Who Would Care for Post-Imperial Broken Society?: Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker

Abstract

An analogical reading of socio-historical context of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker employs some postcolonial discursive analyses of postimperial British capitalistic interests in their post war reconstruction. It is also concerned with causes of so-called broken society. The Caretaker dramatizes minimal actions: a tramp is invited by the elder brother; a job as caretaker is offered; he is reluctant to accept the first offer by the elder brother, but is willing to the second by the younger; eventually, he is excluded because he makes noises while dreaming. These trivial actions produce serious and critical speech acts with their socio-historical implications. The tramp Davies is socially and thereby existentially excluded from the centre of the cold, banished to even colder peripheries. The audience face to the question. Why is Davies excluded? This study tries to answer the question, uncovering deep-rooted capitalistic racism,and reading its symptoms. Even after 50 years The Caretaker was staged,post-imperial broken society tries to operate the betrayals of disparity between the cause and effect of what has gone wrong. Pinter confirms that the action of the play takes place in a house in west London. With the city of London as its capitalistic centre, British imperialism lavished much of its wealth which has only served sectional interests dividing people against themselves. Pinter dramatizes the root of broken society. On the one hand, Pinter foregrounds the very general conflicts between individuals and forms of power; on the other hand, he underlies the very specific strategies of socio-historical exploitation, domination and exclusion.