ABSTRACT
Harold Pinter’s work occupies a contiguous space. His friendship with Beckett, and his admiration for his work, suggests that he clearly recognized this. In post-war Britain, the dominant middle-class culture had to absorb not only the magnitude of these terrorizing facts, but also the entry into its cultural space of many new social experiences and voices. The play opens with a glimpse of the childish marriage between Meg and Petey, a couple in their sixties. Their relationship is made up of Meg’s girlish dependency and Petey’s childish link to her as a maternal figure who provides oral gratification. Caretakers are objects of ambivalence in the real world - often depended on, but mistrusted - and this social fact gives the play’s title some of its ironic punch. None of the three characters in The Caretaker has much capacity to take care even of themselves, though they seek alliances with each other that might improve their deteriorated state.
