The Caretaker by Pinter Essay -- essays research papers

The C artaker by Pinter A Play Can Be Confrontational, Challenging andDisturbing to the Values and Assumptions of An Audience. deal With closeReferenceThe Caretaker, written by the British playwright Harold Pinter in the late1950s and early 1960s disrupts the interviews perceptions of existence andtheir understandings of it. The play deconstructs perceived notions andconceptions of reality, and disturbs the auditions perception of their averidentity and place within a world which is primarily refer with the searchand need for identity. Pinter was clearly influenced by the fashionablephilosophic check into of human condition that was prominent in the 1950s and1960s existentialism. The play attacks the notion that there are no absolutetruths or realities. Pinter is therefore concerned with what exists as unknownand intangible to humanity. His theatre interrogates the truth of nature andrealities of language and demonstrates that more than of what the audience regards asfact is fiction as he explores the hesitancy of human existence.When an audience of the 1960s went to the theatre, it can generally be assumedthat they had preconceived ideas about what they expected and what they aregoing to gain from the theatrical start. The conventional attitudes towardstheatre and the conventions of realist drama are disrupted by Pinter. Thisconfronts the assumptions and value of the audience, an vex which wouldbe disconcerting and frightening to many.Pinter divorces and exposes societys codes, institutions and human relations. doneout the play the audience is rarely comfortable. This disruption isestablished from the outset of the play when Mick, a division who at this stageof the play the audience knows nothing about, sits on the furnish and stares at theaudience in silence for 30 seconds. Traditionally in realist drama such asHenrik Ibsens Hedda Gabler characters use simple exposition done languageand non-verbal elements to let the audience in and enlighten them on what ishappening on the stage and the results and reasons for and behind actions.Pinter disrupts this tradition and this in itself would have been a sadphenomena to the conservative audiences of post-war Britain. Micks arrival onstage generates unease within the audience and the tension would only increaseas Pinter provides the audience with... ...entity and thestructure of society. This break of action is primarily indicated by Daviesand Aston. The prime example of this is in Davies unremitting references to hisplanned trip to Sidcup and in Astons references to the shed that he is planningto build. Through the representation of these possible future activities, itappears that it gives purpose to their current actions and to some purpose areason for living. It allows these characters to suggest that they are in factworthwhile human beings with a purpose and a life. Pinter suggests throughthis deferral of actions that peoples lives suck no worthwhile meaning andultimat ely there is nothing gained at the point of death.The Caretaker is a subversive play that demythologises many of an audiencesassumptions and values. Pinter makes the audience experience paranoia andfeelings of menace and by disrupting conventions of social behaviour andignoring traditional dramatic realist protocol, Pinter confronts andchallenges the values and assumptions of an audience. He successfullydeconstructs notions of power and security, and problematises the conservativebelief that there are in fact absolute truths and realities.