Comparison Between Harold Pinter's the Homecoming and the Caretaker

An author’s life can be portrayed through the hidden messages, characters and storylines involved in the novels and plays they wrote. For instance, Harold Pinter uses his theatre of absurd writing style to demonstrate part of his life story through two of his plays, The Homecoming and The Caretaker. In these plays the characters are confined to one room as a way to face what society expects everyone to act like. Even like the characters in his plays, Harold Pinter had to seclude himself from society in order for him to understand the unrealistic, pointless views and expectations society created. As well as figuring out these expectations Pinter also noticed the way others were living out their lives and decided to write about it. The characters from Harold Pinter’s plays, The Homecoming and The Caretaker illustrate the negative effect certain societal expectations have on humanity. Society has many different ways of controlling actions and events their citizens take part in. One specific way is by creating certain expectations that everyone should live up to. These societal expectations are used to help guide people in to making the correct choices in their life so that it will help them achieve the life society wants their people to have. However one may not be able to live up to these expectations, which may causes one to be looked upon by others as an outcast. Many people have portrayed Harold as outcast in society since he decided to go against everything the government suggested about certain topics, such as life and human rights. “Pinter is also an outspoken human rights advocate. He has protested the NATO bombing of Serbia, the Gulf War and the bombing of Iraq since that time, the ill-treatment of U.S. prisoners, censorship, the U.S. role in Latin America, and the Turkish government’s mistreatment of the Kurds.” (Cusac 1)

For instance the character Davies from Pinter’s play The Caretaker, is known as an outcast, much like Harold Pinter,