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. 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. 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.

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. 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. Pinter originally intended the play to end with Aston murdering Davies, but he felt that the characters took him elsewhere; it instead ends with Aston politely but emphatically asking Davies to leave the home. 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.Major themes in the play include the problems of communication; race and social class; the current political state in 1950s England; identity; language; and deception. The play is lauded for its placement of a man of the lower social class at (literal) center stage, for its naturalistic language, meticulous crafting, dynamic interplay between characters, and layers of meaning. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. 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.

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.The theme of isolation appears to result from the characters' inability to communicate with one another, and the characters' own insularity seems to exacerbate their difficulty communicating with others. [ citation needed] Arden, John. Book review of The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter. New Theatre Mag. 1.4 (July 1960): 29–30.