Harold Pinter, The Room. The classic play by Harold Pinter. Perfect for anyone trying to get a better grasp of naturalistic dialogue.

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I don't know quite what to say about this play--it was my first Pinter experience, and I'd be interested to read more. But I'd say that I got a lot more through discussing the play in class than in the actual reading of it; which doesn't necessarily discount it, but I'm hesitant to say I loved it, when really I loved the issues that arose peripherally, as my class was perplexed as to what to bring up from within the text. Issues like: where do we search for meaning, particularly in our reading of literature--is it on the surface? What is the importance of a text if you have to read between the lines, so to speak, in order to gain anything from it. Several people waxed poetic on 'art for art's sake' and claim that we should never make conjectures about a text--any assumptions must be made from the actual evidence in the work itself--and continued by asking why we can't just enjoy what's there, rather than analyzing everything to death? I think that strain of thought is idiotic, and it made me wonder why these people are English majors, if they don't like analyzing literature in an exhaustive fashion! Pinter's play, though, creates a taut atmosphere--spatially, it is claustrophobic, and each movement deliberate, leading us to wonder as readers when the tightrope is going to snap.

Similarly, the dialogue never falls on anything substantial, as though Gus and Ben are circling the issues at hand. That in itself is fascinating (and why we discussed the implications of 'reading between the lines' in a text). The dumb waiter itself points to, I think, humanity's fascination or need to look to and obey some higher authority--Ben, in this way, is incredibly robotic. He doesn't know what the dumb waiter is, this scares him, and then he wants to follow it simply because it seems authoritative. Gus asks questions, and is perhaps punished for doing so--certainly he isn't encouraged. Very Orwellian or Atwood-esque in the sense that they warn readers that it's when you stop asking questions that 'those who are they' (haha) get you, so to speak. But it's also Gus, asking questions here, who is going to pay for doing so.