Davies Represent Everyman
Davies
in The Caretaker is a prominent character whose life and problems can be seen
as representing certain basic features that are shared by every human being.
The
problems faced by Davies are the problems of normal human existence. He tries
pathetically to cling to his dignity when society wants to deprive him of his
rights. Davies is frightened of loneliness and anything he does not understand
such as taxation, house purchase and ‘paper’. His fear of down payments, back
payments, family allowances, bonus schemes is common enough to make it a
standard human reaction. It may be that in Davies Pinter shows his audience an
even more basic human instinct, that of territorial advantage or the desire to
gain dominance in any given situation. Davies certainly shows this in his
dealings with Aston and Mick. His belief that he will ‘sort himself out’ when he
gets down to Sidcup can be seen as representing all the things that people
dream of doing, but never achieve. Davies represents all people who try to
evade reality by dreams and fantasies.
We
can find other aspects in which Davies can be said to represent more than just
his own self. He uses the language of the common man. Like any other human
being, he is a wanderer who faces trials and tribulations during the journeys
he makes. As a religious figure, he is poor, unmarried and is rejected by his
fellow men and in this respect at least he can be compared to Jesus Christ.
But
if we are to see Davies as representative of mankind, we are to ignore many of
his most obvious features. He is an outcast before he is rescued by Aston, an
unprincipled vagrant and a filthy, ill-clothed wreck of a man. Certainly there
are many people like Davies in the world, but he is nevertheless an extreme
case, a total loss of society and hardly typical of all humanity. If he were
Everyman, society would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago.
The
problems Davies are common enough for an audience to feel a degree of sympathy
for him, and they are clearly drawn from the real world. Davies shows the dark
side of life, in the form of loneliness, rejection, inadequacy, loss of
personal identity and failure abut however compelling the portrait might be, it
is only one side of life. Therefore Davies is not unusual, but equally is not a
representative of all humanity.
To
sum up, Davies should not be regarded as a symbol. He is a representative
figure, no doubt, but his vision is limited to one side of human experience. So
Davies should be seen not as Everyman but simply a part of man.
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