A Kind of Alaska (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Harold Pinter
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Existentialism
- Time of Work: The 1980’s
- Setting: England
- Genres: Existential literature, Drama, Psychological drama
- Subjects: Self-discovery, Doctors, 1980’s, England or English people, Reality, Sisters, Truth, Isolation
- Locales: England
Characters Discussed
Deborah, a hospital patient who has suffered from sleeping sickness (Encephalitis lethargica) since she was sixteen years old. She is in her mid-forties and has been asleep for twenty-nine years; hence, she does not know her age. She wakes as the play begins, and in her attempts to realize what has happened to her, she alternately thinks that she has merely overslept, that she has been awakened from the dead, that she is imprisoned or a victim of “white slavers,” or that she is in a fairy tale. Unable to think or behave as a grown woman, Deborah...
[The entire page is 514 words long]
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