Pinters: The Caretaker

Harold Pinter: The Caretaker

A 'Just So' tale.

Davis: “Is this your house?”

Aston replies: "I'm in charge"

Davis asks:  "You the land lord are you?" 

Aston enquires: "What?"

In this ' Just So' tale, Pinter, asks us to listen and join in on a conversation, a conversation in a degenerated house. Join in a conversation in some room, a room in a UK place. Listen and join in on a dialogue of three ordinary,  'just so'  tales.

Pinter:  focuses on the conversations of three ‘ordinary’ beings and in doing so invites the rest of  us  to  listen in  and in doing so ,  implicitly questions us to ask ;  Do we accept  the 'Just So'  narrative ? as just SO?

The ‘Care Taker’ is a play that asks the listener/ participant to think about and question : What really is  existential and individual existence?  

Pinter, poses for example,  the question: do ordinary people have a formidable capacity to create illusions and self delusion, in an overarching  socio - political environment,  that may destroy and create personality and self realisation, simultaneously?

The play;  ' The Caretaker'  appears to achieve qualification of this question by posing the idea of : 'If  and  Why ?’ and  if  so How ?

'How?' Pinter asks, may an individual experience an ordinary homelessness, no shoes,  dripping roof, banal pub fight, electro shock therapy, existence  and still hold together some mental capacity to question the existence of 'I' ? 

A : 'JUST SO'  sort of existence?

Just, SO,  Happens…? It appears?

A  'JUST SO' ... existence  is both a denial and a self realisation simultaneously. A dialectical conversation , yet one that is not easily talked about.

The ‘Care Taker’ is a historical take of a tale of yesterday, the yesterday where Davis argues he had a place to sit  (somewhere)  at the dinner table, before the: ‘Greeks, Poles and Blacks were : “doing me out of a seat”. A tale of a ‘yesterday’.  A yesterday when 'The Sun' shone in a place called Sidcup and identity was fixed and seated in place.  When every existence was ' JUST SO '

In: ‘ The Caretaker’ Pinter, attempts to make sense of late modern reconfiguration of time in space and in doing so appears take the position that the form of apparent properties such as identity, only offer an illusion of the self as a product and a production of things in time. The notion of Identity, in Pinter’s, 'The Care Taker,'  seems to mean that dialogue is constructed through a messy complexity of narrative, spin and self serving 'Just So' , justification that is entwined within a conditioned socio political, personality. Through the illusion of the;   ‘Care Taker’ Pinter, argues that,  we as a nation, as a global peoples and individuals  appear, to be entwined  in a ' Just So ' story.

For all the controversy surrounding Pinters’ observations and his Nobel Laureate Prize 2005,  he was a socialist that listened in on three conversations and asked three questions:

 Who are we ? Who is the ‘Care Taker?  And How did we get to :  Just So?