“Get Back to Your Trough”

ABSTRACT

Deploying Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial interpretation of the concept of ambivalence, the author focuses on three characters in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker (1960): Davies, the tramp, and the two brothers, Aston and Mick. Using references to class conflict and Britain’s colonial past, the article invites discussion on the trio’s relationships. By unpacking Davies’s motives and encounters with the two brothers, we can see how Davies’s influence impacted them during his stay and later in his eviction from the house. Pinter can bring to the fore how Aston and Mick, while defending their own identities, are subconsciously changed forever because of their encounters with strangers.