Imagery
Dumbwaiter- A dumbwaiter is a small elevator that usually carries objects, mostly food, rather than people. When they became popular in the 1840's, they used rope and rails to guide the dumbwaiter up and down the shaft. Then in the 1920's, when they became motorized, they operated a lot more like modern elevators.
|
|
In the play, not only is the dumb waiter communication analogous to the disconnect in communication between Ben and Gus, Gus is himself a dumb waiter, "in that he must wait in ignorance of his fate. Impatient and questioning his job, he has also become an inadequate waiter, and this is to prove his downfall" (Batty 17). As the orders from the dumb waiter get more and more exotic, we can see that the two men are being toyed with, perhaps even tested as Gus concludes. The dumb waiter could be a way for their organization to weed out the cream of the crop based on their reactions to the orders- Gus is unprepared and panics, while Ben realizes that it would be better to send up the wrong food than no food.
The random intervention of the dumb waiter "might remind us of our own daily efforts to make sense of an erratic world that defies prediction. We might recognize in their panic our own endeavors to assert ourselves and secure confident identities in the face of exposing realities" (Batty 18).
"The Dumb Waiter offers a painfully recognizable portrait of the human condition" because "we all wait for redemption and release, and ignore the mortality that both effects and negates these matters" like how we felt the pointlessness of the action when Gus complains that Wilson might not even come (Batty 18).
|
Basement setting- "The basement adds to the symbolism of Gus's predicament- he is entrapped and literally 'kept in the dark'; arriving and departing during the night, unsure of and unable to see the outside. Disoriented, he even needs to be informed which city he is in. It is an apt decor for these two men, blinded by duty and bling to the increasingly apparent truth" (Batty 17).
The windowless basement further feels like a bunker, completely removed from society. From the descriptions in the beginning, with the small kitchen and two shabbier beds, by the time Ben concludes that there must be a restaurant overhead because of the dumbwaiter, it feels unlikely that the space they are in could have ever been a restaurant. |
False communication- The major theme in the play is the false communication between Ben and Gus. Ben never clearly answers any of Gus's questions, choosing instead to give out a snippet of information or avoiding the question. Besides the lack of communication between Ben and Gus, there is also the false communication they receive through the dumbwaiter and the twelve matches. This communication is not explained at all throughout the play, and adds to the confusion of the audience. It even goes as far as to make you feel like you are drowning from all the information you are getting but you are unable to understand any of it.
|
|
|
Absurdism- As an absurdist play, The Dumb Waiter has many things going on that are not easy to understand. Pinter throws a lot of information at the audience, leaving them more confused at the end of the play than at the beginning. The theatre of the absurd movement started with Martin Esslin. He saw the playwrights in this movement giving artistic meaning to Albert Camos's Myth of Sisyphus. This essay was about a Greek myth about the man in Hades, Sisyphus, who rolls a boulder up a mountain every single day only to have it roll down the other side every time he gets to the top. The myth became an analogy to human life for the absurdist playwrights; we do the same menial tasks every day, and when we can accept that the tasks we do are pointless, only then can we be happy.
The artistic movement of absurdism also followed the ideas in The Myth of Sisyphus. The paintings that absurdist artists made defied explanation. They have the feeling of being about the need to understand the meaning of life, and the inability to find meaning. |
Twelve Matches- Perhaps the most unexplainable portion of The Dumb Waiter is the twelve matches that are slipped under the door to Ben and Gus's room. They could have been given as a way to light the stove so Gus could have a last cup of tea, or to light a cigarette as a last cigarette for a dying man. However, it is already known that Gus has no more cigarettes as he had asked Ben for one after he pulled the empty box out of his shoe, and when Gus goes to light the stove, the stove quickly goes out because the gas is on a meter. Perhaps the matches are a spit in the face to Gus; first giving him hope for that last cup of tea or last cigarette, and then dashing all that hope.
|
|
|
Death- Besides the fact that we assume the characters of Ben and Gus to be hitmen, there are several mentions in the play of recent deaths and killings and the foreshadowing of more to come. On pages 87 and 102 of the play Pinter describes the killing of a female compared to a male and how much more messy females are than males after they have deceased. Perhaps this theme of death and the objective of handing someone over to death but not necessarily understanding why you are doing so plays a factor in the relationships between one character and another.
|