No Man’s Land
The title of the play is a metaphor that is directly addressed as such within the dialogue. What is less directly addressed is the specific and explicit meaning of the metaphor. The definition of “no man’s land” as a metaphor for something can only be arrived as allusively through interpretation. Hirst’s description is presented in dream fashion: “No man’s land…does not move…or change…or grow old…remains…forever…icy…silent.” Combined with the narrative events and overall thematic presentation of patriarchy as prison, no man’s land sees to ironically suggest a paradox. It is actually inhabited exclusively by males, and few circumstances of existence are less desirable.
Friendship
Male friendship and masculine bonding are vital to the narrative playing out in this strange drama. A long monologue by the character of Spooner directed specifically toward Hirst and his pathetic living conditions addresses the issue in an oceanic metaphor: “You need a friend, you have a long hike, my lad, up which, presently, you slog unfriended. Let me perhaps be your boatman.” For most characters, this language would seem a little too literary to come off as conversational realism. The drama benefits greatly from Spooner being a poet. He may not be a successful poet, but simply a poet. It is easy to buy into the idea that he might actually use such elevated speech and pepper his conversational dialogue with figurative language.
Happiness is a Warm Home
The precise dynamics of the relationship between the successful writer who owns the house—Hirst—and the two younger men who seem to be employed by him in one capacity or another remains ambiguous for most of the play. What is certain is that the two men named Foster and Briggs exert a menacing authority over the houseguest, Spooner: “We’re in a position of trust. Don’t try to drive a wedge into a happy household.” The metaphorical castigation of the newcomer to the house as nothing more consequential than an obstructive block of wood in relation to the metonym that serves to connect Hirst, Fosters and Briggs as family members sharing a home foreshadows the revelations to come about the actual nature of dynamic between the three members of the allegedly happy household.
Menace
The first act comes to a sudden end with a spoken simile that becomes a visual metaphor. Most of Pinter’s plays are about the arrival of a menacing threat. Menace is a recurring metaphorical foundation in the playwright’s body of work. The arrival of Foster and Briggs into the action which has been confined up to that point between be Hirst and Spooner is the arrival of the menacing threat in this play. It is not until the curtain-closer of the first act that this menace moves from a state of potential into something more concrete and Foster introduces it through a simile: “You know what it’s like when you’re in a room with the lights on and then suddenly the lights go out?” The simile here is a comparison of the lights suddenly going out in a room to the onset of darkness and the onset of darkness has been evolutionarily hardwired into humans to jolt us into a state of fear as a means of survival. This metaphorical notion of fear is then made literally concrete as Foster continues by adding, “I’ll show you. It’s like this” just before he turns off the lights on stage which signals the blackout indicating the end of the first act.
Briggs
Briggs is both more overtly contemptuous of Spooner than is Foster and more accommodating. It is as if he is playing a game of good cop/bad cop by himself in which he takes on both roles. Spooner has his number, however, observing to himself when Briggs leaves him alone in the room after offering to bring him breakfast if he is hungry, “I have known this before. The door unlocked. The entrance of a stranger. The offer of alms. The shark in the harbor.” That final image—the shark in the harbor—suggests that Spooner has a history of being treated nicely by people who were not nice at all for insidious purposes. In fact, it suggests that this history is long enough that he finally learned to recognize it and make sure it never happens again. It is a lesson that is subtly juxtaposed with Hirst, whose success by comparison has not offered enough experience for him to recognize the difference between the friends he needs and the sharks he does not.
