Characterization in Pinter's "The

Caretaker"

Submitted To. Mam Komal Khan

Submitted By. Muhammad Naveed Niaz

Registration No. MAEN-023R18-24

Institute of Southern Punjab

Characterization in Pinter's "The
Caretaker"
The Caretaker is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his
major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of
power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became
Pinter's first significant commercial success

Mick
Mick, a man in his late twenties Aston’s brother. He is the first character seen
onstage in the play, although he does not speak or interact with the other
characters until the end of act 1. From the outside, he tries to control the other
two. When he does speak, he tends to utter either single lines or long incoherent
ramblings about unseen friends and relatives, sprinkled with dozens of London
place names, financial terms, and interior decorator’s phrases. He owns the
derelict building in which Aston has his flat, and he has dreams of converting it
into a high-class penthouse, dreams that he has no apparent means to fulfill. He
has tried and failed to reconnect with Aston by giving him a home, and he hopes
now that he can get to Aston through Davies. Instead, he becomes jealous of
Aston’s relationship with Davies and turns his anger on them both.

Aston
He lives alone in a run-down flat piled high with old paint buckets, boxes of
screws and nails, a shopping cart, and even a detached kitchen sink. A former
factory worker, he has been unemployed ever since undergoing electric shock
treatments years ago. The treatments left him brain-damaged, and he endures
terrible headaches. He rescues Davies from a fight and brings him to his own flat,
where he offers him a bed, a bit of tobacco for his pipe, an old pair of shoes, and,
eventually, a job as caretaker of the building. Aston is planning to build a wooden
shed in the backyard and spends hours planning the materials and tools he will
need, but clearly he will never even begin the project. Instead, he sits on his bed
and pokes at a broken plug with a screwdriver to satisfy his urge to work with his
hands. He is unable to stay focused on any one idea very long or to form any real
human connections. He plans to complete various tasks or talk with people again
after he has built his shed. Although he does not recognize his connection to his
brother and to his room, they are all he has, and when Davies tries to come
between Aston and Mick, Mick rejects him and clings to the security and isolation
of his life in the flat.

Davies
Davies, an old tramp from Sid cup. He is argumentative and paranoid, seeing danger in
every brown or black face and hearing a threat in every accent different from his own.
When Aston rescues him from a fight with a Scot, Davies reveals that this is not the first
time he has brawled with foreigners; he stoutly believes that none of these fights was in
any way his fault. He worries about his papers, which he has left with a friend in Sid
cup; he believes he must retrieve the papers before he can work or move on, yet he
makes no effort to go after them. He fears that the junked gas stove in Aston’s flat will
kill him, although it is not connected. Frequently, he awakens Aston in the night with the
sounds of his dreaming. When he moves in with Aston, he is willing to help out and to
assume the unspecified duties of the caretaker, but soon he becomes aggressive and
demanding. When he tries to drive a wedge between the brothers, they throw him back
on the street