Laughter and Terror in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is a play about two brothers and a vagrant. The play deals with power in human relations by means of laughter and terror. Failure in communication between the characters produces many amusing situations. Everything, however, is not as amusing in reality as it may first seem to be. The play’s audience is disturbed with their own reactions as they notice what it is that they are really laughing at; the abuse of power by terror and bullying. The play changes its mood suddenly back and forth between innocent amusement and real terror, which creates a feeling of guilt as a result of enjoying and laughing at a situation that turns out to be not so innocent and amusing, after all. The play shows how thin the line between what is funny and what is quite the opposite of it can sometimes be. Thus judging by universal human values, it is rather difficult to tell whether the play is amusing at all, because compassion and malicious delight are both fundamental parts of human nature, and the audience undoubtedly has to go through a disturbing

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