Theatrical lecture Module

“THE DUMB WAITER”

by Harold Pinter

“The Dumb Waiter” was written by Harold Pinter in 1957 and was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre Club on 21^st January , 1960.

As in others Harold Pinter’s plays, this has two characters. Ben and Gus. Firstly I am going to describe Ben. Ben is as an older brother to Gus, that is to say, Ben acts as if Gus was his brother. He orders him to do things, like prepare the tea ( page 130 ). On the other hand, Gus does everything that Ben orders and recommends, like a young brother. Gus has a more timid character , this might be because he is younger than Ben and more unexperienced in what they have to do.

During the play, Ben and Gus are waiting for something, a call, as we can see on page 134 when Gus says; “You can’t more out of the house in case a call comes“ and on the same page, some lines down when Ben says: “Then when a call comes, I´m ready“. Meanwhile they wait, they read the newspaper, talk about where they are “What town are we in ? I´ve forgotten“ (page 137), about football “We could go and whatch the villa”-“They playing away“ (page 137), and about girls for example, “I was thinking about that girl , that’s all“ (page 146). They are in a basement room, the only way that they have communication with the outside world is with a dump-waiter, which communicates with the kitchen of the restaurant above them. Ben and Gus are murderers. Gus doubts if he wants to work as murderer. In the end Ben murders Gus.

The space, as in other Harold Pinter plays is a room. In this case a room with two beds, a serving hatch and a kitchen and lavatory. This description is at the beginning of the play. It is a marginal note of Harold Pinter. There is another space, the town where they (Ben and Gus) are. This town is Birmingham which is in the Midlands (the second biggest city in Great Britain) as we can see on page 137.

The time is not said by the writer. I suppose it was the time in which the author wrote the play. The internal time I think is one of the days that they were in the basement room.

The language of the play is very colloquial with many repetitions, i.e., no literal repetitions, but some different explanations about one issue that is being discussed by Ben and Gus.

This play shows me how patient people are, that is to say, the Ben’s impatience when Gus has doubts about what they have to do, i.e., murder someone, show me that people are impatient. We want to do what we have to do quickly and after forget it. When we are staying with someone we lose our patience if we do not accept the others. It is a problem because people have to help together, but if we can not stay together, help is impossible.