Abstract

The Ashes to Ashes is an anthology of the Nobel Prize winner, Harold Pinter, translated by Hua Ming. It includes eight plays of Pinter. They’re Betrayal, Landscape, Moonlight, Mountain Language, No Man’s Land, Old Times, Silence, and Ashes to Ashes. Among those works, Pinter mainly presented his ideas and reflections on the problems of family ethics at that time in Betrayal, Landscape, and Moonlight.

The thesis consists of five parts. The introduction part talks about Pinter’s life and reviews people’s researches at home and abroad on his works. Based on that, this paper concentrates on the studies of Pinter’s ideas on family ethics presented in Betrayal, Landscape and Moonlight. The first chapter focuses on the explanation and understanding of the family ethics. The second chapter emphasizes the marriage ethics revealed in the Landscape and Betrayal. And in the third chapter, this paper underlines the intergeneration unfolded in Moonlight. In the last part, it summarizes the main ideas discussed in the paper. The exposition and reflections on the family ethics at that time in Pinter’s works play a positive role in guiding the construction of harmonious family relationship in Chinese modern society.  

Key words: Harold Pinter; Betrayal; Landscape; Moonlight; ethics

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1 Introduction.1

1.1Harold Pinter and Ashes to Ashes .1

1.2Literary review at home and abroad 2

2 Understanding of family generation ethics.3

3 Marriage ethics .4

3.1 The cause of extramarital affair in Betrayal .4

3.2 The effects of extramarital affair in Betrayal and Landscape 7

3.3 Reflections on extramarital affair in Betrayal and Landscape .10

4 Inter-generation ethics .11

4.1 Inter-generation ethics in Moonlight .11

4.2 Reasons for lacking of inter-generation ethics .12

4.3 Reflections on the lack of inter-generation ethics .14

5 Conclusion .16

References 17