He then launches into one of his typical, vague invectives. “I told him about them Blacks using the lavatory. I told him, it was all dirty in there, all the banisters were dirty, they were all black, all the lavatory was black.” For all his racist bravado, and hateful, irrational comments about foreigners, he is terrified of the black family in the building. His apparent obsession with hygiene does not appear to extend to his clothing- he sleeps fully clothed, and is described several times by Mick as stinking. His xenophobia prevents him from even sharing facilities with black people. In the age of political correctness, this is probably intended to shock the audience with his blatant racism, but is slightly dated as this sort of bigotry can be found anywhere today.
He then draws Aston into the rant with a whingeing complaint. “…What did he do? He’s supposed to be in charge of it here, he had nothing to say…” Although he is happy to exploit Aston’s good nature by pretending to be his friend, he frequently grumbles about his perceived stinginess. Here he is disgusted with Aston for not taking action over the presence of the blacks, as though this is any of his business.
The weight of this speech is not aimed completely at the audience, as Mick’s reactions will also be important to the play. Mick facetiously toys with Davies, confusing him, drawing him into making offensive remarks, and occasionally completely surprising him with a sudden torrent of abuse. In this case, just before the speech begins, he says darkly, “I know what you want.” Davies, however, misunderstands the threatening tone, and, believing Mick to be a sympathetic listener, unveils his inner thoughts.
He then, ponderously, begins to criticize Aston for his faults. Aston has shown nothing but consideration and kindness to Davies, and Davies repays him by sharing his condemnation with his brother.
“Couple of weeks ago…he sat there, he give me a long chat…since then he ain’t hardly said a word.” Aston is clumsy socially, especially with strangers, so his reticence is hardly surprising. “He was talking to himself! That’s all he worries about. I mean, you come up to me, you ask my advice, he wouldn’t never do a thing like that. I mean, we don’t have any conversation, you see?”
In spite of all Aston’s charity, he still viciously finds fault with his shy silence. This is supposed to make the audience more sympathetic to Aston, and contemptuous of Davies. “You can’t live in the same room with someone who…who don’t have any conversation with you.” The brief pause could simply have been a hesitation, or it might have been Davies exercising what might be tact. Earlier, as I will examine next, Aston had made a very intimate confession to Davies about his mental history. Davies, in his malicious way, seizes upon this as a weapon. He may have just stopped himself from saying “…someone who is a creamer.”
Davies’ language is a potentially comical element of his speeches. He has a unique style, strewn with repetition and paranoia, just like his life. His perpetual reiteration, although frustrating for the listener, is intended to be humorous.
Aston only makes one lengthy speech in the play, but it is extremely significant to what passes for the plot. The entire speech is directed primarily at the audience- in the stage directions, Pinter indicates that the lights should be slowly faded except for a spotlight on Aston. The audience is supposed to forget that Davies is listening, and feel that Aston is talking to himself.
Aston does not display much individuality through the most part of the play, and this is one of the few points where the audience are given any insight into his otherwise closely guarded thoughts. His language is not very original, and in fact the one defining feature of his speech is his slow style of delivery.
He often hesitates to collect his thoughts, and this makes the speech feel like a very personal admission directly to the audience. His apathetic discourse is also very indistinct, and quite hard to follow.
The opening part of his speech could be a Lector-esque psychopath confessing his madness to a psychologist, instead of a quiet and unambitious man recounting a past incident. “I could see things…very clearly…everything…was so clear…” Once he strays away from the description of his emotions and returns to narrating hard facts, his tone hardens and he becomes more confident.
“I knew he couldn’t do anything to me without getting permission. I knew he had to get permission from my mother.” Here he introduces a possible cause of his social reservation – the sense of universal betrayal, as though everyone has had some part in reducing him to his current piteous state. Once again, Pinter attempts to encourage sympathy from the audience to his wistful depression.
Towards the end of the speech, he regains his focus when he speaks of his ambitions. He speaks about building the garden shed as though it is the one goal he has in life, and after he has overcome this task, he will be able to fulfil all his objectives. This lack of motivation is very sad, and contributes to the overall impression of stagnation that Pinter has generated.
For my third speech, I have chosen Mick’s first long speech, where he introduces himself to Davies, as it is typical of his befuddling style, especially when confronting the tramp. Mick is the character that the audience are supposed to empathise with, the only realistic character Pinter presents. He clearly likes to think of himself as an upwardly-mobile, intensely ambitious young man, but in reality, as he realises later in the play, is just as stationary and idle as the others. In common with the other two characters, he holds a single, absurd goal upon which his progress relies. However, in this case, it is a lot more difficult to achieve than Davies’ journey to Sidcup or Aston’s garden shed.
In this speech he continually alternates between a menacing and an entrepreneurial stance towards Davies, intended to confuse him. He has earlier attacked Davies and taken some malicious pleasure in watching him squirm pathetically, and now he prepares the final order to leave. “You’re stinking the place out. You’re an old robber, there’s no getting away from it. You’re an old skate. You don’t belong in a nice place like this.” Initially, Mick comes across to the audience as a very aggressive, dominant figure. However, as he confuses Davies, he surprises the audience by adopting a professional tone, pretending to be an estate agent trying to sell his flat to Davies. The main aim of this speech, as in many of the others, is to compensate for the lack of scene-setting at the beginning of the play by indirectly informing the audience of the situation. For example, it now transpires that Mick is the owner of the flat.
“You got no business wandering about in an unfurnished flat. I could charge seven quid a week for this if I wanted to. Get a taker tomorrow. Three hundred and fifty a year exclusive…I mean, if that sort of money’s in your range, don’t be afraid to say so.”
He then uses a variety of technical jargon to further disorientate Davies, much of it fabricated, before once again going on the offensive. “Otherwise I’ve got the van outside, I can run you to the police station in five minutes, have you in for trespassing…thieving, stinking the place out. What do you say?” Then, once again, he switches back to masquerading as the estate agent.
This monologue is the first point where Mick is really introduced to the audience, and like Davies they will probably react with perplexity at his unpredictability. This is a constant theme for his character throughout the play.
Overall, Pinter makes use of the monologues to reveal more about the backgrounds, opinions and personalities of his characters. He completely fails to give the audience any information at the start, and so throughout the course of the play he is free to reveal twists in the tail. He uses the speeches effectively to present more detail about his play to the audience.