(The) Caretaker의 희극성 = (A) Study on the Comic Elements of the Caretaker

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The plays of Harold Pinter are comedies. Only within the mood of comedy are Pinter's serious intentions intelligible. Specially The Caretaker, one of Pinter's most obscure plays and also one of his best, is closely interwoven by the comic and the tragic. Although the play uses traditional elements of comedy, it maskes seriousness so terrible that characters improvise with any ploy at hand to avoid it.
The characters appear to be playing a kind of hide-and-seek, a game that is actually very popular in this continually evasive world of Pinter's, where all would rather hide than seek and be safe in the burrow of their own darkness, like a child covering its eyes so as not to be seen. But there are seekers all around, and since there is always the chance of being found out it is often better to pretend to be the aggressor who seeks rather than the defendant who hides. In The Caretaker, the rules of hide-and-seek allow each player a double role: each has to hide his sense of identity from the others, while seeking to find out more about these others in return. It's a particularly dangerous game in Pinter's view, since it encompasses what they all try to keep away from.
The characters are basically comic, but unlike conventional characters who bounce back no matter how many they are hit, these characters do not bounce back. They are not permitted happy endings to rescue them from the brink. So they are comic victims.
The impact of catastrophic resolution is felt more keenly since the characters are presented initially as comic, the contract between the inconsequentiality of their affairs and their bad ends leaves audiences confused and shocked. It is enigmatic and puzzling that a playwright allows his comic characters to suffer catastrophes as serious as those of tragic characters.
Pinter is working in a basically realistic mode, mixing comic and serious elements. The characters speak ordinary words, never seem to be absurd and unrealistic. When we, however, try to understand the play with reason or logic, we feel confused and threatened by the character's language. Ironically the language for communication is not to be communicated. The language is relating each with the meaning of the play and the existential reality behind the language.
Harold Pinter's plays use traditional comic setting. The Caretaker also appears to be about the physical possession of a room. The room is used realistically as a setting, but it also has symbolic meaning. The characters have a fantasy to confirm their identity by possession of a room. The fantasy represents a temporary refuge from the menace out of the room. The process of stepping into a fantastic world is comic. Ironically, however, the fantasy is not for a refuge but for a ruin.
Consequently, through the comic characters and the comic language and the comic fantasy, we can see the seriousness of The Caretaker. By use of the comic, Pinter shows us the existential meaning in modern society.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 목차 = 1
• Ⅰ. 서론 = 2
• Ⅱ. 인물의 희극성 = 8
• 1. 관계형성을 위한 게임 = 8
• 2. 희극적 희생자 = 18
• Ⅲ. 언어의 희극성 = 27
• 1. 모순적인 대화 = 27
• 2. 의사소통의 단절 = 37
• Ⅳ. 환상의 희극성 = 46
• 1. 방 = 46
• 2. 도피처로서의 환상 = 52
• Ⅴ. 결론 = 61
• 참고문헌 = 64
• SUMMARY = 67