A comedy of menace is a play in which the laughter of the audience in some or all situations is

immediately followed by a feeling of some impending disaster. The title “Comedy of Menace”
immediately brings contradictions to mind, because comedy is generally something that makes people
laugh, and the word "menace" implies something threatening. Quite literally, then, this phrase involves
laughing at an ominous situation. Pinter himself has been quoted as saying he’s never been able to write a
happy play, and that a situation can be both true and false. most critics described his characters with
negative connotations. By creating humor around a very dramatic or tense situation, audiences are left
feeling confused at the end, because of the range of emotions experienced.

Pinter’s comedies of menace have a rather simplistic setting; they might focus on one or two powerful
images and usually are set in just one room.

The Caretaker: Major Themes

The Caretaker is a play that stimulates its audience to a wide range of topics, and on a number of
levels but leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions. It deals with various ideas and
suggestion which are the reasons for its wide popularity. The major themes of the play are:
loneliness and isolation, personal identity, lack of communication, violence and menace,
absurdity od modern society etc. Let us now discuss some of the themes.

Loneliness and isolation :

Loneliness is The Caretaker is largely expressed through the characters of Davies and Aston.
Davies is alone when Aston rescues him from the brawl at the cafe , and after a brief interlude he
is left alone again at the end of the play . Davies is an outcast, a vagrant, cut off from society but
Pinter's double -edged vision shows that some of this isolation is self -imposed . Davies is
aggressive , truculent , and unstable.

Aston's isolation is a different case. His offer to Davies of a room and a job ,and his kindness
towards him, suggest a man desperate for human companionship ,as isolated and lonely in his
way as Davies is in his. Yet Aston's isolation is not as simple as that of Davies, and springs from
a different cause . Aston's fault seems to have been exactly the opposite ; he seems to have
trusted people too much.

Lack of communication:
Loneliness and communication are closely linked. The characters in The Caretaker have a
desperate yearning to communicate with their fellows but time and again they are thwarted in
this desire . The words go out from the mouth of the speaker , but either fail to arrive or fail to
say what is meant . Even when something is said , it is misunderstood . This happens to Aston at
the end of Act Two when he speaks of his experience in the hospital .

Violence and menace:

Pinter is expert in creating a dramatic world in which violence and menace exist in disguise. For
example, Mick represents someone who finds pleasure in frightening others. His movements are
often swift and silent ; he is unpredictable in his behaviour, subjecting Davies to physical
violence at first and then to more subtle but very unsettling exhibitions of verbal menace.

Power and Deception

The Caretaker’s main characters—Davies, Aston, and Mick—are all powerless in the face of the
chaotic, oppressive forces that rule their world. Aston is forcibly institutionalized because of his
mental illness, Davies’s homelessness makes him desperate and reliant on others, and Mick’s
many familial and financial obligations overwhelm him. In response to their lack of power, every
character—even the comparatively altruistic, harmless Aston—engages in manipulation and
deception in an attempt to gain power and control over their surroundings.

The Absurdity of Modern Society

The Caretaker contains elements common to a movement in drama called the Theater of the
Absurd. The particular absurdity in The Caretaker directly relates to issues of class and social
conformity, with each character desperately trying to realize their worth in terms of their
economic usefulness and social status. Aston spends the whole play trying to fix things or talking
about future up-keeping projects, seemingly wanting to validate his ability to work and be useful.
Mick, meanwhile, holds on to his lofty ambitions of becoming wealthy and living in a lavish
home, and Davies works hard to hide his poverty so that Mick and Aston will accept him. The
desperation with which each character tries—and fails—to uphold the outward appearance of
economic and social prosperity borders on ridiculous. In this way, the play’s absurdity suggests
that the way modern society judges people’s value makes it difficult (if not impossible) for
people to achieve genuine happiness and success.

Identity and Authenticity

While The Caretaker centers entirely on the characters of Mick, Aston, and Davies, it’s difficult
to get a sense of their true personalities. In fact, it’s often the case that the characters know more
about what one another do (or hope to do) than who they truly are: Mick owns a building and
maintains some kind of business, Aston has aspirations to build a shed that never come to
fruition, and Davies is a drifter who lies and manipulates others for personal gain. While the
characters’ external activities are apparent, making their identities clear on a superficial level, the
characters never come to know themselves or one another in a deeper sense. The Caretaker
positions identity as fluid, impermanent, and determined by outside forces and other people’s
observations, rather than something that is inherent to a person or derived from within.

To sum up, Harold Pinter's Caretaker is a small play of three acts but within this brief compass
the playwright has left scope for various interpretations . The picture of human nature that Pinter
presents is not a pleasant one. He seems to suggest that beneath the civilized exterior of people
there lurks a basic savagery and primitive instinct for domination over others.

Realism and Absudity in The Caretaker

It appears, that the play, The Caretaker is an interesting combination of realist, as well as
absurdist elements. Traditionally, absurd plays have more ‘unrealistic’ settings. The Caretaker is
a bit different from the other absurd plays. The characters of the play are very much real, and
belong to the world we live in. The setting as well is realistic. The absurdity, however, is moving
through the characters, as well as the setting. Let us analyse how the play is a combination of
elements of realism and absudity simultaneously.

Lack of Plot
The Caretaker is devoid of any plot. The characters do appear to be ambitious at times, but it is
soon realized that there’s nothing like that. The characters, apart from Davies, appear and
disappear. They seem to believe that they will get things done, but in reality they are just stalling.
There are several instances in the play where it seems that the characters will definitely do what
they have been intending, but then they don’t. Take old Davies, for example. He keeps saying
that he has to go to a place called Sidcup, and fetch the documents of his identity. But he never
goes there, making excuses every single time.

In the play there is no logical sequence of events, as such. There are instances where you expect
the characters to talk about something, but they don’t. There is also repetition and the characters
and the plot appear to go nowhere.

Incoherence in Communication
The communication between the characters is integral to the play, with regards to the absurdity.
There appears to be a painful incoherence. The characters, seemingly, cannot make each other
truly understand. The problem, however, lies with both the speaker and the listener. The
speaker’s language is incoherent, and the listener is too preoccupied to gather the speech. For
example, Mick, during the relatively climatic moments towards the end of the play says:
 “Anyone would think this house was all I got to worry about. I got plenty of other things
I can worry about...I'm moving about, all the time. I'm moving...all the time. I've got to
think about the future.”

This actually shows that there is a perpetual conflict going within Mick, where dreams and
reality are colliding with each other.

Another interesting thing to note is the relationship between Aston and Mick. They never
converse properly through the course of the play, and almost always do not share the space,
creating a serious communication gap. The characters, when they speak, also suffer from
constant breakages in their speech. There are illogical pauses, and constant meandering.

There is a triangular relationship between the characters. When Davies enter the house, and
meets Mick, later on, the triangle is created. The triangle, as the story progresses, becomes an
embodiment of absurdity. The communication gaps between the characters add to the misery and
things only become more confusing for the characters.

The Setting of the Play

The setting of The Caretaker is realistic. The entire action of the play takes place in one room,
which contributes to the mood and thematic development. The house itself is assumed to be
located in hackney London. Symbolically the room, with its clutter of incongruous objects, helps
us understand the clutter of Aston's mind.

In the play all the characters react in a specific way when they are in the house. Aston, does go
out, but is more comfortable at home. Mick finds it hard to communicate, like all the characters,
but he is more brawn than brain, and wants to give a new look to the house. Davies, however,
has been without a home. He finally gets one when Aston invites him in, and now he seems
reluctant to leave the house, and readily accepts the job of the caretaker, twice. The ‘house’,
itself, is providing refuge to the characters.

Aston, is a kind individual, having a troubled past. Mick, as we see a few times, prefers physical
force over intellect. All these individuals feel ‘safe’ in the house, but that doesn’t stop them from
having communication issues, and identity crises. This is most prevalent in the case of Davies
who has a rather strange sense of ‘entitlement’ and that is explicitly shown towards the end of
the play.

In short, The Caretaker, is a fascinating play that juggles with realism, along with absurdist
elements. This makes it rather unique, and different from the other absurdist plays. Pinter, used
the canvas of realism, to paint a picture using the colors of absurdity.

Pinter’s Realsim
The Caretaker, generally considered to be Pinter’s greatest play, is in many ways an even more
complex permutation of the elements that were developed in his first few plays. The Caretaker is
much more realistic on the surface than the earlier plays and has much less overt violence.

From the beginning of the play,

realistic detail is a most striking feature. The setting
of an attic room filled with a vast amount of clutter,
all easily identifiable, has to be taken as a place
where somebody lives. The setting of The Caretaker is realistic. The entire action of the play
takes place in one room, which contributes to the mood and thematic development. The house
itself is assumed to be located in hackney London. Symbolically the room, with its clutter of
incongruous objects, helps us understand the clutter of Aston's mind.

In the play all the characters react in a specific way when they are in the house. Aston, does go
out, but is more comfortable at home. Mick finds it hard to communicate, like all the characters,
but he is more brawn than brain, and wants to give a new look to the house. Davies, however,
has been without a home. He finally gets one when Aston invites him in, and now he seems
reluctant to leave the house, and readily accepts the job of the caretaker, twice. The ‘house’,
itself, is providing refuge to the characters.

Aston, is a kind individual, having a troubled past. Mick, as we see a few times, prefers physical
force over intellect. All these individuals feel ‘safe’ in the house, but that doesn’t stop them from
having communication issues, and identity crises. This is most prevalent in the case of Davies
who has a rather strange sense of ‘entitlement’ and that is explicitly shown towards the end of
the play.

The language of his characters, bumbling, repetitive, circular, is actually more realistic—more
like actual human speech—than the precise and rhetorically patterned dialogue found in what is
considered to be “realistic” drama.

To conclude, Pinter’s approach to realism is unique as reality is reflected in various ways in his
plays. Often, as we have seen, starting points in his plays are familiar, real and natural. But Pinter
does not remain confined to the everyday reality only and from the initial familiar world we are
taken, as we have seen, to a world which appears to be illogical, bizarre and absurd. Actually,
these are other levels of reality – poetic reality, metaphorical reality, psychological reality etc.
And Pinter’s unique style of multivalent realism made him a Noble Laurate dramatist.

The Caretaker as a Dark Comedy

Dark comedy is a subgenre of comedy that deals with topics traditionally considered taboo or
serious. A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor that makes
light of the otherwise solemn subject matter, or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is
problematic. is a form of drama that displays a marked disillusionment and cynicism. It shows
human beings without convictions and with little hope, regulated by fate or fortune or
incomprehensible powers. In fact, human beings in an ‘absurd’ predicament. At its darkest such
comedy is pervaded by a kind of sour despair: The wit is mordant and the humor sardonic. The
term black humor was coined by the surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935, to designate a
sub genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism.

“The Caretaker” is a darkly funny, twisted and slightly absurd look at male loneliness. It is a
drama which believes that human beings exist in a purposeless universe where they are faced
with forces which are beyond their control or understanding. It believes that morality and ethics,
as well as intellectual values are meaningless, and that life is a tragic farce. It does have a happy
ending. It also has amusing scenes as well as wit and humour. It is an undercurrent of gloom and
despair which never leaves us. The comic elements in such play are pushed into the background
by the tone and atmosphere of seriousness and gravity.

Title
The title Caretaker is initially read as meaning that Davies/Jenkins is being offered a position
where he looks after the run down guesthouse with duties including that of a handyman, which
he is totally unsuitable for.
However ‘care taker’ could also be read as one who is in need of care and willing to accept it.
Maybe we are actually watching three men suffering various forms of mental health problems in
a mid 20th century institutional care home that is so poorly funded it is literally falling apart? In
it three men battle over the two beds that are in a dormitory, their racism and bigotry not
allowing them to move to the room next door where “black” men live.