The Caretaker

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As far as I know Harold Pinter, plot and story are usually non-existent in his works, but I still write a few lines about what goes on in this play. I mean, we don't have any conversation, you see? You can't live in the same room with someone who...who don't have any conversation with you. Davies, 46 You've got...this thing. That's your complaint. And we've decided, he said, that in your interests there's only one course we can take. He said...he said, we're going to do something to your brain. Aston, 42 Yeah, it's very very very deep. Who am I to say it but whatever the author showed or conveyed in his work could've been done in a less literal way. He made the entire story absurd to prove his point. He made all his characters retards to show the 'stutter' of his time. What's On: The Caretaker (archived past seasons). Sheffield Theatres, n.d. Web. 13 March 2009. (Run at Sheffield Theatres ended on 11 November 2006.)

What if we go down to get our papers or go to see the man about the job he is keeping especially for us or head off to the church where they were going to give us a brand new pair of shoes and it turns out, after all our efforts in getting there, that they tell us, after looking us up and down with a gaze that's impossible to misinterpret, to piss off? What then?I would like to say this is a funny play – but it isn’t, even though I did smile quite a few times. There is an underlying nastiness and aggression to the play that is all too masculine and all too disturbing. And Pinter has an unfailing eye for cognitive dissonance and for the lies we tell ourselves so as to reduce the torments of this dissonance. He has ways of holding a mirror up to ourselves, well, if we are brave enough to look, brave enough to see beyond what is actually being shown. Brian Richardson, Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993, The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994, ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale (Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994) 109-10: "Here, real objects and stylized representations alternate and the three vertical structures [of the set] though not symmetrical, balance each other in a rough though pleasing harmony."

Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. ISBN 978-0-571-23476-9 (13). Updated 2nd ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. ISBN 0-571-17103-6 (10). Print. The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter : Two Plays by Harold Pinter 1960. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ISBN 0-8021-5087-X (10). ISBN 978-0-8021-5087-5 (13). Print. Roundabout Theatre Company, New York City. Directed by David Jones. Set design: John Beatty, Costume design: Jane Greenwood, Lighting: Peter Lezorowski. Design: Scott Lehrer. The civic-minded fellow’s brother owns the place and hassles the old homeless man not realising he was invited. No, it is better never to go. Better to be always just about to go. That way the hope is still alive. Is it better to be Tantalus or Prometheus? Is it better to have what you desire always within sight and always just out of reach? Or is it better to have snatched at the prize, to have known the victory of holding it in your hands, only to be caught and given your punishment of eternal torture that spans out forever without a shred of hope. For surely, Tantalus’s punishment only works as punishment if he retains some hope – just as Prometheus’s is premised on his being beyond salvation.From the very first, Davies appears quite fixated on race. He refers often to other racial groups, all in denigrating ways. He is suspicious of their position in society, clearly nervous that they are supplanting him or giving themselves airs that they are better than him. His racial prejudice is tied up with his perception that he is a victim, always unfairly shunted aside. It is also part of his defense mechanism, for if he can blame others for his lowly status, then he never has to question himself as to why he cannot hold a job or why he is so unpleasant. Pinter's decision to make Davies a veritable racist is not just in terms of character, but also a manifestation of historical and social realities of the time in which the play was written. Lower-class whites in 1950s Britain were fearful of foreigners usurping their already precarious position in society, and Pinter captures that fear in Davies. One of the keys to understanding Pinter's language is not to rely on the words a character says but to look for the meaning behind the text. The Caretaker is filled with long rants and non-sequiturs, the language is either choppy dialogue full of interruptions or long speeches that are a vocalised train of thought. Although the text is presented in a casual way, there is always a message behind its simplicity. Pinter is often concerned with "communication itself, or rather the deliberate evasion of communication" (Knowles 43). Richardson, Brian. Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993. The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994. 109–10. Print.

I felt the loneliness and the absurdity. Absurdity and absurdity. Lots of it. Too much of it that it got too, well, absurd. I get it. I get what the writer tried to convey to the audience but for me, it was a reading disaster. I wouldn't have read it at all if I wasn't worried about failing my Drama exam. And this is what we get to study? Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. 1961. 3rd ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-7523-8 (10). ISBN 978-1-4000-7523-2 (13). Print. For a review of the Sheffield Theatres production, see Lyn Gardner, "Theatre: The Caretaker: Crucible, Sheffield", Guardian, Culture: Theatre. Guardian Media Group, 20 October 2006. Web. 12 March 2009. The play's staccato language and rhythms are musically balanced through strategically placed pauses. Pinter toys with silence, where it is used in the play and what emphasis it places on the words when they are at last spoken. Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past. Stylistically, these works are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony and menace. Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual identity oppressed by social forces, language, and vicissitudes of memory. In 1981, Pinter stated that he was not inclined to write plays explicitly about political subjects; yet in the mid-1980s he began writing overtly political plays, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his left-wing political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary.

See also: Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work §"Two silences", and Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work §The "Pinter pause" Arden, John. Book review of The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter. New Theatre Mag. 1.4 (July 1960): 29–30. About directing a production of The Caretaker at the Roundabout Theatre Company in 2003, David Jones observed: Aston smiles at him when he thinks he is asleep. He doesn't know that Davies is watching him through the blanket, only pretending to be asleep. I thought this was great, that smile. That kind of made it for me. That Davies is in this guy's room, pretending to sleep in the bed he gave him. Yet he didn't give it him. He's only borrowing it for an undetermined time. He doesn't know Aston, or what he wants from him. Another prevalent theme is the characters' inability to communicate productively with one another. [ citation needed] The play depends more on dialogue than on action; however, though there are fleeting moments in which each of them does seem to reach some understanding with the other, more often, they avoid communicating with one another as a result of their own psychological insecurities and self-concerns. [ citation needed]