Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Caretaker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Deception
The Absurdity of Modern Society
Alienation and Family
Identity and Authenticity
The Limitations of Language
Summary
Analysis
It’s morning. Aston puts on his trousers. Looking rather displeased, he moves to the window to fan out the air before waking up Davies to remind him to go to Sidcup that day. Aston begins to say something about Davies making noise in the night again, but Davies interrupts to comment on the rain, asking Aston to shut the window to stop the draught and rain from coming inside. Aston, who is currently sandpapering a small plank, argues that they need the fresh air, but Davies disagrees. The men argue back and forth without reaching a clear solution. Aston eventually puts down his plank and sandpaper and exchanges them for a pair of shoes, which he begins to polish.
Aston and Davies are still unable to have a meaningful conversation, with Davies immediately redirecting the subject away from an important matter (his need to go to Sidcup) to something superficial (the weather). Aston, too, is unable to maintain his train of thought when he shifts his attention away from Davies and toward the sandpaper, wooden plank, and shoes. The men’s circuitous, repetitive argument reinforces their failure to communicate. Aston’s complaints about Davies making noise in his sleep could be interpreted as his attempt to tell Davies that he’s a rude, obtrusive guest without explicitly saying so, which further highlights language’s limited ability to communicate people’s true thoughts and feelings.
Themes
Aston announces that he’s going to go to Goldhawk Road today to ask about a bench he saw there. Davies announces that the rain makes it impossible for him to make his trip to Sidcup today. Aston finally caves and lets Davies close the window. As Davies does so, he looks out the window and asks Aston about the tarp outside. Aston informs him that he’s keeping wood he needs to build his shed underneath the tarp.
Aston continues to put off the work he needs to do: he makes plans to pick up a bench for the building to appear as though he is making progress on the building, though in reality, he continues to make no progress. The same goes for the wood beneath the tarp outside: Aston points to this wood to convince himself and others that he’s moving forward with the task of fixing up the building, when, in reality, he’s made no progress. Aston seems to want to appear productive because this is how he (and society) measures his worth, yet his feigned efforts only make his unproductivity all the more obvious.
Themes
Davies asks Aston about getting a pair of shoes, complaining about how it’s his bad shoes that keep him from leaving the room. Aston says he’ll pick up some shoes for Davies today.
Once more, Davies cites his lack of adequate walking shoes as the reason he’s yet to go to Sidcup to pick up his documents. In reality, he does not want to retrieve the identifying papers, as doing so would be to accept a concrete and perhaps inconvenient truth about his identity (likely that he is a foreigner). Yet if he doesn’t retrieve the papers, he won’t be able to get a job and will remain a homeless drifter whom people automatically look down on and distrust. The disconnect between Davies’s plans and his perpetual inaction creates the sense that the society of the play sets marginalized people up to fail. It doesn’t seem like Davies’s choices really matter, because he can’t win—whether he gets the papers or not, society will reject him either because he’s a foreigner or because he’s homeless.
Themes
Aston mentions there being a café right down the street and segues into an extended monologue. He remembers going to the café often “before [he] went away” and associates the place with his departure. At the café, Aston talked to many people. At the time, he felt that he understood them, though he now regrets his “mistake” of talking too much to these people. He recalls confessing to them that he experienced “hallucinations,” after which the people began to spread rumors about Aston’s condition.
Aston’s monologue is important because it’s the first moment in the play when a character has divulged something personal in such a detailed, sincere manner. The fact that Aston does so through language contradicts the play’s overall portrayal of language as useless, confusing, and unable to forge connections between people. This perhaps suggests that language can be meaningful if one actually has something meaningful and honest to say. That Aston considers it a “mistake” to have spoken so candidly with others in the past might explain his reserved, cautious nature in the present. His feeling of not being understood by other people at the café reflects the idea that people in modern society are fundamentally alienated from one another and unable to connect meaningfully. And given the way people spread rumors about Aston rather than trying to help him, the play implies that in a society that values social conformity, people who don’t fit in will be ostracized.
Themes
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These rumors resulted in Aston being sent to a hospital outside London. At the hospital, the doctors asked him many questions about the thoughts he had. One day, the lead doctor gave Aston a diagnosis and informed Aston that they would have “to do something to [his] brain,” or else Aston would have to stay in the hospital forever. The doctor made it sound as though Aston had a choice in the matter, but Aston knew that, because he was a minor, the doctor must first get permission from Aston’s mother. Aston later learned that his mother signed the forms needed to validate the procedure.
Aston’s attempts to be close with people backfired when they resulted in his being sent away, which alienated him literally and figuratively. This pessimistically suggests that trying to connect with people—particularly through language—will inevitably lead to misunderstanding and further isolation. His alienation is compounded by his mother’s betrayal. Mick’s earlier remarks about his and Aston’s family hinted that there was some distance between them, and Aston’s admission here provides further evidence of the lack of intimacy and understanding in their family. This could explain why Aston and Mick seem so alienated from each other (as well as other people) in the present—it’s possible that their troubled relationships with their parents left them unable to trust and connect with others.
Themes
That night, Aston tried unsuccessfully to escape the hospital. The next week, they performed a procedure on Aston, which involved “big pincers, with wires on, the wires attached to a little machine.” The night the doctors came for him, Aston fought back against the men, though they eventually overpowered him. Aston’s fight forced the lead doctor to perform the procedure while Aston was standing up, rather than lying on the bed, which Aston believes damaged his spine. After the operation, Aston returned home to live with his mother and older brother, and his thoughts “bec[a]me very slow,” which made it hard for him to think and understand other people. It also gave him bad headaches. He remembers “[laying] everything out, in order, in [his] room, all the things [he] knew were [his].” He believes he should have died.
The procedure to which Aston is referring here is electroconvulsive therapy (sometimes referred to colloquially as electroshock treatment) which involves medically inducing a seizure in patients through electric volts that are passed through the brain. The procedure was used to treat various mental illnesses, such as major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. The treatment negatively affected Aston physically and mentally, making it difficult for him to keep track of his thoughts and understand people. His experience serves as a critique of the way modern society casts out and punishes people who are vulnerable or different—because of mental illness, homelessness, immigrant status, or a host of other factors—rather than trying to understand and help them. Aston’s botched therapy is, in this sense, a betrayal, and the trauma of this period in his life seems to have made him more reserved and skeptical of opening up to others. His mention of “[laying] everything out, in order, in [his] room, all the things [he] knew were [his]” is reminiscent of the way Aston collects objects in his room in the present day. The fact that he began exhibiting this behavior after the procedure (and after he become cut off from others) implies that Aston learned to substitute human interaction and connection with the collecting of objects.
Themes
Aston feels better now, though he doesn’t communicate with people or go to the café any longer. He still has a strong desire to find the doctor who performed the procedure on him, though first, he wants to build the shed out back. The light fades to black, and the curtain falls.
Aston carries the trauma and resultant physical and mental damage of his botched treatment with him to this day, as the way people misunderstood his mental illness and mistreated has made him closed off and untrusting. That Aston ends his monologue with mention of the shed suggests that he wants desperately to move on from his past—to create new things and complete new tasks. But the fact that Aston continuously mentions the shed without actually beginning work on it suggests that he remains unable to move forward in his life. In a society that values productivity and social conformity above all else, someone like Aston is set up for failure, as his brain damage makes him both unable to work and unable to fit in with other people.
Themes
