The Birthday Party

Meg is in her sixties, and she and her husband, Petey, are the owners of the boarding house where the play is set. She has fabricated a rose-colored vision of her life in which she is the marvelous host of a lovely bed and breakfast that is on the verge of being sought-after. Meg imagines that she has a close relationship with Stanley, her only boarder, and vacillates between motherly affection and a chaste-but-electric flirtation in her interactions with him. This desire for connection leads to her inappropriate familiarity with Stanley, and even his occasional rudeness does not dissuade her. Her husband humors her, but even when Stanley unleashes insults about her terrible cooking and housekeeping, Meg refuses to believe them. She longs for love and attention, and she is desperate to feel special and beautiful. Her perception of reality filters out anything negative, and she even “forgets” that Stanley strangled her at the party. All she remembers about the night is that she felt beautiful and was the center of attention, which was certainly not the case.

Also in his sixties, Meg’s husband is quiet and bland, content to allow his wife’s fancies to run wild, but not particularly interested in getting caught up in the charade. He tends to make himself scarce, such as when he avoids attending the birthday party because he has a prior commitment to go to a chess club meeting. Petey’s tolerance and threshold for absurdity is rather high, and he never complains to Meg, even when he may or may not have eaten cornflakes doused in sour milk. He is also practical even when the other characters react emotionally or erratically: For example, he notices that the electricity is off because the meter needs a coin, rather than assuming—as the other characters did—that a dramatic blackout is occurring at the height of the party. At the end of the play, Petey shows some integrity by trying to stop Goldberg and McCann from taking Stanley, but he backs down when Goldberg threatens him. Despite his usual practicality, Petey indulges Meg’s delusions by telling her that Stanley is still asleep, delaying the moment when she will be heartbroken to discover he is gone. This ultimate capitulation suggests that Petey, while well-intentioned and selfless, is still too weak to break the cycle of delusion and empty routine that dominates his life and marriage.

An attractive young woman in her twenties, Lulu is a neighbor of the boarding house. She is searching for love and companionship, seemingly without success. Lulu sees potential in Stanley and tries to convince him to better himself by looking at himself in the mirror and going outside with her. Stanley eventually asks her to go away with him, but she determines that he has nothing to offer her and has nowhere to take her. At the party, Lulu is immediately taken in by Goldberg’s advances, even though he is at least 30 years her senior. She reveals a bit of her complex issues with men when she says that Goldberg reminds her of both her father and her first love. But in the morning, Lulu returns to accuse Goldberg of taking advantage of her, and their encounter the night before has cracked her own illusion of herself as “innocent.” She runs away when Goldberg and McCann try to force her to confess her sins, and this is the last the audience sees of her character. Like so much of the play, her final exit is ambiguous, and she seems genuinely confused by the men’s insistence on her confession. However, Lulu’s hasty exit may suggest that she can only maintain her sense of self by evading confession and reimagining the details of her past—a past that perhaps differs from what she would like to believe. Thus, like Meg and Stanley, Lulu can only maintain her preferred sense of identity by avoiding reality.

Goldberg, a man in his fifties, has arrived at the boarding house with McCann under mysterious circumstances, which they describe cryptically as a job. Goldberg is smooth and personable, easily manipulating others. He is also Jewish and refers multiple times to elements of Jewish culture in his upbringing, but the other characters don’t acknowledge it. McCann even praises Goldberg as a “true Christian” (29). As constantly and verbosely as Goldberg talks about his life and his childhood, he hides himself beneath a gregarious façade. Goldberg plants the idea of the birthday party in Meg’s mind and insists on it as a kind gesture, masking his intent to draw Stanley out. Goldberg reveals glimpses of his inner nastiness, as when he rages at McCann for calling him “Simey.” In private, Goldberg lets down the façade and exposes Lulu to his sexually predatory appetites.

It’s unclear why Goldberg targets Stanley. He could be a representative of the organization that Goldberg claims at one point Stanley has wronged, or he could have a different hidden motive. Regardless, Goldberg somehow knows everything Stanley has done, including his private interactions with Meg and Lulu earlier in the play. Goldberg is undeterred and ruthless in his mission, turning instantly vicious toward anyone who gets in his way.