Throughout The Caretaker, Mick, Davies, and Aston do a lot of talking, yet they never manage to convey any meaningful information that might deepen their understanding of themselves and one another. Effectively communicating through language isn’t something that Mick, Davies, or Aston seem willing to do or capable of doing. Time and again, the men fail to listen to one another, often changing the subject in lieu of answering questions or uttering nonsense in place of discernible, objective facts. In the wake of the failure of language, the characters often flail about physically: Davies is quick to pull out his knife or use other objects in the room as weapons, for example, and Aston resorts to messing with a plug and screwdriver when conflict threatens to become unmanageable, or when his own words are misunderstood or overlooked. By demonstrating the limits of language and the physical (and sometimes violent) interactions that flourish in its absence, The Caretaker suggests that language isn’t always sufficient when it comes to expressing complex thoughts or difficult emotions, and that people’s actions tend to be more truthful than their words.
Characters in The Caretaker seem unable or unwilling to communicate with one another, and their physical actions underscore the absence of meaningful language. In the beginning of the play, right after Aston and Davies return home from the café, Davies brags about how he dealt with the man he got into a fight with and prompts Aston to compliment his toughness. But Aston doesn’t respond to Davies’s question directly, offering a meager “I saw him have a go at you” in response before he begins to tinker with a wooden plank and screwdriver. Aston seems hesitant to go along with Davies’s bravado or contradict it, so instead of using words, he turns to his tools to occupy himself and avoid engaging with Davies meaningfully. This begins to suggest that language—especially for someone like Aston, whose mental disability makes verbal communication difficult—can’t always adequately express people’s true feelings. Later on, in one of the play’s more comical moments, Mick antagonizes Davies by playing keep away with Davies’s bag (Mick takes the bag and throws it to Aston, Aston gives it back to Davies, Mick takes it again, and so on). The exchange is funny, but it’s also significant, as it’s one of the few moments when the characters engage simultaneously and directly with one another. Mick, Davies, and Aston are all frustrated with one another, but they’re only able to express this frustration nonverbally, again suggesting that what people think and feel can sometimes transcend language.
Mick and Davies go a step further, resorting to violent or otherwise cruel actions to express themselves. Unlike Aston, who seems fairly openminded about Davies, Mick is suspicious of the old man from the beginning, and he expresses many of these suspicions by physically antagonizing Davies, such as when he steals Davies’s trousers and refuses to give them back. At one point, Mick unscrews the lights in the room and waits in the darkness with the electrolux (vacuum cleaner) for Davies to enter, at which point he turns on the machine and severely frightens the unsuspecting Davies. Davies lashes out physically, as well: in the final scene of the play, Aston orders Davies to leave. But rather than confront Aston about this decision directly, Davies sputters nonsensically before pulling out his knife and pressing it to Aston’s throat. In all of these instances, characters find language insufficient to express their dislike for one another, yet their actions make their feelings very clear.
The play also displays a repeated disconnect between characters’ words and their actions, which emphasizes the limitations of language to convey a person’s actual intentions. Davies talks incessantly about his plans to go to Sidcup to retrieve his identification papers, but as the play unfolds, it becomes obvious to everyone that he has no intention of actually doing so. Aston, meanwhile, talks longingly of his desire to build a shed out back and start a workshop there, yet he fails even to start this massive project. Similarly, Mick has ambitious dreams of finishing repairs on his building and living there with Aston. He describes in great detail to Davies all the objects and appliances he’ll decorate the place with: “I’d have teal-blue, copper and parchment linoleum squares. I’d have those colours re-echoed in the walls. I’d offset the kitchen units with charcoal-grey worktops.” Despite the elaborate and evocative quality of Mick’s words, he doesn’t take any of the steps necessary to make his dream a reality—he can’t even directly confront Aston about his failure to do the work he was supposed to do on the building. Further, Mick’s repeated use of the conditional tense, listing the things he would do, gives his words a hypothetical quality, which emphasizes the disconnect between the things Mick talks about doing and the things he actually will do. All in all then, the play shows that there is a gap between the truth (that is, what people actually feel or intend to do) and what language can realistically convey. In this sense, it implicitly echoes the old adage that “actions speak louder than words”—put another way, the play suggests that the way people act is more indicative of the truth than what they say.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Limitations of Language ThemeTracker
The Limitations of Language Quotes in The Caretaker
All them toe-rags, mate, got the manners of pigs. I might have been on the road a few years but you can take it from me I’m clean. I keep myself up. That’s why I left my wife. Fortnight after I married her, no, not so much as that, no more than a week, I took the lid off a saucepan, you know what was in it? A pile of her underclothing, unwashed. (Turns R.) The pan for vegetables, it was. The vegetable pan. That’s when I left her and I haven’t seen her since. […] I’ve eaten my dinner off the best of plates.
Shoes? It’s life and death to me.
DAVIES. What’s this?
ASTON. (Aston crosses to L. of Davies. Davies hands him Buddha. Taking and studying it.) That’s a Buddha.
DAVIES. Get on.
ASTON. Yes. I quite liked it. Picked it up in a…in a shop. Looked quite nice to me. Don’t know why. What do you think of these Buddhas?
DAVIES. Oh, they’re…they’re all right, en’t they?
DAVIES. Yes, I was pleased when I got hold of this one. It’s very well made.
ASTON. You Welsh? (Pause.)
DAVIES. Well, I been around, you know… I been about….
ASTON. Where were you born then?
DAVIES. (Darkly.) What do you mean?
ASTON. Where were you born?
DAVIES. I was … uh … oh, it’s a bit hard, like, to set your mind back … going back … going back … a good way… lose a bit of track, like … you see what I mean….
MICK. Jen … kins. […] You remind me of my uncle’s brother. He was always on the move, that man. Never without his passport. […] I think there was a bit of the Red Indian in him. (Turns to face Davies.) To be honest, I’ve never made out how he came to be my uncle’s brother. I’ve often thought that maybe it was the other way round. I mean that my uncle was his brother and he was my uncle. But I never called him uncle. As a matter of fact I called him Sid. My mother called him Sid too. It was a funny business. Your spitting image he was. Married a Chinaman and went to Jamaica. (Pause.) I hope you slept well last night.
MICK. […] You still got that leak.
ASTON. Yes. (Pause. Gets plug from shelf.) It’s coming from the roof. (looks up.)
MICK. From the roof, eh?
ASTON. Yes. (Pause.) I’ll have to tar it over.
MICK. You’re going to tar it over?
ASTON. Yes.
MICK. What?
ASTON. The cracks. (Pause.)
MICK. You’ll be tarring over the cracks on the roof.
ASTON. Yes. (Pause.)
MICK. Think that’ll do it?
ASTON. It’ll do it, for the time being.
MICK. Uh. (Pause.)
DAVIES. (Abruptly.) What do you do—? (They both look at him.) What do you do…when that bucket’s full? (Pause. Mick looks at Aston.)
ASTON. Empty it. (Pause.)
DAVIES. Who was that feller?
ASTON. He’s my brother.
DAVIES. Is he? He’s a bit of a joker, en’t he?
ASTON. Uh.
DAVIES. Yes…he’s a real joker.
ASTON. He’s got a sense of humour.
DAVIES. (Crosses to chair, sits. Faces Aston.) Yes, I noticed. (Pause.) He’s a real joker, that lad, you can see that. (Pause.)
ASTON. Yes, he tends…he tends to see the funny side of things.
DAVIES. Well, he’s got a sense of humour, en’t he?
ASTON. Yes.
ASTON. (Crosses to window, looks out.) Once I get that shed up outside … I’ll be able to give a bit more thought to the flat, you see. Perhaps I can make one or two things for it. I can work with my hands, you see. That’s one thing I can do. I never knew I could. But I can do all sorts of things now, with my hands. You know, manual things. When I get that shed up out there…I’ll have a workshop, you see. I … could do a bit of woodwork. Simple woodwork, to start. Working with…good wood. […]
DAVIES. I was saying, he’s … he’s a bit of a funny bloke, your brother. (Mick stares at him.)
MICK. Funny? Why?
DAVIES. Well … he’s funny. …
MICK. What’s funny about him? (Pause.)
DAVIES. Not liking work.
MICK. (Rises.) What’s funny about that?
DAVIES. (Slow turn to Mick.) Nothing. (Pause.)
MICK. (Crosses to Davies.) I don’t call it funny.
DAVIES. Nor Me.
MICK. You don’t want to start getting hypercritical.
MICK. I’ll be quite open with you. I could rely on a man like you around the place, keeping an eye on things.
DAVIES. Well now … wait a minute … I … I ain’t never done no caretaking before, you know….
MICK. Doesn’t matter about that. It’s just that you look a capable sort of man to me.
DAVIES. I am a capable sort of man. I mean to say, I’ve had plenty of offers in my time, you know, there’s no getting away from that.
MICK. Well, I could see before, when you took out that knife, that you wouldn’t let anyone mess about.
DAVIES. No one messes me about, man. […]
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. He said…if we don’t you’ll be in here for the rest of your life, but if we do, you stand a chance. You can go out, he said, and live like the others.
The trouble was … my thoughts … had become very slow … I couldn’t think at all … I I couldn’t … get … my thoughts … together … uuuhh … I could … never quite get it … together. The trouble was, I couldn’t hear what people were saying. I couldn’t look to the right or the left, I had to look straight in front of me, because if I turned my head round … I couldn’t keep … upright. And I had these headaches. I used to sit in my room. That was when I lived with my mother. And my brother. He was younger than me. And I laid everything out, in order, in my room, all the things I knew were mine, but I didn’t die. The thing is, I should have been dead. I should have died. Anyway, I feel much better now. But I don’t talk to people now. I steer clear of places like that café. I never go into them now. I don’t talk to anyone … like that.
You can’t live in the same room with someone who … who don’t have any conversation with you.
Furniture … mahogany and rosewood. Deep azure-blue carpet, unglazed blue and white curtains, a bedspread with a pattern of small blue roses on a white ground, dressing-table with a lift-up top containing a plastic tray, table lamp of white raffia […] it wouldn’t be a flat it’d be a palace.
I’ve seen better days than you have, man. Nobody ever got me inside of them places, anyway. I’m a sane man! So don’t you start mucking me about. I’ll be all right as long as you keep your place. Just you keep your place, that’s all. Because I can tell you, your brother’s got his eye on you. […] He knows all about you. I got a friend there, don’t you worry about that. I got a true pal there. Treating me like dirt! Why’d you invite me in here in the first place if you was going to treat me like this? You think you’re better than me you got another thing coming. I know enough. They had you inside one of them places before, they can have you inside again. Your brother’s got his eye on you!
You’ve been stinking the place out.
What a strange man you are. Aren’t you? You’re really strange. Ever since you came into this house there’s been nothing but trouble. Honest. […] I can take nothing you say at face value. Every word you speak is open to any number of different interpretations. […] Most of what you say is lies. You’re violent, you’re erratic, you’re just completely unpredictable. You’re nothing else but a wild animal, when you come down to it. You’re a barbarian. And to put the old tin lid on it, you stink from arse-hole to breakfast time.
You make too much noise.
