynamic is foreshadowed in the melancholy imagery voiced out loud by the writer. “The light … out there … is gloomy … hardly daylight at all. It is falling, rapidly. Distasteful. Let us close the curtains. Put the lamps on.” The writer is essentially a captive of his own loneliness and he is standing on the verge of a complete loss of control and autonomy which this imagery subtly conveys with a moody foretelling of darkness falling.
The Title
Although the title of the play is mentioned several times in the dialogue over the course of the play, it is never explicitly defined. Instead, it is presented exclusively throughout imagery which requires the audience to piece together its meaning allusively and through context. When Hirst first describes it in Act One, the context offers little help. It is only when Spooner uses nearly the exact same words that things become a little clearer. “You are in no man’s land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever, icy and silent.” Hirst’s description puts ellipses between phrases and individual words and this staccato effect lends them a contemplative philosophical tone. Though the words are nearly identical, the lack of indicated pauses has the effect of Spooner’s use of them being terse and the loftiness of contemplation has been replaced by something more sinister and menacing. Only at this point does it become clear that Hirst’s idea of “no man’s land” is the dream of escaping from his prison whereas Spooner’s characterization is the final confirmation that Hirst is a prisoner in his own home.
