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 two weeks later. Mick lies on his back on the floor, gazing at the ceiling as Davies paces and smokes a pipe. Davies is puzzled about the cracks in the ceiling, as it’s rained quite a bit over the last week, yet the rain hasn’t dripped into the hanging bucket. Davies speculates that Aston must have sealed the ceiling cracks with tar, though Aston hasn’t mentioned this to him—nor does he talk much with Davies at all these days. In fact, Aston won’t even give Davies a knife to cut bread. Mick points out that Davies has his own knife. Davies acknowledges this but complains that his own knife isn’t good enough.
Davies and Aston don’t seem to be on good terms since Aston delivered his emotional speech about his past institutionalization and traumatic failed electroshock procedure. Even when characters try to use language to become closer to one another, they fail and only widen the distance that separates them, which suggests that even sincere attempts at communication are rendered futile by the alienating and absurd modern world. Davies complains about his knife not being good enough to give Mick the impression that he has discerning taste. Mick’s decision to respond critically to Davies’s complaint about Aston demonstrates his repeated attempts to stick up for his brother, even though they aren’t openly affectionate with each other.
Themes
Davies continues, complaining about how close the gas stove is to his bed, even though Aston has assured him that it’s not connected. Next, Davies continues about “them Blacks” using the bathroom and making it “dirty,” and about how Aston does nothing about it. Davies confides in Mick that, after Aston had his “long chat” with Davies the other week, the two have hardly spoken. Further, Davies speculates that Aston was actually talking to himself during the “long chat,” as he didn’t look at Davies when he was speaking. Davies complains about living with someone with whom he can’t have a real conversation. In contrast, Davies speculates, he and Mick “could get this place going.”
Davies complains about everyone but himself. Since Aston and Mick both offered him the position of caretaker, it seems as though it should be Davies’s own responsibility to do something about the supposedly “dirty” bathroom, yet he blames Black people for making it dirty and Aston for failing to do anything about it. Again, he seems to be blaming other people (and, in this case, scapegoating them in a racist way) for his problems in an attempt to feel better about himself—yet this does nothing to actually solve the problem he’s complaining about. Rather than respond sympathetically to Aston’s emotional speech, Davies uses it as an opportunity to criticize Aston, minimizing the speech’s importance by referring to it as a “long chat” and complaining that Aston didn’t look at him when he was talking. It’s ironic that Davies accuses Aston of not being able to have a real conversation given that Davies himself isn’t capable of communicating with others, always changing the subject to complain about his shoes or something someone has done to wrong or upset him. Davies’s suggestion that he and Mick “could get this place going” seems to be his attempt to ingratiate himself with Mick.
Themes
Mick agrees that he and Davies could fix up the flat, and he daydreams about how he might decorate it, what type of fixtures he would install, and the objects with which he would fill it. Davies asks who would live in the finished place, and Mick responds that he and Aston would. Davies asks if he could live there too, but Mick argues that there’s too much junk in the space for Davies. After a pause, Mick laments Aston’s disinterest in Mick’s home improvements.
Given Aston’s inability to accomplish the smallest of tasks, it’s likely that Mick’s elaborate daydreams are the closest he’ll get to the flat actually being finished. This claim is supported when Mick laments his brothers failure to complete the home improvement tasks needed to make the place livable. When Mick tells Davies that he and Aston—and not Davies—will live in the finished flat, it suggests that even with Davies’s many deceptive attempts to relate to and win over Mick, Mick will always be obligated to his brother first. Once again, then, Davies is made to feel like an outsider.
Themes
Mick suggests that Davies talk some sense into Aston, seeing as they’re friends. Davies objects, arguing that they’re not actually friends. Unlike Mick, whom Davies considers to be “straightforward,” Aston is unknowable. Davies changes the subject and announces that he needs a clock to be able to tell the time while he is in the house. When he mentioned needing a clock to Aston, he complains, Aston did nothing. In fact, all Aston seems to do is wake up Davies to complain about him “making noises” in his sleep. Mick sympathizes with Davies’s plight.
Davies uses Aston’s earlier confession against him, applying what he now knows about Aston’s botched ECT treatment to put forth the idea that Aston is unknowable. He tries to pit Mick against Aston, positioning Mick as “straightforward” and, therefore, the opposite of the unknowable and enigmatic Aston. But Davies’s complaints about Aston are ironic, given that it’s really Aston who has much more reason to complain about the disruptive Davies. Again, Davies is shifting the blame onto someone else in order to make himself feel superior.
Themes
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Davies continues to complain about Aston, telling Mick that Aston leaves all day—Davies knows not where—comes back late, and says nothing to Davies until he’s waking him up “in the middle of the night” to order him to stop making so much noise. Davies asks Mick where he lives, and Mick tells Davies he has “a little place” and invites him over to listen to music. In the distance, a door bangs open. Mick gets up and exits through the room without telling Davies where he’s going.
In light of Aston’s earlier confession that he rarely goes out anymore, it’s contradictory that he supposedly leaves all day. It’s clear that Mick and Davies are deceptive, manipulative characters, and the reader might be inclined to believe that Aston, in contrast, is less dishonest and more sincere. However, the fact that Aston apparently does leave the house all the time—despite making statements to the contrary—opens up the possibility that even Aston isn’t as honest or upfront as one might initially believe him to be. Despite the fact that Mick and Davies are seeming to relate to each other over their frustrations with Aston, Mick still leaves the room without saying anything to Davies, which suggests that Mick isn’t actually okay with Davies criticizing his brother in this manner.
Themes
Aston enters the room and closes the door behind him. He hands Davies a paper bag containing a pair of shoes. Davies tries them on and complains that they don’t fit; furthermore, they have no laces. Aston looks around the room and finds a pair of laces, but Davies rejects them because they don’t match the shoes. Davies laces them anyway, deciding that these shoes and laces will allow him to at least get to Sidcup tomorrow, at which point he’ll “be able to sort himself out.”
Davies’s complaints about these shoes are even more absurd than before: whereas Davies rejected the first pair of shoes that Aston offered him because they supposedly didn’t fit well, these he rejects because he doesn’t like the way they look. Davies seems determined to find something unsuitable about the shoes, because—to his mind—if he doesn’t have proper shoes, he doesn’t have to go to Sidcup. And if he doesn’t have to go to Sidcup, he won’t have face his problems and commit to being the person his identifying papers say he is—instead, he can continue to loaf around Aston’s room in a state of perpetual immobility and meaninglessness.
Themes
Davies mutters something about having “been offered a good job,” though the “man” who hired him wants his papers, which are in Sidcup, and, because of the poor weather, he likely won’t be able to get there to retrieve them. Aston silently leaves the room. Davies, not noticing Aston’s departure, continues his rant, redirecting his attention back at the ill-fitting, weather-inappropriate shoes. Davies turns around and notices Aston’s absence. He angrily curses Aston, calling him a “bastard.” The scene fades to black.
Davies is clearly referring to Mick when he talks about having “been offered a good job” by a “man.” The fact that he doesn’t refer to Mick by name suggests that he doesn’t want Aston to know that Mick has also offered him the job—in other words, he doesn’t want Mick and Aston to know that they’re on the same page about Davies. In Davies’s mind, his place in the house is safe so long as he can ensure that Mick and Aston’s intentions remain unknown to each other. In this sense, the brother’s alienation from each other leaves them open to Davies’s manipulation—though there have been several hints throughout the play that Aston and Mick are more loyal to each other than Davies would like to believe. Indeed, Aston leaves the room without warning Davies, which is exactly what Mick did earlier in the scene. That Aston mimics Mick’s behavior unites them, albeit rather indirectly. Davies is frustrated because this bond between Mick and Aston leaves him out of the loop and demotes him to the role of outsider—a role he desperately wants to reject.
Themes
