THE DUMB WAITER

HEADLINE:

Author: Harold Pinter

Title of the play: The dumb waiter

Editorial: Faber & Faber

Year of publication: 1960

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Ben: He is carpenter and very hyperactive. He is friend of Gus, and he always is saying to Gus what he has to do.

Gus: He is older than Ben so this is reflected in his experience of the life and very often is disagreement in many things. Both friends are dressed by the same way.

PLOT:

Both friends, Gus and Ben, are in the room of a hotel waiting to the order of Wilson to do something, in theory could be a murder or something like this because they has guns. They receive a letter with a matchbox under the door of their room so they get out of the room very altered and with the guns in their hands to murder the person who had left the letter. Later they received another letter by the freight elevator from the room below of them that ask for some food, but they give it. As long as Gus sees a tube where he starts to talk with someone. Suddenly both get dressed and go out, and here is the end of the play, we don’t know nothing more.

SPACE:

All the actions happens in a little room of a hotel of Birmingham. This room is composed of two beds, a bathroom and a kitchen.

TIME:

This play pass in only tow hours more or less, we can’t say that is present but also is no in the past.

STILISTICS AND LITERARY RESOURCES:

Language valuation: The language is colloquial and very simply, easier to the understand of the reader.

PERSONAL OPINION:

From all of the plays I had read by this moment this is one of the most absurd I had read, due to we don’t know really what is the thing that they had to do, also they happen strange things as the pass of a letter with a matchbox, or their reaction in front of this. By other way the subject of the freight elevator I cant understand it very well, that is, who ask for the food, who are talking with, what they ask for, why they change their clothes where they go… Maybe by this reason I don’t like it, due to I don’t understand the end, or better, I’m waiting to the end.