Discuss the Caretaker as A Comedy of Menace. Essay Example

Discuss the Caretaker as A Comedy of Menace. Essay Example Discuss the Caretaker as A Comedy of Menace. Essay Discuss the Caretaker as A Comedy of Menace. Essay Essay Topic: House Of Mirth The Caretaker generally followed a pattern: the brilliance of the actors was celebrated and the questions of influence, primarily Becketts, were linked to discussions of the relationship between the comic and serious elements in the play. Interpretations of the meaning varied from the literal to the fully allegorical, by way of generalized abstract tags. Subsequent academic criticism, deriving from textual study rather than stage performance, has early always followed the serio-tragical-symbolical-abstract line- what we might call Modern Man in Search of His Insurance Cards, or, I stink. Therefore I am. The comedy of The Caretaker is not a dispensable palliative. To discuss meaning without taking this into account is to distort the play as a whole and devalue its achievement. The combination of the comic and the serious, laughter and silence, is often deeply disturbing for art audience: but only in confronting it can we begin to understand the play. For one member of the audience, at least, the relationship between the comic and the serious elements was unacceptable. Leonard Russell, the Sunday Times book reviewer, recorded his impressions of a performance at the Duchess Theatre in an open letter to Harold Pinter: I will go so far as to admit that I found it a strangely menacing and disturbing evening. It was also a highly puzzling evening; and here I refer not to the play but to the behaviour of the audience. On the evening I was present a large majority had no doubt at all that your special contribution to the theatre is to take a heartbreaking themes and treat it facially. Gales of happy, persistent, and, it seemed to me, totally indiscriminate laughter greeted a play which I lake to be, for all its funny moments, a tragic reading of life. May, I ask this question- are you yourself happy with the atmosphere of rollicking good fun? Pinters reply is such crucial importance for an understanding of the play: Your question is not an easy one to answer. Certainly I laughed myself while writing The Caretaker, but not all the time, not indiscriminately. An element of the absurd is, I think, one of the features of the play, but at the same time I did not intend it to be merely a laughable force. If there hadnt been other issues at stake the play would not have been written. Audience reaction cant be regulated, and no one would want it to be; nor is it easy to analyses. But where the comic and tragic (for want of a better word) are closely interwoven, certain members of an audience will always give emphasis to the comic as opposed to the other, for by so doing they rationalize the other out of existence. On most evenings at the Duchess there is a sensible balance of laughter and silence. Where, though, this indiscriminate mirth is found. I feel it represents a cheerful patronage of the characters on the part of the merrymakers, and thus participating is avoided. This laughter is in fact a mode of precaution, a smoke-screen, a refusal to accept what is happening as recognizable (which I think it is) and instead to view the actors (a) as actors always and not as characters and (b) as chimpanzees. From this kind of neasy jollification I must, of cause, dissociate myself, thought I do think you were unfortunate in your choice of evening. As far as Im concerned, The Caretaker is funny, up to a point. Beyond that point it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it. Pinters letter is an essential starting point for discussion of the play. Adequate criticism must be based on a recognition of both the comic and tragic elements compounded in the paralleled process of stage performance and audience response. Out emotional reaction of laughter or silence complements what happens on stage. Both actors and audience create a structure of feeling that the play has in its living moment, as Pinter puts it. The point where The Caretaker ceases to be funny must be found within the movement of the play itself and within the emotional complex of our participation. In order to do so, I wasnt to focus not so much on the physical structure which is relatively straight forward but rather on the structure of feeling, the emotional rhythm of laughter and silence which culminates in the arrested tension of both. Rather than follow the tendency to generalise from paraphrase and thereby lose the essential drama, one must examine certain passages in order to bring out the deeply sensitive psychological insight that lies behind Pinters plain statement. Deeply Sensitive Psychological Insight When the curtain rises, Mick shares the activity of the audience. He slowly looks about The Room looking at each object in turn. He looks up at the ceiling, and stares at the bucket. Then he brazenly separates himself from the audience. Ceasing, he sits quite still, expressionless, looking out front. Silence for thirty seconds. Mick then leaves upon hearing muffled voices. This silent enigma is in dramatic contrast to the end of the play. At the outset Mick, in effect, rejects the audience by walking offstage after a protracted silence, while at the close it is Davies who is left onstage rejected by the audience insofar as we recognize that he must go. But this formal, inverted symmetry is recognised retrospe ctively. Micks silence and departure stays as a qualm, leaving a question behind the laughter that is immediate. Astons opening invitation to Davies to sit down is manifestly frustrated by the evident disorder of the attic. As Aston sorts out a chair, Davies breaks into the first of so many complaints: Sit down? Huh I havent had a good sit down I havent had a proper sit down well, I couldnt tell you Ten minutes off for a tea-break in the middle of the night in that place and I can’t find a seat, not one. All those Greeks 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 thats what, doing me out of a seat, treating me like dirt. When he come at me tonight I told him Daviess categorical discriminations (sit down good sit down proper sit down) express the degree of deprivation that he feels he has suffered. His present gratitude is deflected and finally demolished by recrimination directed at the immediate past. An aggrieved sense of active and collective discourtesy by default is magnified to a major injustice; it is as if the merely adventitious revealed the latent injustice of victimization as a permanent condition of the world. As so often in comedy a mundane occurrence is given an unwarrantedly inflated significance. Daviess bigotry, aggravated by constitutional self-righteous defensiveness, evidently distorts whatever really happened, and as a consequence we laugh rather than sympathize. The insistent repetition inadvertently suggest that, on the one hand, it is both the multi-racial conditions of work and work itself that has pained Davies, and on the other that his appeal is in part determined by a bit of tobacco coming his way: as Aston begins to roll himself a cigarette. Davies watches him. This initial comedy continues to develop in the ever widening gap between the intentions of Daviess speech and its effect on the audience. Daviess Tramplike Appearance and Mannerisms Even before he speaks Daviess tramp-like appearance has prompted a certain predisposition in the audience. Socially, tramps are at an inferior extreme, and their condition precludes a normative response by definition. Reactions to tramps are nearly always compounded of fear, distaste, embarrassment, seeming indifference, or a degree of sympathy arising from unconscious self-reproach at our own well-being. Whatever feeling predominates depends upon the tramps behaviour on a scale from abasement to aggression. Abasement invites individual, summary charity as a token of Societys larger responsibility for victims of circumstance. Aggression (like Daviess), though frightening on actual encounter, ultimately prompts laughter in the dramatic representation of self-determined viciousness. The transformation of the actual into the dramatic, the street into the theatre, the individual into audience, brings with it the laughter of relief. Before taking a seat, winded by climbing the stairs, Davies must loosen himself up. He exclaims loudly, punches downward with closed fist crying, I could have got done in down there. There is no book and Daviess evidently exaggerated claim is undermined even further by comic colloquialism. The stance of retrospective pugilism suggests a purely mimetic valour. It is clear that the combination of self-assertion and self-deception creates for Davies a fiction to live by. But although the imperatives of his existence have confounded fiction and fact, the distinction is evident to the audience throughout. Aston immediately offers Davies a roll-up but he replies: What? No, no. I never smoke a cigarette Ill tell you what, though, Ill have bit of that tobacco there for my pipe, if you like Thats kind of you, mister. Just enough to fill my pipe, thats all. I had a tin, only only a while ago. But it was knocked off. It was knocked off on the Great West Road. Daviess refusal of the roll-up is reinforced by a categorical statement similar to the earlier example which expresses both the certainty of negative choice and yet an alternative possibility in the suggestion of a latent discrimination. His initial question- What? - is a response to Astons putative motive and means; Davies is rejecting what he feels may be charity but offering to accept Astons tobacco in terms of his own positive preference for the more socially acceptable pipe, all the time leaving the actual decision to Aston. Daviess acknowledged indebtedness is modified by the subsequent etiquette. His self-conscious moderation forestalls any charge of excess, establishing his action as a gen tle manly custom rather than revealing a condition of permanent dependence. The closing anecdote is intended to alter the action of giving and receiving into a form of indirect restitution. A similar rationalisation takes place later in the act when Davies accepts a few bob from Aston: Thank you, thank you, good luck. I just happen to find myself a bit short. You see, I got nothing for all that weeks work I did last week. Thats the position, thats what it is. Though retrospective criticism of this nature articulates the ironies of Daviess gesture and utterance, the immediacy of the audiences experience registers this emotively, responding to the comic moment which is immediately fulfilled when Aston fails to corroborate Daviess revision of his misfortune. You heard me tell him, didnt you? Davies asks, Aston replies I saw him have a go at you, forcing him to attempt to draw sympathy by reference to age, Go at me? You wouldnt grumble. The filthy skate an old man like me. But here Daviess aggressive demotic ironically pre-empts the response he seeks, while the claim that breathlessly follows- Ive had dinner with the best- incites the broadest laughter with its blatant i mprobability. Aston, with a neutral imperturbability that promotes our laughter even further, refuses to comply and calmly repeats himself, Yes, I saw him have a go at you. Daviess only recourse is to recall his persona! standards to bolster his present judgments: All them toe-rags, mate, got the manners of pigs. I might have been on the road a few years but you can take it from me Im clean. I keep myself up. Thats why I left my wife. Fortnight after I married her, no, not so much as that, no more than a week, I took the lid off a saucepan, you know what was in it? A pile of her underclothing, unwashed. The pan for vegetables, it was. The vegetable pan. Thats when I left her and I havent seen her since. Davies has no apparent sense that such demonstrative probity is so farcically disproportionate that it cancels what it claims. Following Daviess earlier revision of events, this exaggeration suggests that what we hear is a ludicrous distortion of whatever may have happened. The indis criminately vulgar language of the opening- All them toe-rags, mate, got the manners of pigs- burlesques the posture of arbiter of decorum which it protects. Immediately following this, Davies describes the row in the cafe. While laiming proper respect due to an old man, if a few years younger he would break in half that Scotch git. All the socially regulative values Davies claims- dignity, respect, propriety, decorum- are confounded by the language and gesture of a caricatured ethic more appropriate to an anti-social wild animal, as Mick later describes him. In short Daviess comic character is founded on a total travesty of the mode of being to which he aspires. The pathos of his deprivation is made comic with the citation of a public lavatory attendant as a promoter of a personal hygiene. Vast significance is given to the quotidian- Shoes? Its life and death to me, man, Daviess scale of values inverts the normative values of the audience, accustomed to more abstract priorities, which remain unquestioned since Davies cannot be taken seriously. We reason not the need when it is rendered in comic picaresque. Elaborating on his need for footwear, Davies launches into the celebrated tale of the quest to the Luton monastery. A ‘bastard monk, the representative of a holy order, warns the suppliant, if you dont piss off Ill kick you all the way to the gate. As Davies expands on his misfortunes, mounting audience laughter accompanies each incident, culminating in applause at the close of the story. And with applause action is temporarily suspended. For a few crucial seconds the actor is divorced on the character as the audience celebrates a comic performance. The reality of whatever happened in Luton is subverted by characteristically jaundiced aggression which is transferred to the monk, dramatically evoking laughter rather than sympathy. Therefore, Davies as a credible being struggles not only with Aston and Mick, but with the theatrically formalised predisposition of the audience, a predisposition to see Davies as a type, a brilliantly embodied act, at best a tramp, but hardly an individual Shortly after the Luton story, the anecdote of Sidecup and the papers consolidates this. Davies insists that the Side up papers prove who I am They tell you who I am, but we know he will never collect those chimerical documents of fifteen years ago. Lack of shoes, or bad weather, or something else will always intervene. His re-assumption of a past bureaucratic identity could not alter what he is. It is being a tramp which has shaped his body and soul, and not the fact that he is called Bernard Jenkins rather than Mac Davies. Every utterance and every gesture he makes denote a class rather than an individual, dialect subsumes idiolect. Davies is finally no more than his languge and appearance- and this is how Mick encounters him at the end of the first act. Micks Insight It is as if throughout most of Act I Mick has been listening in, since he shows an uncanny insight into Daviess character. In this sense Mick is almost a representative of the audience, knowing, sardonically, as much as they know. On the other hand Mick knows his Davieses as he knows his London, but he expresses it indirectly in terms of Astons behaviour: Mick: He doesn’t work. (Pause) Davies: Go on! Mick: No, he just doesnt like work, thats his trouble. Davies: Ay. Mick: Hes just shy of it. Very shy of it Davies: I know that sort. Mick: You know the type. At the end of Act: Mick immediately recognises Daviess work-shy type, and his first words, Whats the game ? are really the later statement, I know what you want, put in the form of a question. Comic Relief It has been shown by Peter Davison that Micks first two speeches derive in form from the traditional music-hall monologue. As such, alongwith something like the bag-passing game, they border on the farcical. But there is more to them than this. In laughing at the combination of the ludicrous, the grotesque and the improbable, the audience join s Mick in laughing at Davies. In other words, Mick provides the relief of a new comic perspective which enlists the audience on its side. At this point the verbal slapstick seems almost innocuous: You remind me of my uncles brother. He was always on the move, that man. Never without his passport. Had an eye for the girls. Very much your build. Bit of an athlete. Long-jump specialist. He had a habit of demonstrating different run-ups in the drawing-room round about Christmas time. Had a penchant for nuts. Thats what it was. Nothing else but a penchant. Couldnt eat enough of them. Peanuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, monkey nuts, wouldnt touch a piece of fruit cake. Had a marvelous stop-watch. Picked it up in Hong Kong. The day after they chucked him out of the Salvation Army. Used to go in number four for Beckenham Reserves. That was before he got his Gold Medal. Had a funny habit of carrying his fiddle on his back. Like a papoose. I think there was a bit of the red Indian in him. To be honest, Ive often thought that may be it was the other way round. I mean that my uncle was his brother and may be he was my uncle. But I never called him uncle. As a matter of fact I called him Sid. My mother called him Sid too. It was a funny business. Your spilling image he was. Married a Chinaman and went to Jamaica. In spite of its seeming inconsequentiality this speech manifestly says a lot about Davies, Mick and Aston on a naturalistic and psychological level. Micks sardonic delivery expresses at once both discursive doubt and impatience with the conversation game and a sadistic playfulness. The verbal barrage parallels the earlier arm-twisting: verbal intimidation follows physical domination. Mick is equally dexterous at both. What Mick is really saying behind the formal obliquity of his narrative is this- I recognized your sort, a tramp (always on the move), with your story of papers (never without his passport), your ridiculous physical posturing (Bit of an athlete), thrown out of a monastery (they chucked him out of the Salvation Army) of questionable background (a bit of the Red Indian in him), now mixed up with my brother (Ive never made out of how he came to be my uncles brother), why dont you clear off (married a Chinaman and went to Jamaica). But at the same time Mick is deflecting a suppressed view of his own brother that is forced into his mind by the fact of Daviess presence: my brother (You remind me of my uncles brother) has picked up this nut (had a penchant or nuts), he must be nutty as a fruit cake (wouldnt touch a piece of fruit cake). Micks feelings only emerge eventually by way of his surrogate; Davies whose exclamation Hes nutty! enables Mick to savour the suppressed, emotionally forbidden, work: Nutty? Whos nutty? (Pause). Did you call my brother nutty? My brother. Micks second speech is also something more than an exercise in intimidation. It is a comically indirect way of elaborating on what is implicit: the foreignness of Davies. The indigenous Mick ironically compares the indigent Davies with a fellow Londoner. Micks irony is sharpened by his reflection on the sense of difference felt by a working-class North Londoner for those from south of the Thames. When I got to know him I found out he was brought up in Putney. That didnt make any difference to me. The bloke, after all, was born in the Caledonian Road, just before you get to the Nags Head. Micks North London references are to neighboring localities linked by bus routes at the centre of which is the blocks old mum still living at the Angel. Mick evokes neighbourhood, pub and home- the self-advertisement of a particular kind of Londoner recognising an outsider and reminding him of the fact. By contrast, Davies lonely wandering existence is reflected by sporadic, peripheral references to places outside of London proper (Sidcup, Luton, Watford, Wembley) and to past friends: I used to know a bookmaker in Acton. He was a good mate to me. Whereas Micks two speeches are littered with familial terms (uncle, brother, mother, cousin). Daviess anecdotes suggest that over the years, in all of London between Luton and Sidcup, only two encounters have ever led to friendship- and both friendships of a dubious kind. The style and delivery of Micks speeches suggest the amateur comedian at home in pub, club or family; Davies is only a solitary tramp stranded somewhere on the Great West R oad or the North Circular, an anomaly. But all these serious undertones are checked by a sense of game. Micks interrogation of Davies is deliberately punctured by straight music-hall cross-talk: Mick: Thats my bed Davies: What about that, then Mick: Thats my mother’s bed. Davies: Well she wasnt in it last night! Even when Mick rounds on Davies in this third long speech. Youre stinking the place out. Youre an old robber, theres no getting away from it. Youre an old skate†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. - the serious force of his charges is tempered, firstly by his appropriation of Daviess language (filthy skate, and secondly, by an extended parody of the conditions of tenancy and purchase. Between an outline of costs and recommendation of Aston as decorator. Mick threatens Otherwise Ive got a van outside, I can run you to the police station in five minutes, have you in for trespassing, loitering with intent, daylight robbery, filching, thieving and stinking the place out. Amusing to the audience, this exaggeration is frightening to Davies since the language parallels his own exaggerated sense of persecution. The ludicrous magnification of the obligations, commitments and penalties of legal responsibility in buying a house is a humorous reminder to the audience of an often exhaustingly protracted business, but to Davies it is a manifestation of a bureaucratic world that excludes him. Mick makes the point in his repeated final question Who do your bank with? This complex verbal humour is accentuated by the visual comedy. Throughout the act Davies has been on stage without his trousers, in his long pants, and Mick emphasizes the fact by flicking Daviess trousers in his face- several times. This is then followed, almost immediately, by one of the oldest plays in the slapstick repertoire, the bag-passing game with its knockabout sequence reversal. Threat and menace are conflated in Micks speeches and the bag-passing game is almost wholly funny (but not merely funny, since the same symbolises the way in which Davies himself passes from brother to brother). Then, with the terrifying attack in darkness and the succeeding revelation that it is Mick merely spring cleaning with an electrolux, violence and laughter are powerfully juxtaposed. Thus Pinter exploits different kinds of comedy in a cumulative and structured way: comedy of character is established in Act I and then extended by music-hall monologue and broad farce in Act II. Comedy of language, gesture and action is then allowed to build up to the moment when it is dramatically arrested by Astons long, painful account of treatment in a mental hospital, and the events leading up to it. Astons speech has always been recognized as a major moment in the movement of the play, but its full significance has not been adequately discussed. Astons Behaviour John Russell Brown has pointed out the correspondences between Astons hospital treatment and his present behaviour. He underwent electrical treatment and now fiddles obsessively with electrical equipment: he has a white coat, a pillow and a sheet at the ready: the uncovered light bulb glares down; he stares smilingly over Davies in bed. Brown also points out that Aston did go back to place like the cafe and did talk to strangers again- namely Davies- and suggests that the impetus for this was two-hold. Aston is haunted by revenge and somehow sees his own role as a caretaker of Davies. These are all important points, but need to be taken further. Aston refers to the piles of papers he was shown as medical evidence: Davies refers to the piles of papers kept in the attic. Aston says that the window of his hospital room was barred; the indications are that the attic window was kept open even before Daviess malodorous entry. Aston spent five hours sawing at the bars, and is now preoccupied with saws, ostensibly to carry out the building work. He recognises that in cafe and factory he talked too much, and his long speech is a chilling reminder that he still does. What does all this add up to? Surely the commonly accepted notion of Astons charity in taking in Davies is called a question here. Rather than a disinterested act deriving from an impulse or conviction of moral duty and thus a token of his social rehabilitation it is part of the irreparable damage brought about by his sufferings. Astons charity is a way of simultaneously vindicating himself and impugning those who have harmed him. Davies is there in the attic because of Astons psychology, not because of his ethics: Aston sees. Davies as a version of himself. Astons recollections of the glass of Guinness and the lady in the cafe indicate his continuing disorientation. Both these speeches occur after pauses and have no relation to what precedes them and both after pauses and have no relation to what precedes them, and both contrast forcefully with Astons previous reticence. As conversational gambits they are disastrously bizarre; it is almost as if of an interior monologue has suddenly come to the surface. The preoccupation of Aston and Davies are psychological treadmills imprisoning each in his mutually exclusive world. For Aston to work on the house he needs to clear the garden for a shed. To build the shed on the house he needs to clear the garden for a saw bench, is needed for the shed. Davies, to sort himself out needs his papers at Sidcup. To get to Sidcup he needs good shoes, to get good shoes he needs, money, to get money he needs his papers to sort himself out Both minds have been numbed by the different experiences of being on the road and being in a mental hospital: both are reduced to a preoccupation with the physical function of hands and feet. With Astons speech the laughter ceases. And there is no caretaker for them. The audience is silenced and confounded as the darkness grows. Comic Tableau As Act III opens, and before anything is said, Davies is seen in a comic tableau, pipe in hand and incongruously garbed in a smoking jacket. Here, after the strain of confronting the nature of Astons being, we are at last allowed the relief of laughter. But when Davies speaks, although his concerns seem much the same (the gas stove, blacks, shoes, etc. ) his continual reference to Aston compromise and complicate our response. At this point as subjective coefficient of guilt rises in us, deriving in part from our former complicity with Mick (now more evidently working on his strategy of expulsion) and in part from laughing at Astons expense. Whereas earlier Davies seemed self-determining and thus responsible for what he is, he now seems more like a plaything being used by Mick for certain questionable ends. The serious and the comic are now much more, forcefully counter pointed. Micks dry-mock is still there (You must come up and have a drink something. Listen to some Tchaikovsky and Daviess procrastination, although now invidiously ungrateful, is still lightened to pure comedy (the only way to keep a pair of shoes on, if you havent got no laces, is to tighten the foot, see? But Daviess response to Micks evocation of a penthouse palace- What about me? - gives voice to the inevitable question at the heart of the situation. Micks All this junk here, its no good to anyone, is much less casual than it seems. Davies as, part of the junk, will obviously have to go, and we recognise it. Mick obliquely incites Daviess verbal attack on Aston by giving voice to what the tramp has felt from the outset. Daviess real feelings in surveying the attic are compromised by the fact that Aston has rescued him. As a consequence Davies says the opposite of what he feels: Davies: This your room? Aston: Yes. Davies: You got a good bit of stuff here. Aston: Yes. Davies: Must be worth a few bob, this put it all together. (Pause) Theres enough of it. Aston: Theres a good bit of it, all right. Davies: You sleep here, do you? Aston: Yes. Davies: What, in that? Similarly, Micks pointed summary not only places Davies as part of the rubbish and simultaneously predisposed him to attack Aston, but gives utterance to that protracted stare at the opening of the play: All this junk here, its no good to anyone. Its just a lot of old iron, thats all Clobber. Davies Opportunistic Nastiness Davies echoes this in his viciously prolonged attack on Aston as an irresponsible lunatic, all this junk I got to sleep with this lousy filthy hole. Daviess contemptible vilification is emotionally complex for an audience. If it confirms our opinion, of Daviess opportunist nastiness and strengthen our impulse to reject him as wholly objectionable, at the same time it provides almost a release for our strained protective feelings towards Aston. The opening lines of the speech continue Daviess exaggerated sense of comic victimisation made ludicrous by disproportionate expectation: Its getting so freezing in here I have to keep my trousers on to go to bed. I never done that before in my life. But thats what I got to do here. Just because you wont put in any bleeding heating! We may derive a temporary sense of relief in what follows by intellectually assessing the circularity of Daviess charge- Aston is lunatic because he is irresponsible and irresponsible because he is lunatic- and even maintain our distance when Davies claim the friendship and kindred opinion of Mick. But this relief is completely shattered as Davies sadistically baits Aston with the prospect of renewed electrical treatment. As the emoti on rises both in Davies and the audience it is, paradoxically, both undercut and heightened by localised London slang: Theyd take one look at all this junk I got to sleep with theyd know you were a creamer. Davies charges Aston with what, in all probability, has been levelled at him, acreamer. It is almost funny as an unexpected synonym for the more current nutcase, but at the same time more insidiously mocking for Aston, since Davies uses the highly specific argot of Astons own background. Yet even at this point we are tempted to laugh as Daviess expression gets more and more Welsh in self-righteous anger: You want me to do all the dirty work all up and down them stairs just so I can sleep in this lousy filthy hole every night? Not me, boy. Not for your, boy. But the idioms that provoke laughter also arrest it: Youre up the creek! Youre half off! Our awareness of the possibility of this being true checks our natural tendency to respond humorously to figurative exaggeration. Daviess subsequent question Whoever saw you slip me a few bob? Simultaneously recalls Astons kindness in doing just that, and predisposes the audience to take up a defensive position, on Astons behalf, against Daviess final callousness- I never been inside a nuthouse! Even here, the colloquially derisive reduction makes us want to laugh, as we have laughed at the peremptory idiom of Micks attack on Davies. But as Davies draws his knife on ominous silence supervenes. This tableau recalls Davies ineptitude in threatening Mick earlier, and Aston finally breaks the tension with a delayed understatement that is totally deflating: I think its about time you found somewhere else. I dont think were hitting it off! This is precisely what Mick has been worming towards. He could have thrown Davies out whenever he liked, but he has waited two weeks for Aston to see through Daviess character. Mick has promoted the exposure in order that Aston will see and feel as he does. The usual interpretation of Mick and Astons relationship- that there is an unspoken bond of brotherly love between them- is really rather naive and sentimental. Mick smashes the Buddha to pieces out of a frustrated rage that derives from his suppressed acknowledgement of the truth of Daviess previous accusation (Hes nutty), and his subsequent passionate outburst is a wilful attempt to see Astons condition in terms of his failure to decorate the house, rather than in terms of what lies beneath it. To have thrown Davies out would have been a tacit admission that Aston was a lunatic to have brought him there in the first place. (Perhaps Davies wasnt the first? ) Mick and Aston In other words, Micks obligation to his brother is formal rather than affective. Micks character- tough, sardonic, worldly-wise- is similar to that of the people in the cafe and the factory who found Aston funny and were instrumental in having him put away. Like his mother and the doctor, Mick wants Aston to live like the others. He understands Davies so well because they both have a kind of bureaucratic view of the world. They both see human activity in terms of status conferred by institutions that regulate society (social security, solicitors, etc). Whereas the Buddha for Aston was an example of something well made, for Mick it embodies all that he cannot face in his brother- the inscrutable, the passive, and the alien. But, in tarring over the roof Aston is learning to take over of himself, in Micks term. At the opening of the play the suspended bucker focuses for Mick his brothers condition as he understands it, and their only exchange in Act II concerns the problem of tarring over the leaking roof. As Act III opens, Davies contemplates Astons silence in terms of his single activity of doing the job (ironically this anticipates his own expulsion). This small task signalises that Aston will comply with Micks view of things, a complicity dramatized by the taint smile they exchange towards the close. Mick smiles in recognition of what he sees as his rightness in paying off Davies, and Aston smiles back conceding the fact- his last words to Davies were Get your stuff. Davies must go, however plangent his appeal: What am I going to do?. Where am I going to go. The pauses between each utterance are lengthened into the long silence of the final stage direction. Aston turns back to the window, remains still, his back to him, at the window, but we are faced with Daviess concrete questioning presence. We are forced here to confront not only what laughter has created but also what laughter has suppressed. The repetitions of Davies language echo those moments of comedy which are now stifled by the specter of destitution. Daviess need for material items has created moments of high comedy, but the serious moral implications of such subsistence culminate in those questions. The material, social and cultural privileges that presuppose our presence in the theatre are indices of the totality of Daviess deprivation. Throughout the play Davies has been the object of the solidarity of laughter, but now the audience itself is exposed in its own silence before him. The possibilities of food, shelter and warmth are now to be replaced by the possibilities of hunger, cold and exposure, intimation of which have been present all along (I could have died on the road, Davies says at one point. Was this the substance of his nightmares? ). The harsh regimen of the doss-house has been evoked earlier in Daviess hurried attempt to forestall what he knows must happen as the rule of each daybreak: Dont you want me to get out. Rhythm of the Play The points where the laughter spasmodically ceases are obvious enough in the rhythm of the play. These dramatic moments correspond psychologically to the point in each of us where conflicting impulses and vestigial atavism and ostensible civility meet. We experience in The Caretaker the Hobbesian triumph of superior of laughter ovger inferior objects and ludicrousness transforms the socially embarrassing. But beneath this is the self-protective impulse to remove what is psychologically painful. Just as children laugh at (and thus exorcise) the sight of physical deformity, so we react to Daviess warped morality- all the time expecting him to ask for our compassion. But Davies remains intransigent, he does not offer us the adult compromise of compassion. In our laughter there stirs an uneasy atavism which grows in proportion as Daviess nastiness increases. We cannot finally accept Davies on his own terms- as he is. He has to be either killed off by our laughter, or transformed by the tragic dignity of self-awareness. Our emotional expectations are in part shaped by dramatic convention. Davies must be either contemptible or pitiful, a comic vice exposed in laughter, or, by token of some redemptive self-insight, an ultimately traffic figure. But he is actually neither, and this is what is almost too painful. In the theatre adult emotions are customarily channeled into a comforting species of self-protective compassion. Pinter refuses to provide this. Initially Pinter felt that there would have to be a death at the end of the play, but it is clear that this would have only provided another kind of emotional release- and evasion. Pinter not only dropped this notion but in revision, chose to stress the ineluctable concrete actuality of Davies there, before us: resistant to allegory, abstraction, and moral formula. Here, in the long silence, no longer so much an audience as a disparate assembly of individuals which includes Davies, we are forced to confront the limits of our human response, the edges of emotional vulnerability, the barriers of social ordinance that join and divide us all. This is our participation, and this is where the point of laughter and silence, as Pinters letter reminds us, both begins and ends. Bibliography: http://plays. about. com/od/playwrights/a/pinter. htm