The Caretaker

by Harold Pinter

It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success, and its production history since it was first performed in 1960 has established the work as a landmark in twentieth-century drama.The obsessive caretaker, Davies, whose papers are in Sidcup, is a classic comic creation, and his uneasy relationship with the enigmatic Aston and Mick established the author's individuality with an international audience.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Classics, Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century

148 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 21, 1960

About the author

Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

Reviews

[Nayra.Hassan · Rating 3 out of 5]

هؤلاء من اختاروا العزلة خلف الجدران
البسطاء ممن يختبؤن في بيوت لا يلتفت اليها احد
عنهم يحدثنا هارولد بنتر باسلوب مسرحي مكثف وبسيط و مختلف

مستأجر: يعطف على شريد افاق فيؤييه في بيته
مالك :طموح متحفز و نقيض شقيقه في كل شيء
شريد بلا مأوى : صعلوك متعالى يكره العمل و لا يقدر المعروف

يلخصون دنيا كاملة بطباعهم و اختياراتهم

المستاجر استون: و يرمز للإنسان العصري المنعزل ؛نجده دائما يصلح شيء او يعيد تركيبه..طيب القلب له نفسية الشعراء ..وديع محبوب الحق دائما في جانبه..و يتوخى العدل باستماتة ..
لم يفهمه أحد ولذلك أدخلوه المستشفى و عالجوه بالصدمات الكهربائية. .ليشفوه من بصيرته التي تجعله يرى بوضوح ما لا يراه الآخرون واتهموه بالهلوسة لأنه كان يتحدث اليهم حديثاً فوقيا مليء بالمثاليات

الشريد ديفو : و يرمز للضعف البشري" البهيمي " ..فهو عجوز بطباعه طمع و صلف و غرور غير مبرر "شر البقر"🐮و يحاول ان يضرب المالك بالمستاجر..لينتهي به امره بالطرد في الشارع من جديد

ميك : الاخ الاصغر لأستون يرمز الى الغريزة و الوراثة 👥. ..يفهم الدنيا و البشر وينصب ميك فخاً لـلمتشرد ، اذ يوهمه بأنه يثق به وانه يريد ان يجعله حارساً لهذا المنزل الذي يملكه "حارس و هو لم ينجح يوما في حراسة نفسه!"..و لا يمر وقتا طويلا الا و يحقق مأربه و يعيده للشارع ..

ليواصل الشقيقان حياتهما خلف جدران انفسهم السميكة..يحرس كل منهما الاخر بطريقته

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s funny, you know. As soon as a play is called something like The Caretaker you just know that the person who gets the job of caretaker, who is referred to throughout as the caretaker, won’t be able to take care of anyone, not even himself. You know that he will be the one who is taken care of and he will be incapable of acknowledging the care he is receiving. And so it proves. This, of course, is called irony.

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.

For instance, how we believe that if we just did that one thing right before us then everything would work out. It would all work out if we could just do it in exactly the right way and on exactly the right day. Except, well, the problem is that there is no right day. Deep down we know that there is no chance we will ever do that one thing. No matter how simple that thing seems, no matter how we ‘believe’ doing it would fix everything. We will never actually do it. And why? Well, because having that one simple thing always looming as a possibility before us is the only thing that offers us any hope at all.

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?

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.

The Gods find punishments appropriate to our own self knowledge.

Aston is the person most obviously in need of care in this play – although, I do understand that everyone is in clear need of care here. This is a play of the lost and trapped. All the same, Aston is the only character to really offer any care to anyone else – and everyone else, even his own mother, lets him down in ways that are beyond belief, even when it would seem just as easy to provided him with care as to deny it him.

And this is a play about the fear of difference. Of the need to belong by proving that there are others who belong even less than you do. Is it any wonder Davies spends his time in mortal fear of the blacks? Is it any surprise that he cuts off his nose to spite his face?

This is, in so many ways, an absurdist play – but sometimes the absurd is the easiest way to highlight certain terrible truths about what it means to be human.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

ASTON. You…er…
DAVIES. Eh?
ASTON. Were you dreaming or something?
DAVIES. Dreaming?
ASTON. Yes.
DAVIES. I don’t dream. I’ve never dreamed.
ASTON. No, nor have I.
DAVIES. Nor me.

If I were in the room with him I would turn the sound down and watch the lips flap to know what he is really saying. Help me, save me, fuck you.

There are stills of the first production of the play from 1960s. I didn't like the expressions of the actors. They looked like they were acting. Fists are raised in threats! or defiance!. Pinter's play in my mind exists as your ugly humanity you wear on your bones to push through lava, leather, any skin money could buy or borrow. Another day another you pay for it. They look like they are wearing costumes. The pants are torn and bully leather. It might be absurd to judge a performance from a few photographs. Donald Pleasence has the look of a guy who believes himself to be a cunning con man. This part is correct. He's not a good actor, Davies. He's too pathetic his the asking to tell the cost of selling yourself. His fuck yous aren't believable because it fucks himself. More helplessness, even if he was cleaned up. The atmosphere would swallow them up in are you kidding me? No one and nothing would take that shit from you. When we meet him he was going to get the shit beat out of him. He may have even had it coming. I know he had it coming.

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.

I was disappointed in photographs of Mick from a recent production of The Caretaker. It is the scene when they first meet. It reads that he puts Davies in his place. He's under his foot. He responds to the whimpering and struggling tramp with instinctive violence. He grovels and the other man won't let him put on his pants. The actor is too dramatically grimacing, too theatrical. In my mind it is just how he is. It is something he does on sight.

Davies will later suck up and tell Mick that with him he knows where he stands. It is true that Mick is honest in treating the man like an animal. If the type of person who keeps a big dog in their back yard and torments them with a big juicy bone is honest. Work for me, you could be my caretaker, what do you really think of my brother? Aston's clock ticking is harder to set yourself to. A stone body standing over him in the morning. He gives him shoes, a few bob, also suggestions of this caretaker job in the air. What is Davies doing there? What makes Aston rise is his plan to build that shed in the yard. He might want to kill the man who performed a mental hospital operation out of his head. I don't understand what they did to him. I see a nightmare wrestling match on a bed. If they got him lying down they'd break his spine. They get him standing up and he can no longer look to his left or to his right. Aston's vision is a lying down hell of cracks in the ceiling. Mick plays on Davies' paranoia. The homeless man could never understand the old saying "home is where the heart is". He doesn't have one. It is set to self pity and a belly full of hunger. Mick seems to suggest that Davies will have a place there in his new building. What do you think of my brother? What was he thinking? How did he get to be this stupid that you could call a guy's brother a looney to his face? I could see Davies having the shit kicked out of him coming repeatedly.

The trouble was, I couldn't hear what people were saying. I couldn't look to the left or the right, I had to look straight in front of me, because if I turned my head round... I couldn't keep... upright. And I had these headaches. I used to sit in my room. That was when I lived with my mother. And my brother. He was younger than me. And I laid everything out, in order, in my room, all the things I knew were mind, but I didn't die. The thing is, I should have been dead. I should have died. Anyway, I feel much better now. But I don't talk to people now.

It wasn't the menace of Mick that got to me, that he breathed off the page trick question rug pull out. Pinter does breathing threats so well it would be easy to take it for granted or stage it as all there is. Nor the grasping of Davies, his belly sliding to a dark tunnel. He could only sink further. His position in life is not what is interesting about him. It is the way he looks at everything and everyone else as shit. He is shit because that's all he can see. He wants the hand out and he wants to feel he got one over on you.

Aston's recollection of his time in a looney bin as a young man was what pulled on my mind edges. If it weren't for his brother Mick he would be worse off than Davies. He tries to think of that shed. He may never build it yet it isn't as much as a lie as the oft talked about by Davies job in Sidcup. He was born falling down, Aston. His kindness to Davies turns into taking this stinking user who keeps you up all night with strange old man noises. A nonstop track of racism and begging and bragging. A man who lives on a pulpit and the ground, shining and spitting on your shoes at once. Davies asks Where am I going to Go? He's pathetic and I wouldn't want to live in his wormy hole with him either. I wish that it had worked out for Aston that he could have gotten on with someone else, had something else. What really knocked my socks off about The Caretaker was that smile Davies watches through the blanket.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Caretaker, a play in three acts, is about decency and guilelessness as opposed to double-dealing and greed.
Two brothers and a cunning and racist tramp are the only characters in this absurdist drama.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Caretaker is the story of two brothers, Mick and Aston, and a crumbling house. Mick owns the place and has plans to renovate. Dreams, really. Aston has spent time in a mental hospital and underwent electro shock therapy. The play begins when Aston brings home Davies, a down and out who is trying to live under the assumed name of Jenkins, and offers him the spare bed (Mick's old bed). Davies talks about his papers, which he's left behind in Sidcup, and speaks of his plans to get down there, as soon as he can get a pair of shoes, and as soon as the weather breaks. Then Aston floats the idea of Davies staying on as caretaker. But there's a problem. The two don't really hit it off, one being bothered by the other's noises and the other being a bit too demanding.
I love Pinter's writing. There's not much to the plot here, but the joy is in the language, and the way he builds tension out of so little. No one this side of Beckett has been better at squeezing absolute realism from the most absurd of situations. The Caretaker isn't my favourite of his plays, and I wouldn't rate it as his best (I'd put it behind The Homecoming and No Man's Land), but it's still a masterful piece of work, particularly for the blood-is-thicker-than-water quality of what for the most part seems like a non-relationship between the brothers. And because Pinter's dialogue is so impeccable here, as measured as music and distinguished by the essential trademark pauses, it might be the ideal entry point for exploring the works of this most essential of playwrights.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t dream. I’ve never dreamed.

Davies is a prole, fired from a menial job, has references in a nearby town but can never make the walk, waiting for the weather to break, waiting for a proper pair of shoes. He's befriended by a pair of brothers and allowed to crash at their place. There are whispers of mental illness. There's shipwrecked furniture and a leaking roof. A nominal figure could correct the course. Would Davies be the caretaker? If only the weather would break.

This was my first Pinter, I'm ashamed to admit. The cosmos don't appear to have a laugh behind each misfortune. It isn't that fate is grim, it is that fate has left and there's only survival. A silent survival of dust, decay and stench.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excoriating critique--to this reader--of very certain types of 'Englishness' that's as relevant now as it ever was.

[Beatrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

So, the play is about two brothers, Mick and Aston. Mick works in the construction industry, and leads an average, moderately pointless life; Aston – through no fault of his own – doesn’t work anywhere, and leads an absolutely pointless life. Mick is the owner of a run-down building, and his idea is that he lets Aston live there, and Aston, in return, renovates the house. At the beginning of the play Aston brings home an old never-do-well, Davies (or perhaps his name is Jenkins), and he offers him a bed to sleep in. Aston wants to help Davies – who is even more screwed-up than him – and he comes up with the idea that perhaps Davies might become the caretaker of the building. Some time later – independently of Aston – Mick also comes to the conclusion that it would be nice if Davies became the caretaker. But finally Davies doesn’t become the caretaker.

Basically, this is it, but of course the story isn’t too important here. What’s important, and what the play is about is the characters’ inability to communicate, their impotence, helplessness, and their all-permeating, almost tragic cluelessness. Each of the three characters is impotent, helpless (etc.) to some extent, but the level of their defenselessness varies greatly.

To understand the level of the characters’ emotional and mental nakedness, it’s worth considering their typical, trademark sentences one by one because these sum up their philosophy in life very succinctly. For instance, Davies, the old idler (who says that he’s a jack of all trades but I’ve got the hunch that in fact he’s a jack of no trades) keeps repeating that as soon as the weather clears up a bit, he’s going down to a distant London neighborhood to get his identity documents which he had left in the care of an acquaintance ten-odd years ago. Davies argues that all his problems will be miraculously solved once he gets his papers back – for example, he will be able to prove his real name, and he will also be able to prove that he’s the perfect candidate for the caretaker position. Of course, Davies never goes down to Sidcup for his papers, but there’s always a good reason for his inertia – it’s either raining; or it looks as if it’s going to rain; or his shoes are so worn that it’s impossible to take a long walk in them. (But then again – Davies’s constant search for excuses is understandable, given the fact that he probably knows well enough that having his documents on him wouldn’t really change a thing, but as long as he doesn’t have them, he can pretend that his failure in life is due to the missing papers.)

Aston’s philosophy greatly resembles that of the old would-be caretaker: he keeps saying that he will start the renovation of the house by first building a shed in the backyard, and when it’s built, he will be able to get down to the more important tasks. The shed, however, never gets built – Aston’s only noteworthy activity around the house is that he collects junk, and he tries to repair a broken toaster. Aston’s impotence and his constant procrastination arise from the events in his past: as it turns out, he suffers from some mental illness and he was treated with electric shock therapy when he was younger. The treatment left him even worse off, and since then, Aston keeps wandering around in reality and he’s virtually unable to act and think „normally”.

And Mick – even though he lives a more or less „normal” life – is also constantly waiting for the ideal circumstances, and he does virtually nothing to advance his plans. His dream is that one day he will live with his brother in the beautifully redecorated house, and everything will be just fine and idyllic – but presumably he knows that if it’s up to Aston, the house will never be renovated. So the suspicion might arise that perhaps Mick doesn’t really want to live together with his mentally deranged brother.

These underlying thoughts and motivations, naturally, never come to the surface. And even the thoughts that are given voice to are such that the others never understand (or completely misunderstand) them. We might say that The Caretaker is a „typical”, depressing, sickly-funny absurdist play. But the reason why I find it almost unbearably sad and depressing is that The Caretaker – contrary to some really absurd/abstract absurdist plays – is too much like the reality I know. Reading this play broke my heart – partly because it’s very real, and partly because it’s clear from all the fragmentary, meaningless conversation attempts of the characters that these people basically mean well, and if the need arises they protect and stand up for each other (e.g. Mick doesn’t let Davies dismiss Aston disparagingly) – but in the end, all this good-will, all these plans are for nothing.

[P.E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aston and his roommate Mick give shelter an old bum and take care of him.
Or do they make sport of him...?
You get here some fine comedy of menace.



- Robert Shaw impersonating Aston in Clive Donner's screen adaptation.


Matching Soundtrack :
Ful Stop - Radiohead

[Omar Manjouneh · Rating 3 out of 5]

بعد ثاني لقاءاتي مع إحدى مسرحيات بنتر بدأت أكتشف أسباب صعوبة تقبلي لها..

ينقذ آستون العجوز الفقير ديفيز من معركه مع أحد العمال الاسكتلنديين في أحد البارات، ويعرض عليه البقاء في شقته ريثما يتمكن من إيجاد وظيفة تكنه من الحصل على سكن خاص.. لكن العجوز سرعان ما تنكشف صفاته الحقيقية فيبدأ بمحاولة الإيقاء بين آستوف وبين أخيه ميك الذي هو في نفس الوقت صاحب الشقة التي يقطنون فيها، لكن الأخوان سرعان ما يتنبهون لذلك ويطردون العجوز المحتال من حياتهم.

حتى الآن لا يبدو هنالك مشكلة في القصة فهي بسيطة ومفهومة تماما لدرجة توحي بأنها لا تحمل أي عمق في طياتها، و حتى مع اكتشاف المشكلة العقلية التي تلازم آستون وتسبب له بطئ في التفكير والتصرف في "مونلوج" طويل تجاوز الأربع صفحات.. بقيت مع ذلك رتابة الأحداث هي السائده، حتى تصاعدت حدتها قبيل النهاية لكن بعد فوات الأوان في رأيي.

- لدينا هنا شخصيات واضحة المعالم، ربما نستثني ميك الذي لا نعرف في صف من هو حتى النهاية، فهو يدافع عن أخيه في وقت ويشير كلامه إلا أنه يوفق ديفيز في وقت آخر دون تبرير كاف لذلك، بل دون تبرير أصلا لغضبه الشديد من ديفيز الذي أدى به لطرده بسبب اكتشافه أنه لا يفهم في "الديكورات الداخلية" وهو ما لم يصرح به العجوز طوال النص، فهل يريدنا بنتر ان نتعاطف هنا مع ظلمه الناتج عن سوء فهم؟ أم يريد أن يخبرنا أن حصد صنيعة أعماله، بعقابه لسبب لا يسأل عنه أصلا، بين كان هو طوال الوقت يسعى لطرد آستون، الشاب الطيب الذي عطف عليه وساعده؟
تلك أسئلة لا يجاب عنها حتى النهاية التي أراها بديعة وفي رأيي هي التي رفعت كثيرا من مستوى النص.

- على صعيد الحوار تكمن مشكلتي الرئيسية.. يعتمد بنتر على تأثير عامل الزمن على الشخصيات في كتابة الحوار، فكثير من الشخصيات تكرر جملها بشكل ملحوظ وبل حتى قد نتجاوز موضوع أثناء الحديث وندخل في آخر، لنعود إلى الموضوع الأول في النهاية دون أن نصل لنهاية أي من الموضوعين ونرى مثالا لذلك في المقطع التالي :
ديفز : شخص عجيب أخوك هذا؟
ميك : ماذا؟
ديفز : كنت أقول إنه .. شخص غريب أخوك هذا؟
ميك : عجيب؟ لماذا؟
ديفز : هو.. هو عجيب...
ميك : لماذا هو عجيب؟
ديفز : لا يحب العمل؟
ميك : وما وجه العجب في هذا؟
ديفز : لا شئ.
ميك : أنا لا أرى في هذا شيئا عجيبا.
ديفز : ولا أنا !!

، الزمن يغلف كل حوارات الشخصيات في النص، فنحن لا نشعر بأي تطور في الحوار تنقلنا إلى المستقبل، أو حتى تعود بنا إلى الماضي!.. ربما يدعم هذا الأمر أن المكان الذي يدور فيه الحدث لا توجد به ساعة بالأصل فنحن لا نعرف من الوقت إلا شروق الشمس، أو غروبها ليحل الليل.. وهكذا.. وهو بناء مشتت بالطبع وإن كنت على قدر من الإعجاب به إلا أنيي أرى أن عياره قد انفلت من بين يدي المؤلف وطال كثيرا عن الحد مما سبب العديد من الارتباك والملل. لكن في المجمل كانت صياغة الحوار رشيقة للغاية مليئة بالتعبيرات المدهشة وتغلفها التساؤلات العبثية التي تضفي الكثير من التساؤلات على الشخصيات والأحداث. والنص عامة يعد من الأعمال الجيدة وإن كان يحتاج إلى الكثير من صفاء الذهن لاستقباله.

[Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not Pinter's best. If you're into Absurd Theatre you'd guess that this is probably the story of someone who can't take care of himself. And you'd be correct. Dialogue is funny, but not as witty as The Birthday Party for example and comes off boring in the beginning. No plot as usual, but the play sheds the light on some of the most interesting human characteristics such as greed, ungratefulness and hypocrisy. An interesting read.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC radio 4:
Two brothers shelter an elderly, homeless man after a fight in a café. But his problems are far from over.

[Simona · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nu am înțeles nimic...

[Rao Javed · Rating 1 out of 5]

How the hell is it one of the best play of an era...it must've been a very boring era.

This play was influenced by the play, "Waiting for Godda" and the movement of absurdism, but this play was way too absurd. Just wanted to kill the writer for writing it.

The dialogues of the play were too limited and on a single realm and scale. Too low vocabulary...too low thinking and everything is copy of another copy of another copy.



The concept is nothing...there is nothing in the play to make might make is look different, nor there is any story line at all. Just constant nagging of words. It was as if someone wrote a play to fill up words like we do to finish an essay. The Character are also boring...boring...boring...boring

[Neha Azhar-Fahad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was... a disaster.

I kind of get it, though.
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?
A play that makes no sense AT ALL! Which, again, is the point of the whole text. It doesn't have to make sense. It shows the confusion and absurdity of the era, it shows the lack of communication. Their stutters, and hesitations, every "err" and every "uh" was evidence of it.
Harold Pinter was part of Theatre of Absurd for a frickin' reason!
That doesn't stop me from highly disliking it.
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.
It is often portrayed as genius but it's not for me. And not for any of my classmates either, apparently. Or maybe we're all just very shallow and don't get the point of it which is very clear.

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely one of the best plays I've ever read, the equal of Waiting for Godot or Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Pinter does unspecified menace better than anyone, and it's all the more menacing for being unspecified. Why exactly do Aston and Mick wish to torment Davies? This is never revealed. Davies himself is not an especially moral or decent individual. The brothers work on him with the age old 'nice and nasty' technique but they swap roles doing so. And it's not even entirely clear that intimidating, befuddling and crushing him is exactly what they are doing. The menace might be arbitrary, with no object in mind. It might even be accidental, the product of insanity. An enigma, and a brilliant one, with no need for a clear resolution at all.

[Zeeshan Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's absurd, and I loved it!

[Sumeghy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Beckett, but with story.

[andreea. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was absurdly sad or sadly absurd, one of the two.

[samet]

ay hoşt bu neydi ya altıma sıçtım yaşlı amcanın creepyliğinden

[Sportyrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange play. A guy lets an old homeless man share his room after being harassed by someone until he gets up on his feet.

The civic-minded fellow’s brother owns the place and hassles the old homeless man not realising he was invited.

The old man starts turning on the room mate and tries to impress the landlord brother. He is offered a role as a caretaker subject to providing references, upon which his paperwork is in another town. And how he has been trying to imminently regain them for the past decade.

There’s no real closure or objective in sight. I think this could be a snap shot into the communication issues amongst the homeless and mentally unwell people (the civic guy in this case). It’s also a little sad how nice people get used or taken advantage of but then you can understand their rationale for doing so.

After the tiff, the old man is evicted or rather the good will is retracted so he resorts to begging/pleading and backpedaling only for it to fall on deaf ears. You can just see how people in this scenario struggle to fit in. So it is a bit sad.

I haven’t read plays since doing drama in high school so it was fun getting back into it.

[kiho · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play feels like being in limbo, like going crazy, like being bullied and gaslit to the point of feeling sick. Initially the play is darkly funny but goes above and beyond, and starts to become tedious. Aston's backstory is an interesting turn of events which brings about changing loyalties as it showcases yet another layer of human cruelty.

At one point I questioned whether Mick and Aston are even two separate people. Or if they are only in Davies' head.

I understand what Pinter wanted to to here and his language is like it always is, brilliant, but I'm not sure the play's execution is very successful. Its premise, however, is intriguing.

[HR Habibur Rahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grasp all lose all.

[Jacobcerisgandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

4/12

Still need to stop reading plays and start seeing plays.

[margarida anjos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I mean, you don't know who might come up them front steps, do you?

I talked too much. That was my mistake.

The Caretaker is a wild ride through human psychology and power plays. Listening to the audiobook while flipping through the pages adds an extra layer of immersion and I 100% advise you to do the same. Pinter's dialogue crackles with tension, but be warned, it's a slow burn. Still, it's worth the ride for its deep insights into human nature.

[Nick Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the last twelve months I have been reading Harold Pinter. I have no doubt that he is the leading English playwright of his generation – I could say he is my favourite, but in many ways his work isn’t likeable, so maybe I should say I find him the most interesting playwright of his generation. But there is also something small about his work. For me his major works are the five plays written over 20 years, from The Caretaker in 1959 to Betrayal in 1978. (Perhaps controversially I leave out The Birthday Party as a brilliant apprentice work and Moonlight as a work falling into self parody and the shorter work as sketches where ideas were tried out for the more substantial plays.) They are not broad in theme. I have seen his work divided between the early comedies of menace and the later memory plays – although I’m not certain the division is clear. There is a shifting of concerns from one play to the next, but the range of concern isn’t large. The Caretaker clearly fits as a comedy of menace, but the uncertainty of memory or recollection is also important. Three characters. Aston brings the much older Davies back to his semi-derelict house: Davies seems homeless and Aston offers him a place to stay. It is Aston’s brother Mick who offers the menace: he bullies and manipulates Davies, language being used to unsettle and demean. This is typical Pinter. There is both a dark comedy and deep unpleasantness – and this makes it disconcerting, our responses confused. (It could, of course, be played as black comedy, but playing Pinter as straight comedy makes the plays easier, safer, less disconcerting.) But Davies is a storyteller, telling of his past, but we cannot be certain about their truth, whether he is sharing memories or fantasies. And Davies acquiesces to Mick’s bullying, willing to turn on the milder Aston if he thinks it will advantage him. And Aston has a history of mental illness and is haunted by the memory of his time in hospital. There’s not much of a narrative, rather there are a series of situations as the three characters establish and then reconfigure their relationships – although Aston and Mick’s relationship is largely played out through their responses to Davies. As always what is not said seems as threatening as what is said, but that gives the work a sort of puritanical sparseness. Yes, they are a strange bunch of plays, but they get under your skin.

[Ghost Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Caretaker" is the last play I read from the Pinter's collection I now investigate. It is brilliant and I really am confused to see such low rating of Pinter's plays here on Goodreads. Before reading Pinter I was already acquinted and familiar with the works of Stoppard, Beckett and Ionesco all of whom seem quite alike to Pinter. At the same time they are all different. There is no absolute absurd in Pinter's plays and Beckett is much different from Ionesco as well. Yet their work is qualified as a "theatre of absurd". Pinter is less absurdist than others but even liking Beckett, Stoppard and Ionesco I tend to say that Pinter is my favorite by now. "The Caretaker" like "The BIrthday Party" is about seclusion, loneliness, indifference, and quiet desperation. I think that the two best plays of Pinter that I read are "The Caretaker" and "The Birthday Party". They both end on a passive, tragic, and dramatic note of despair. The two brothers (Aston and Mick) are so different yet they connect even though they are different because they are brothers. Being the guest from a street Davies tries to fit in the enviornment where Aston tries to be as hospitable as he can. Astone tells the truth only. He wants to have a barn to use it as a workshop to work but he can't work until he have his barn to work in. It is a vicious cycle and the barn, I think, symbolizes either happinnes or sense of life, maybe both. Davies adjusts his behavior to Aston and Mick and even tries to oppose them at each other. If there is a villain in this play it is Davies because his motives are practical and egoistic.

I don't really know what others think about the maning of the bucket that hangs from a ceiling but I am really interested. When Davies talks about his past in nut-house and Pinter remarks that the light around him should be slowly turned off it feels really great. Being a Buddhist I was also interested in the role of Buddha statue so loved by Aston and crashed by Mick. I realy cannot even think of its meaning and I am lost in assumptions.

The play is magnifiscent. I gave it 5 starts and highly recommend it to eveyone because it has such astonishing lines, so brief and yet meaningful, funny in a dark way, hilarious, touching, sincere and moving, so real and yet surreal.

[Dr. Vipin Behari Goyal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern Man has three faces- Mike, Aston and Davies in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. Mike and Aston are brothers and Davies is a tramp. All of them are directionless. In the play Shoes have been used symbolically. They are symbolic of the right path, action and destination, which all the three are utterly lacking. Despite being aimless they are ready to lend shoes and thus show path to others without caring for its appropriateness.

All the three suffer from isolation. At the beginning of Act I Mike is alone on the stage and at the end of play Davies stands alone on the stage. Mike rejects the audience and walks away after thirty seconds without uttering a single word. He attracts the attention of the audience at the garbage scattered in the room. Davies stands alone rejected by both, the brothers as well as the audience. The means of communication have decreased the capacity of Modern Man for genuine communication. Fear of rejection is due to lack of genuine communication.

All the three are opportunist and leave no chance to take advantage of each other. Aston has not brought Davies home out of charity. He wants to use him as an assistant and take his help in constructing a shed in the backyard of the house which is his long awaited dream. He collected Davies as he collects all other junk with the objective of putting them to use someday. Davies after realising that Mike is the owner of the house plays tricks to separate brothers. Mike is using his imbecile elder brother as caretaker.
- See more at: http://vipinbeharigoyal.blogspot.in/2...

[Zeineb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Post-war drama is bound to a mixture of absurd, often PTSD-oriented and pessimistic dramatization of the human condition struck by destruction and chaos. Pinter carries on in this vein and gives us this short play.

As a “not” avid reader of this sort of dramas, my review should be taken with a grain of salt.
I find both the structure and themes expected given the context of the play (post-war/modernist/unconventional/experimental to a degree) which is a “good” thing if one is NOT familiar with this type of plays. However, that is enough of me complaining about the loss of the element of surprise in a shock-driven, destruction-centred play. I am such an ungrateful wretch who should appreciate this trauma drama. I should behave myself.

The only thing that attracted my attention (however brief that was) was the subtle inclusion of mandatory shock therapy that made one of the characters “nutty”. Other than that, it is obvious that the play revolves around the theme of estrangement (spatial and psychological) in a witty way (that is Harold Pinter for you, folks. “Bref comme ça, efficace comme ça").
This play is a rhythm-breaker, and that is all for me.

Till next time, Mr Pinter!

[Ilgvars · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, Harold Pinter's The Caretaker was one of the plays it is more interesting to read about than to read itself. Sure, the style, language and approach of narrating is appealing in its difference. But again, it is when you read about it or sit down to think about it in retrospective. Otherwise the unfinished sentences, repetitions, odd sounding phrases and choppy dialogues could give a headache. But I guess, it is good to have headache sometimes from a play. Isn't it one of the suggested side effects after all?