The Theatre of the Absurd is characterized by the term anti-theatre, because it rejects thematic meanings and logical structures. The absurdist playwrights puzzle the audience with enigmatic scenes and the story is left mysteriously incomplete. The Theatre of the Absurd could be seen as escapism and the value put on the subconscious as a retreat from reality. It presents the amorphous complexity of post-industrial society. Its multiplicity of dynamic but unstable movements and apparent fragmentation focuses on the philosophic abstractions, like the view of man himself as fragmented [1,2].

Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, into a Jewish family in Hackney, an inner suburb in East London. According to one strain of criticism of the works of Harold Pinter, the playwright is in a fundamentally realistic tradition that includes such practitioners as Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. The world anxiety is frequently used in writing about Pinter, but usually only in passing or when describing the atmosphere of the plays or, sometimes, their effect on an audience. The Caretaker was Harold Pinter’s first successful play, first staged in 1960 in London. The play is a subtle exploration of madness, power and the inertia at the core of many people’s lives. There are just three characters in The Caretaker: Mick, his older brother Aston and a homeless man named Davies (who also goes by the name Jenkins). The major themes of the play are: loneliness and isolation, personal identity, lack of communication, violence and menace, love of power, primitive instincts, human nature, dreams and illusions etc. Irving Wardle approaches Pinter’s characters from the point of view of the animal instinct they represent and suggests that they should be analyzed from an ethological perspective. For him they are:

Humanized animals fighting for territory: the room in The Room, The Caretaker, The Basement; the boarding house in The Birthday Party; the old house of The Homecoming; the flat of No Man’s Land rather than for sex, or power, or pleasure, or glory, or immortality (Wardle 79).

Before the play begins, Aston intervened and rescued Davies from a brawl and has brought him back to Mick’s flat (where Aston is also living) so he has somewhere to stay for the night. Davies makes a number of critical comments about the state of the flat, which is being renovated. He also says that he needs a good pair of shoes so he can go to Sidcup and retrieve his papers, as he is known under the name Bernard Jenkins but his real name is, in fact, Mac Davies. Next morning, Aston complains that Davies was making a lot of noise during the night, muttering in his sleep. Davies tries to blame the noise on the foreign neighbours, making a racist comment. Aston leaves Davies with a key while he heads out and while he is alone in the flat, Davies rummages through Aston’s possessions [3].

When Mick arrives home, he thinks Davies has broken in. But Aston comes back with Davies’ bag and explains who Davies is. The three of them engage in a comic tussle over Davies’ bag. Aston also tells Davies that Mick is his brother; Aston is staying with him as he is renovating the house. Aston offers Davies the job of caretaker of the house, but Davies says he’ll have to think about it.

Mick later offers Davies the same job, but again, Davies plays for time, not wanting to accept the job yet. Mick also starts to open up to Davies about his brother. The next day, as Aston is talking to Davies, we find out that Aston has had electric shock therapy for mental illness (he was having hallucinations). The therapy made him unwell.

Two weeks pass. Davies is still at the house and it is seen Mick outlining his plans for its renovations. Davies, who keeps talking about needing to go down to Sidcup to get his papers, is presented with some new shoes. When Davies makes his usual noises at night, Aston wakes him, only for Davies to threaten him with a knife and deny that he’s been inside a ‘nuthouse’ or insane asylum. Aston tells him to leave, but Davies says he is there to help Mick with the house. The next day, when Davies makes a disparaging remark about Aston’s sanity, Mick turns on him. Mick then leaves and Davies pleads with Aston to allow him to stay at the house.

The play takes place in an upstairs room of an almost ruined house. The room is filled with miscellaneous objects like an iron bed, paint buckets, boxes containing nuts, screws etc. a stepladder, coal bucket, lawn mower and gas stove, on which is placed a statue of Buddha. The play has three acts and three characters - Mick, Aston and Davies. Mick and Aston are brothers. Mick, who is the younger of the two, is in his late twenties, while Aston is in his early thirties. Mick seems to be a successful businessman of some kind who has a van and is buying and selling properties of some kind. Mick has bought an old, derelict house in West London. The two brothers seem to live there periodically and do not take any care of the place.

Aston seems a slow and awkward man who continuously fiddles with screw-drivers and handsaws. At the beginning Aston brings Davies, a stupid character, into the room. From Davies we get the information that he was rescued by Aston from a cafe:

If you hadn't come out and stopped that scotch git I'd be inside the hospital now (8).

The tramp, Davies informs him that he has been working as a cleaner in that cafe and the quarrel has happened because he has refused to remove a bucket of rubbish which was not his duty to remove. Davies, it seems, is full of race-hatred. He hates the Greeks, the Poles and the Blacks:

Ten minutes off for a tea-break in the middle of the night in that place and I couldn't find a seat, not one. All them Greek had it, Poles, Greeks, Blacks the lot of them, all them aliens had it. And they had me working there… they had me working…All them Blacks had it, Blacks, Greeks, Poles, the lot of them, that's what, doing me out of a seat, treating me like dirt… [I,5-6]

Apart from these three images (Aston, Mick and Davies), those of the old, the sick and the dead, appears the statue of Buddha. Davies picks up the statue and could not understand anything about it. He asks [4]:

Davies: What is this?

Aston: (taking and studying it) that’s a Buddha

Davies: Get on

Aston:    Yes. I quite like it. Picked it up in a shop. Looked quite nice to me. Don't know why. What do you think of these Buddhas?

Davies:  On, they're they're all right, en't they? [I,15-16]

The most significant thing is that the statue of Buddha is on a gas-stove, neglected with piles of papers and boxes. Pinter seems to be using this image to show that Buddha is marginalized in the modern age as the piles of papers. Aston is quiet and nostalgic whereas Davies is extremely talkative, questing and well opinionated. The next morning Aston complains that Davies was making noises in his sleep. Davies firmly denies it and attributes the noise to the Blacks living next door.

Aston goes out to purchase, leaving the room in Davies’ charge. Davies is flabbergasted that he is being allowed to remain alone in the house and has been trusted by Aston. Aston has given second key to him. When Aston leaves, Davies begins to examine the objects in the room. Davies feels frightened by the electric fire and the old gas stove even exaggerated his phobia. When he is left alone in the room, Pinter has established, out of Davies' lack of self-confidence and his nervousness about the menace of these objects, an atmosphere of threat, mystery and horror. Mick reappears silently and attacks the tramp and frightens him out of his wits by suddenly seizing him from behind and treating him as if he were a burglar and throwing him to the floor. Mick's action is a brutal intrusion into Davies' solitude. He demands to know 'what's the game?' and here act one ends [5].

In act two Mick baffles and cross-examines Davies with a series of searching questions. He claims that Davies reminds him of various people in the past. He takes hold of suddenly and forcibly Davies’ trousers and has become very threatening. He says that the house is pertaining to him and he can offer to let it to Davies for a reasonable rent. Aston now comes back and Mick's attitude immediately changes. Aston returns with a bag he has bought to replace the one Davies had left at the cafe, the night before. There follows another activity of teasing by Mick who grabs the bag repeatedly, but when Aston shows that he wants Davies to have it, Mick leaves the room mysteriously. Davies asks who that man was and Aston informs him that he was his brother. Davies thinks that the man is "a bit of joker". With almost motherly affection Aston gives to Davies a number of things he has bought for him. Even the bag, it turns out, is not really Davies’. Someone else has taken away Davies' bag from the cafe and Aston has bought another bag with a bundle of clothes for Davies at some second hand stall.

Aston feels good at heart to have someone to look after. He offers the homeless tramp Davies a house where he can live without any fear. He says that Davies can be the caretaker of the place if he likes Davies first flabbergasted and his acceptance of the proposal is half-hearted which shows his depression and timid nature as well:

Aston: You could be . . . caretaker here, if you liked

Davies: What?

Aston: You could . . . look after the place, if you liked

Davies: Well, I . . . I never done caretaking before, you know, I mean to say, I never What I mean to say is, I never been a caretaker before (II,40).

The tension is gradually developing in between Davies and Aston. Davies says that he cannot sleep because the rain coming in through open window while Aston wants fresh air to sleep. Meanwhile Aston becomes nostalgic and delivers a long, hesitant speech in which he confides that he was forced to undergo electric shock treatment in a mental hospital. He feels himself lucky that he did not die. He discloses that he used to have hallucinations. But he thinks that they were not hallucinations. He proclaims that most of the time he was misunderstood and everything that is pertaining to his personality appeared funny to the others.

Then one day they took me to a hospital, right outside London. They got me there. I did not want to go. They asked me questions, in there. Got me in and asked me all sorts of questions (II, 53).

The doctor informed him that he was ill and he had to undergo a shock - treatment. He tried to get away from the shock-treatment but failed to do so. When he came to his home, his thoughts had become slow and uncertain. He became paralyzed in a way that he could not move his head or write any more. Act II ends at this point.

Act III (two weeks later) begins with Davies complaining to Mick that Aston has not been paying any attentions to his needs. It appears that whatever Aston accepts the account of his life towards Davies leads to some disastrous consequences. Davies now tries to take advantage of Aston's confessions. Davies knows it very-well that after the shock-treatment Aston has become low and slow in his thoughts and working. Davies does not show any gratefulness for his savior, Aston. Davies wants Mick to intervene between him and Aston and suggests that he may be the person who may help in decorating the house. Mick reveals that he has a dream of seeing this derelict house as a luxurious home. Mick wants to decorate and change the place into something wonderful. However, Mick immediately leaves the place when Aston returns. Aston has got hold of a pair of shoes for Davies. But Davies finds defects within the shoes. Now Davies has changed his idea of going to Sidcup.

At night Davies is again talking in his sleep. Aston complains about Davies groaning. Davies reacts contemptuously and even pulls out his knife to threaten Aston. Aston does not believe such offensive behaviour and suggests that the time has come when Davies would find some other place to live. Davies says that he is appointed as a caretaker of this house by Mick and it is Aston who might have to leave the place. He states:

Davies: Well, I can tell you, there's someone here thinks I am suitable. And I'll tell you I'm staying on here as caretaker! Get it. Your  brother, he's told me the job is mine. Mine! So that's where I am. I'm going to be his caretaker (66).

The same evening Davies comes back and, in the absence of Aston, denounces and criticizes Aston to Mick. Mick seems to be listening carefully and sympathetically; but, when Davies puts forward the idea that Aston should be sent back to the Mental hospital, Mick's behaviour has changed suddenly. Mick now calls Davies "Imposter" and "Wild animal". The following speech by Mick recounts Davies' stay into the house:

What a strange man you are, Aren't you? You're really strange. Ever since you come into this house there's been nothing but trouble... Every word you speak is open to any number of different interpretations. Most of what you say is lies. You're violent, you're erratic, you're just completely unpredictable. You're nothing else but a wild animal, ... You're a barbarian... You make a long speech about all the references. You've got down at Sidcup and what happens? (71-72)

Mick is so angry that he picks up and smashes the figure of the Buddha which is one of Aston’s favourite pieces in the room? Davies becomes speechless and flabbergasted. Aston comes back to home and finds the broken Buddha, looks at the pieces for a moment. Mick watches Aston smiles faintly and leaves the room. Aston goes to his bed and begins to work on his electric plug.

Davies now tries desperately to get back Aston’s favour. The play ends with Davies pleading for the room while Aston stands quietly by the window. Once again Pinter emphasizes the importance of the room in a great deal and mystery about who the landlord is. The two key elements of The Caretaker in terms of character are the relationship (and power dynamic) between the two brothers, Mick and Aston and the hypocritical and self-destructive personality of Davies. Having been shown some charity by Aston, who takes him back to the flat, he wastes no time in criticizing it.

1. Gale, Steven H. Butter’s Going Up: A Critical Analysis of Harold Pinter’s Work. Duke University Press, 1977.

2. Pinter, Harold. Plays: 2. Faber and Faber, 1991.

3. Sinette, Charles. Anxiety and Faith. The Seabury Press, 1955.

4. Styan, J.L. The Dramatic Experience. Cambridge University Press, 1985.

5. Wardle, Irving. Quoted in Guido Almansi, “Harold Pinter: Idiom of Lies.” Contemporary English Drama, Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., 1981.