Galens, David M., ed. (2000). "Overview: The Caretaker." in Drama for Students, Vol. 7 . Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center . Retrieved 4 September 2012.

The old man starts turning on the room mate and tries to impress the landlord brother. He is offered a role as a caretaker subject to providing references, upon which his paperwork is in another town. And how he has been trying to imminently regain them for the past decade. Plays, including The Birthday Party (1958) and The Dumb Waiter (1960), of British playwright, screenwriter, and director Harold Pinter create an atmosphere of menace; people awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005. What if we go down to get our papers or go to see the man about the job he is keeping especially for us or head off to the church where they were going to give us a brand new pair of shoes and it turns out, after all our efforts in getting there, that they tell us, after looking us up and down with a gaze that's impossible to misinterpret, to piss off? What then?Knowles, Roland. The Birthday Party and The Caretaker : Text and Performance. London: Macmillan Education, 1988. 41–43. Print. Another prevalent theme is the characters' inability to communicate productively with one another. [ citation needed] The play depends more on dialogue than on action; however, though there are fleeting moments in which each of them does seem to reach some understanding with the other, more often, they avoid communicating with one another as a result of their own psychological insecurities and self-concerns. [ citation needed] In his 1960 book review of The Caretaker, fellow English playwright John Arden writes: "Taken purely at its face value this play is a study of the unexpected strength of family ties against an intruder." [6] As Arden states, family relationships are one of the main thematic concerns of the play.

Aston is the person most obviously in need of care in this play – although, I do understand that everyone is in clear need of care here. This is a play of the lost and trapped. All the same, Aston is the only character to really offer any care to anyone else – and everyone else, even his own mother, lets him down in ways that are beyond belief, even when it would seem just as easy to provided him with care as to deny it him. You've got...this thing. That's your complaint. And we've decided, he said, that in your interests there's only one course we can take. He said...he said, we're going to do something to your brain. Aston, 42There’s no real closure or objective in sight. I think this could be a snap shot into the communication issues amongst the homeless and mentally unwell people (the civic guy in this case). It’s also a little sad how nice people get used or taken advantage of but then you can understand their rationale for doing so. No, it is better never to go. Better to be always just about to go. That way the hope is still alive. Is it better to be Tantalus or Prometheus? Is it better to have what you desire always within sight and always just out of reach? Or is it better to have snatched at the prize, to have known the victory of holding it in your hands, only to be caught and given your punishment of eternal torture that spans out forever without a shred of hope. For surely, Tantalus’s punishment only works as punishment if he retains some hope – just as Prometheus’s is premised on his being beyond salvation. What's On: The Caretaker (archived past seasons). Sheffield Theatres, n.d. Web. 13 March 2009. (Run at Sheffield Theatres ended on 11 November 2006.)

I felt the loneliness and the absurdity. Absurdity and absurdity. Lots of it. Too much of it that it got too, well, absurd. I get it. I get what the writer tried to convey to the audience but for me, it was a reading disaster. I wouldn't have read it at all if I wasn't worried about failing my Drama exam. And this is what we get to study? Roundabout Theatre Company, New York City. Directed by David Jones. Set design: John Beatty, Costume design: Jane Greenwood, Lighting: Peter Lezorowski. Design: Scott Lehrer.I would like to say this is a funny play – but it isn’t, even though I did smile quite a few times. There is an underlying nastiness and aggression to the play that is all too masculine and all too disturbing. And Pinter has an unfailing eye for cognitive dissonance and for the lies we tell ourselves so as to reduce the torments of this dissonance. He has ways of holding a mirror up to ourselves, well, if we are brave enough to look, brave enough to see beyond what is actually being shown.

Pinter originally intended the play to end with Aston murdering Davies, but he felt that the characters took him elsewhere; it instead ends with Aston politely but emphatically asking Davies to leave the home. From the very first, Davies appears quite fixated on race. He refers often to other racial groups, all in denigrating ways. He is suspicious of their position in society, clearly nervous that they are supplanting him or giving themselves airs that they are better than him. His racial prejudice is tied up with his perception that he is a victim, always unfairly shunted aside. It is also part of his defense mechanism, for if he can blame others for his lowly status, then he never has to question himself as to why he cannot hold a job or why he is so unpleasant. Pinter's decision to make Davies a veritable racist is not just in terms of character, but also a manifestation of historical and social realities of the time in which the play was written. Lower-class whites in 1950s Britain were fearful of foreigners usurping their already precarious position in society, and Pinter captures that fear in Davies. Major themes in the play include the problems of communication; race and social class; the current political state in 1950s England; identity; language; and deception. The play is lauded for its placement of a man of the lower social class at (literal) center stage, for its naturalistic language, meticulous crafting, dynamic interplay between characters, and layers of meaning.Brian Richardson, Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993, The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994, ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale (Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994) 109-10: "Here, real objects and stylized representations alternate and the three vertical structures [of the set] though not symmetrical, balance each other in a rough though pleasing harmony." The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter : Two Plays by Harold Pinter 1960. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ISBN 0-8021-5087-X (10). ISBN 978-0-8021-5087-5 (13). Print. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Aston enters the room and hands Davies some shoes. Davies complains about the shoes while making tentative plans to return to Sidcup. Aston exits the room without Davies noticing, which greatly annoys Davies.