"The Caretaker" is either about nothing or everything! How far do you agree with this statement?

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The Caretaker

Tom Spooner

“The Caretaker” is either about nothing or everything!  How far do you agree with this statement?

“The Caretaker”, written by Harold Pinter, is a rather bizarre play that belongs to Theatre of the Absurd, a theatrical tradition that surfaced in the 1950s with a group of playwrights that included Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter. Their plays expressed a common atheistic and pessimistic belief in a godless universe where human existence has no meaning or purpose and human beings are unable to communicate.  This led to the abandonment of coherent, logical dialogue and was replaced by both irrational and illogical speech where the characters in the play would talk at each other rather than with each other, which helped to convey the futility of human existence.

Theatre of the Absurd derived from Existentialism.  This was the theory of Jean-Paul Sartre who argued that if the past is fiction and the future un-knowable, then all that remains is the present.  This frees man from worry about God, tradition or hope.  Existence now is all that matters.  

If we agree that existence is absurd and that theatre is a mirror of life, theatre also must be absurd with no plot, no meaning, no beginning or end and no purpose.

The Caretaker can be seen as about nothing or absolutely everything.  On the surface, it seems to be like most absurdist plays, with no plot or meaning but I think it has been very cleverly crafted by Pinter, so that people can take from it what they wish.  No one has ever tried to set any interpretation on the play or state what it really means which is what makes it so unique.  When asked what it meant, Pinter simply replied:  

“I can sum up none of my plays.  I can describe none of them, except to say: That is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.” 

 

It is a minimalist play with only three characters, no real plot or obvious meaning that is all performed within a total unity of place in a single cramped room.  The play begins when an odd man called Aston offers hospitality to an ungrateful tramp named Davies.  He takes him to his house, which is all out of commission due to refurbishment save for Aston’s room, which lies in absolute chaos.  The room is crammed full of all sorts of things, ranging from boxes of screws and paint buckets to dusty furniture and a whole manner of other things that Aston believes he will one day find a use for.  The setting therefore appears as absurdist, it’s an inhospitable place that gives no indication to the history of the occupants.  There is a statue of Buddha in the room which stands out among all the other clutter and points to a vague strand of religious conviction but it may only be a piece of junk or an ornament with no meaning to the owner.  The fact that the room lies in chaos shows no hope for the future unless there is a present motivated plan of action to redecorate the entire house, which seems more and more remote as the play progresses.  The chaos of the set helps convey the existentialist belief in the futility of life, which means the play is perhaps about nothing.  On the other hand it could represent life, a microcosm of the human world, which is unorganised and can be a horrible place to live.

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The play is confined to a short length of time with no past events or discussion of the future.  It is about now in the present but nothing much seems to be achieved and the play appears to be about nothing.  But we can only live in the present, it is impossible and futile to try and live in the past or the future.  If we try to do either then the present will become a wasted opportunity.  Bearing this in mind, the play can be seen as about everything.      

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