Pinter di Laura Silletta

LESSON PLAN:"The Caretaker", 1960

ACTIVITIES ON THE EXCERPT "THE CARETAKER"

 

*in italics you have explanations and keys, in blue the aim of the activities

Timing: 2 periods of 50 minutes

 

Pre-reading activities                  Total timing: 10 minutes


1. Plenary activity

The teacher asks to the students what is their idea about insanity

 

What does it mean to be mentally sane?

What does it mean to be insane?

What is the electric shock treatment?

AIM: the aim is to make students think about the issues of mental health and insanity in order to make them better approach the themes of Aston's monologue:

  

2. Plenary activity

The teacher explains to the class that the extract is a monologue taken from "The Caretaker" at the end of  ACT II and briefly summarizes the plot of the play.

 

"The Caretaker": PLOT

The play opens in a room full of old things. Aston, a thirty-year-old man, lives there and is now giving hospitality to Davies, an old tramp who has nowhere to go, no shoes, no identity papers, not even a definite name. Aston shows him solidarity and offers him to stay in his room. Mick is Aston's brother and the real owner of the house but he does not live there.  Aston should restore the entire building for his brother and proposes Davies to be the caretaker. One day Aston reveals Davies his past.

 

AIM: the aim is to give students information to let them understand the title and to make them better contextualize Aston's monologue within the play.

 

Timing: 10 minutes
 

 

While-reading activities               Total timing: 90 minutes

AIM: students read the text and do specific exercises in order to identify the main features of the text, with particular reference to the plot.
 

1.  Individual work

Students read the text silently

 

2. Work in pairs

The teacher gives photocopies with the activities to the students. Answer to the following sentences saying if they are true of false (write after each sentence T for true and F for false). Go back to the text if you need to.

 

  1. In the past Aston used to go to a café 
  2. Aston used to talk too much with people 
  3. He used to have a kind of hallucinations                    
  4. People started talking with him                                        
  5. People tried to understand Aston                          
  6. Aston escaped from the hospital                                                           
  7. The head doctor told Aston that he wasn't ill                                          
  8. Aston's mother didn't give the permission for the treatment           
  9. At night 'they' started to do the treatment to the brain of the patients  
  10. The patients were subjected to the electric shock treatment      
  11. Most of the patients do passively suffered the treatment         
  12. Aston didn't try to rebel against the doctors                    
  13. Aston was subjected to the treatment                                    
  14. Astondidn't suffer from diseases after that treatment   

Timing: 15 minutes (included open check at end)

 

3. Work in pairs

Make a list of the physical and mental troubles Aston suffered from when he went out of the hospital.

 

PHYSICAL TROUBLES:     couldn't walk very well; couldn't hear what people were saying; couldn't look to the right or to the left; couldn't keep upright if he turned his head round; had headaches

MENTAL TROUBLES :         thoughts became very slow; couldn't think at all; couldn't get his thoughts together

  

4. Work in pairs

Tick the correct answer:

What does Aston avoid to do now?

Talking to people         Going to hospitals                     Walk alone
 

What has he often thought of doing?

What does he want to do first?

Find the doctor          Build the shed in the garden                    Go to the café

 

Timing: 10 minutes (included open check at end)

  

AIM: the aim of the following activities is to encourage students through specific questions and the help of the teacher to interpret the text

 

5. Students work in groups of 4-5 each and answer to the following questions:

Aston says that he had no real hallucinations. Do you think that Aston could have been dangerous for the other people? Why?

(In my opinion, Aston could not have been dangerous for other people because when he describes his kind of hallucinations he says that he could see things "clearly" and everything was "quiet": it seems his were very peaceful visions, as if he was a sort of mystic visionary).
 

Aston says that "they" took him to the hospital: whom do you think he refers to?

(It is not clear from his speech. I think "they" could have been his mother with some relatives, or the people he used to talk with at the café or in the factory, or maybe someone of these people called the doctors took him to the hospital).

Why?

(Because Aston felt completely misunderstood, they treated him like an insane man and he had to suffer terrible pains because of that).
 

What is the function of lightening during Aston's monologue?

(At the beginning of Aston's speech the room is full of light. During Aston's monologue the room grows darker and the fade down of the light is slowly gradual and unobtrusive to follow the progress of Aston's story. At the end the light is only on Aston, to put in evidence his isolation and his loneliness in a gloomy world which did not understand him and treated him with cruelty. This use of lightening is highly symbolic and it gives a powerful dramatic effect.)


 

AIM: the aim is to arouse students' interest and let them discuss giving their own personal opinion

 

Aston was probably more sensitive and imaginative than the majority of people.  In general, what do you think people's attitude towards the ones who are "out of the norm" is?

curiosity                  √ fear                 contempt              indifference

 

      What do you think was Aston's relationship with his mother like?

(Aston's relationship with his mother was very cold because she did not visit him at the hospital/she did not even try to talk with him to understand his will and opinions/When asked for it, she simply signed the form to give the doctors the permission to do to her son the brain treatment).

(On the other side, we may also think that his mother did not understand at all the situation and that her son was in danger. She was probably a humble woman from the working class (Aston was a worker) who trusted what the doctors said and was ashamed of having a son considered mentally disturbed).

The teacher gives explanation: So we find again the theme of the difficulty of communication and the theme of the difficulty of human relationship. Aston was let alone in his solitude even by his mother.


Timing: 15  minutes (included open check at end)

 

SECOND LESSON
 

Aston talks about "bars on the window"  and that "they used to shine a torch over the beds every half hour". What do these images remind you?

(A prison)

 

The doctors used to apply the electroshock to patients at night: in your opinion, why?

(Possible answers: they used to apply it at night because during the night nobody visits the hospital and the doctors are let alone with their patients. At night  nobody from the outside (parents, relatives, friends) can see or hear what the doctors are doing, so the latter are free to ill-treat their patients and to commit acts of violence). 

 

Most patients did not fight to escape the electroshock but they accepted it passively: in your opinion, why?

(they accepted it passively because after their permanence in the hospital they were already resigned to their destiny. They could have had a lot of different reasons for this: probably the first patients subjected to the electroshock did not know what the treatment was, maybe some of them were really suffering and they just trusted the doctors, others were perhaps absolutely indifferent to their own destiny).

 

After the electroshock, Aston got out of the hospital. Do you think that he could lead a "normal" life? Why?

(When Aston got out of the hospital it was impossible for him to lead a "normal" life because both his mental and his physical health had been seriously damaged by the electroshock. With all his physical and mental troubles Aston could not but have great difficulties in working and in dealing with people and the only thing he could do was staying alone).
 

Aston "laid everything out in order" in his room. In your opinion, why did order become so important for him?

(order became so important for him because he was desperately attempting to find a new way of reorganizing his life as well as his ideas: this new attitude to order may be the expression of his search for a new order in his life. On the other side, we may also consider that order represents the reverse of that excess of imagination and sensitivity that caused him to go to the hospital: Aston is now trying to have control on himself).

 

Aston says "I should have been dead, I should have died". What does it mean?

1) his life after the electroshock had become worse than death,

2) he perceived that the best part of him ¨C his imagination- had been stifled by the electroshock ,

3) he felt so badly that he was like a living dead man.

 

Do you think that Aston will ever go back to find the man who did him the electroshock? Why?

(Aston will ever go back to find that man because with his last sentence about the shed in the garden he reveals his inability to work out a plan or a strategy to realize this wish, which remains something vague and imprecise. The electroshock seems to have killed in him all real passions and desires).

 

Aston said that he "talked too much" and that was a "mistake". Think also about "The Dumb Waiter": do you think that language may be a dangerous tool? Why?

(open answer)

 

In your opinion, what is Pinter trying to suggest about mental health and insanity?

(Pinter is saying that it is very difficult to state precisely what the borders between them are. In many ways Aston seems much wiser than many other people, for instance when, despite the damages provoked by the electroshock, he shows that he understood the tragedy that happened to him. Pinter is trying to say that in a world of conformity, all people who show a different attitude may be considered insane and must be "cured" to "live like the others": it does not matter the price they have to pay.

Aston  may also represent the power of imagination in a world where men have adopted hyper-rationality as their icon: we may think, for instance, about all the questions and the examination that Aston had to undergo.

The problem lies again in the difficulty of communication: Aston thought that the other people could understand his being different but they were only scared of his unconformity)

 

Total timing: 20 minutes


 

AIM: the aim is to focus students attention on language style

 

Is Aston precise or vague when he describes what happened to him? Underline a sentence to justify your answer.

(Aston is quite vague when he describes his story; the sentences "...someone must have said something" or " ... he said that "I got something, some complaint".)

 

Aston's speech is interspersed with gaps and dots: what is their function in this passage?

(express Aston's difficulty to find the right words to tell his story, especially when he should use more definite words to describe feelings, objects or situations.
Gaps and dots are also a way to emphasize the effect of the electroshock on Aston: while before he used to talk a lot, now he cannot easily express himself because his thoughts have become slower.)

What emotion does this description create?

calm             pain             indifference

  

Do you think that Aston and the other people ('they') were really communicating or not? Why?

(Aston and the other people were not really communicating because only Aston used to talk . They always listened and they did not understand him.)

 

Aston's description is mainly vague throughout the monologue, apart when he describes the electroshock machine and procedure. Why is Aston precise about it?

(Aston remembers everything about it because he was one of the last to have electroshock done to him and, as he says, he could see what they did to the others several times. While Aston waited for his turn to come, he must have suffered terribly thinking about his own destiny and what was going to happen. The electric shock treatment was a real tragedy for him because he was among the few who understood what sort of violence it was and he cannot forget it because it destroyed his life.)  


 

What is Davies' role during the monologue? If Davies is there, why do we consider Aston's speech a monologue and not a dialogue as in "The Room" or in "The Dumb Waiter"?

(Davies is only a pretext to make Aston speak and tell his story. During Aston's monologue, Davies is in the shadow and he never speaks. Aston soon forgets his presence and does not really perceive him as an interlocutor. Actually Aston is talking to himself, to recollect his terrible experience which signed him forever and to try to give it a meaning. For all these reasons, despite Davies' presence, Aston is not uttering a dialogue like Rose with Bert in "The Room" but he is uttering a monologue.)

 

Total timing: 15 minutes


AIM: students will compare the characteristics of two different authors and will helped through grids at identifying similarities and differences
 

Think about Beckett and Pinter's plays. Find similarities and differences completing the list  with the expressions below

 

Themes

 

Pinter : lack of true human relationship;   ambiguity and the uncertainty of the human condition;    monotony of life ;  incapacity of finding a meaning in human existence                                                                                 

 

Beckett: lack of true human relationship; ambiguity and the uncertainty of the human condition; monotony of life ; incapacity of finding a meaning in human existence 
 

difficulty or the incapacity of real communication

lack of true human relationship

ambiguity and the uncertainty of the human condition

monotony of life

incapacity of finding a meaning in human existence

 

 

Language

 

Pinter:   realistic; reproduce the rhythm of everyday speech; preserves the syntactic structure of the sentence

 

Beckett:   fragmentary; Incoherent; destroys the syntactic structure of the sentence

 

destroys the syntactic structure of the sentence

Realistic

Fragmentary

reproduce the rhythm of everyday speech

preserves the syntactic structure of the sentence

Incoherent
 

Timing: 5 minutes

 
 

AIM: the aim of this activity is drawing final conclusions on the whole work

The teacher and the students create on the blackboard two maps in order to summarize the important features:

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