The story speaks to isolation, disillusionment, apathy. This is labeled a comedy - and the dialogue in places is very funny - but it is also a very melancholy story in places. Yet we are revealed by our conversations. How we decide what to say, and what to hide - the things we do to maintain our own personal status quo. This manner of telling the story most closely reflects how we engage with and learn about each other. What's said and what's not said reveal the story and the characters - instead of paragraph after paragraph of descriptive prose. What I like most about this, and other similarly constructed stories, is that the conversations drive the plot. Something created in our own imaginations?

They make faces, and think they understand each other.Īnd I'm sure they don't. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other No one believes the lies, the half-truths, the back-handed compliments - yet they're repeated throughout the play. The story takes on an absurd quality as various characters play their part to maintain the crumbling facade of the happy marriage. Is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, 'And I know that all you wanted was the luxuryīut let me tell you, that to approach the strange To which the guest, foreshadowing future engagements, replies: The husband, Edward, abandoned by his wife, Lavinia, before the cocktail party that she planned, first opens up to this mysterious guest because he's a stranger. The catalyst that helps unfold the mystery is the 'Unidentified Guest' - who turns out to be a highly-regarded psychiatrist, Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. The details of the drama become apparent through conversations during and after the cocktail party and conclude with another party two years later. The story surrounds a failing marriage at a crossroad. How much The Cocktail Party resonates with you, as the reader, as the witness to its events, will depend on your experiences in the world. TS Eliot said of The Cocktail Party, 'Whatever you find in it depends on what you bring to it.' Which, of course, applies to much of his work.

That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.' Is a useful and convenient social convention

Ts eliot's the cocktail party