English Literature: Do you Consider The Caretaker to be an Absurd Play?

Monday 29 January 2018

Do you Consider The Caretaker to be an Absurd Play?

The Caretaker to be an Absurd Play



We know that Harold Pinter was associated with the ‘theater of the absurd’, and that does not mean that The Caretaker is an absurd drama. This play, no doubt destabilizes such fundamental elements of dramatic structure such as plot, character, and the conventions 
 
The Caretaker to be an Absurd Play
 

governing the use of language, it does not do as radically as Samuel Beckett has done in Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s drama virtually casts away conventional dramatic forms and theatrical devices but Pinter, in The Caretaker does not completely reject them. It has a setting which is realistic, and a plot, though it appears to be puzzling, there are characters that are drawn from reality, even though their actions and motivations might be incomprehensible. Therefore The Caretaker is not an absurd play, although it resembles Waiting for Godot in certain respects.
 

2 comments:

  1. The Caretaker is not metaphysically so empty and meaningless though the potential menace lurks behind the seemingly friendly behavior.

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