What is the impact of modernism on Harold Pinter?

A complete answer to such a question would go beyond the
allotted space here.  Pinter's place in Western literature is a powerful one and,
consistent with Modernism, an attempt to answer the impact of the movement on he and his
work can only start the discourse and not end it.  I think that Pinter embraces some of
the fundamental elements of modernism.  It should be noted that thinkers like Pinter
represent where modernism and its successor, postmodernism, might blend into one
another.  What is seen as one can also be seen as the other because, true to Modernism,
Pinter was not entirely driven by fitting the prerequisites of an arbitrary label.  I
think that one overwhelming theme that can be seen in Pinter's work is how public
cruelty finds its way into the private.  Pinter's works are studies in how deliberate
cruelty can be present in the internal, and how individuals are not necessarily
alienated from the world when they take the form of it.  Modernist thinkers were
concerned with how the individual can is trapped between the world and their own sense
of self.  Pinter takes this idea and goes to another subterranean level in asserting
that the individual takes the form of the cruelty around him.   In this light, the
"sensitive person" that Modernism hinges upon has become appropriated by the world
around them.  The proverbial monster walks amongst us because we are the monster, and
Pinter's works explore this idea.  There is cruelty that is evident in the outside
world, and how the individual acts amongst this configuration is of vital importance to
the Pinter drama.  Through this, we understand the complete fragmentation of both world
and individual.