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The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

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This presentation briefly introduces the vast world of Harold Pinter and his dramatic works. it tries to analyse the play The Caretaker.

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The Caretaker by Harold Pinter Prof S. M. Abdus Samad Azad Department of English Carmichael College, Rangpur
Harold Pinter Harold Pinter, (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London), English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, uncommunicativeness—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Harold Pinter Harold Pinter began to write for the stage after 1956. The Room (first produced 1957) and The Dumb Waiter (first produced 1959), his first two plays, are one- act dramas that established the mood of comic menace that was to figure largely in his later works. The Birthday Party (first produced 1958), his first full-length play, puzzled the London audiences and lasted only a week, but later it was televised and revived successfully on the stage. The Caretaker (first produced 1960), his second full-length play, established him as more than just another practitioner of the then-popular Theatre of the Absurd and his reputation was secured.
Harold Pinter The Homecoming (first produced 1965), helped establish him as the originator of a unique dramatic idiom. His other major plays include : Landscape (first produced 1969) Silence (first produced 1969) Night (first produced 1969) Old Times (first produced 1971) No Man’s Land (first produced 1975) Betrayal (first produced 1978) Moonlight (first produced 1993) Celebration (first produced 2000)
Harold Pinter In addition to works for the stage, Pinter wrote radio and television dramas and a number of successful motion-picture screenplays. Pinter was also a noted poet, and his verse—such as that collected in War (2003)—often reflected his political views and involvement in numerous causes. He achieved many prestigious awards. His notable awards were: Companion of Honour (2002) Nobel Prize in Literature (2005) Légion d'honneur (2007) David Cohen Prize (1995) Laurence Olivier Award (1996)
The Theater of the Absurd The Theater of the Absurd is a movement in drama that refers to the work of several playwrights of the 1950s and 1960s. The term is credited to the critic Martin Esslin, who in turn derives it from an essay by the French writer Albert Camus. Camus wrote in his 1942 Myth of Sisyphus that human life was essentially meaningless and absurd: "in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and of light, man feels an alien, a stranger. . . This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity." In his essay, Esslin referred to absurdism as "the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose." The Theater of the Absurd writers, including Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Eugene Ionesco, sought to expound on this belief that life was absurd –that human beings occupied a capricious and meaningless universe in which they were able to play no authentic role. Their work focused on humans trying to control the events in their lives, and the resultant chaos. Many of the characters are clowns or completely helpless and bereft of rationality. They also tend to be of the lower social classes. Overall, they seem menaced and controlled by invisible outer forces, completely unable to attain autonomy. Communication between characters is difficult, if not impossible; language is unable to create human connections. Some characters try to fight back against the stultifying incomprehensibility of their world, but are unsuccessful in their efforts.
The Caretaker The Caretaker is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became Pinter's first significant commercial success. First published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter's most celebrated and oft-performed plays. Characters : Mick, a man in his late twenties Aston, a man in his early thirties Davies, an old man Setting : A house in West London, Winter Genre : Tragicomedy in form of the theatre of the absurd
Summary The play takes place in one room of a house in West London during the 1950s. It is winter. The play begins with Mick sitting on a bed in the room, but when he hears a door open and shut somewhere offstage, he leaves. Aston, his brother, and Davies, an old tramp, enter. Aston has helped Davies in a fight at the cafe where he was working an odd job. Aston offers Davies clothes, shoes, and a place to stay the night. Davies is loud and prejudiced, complaining about the "blacks" and people of other races. Aston, by contrast, is reserved, shy, and speaks haltingly. Davies accepts Aston's offer, and says he will have to go down to Sidcup to get his papers, which will confirm who he is. The next morning Aston tells Davies that he was being loud in his sleep, a statement that Davies strenuously rejects. Aston prepares to go out, and tells Davies he can stay there. The tramp says he will try to find a job. After Aston is gone, Mick enters and engages Davies in a silent tussle. He asks Davies what his game is.
Summary Mick asks Davies strange questions and discourses on random topics, discombobulating the older man. He finally says that Davies can rent the room if he wants. Aston returns with a bag of Davies's belongings. Mick leaves. The bag turns out not to be Davies', and he is annoyed. Aston asks Davies if he wants to be the caretaker of the place; he, in turn, is supposed to be decorating the landing and turning it into a real flat for his brother. Davies is wary at first because the job might entail real work, but he agrees. Later Davies is in the room and Mick uses the vacuum cleaner in the dark to frighten Davies. Adopting a more casual manner, he asks Davies if he wants to be caretaker. Davies asks who really is in charge of the place, and Mick deceives him. He asks Davies for references, and Davies promises to go to Sidcup to get them. The next morning Davies prolongs his decision to go out, blaming bad weather. Aston tells him about how he used to hallucinate and was placed in a mental facility and given electroshock treatment against his will. His thoughts are slower now, and he wishes he could find the man who put the pincers to his head. All he wants to do, though, is build the shed in the garden.
Summary Two weeks later, Davies is full of complaints about Aston, delivering them to Mick. One night Aston wakes Davies to make him stop making noise in his sleep, and Davies explodes, mocking him for his shock treatment. Aston quietly says he is not working out and ought to leave. Davies curses him and says he will talk to Mick about it. Davies speaks with Mick and argues that Aston should be evicted. Mick pretends to agree with him for a bit, and then starts to ask Davies about his claim that he is an expert interior decorator. Confused at this claim he did not make, Davies tries to correct Mick. At one point he calls Aston nutty, which causes Mick to order him to leave. He gives Davies money to pay him out for his services. Aston enters, and both brothers are faintly smiling. Mick leaves, and Davies tries to plead with Aston again. He grows more and more desperate, persuading and promising to be better. All Aston says is that Davies makes too much noise. The curtain descends on Davies' protestations.
Character Analysis Aston The older brother of Mick, Aston appears shy, reserved, and slow. He speaks haltingly and has trouble finishing projects. He reveals that when younger he was subject hallucinations, and then, against his will, was put into a mental facility and given electroshock treatment. He confesses he has difficulty ordering his thoughts. He is also very compassionate, offering Davies a place to stay and a job. He is finally pushed to his limits when Davies mocks his treatment and "make[s] too much noise" (60). He has a good relationship with Mick, although they do not speak to each other.
Character Analysis Davies Davies is an itinerant and a tramp. After a fight at his cafe job, he is brought by Aston to the room where he is offered the caretaker position by both Aston and Mick. Davies is loud, confident, arrogant, and full of himself. He has a martyr complex, believing that everyone else, particularly other races, is out to get him. His identity is questionable, as his papers have been at Sidcup for a long time. He eventually alienates Aston with his irritability, laziness, and mean-spiritedness, and is forced out of the room.
Character Analysis Mick The younger brother of Aston, Mick is rather mysterious and complex. He cares deeply for his brother and deftly deceives Davies. He is intelligent and ambitious, and talks frequently about his projects and desires to expand. He lives outside the room but resents Davies's entrance into it. While he admits to getting frustrated with Aston, his dream is to fix up flat and live there with him.
Theme Isolation The characters in the play are profoundly isolated from one another. They orbit their own personal universes and cannot quite maintain deep, meaningful relationships with others. Communication is fractured or impossible; they misunderstand each other and remain in their private, personal worlds. Furthermore, they are not engaged with society; they are isolated from the world outside, finding it hostile or confusing. The room in the play acts as a shelter or a womb; within here they expect to be safe, which explains why, to Mick and Aston, Davies must leave, and why Davies finds it so terrifying that he cannot stay.
Theme Race and National Origin Pinter's characters live in a time and place when race and national origin matter: after WWII and the end of the imperial age, borders became porous, and citizens of Southeast Asia, India, and Africa made their way to European countries to settle. The result was, unsurprisingly, suspicion and prejudice. Race and national origin were of central importance in order to determine who deserved what from society and the government. Davies manifests the contemporary obsession with the hierarchy of race, denigrating "Poles, Greeks, Blacks, the lot of them, all them aliens," (6) while asserting his own rights. Aston and Mick are not racist like Davies, but still query him about his birthplace and, in Mick's case, tell stories about people's identifying factors like where they live and travel to. Overall, the play evinces the unease of racial tensions in 1950s London.
Theme Communication Communication is not something that comes easily to the three characters. They find it hard to truly listen, or to answer direct questions. They speak slowly or not at all, or, in Davies' case, are full of sound and fury but have nothing meaningful or objectively truthful to say. Their communication styles are influenced by their social class and their treatment by society; Aston is slow and thoughtful as a result of his treatment, Davies is loud and boastful to cover up his lack of a place in the world. Mick uses language to his advantage -to manipulate Davies -but finds it hard to articulate the pressures he feels. They are isolated and oppressed, and are unable to use language to communicate fully with each other.
Theme Absurdity The Caretaker takes place in a world characterized by absurdity. Life has no meaning or meta-narrative; it is fragmented, chaotic, confusing, and hostile. The individual cannot rely on others, or society, or God, or even themselves to find meaning or value. The characters are isolated, lonely, and oppressed by forces outside their control. Desires they possess or choices they make seem to be wholly unconnected to the outcome. They seem adrift from history, both collective and personal. All that Mick and Aston can hope for is for things to remain more or less the same, and all Davies can hope for is another small respite from the gnawing emptiness of his life.
Theme Social Class The issues of race and national origin seem much more prevalent than social class in the text, but that is only because they are discussed so openly. Social class on the other hand is a much subtler theme, and one that the audience/reader must consider in order to understand the revolutionary impact of Pinter's play (the lower classes were not often fodder for high drama) and the motivations of the characters. All three of them are oppressed by dint of their class, which means that they are privy to external authorities and controls that strip their autonomy from them. They are trying to eke out a living, and, in Davies' case, are completely untethered from the mechanisms of society that would allow him to fend for himself. He has no job, no papers, and has let his personality ossify into one characterized by martyrdom, prejudice, and misplaced self- regard. Aston's lower-class status made him a victim of medical authorities, and Mick cannot get ahead in his plans to better his life. Overall, the characters exemplify the beliefs, values, and behaviors of those deemed by society to be worthy of little regard.
Theme Family Family relationships are significant in the play, but are depicted in a myriad of ways. Family can sometimes be detrimental, and representative of the larger absurdity and meaningless of life -Aston's mother allows her son to be given the electroshock treatment, and Davies' family is absent (whether or not it was he who rejected his wife or he is leaving part of the story out, he is still completely alone). Family can also be a burden, as Mick understands because he has to put up with his brother's slowness and ineptitude. However, the largely silent relationship between Mick and Aston is the closest the play comes to offering meaning and purpose. Mick and Aston care for each other; Mick sees them living in the house together, and is (mostly) indulgent of Aston's behavior. He resents Davies but does not want to hurt or annoy his brother, so he uses subtler means to oust the tramp. By the end of the play the slight smile exchanged between the brothers indicates that they fully understand and appreciate each other; it is a small gesture but one pregnant with meaning.
Theme Identity Mick, Aston, and Davies are certainly memorable characters, but they do not possess fully- fledged identities. In fact, Pinter suggests that modern life so beats down a person that they are unable to maintain a sense of self. Aston was rendered pliable and meek due to electroshock treatment, and Davies has two names and goes without his identifying papers. He does not remember where he was born, and seems almost afraid to pursue answers to these questions, as if he were afraid to find out he really has no identity. Mick tries desperately to live out his ambitions, but is pulled in different directions by the claims on his attention. The characters are defined more in terms of their relationships to different objects rather than their actual characteristics or motivations: Davies is obsessed with shoes and his knife, Aston has his Buddha and the broken plug, and the brothers closely heed the bucket. Pinter reveals very little of their history or anything else about them, which is intended to call attention to their lack of fixed, unified identities.
External Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Pinter www.britannica.com/biography/Harold-Pinter www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml
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The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

  • 1. The Caretaker by Harold Pinter Prof S. M. Abdus Samad Azad Department of English Carmichael College, Rangpur
  • 2. Harold Pinter Harold Pinter, (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London), English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, uncommunicativeness—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
  • 3. Harold Pinter Harold Pinter began to write for the stage after 1956. The Room (first produced 1957) and The Dumb Waiter (first produced 1959), his first two plays, are one- act dramas that established the mood of comic menace that was to figure largely in his later works. The Birthday Party (first produced 1958), his first full-length play, puzzled the London audiences and lasted only a week, but later it was televised and revived successfully on the stage. The Caretaker (first produced 1960), his second full-length play, established him as more than just another practitioner of the then-popular Theatre of the Absurd and his reputation was secured.
  • 4. Harold Pinter The Homecoming (first produced 1965), helped establish him as the originator of a unique dramatic idiom. His other major plays include : Landscape (first produced 1969) Silence (first produced 1969) Night (first produced 1969) Old Times (first produced 1971) No Man’s Land (first produced 1975) Betrayal (first produced 1978) Moonlight (first produced 1993) Celebration (first produced 2000)
  • 5. Harold Pinter In addition to works for the stage, Pinter wrote radio and television dramas and a number of successful motion-picture screenplays. Pinter was also a noted poet, and his verse—such as that collected in War (2003)—often reflected his political views and involvement in numerous causes. He achieved many prestigious awards. His notable awards were: Companion of Honour (2002) Nobel Prize in Literature (2005) Légion d'honneur (2007) David Cohen Prize (1995) Laurence Olivier Award (1996)
  • 6. The Theater of the Absurd The Theater of the Absurd is a movement in drama that refers to the work of several playwrights of the 1950s and 1960s. The term is credited to the critic Martin Esslin, who in turn derives it from an essay by the French writer Albert Camus. Camus wrote in his 1942 Myth of Sisyphus that human life was essentially meaningless and absurd: "in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and of light, man feels an alien, a stranger. . . This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity." In his essay, Esslin referred to absurdism as "the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose." The Theater of the Absurd writers, including Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Eugene Ionesco, sought to expound on this belief that life was absurd –that human beings occupied a capricious and meaningless universe in which they were able to play no authentic role. Their work focused on humans trying to control the events in their lives, and the resultant chaos. Many of the characters are clowns or completely helpless and bereft of rationality. They also tend to be of the lower social classes. Overall, they seem menaced and controlled by invisible outer forces, completely unable to attain autonomy. Communication between characters is difficult, if not impossible; language is unable to create human connections. Some characters try to fight back against the stultifying incomprehensibility of their world, but are unsuccessful in their efforts.
  • 7. The Caretaker The Caretaker is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became Pinter's first significant commercial success. First published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter's most celebrated and oft-performed plays. Characters : Mick, a man in his late twenties Aston, a man in his early thirties Davies, an old man Setting : A house in West London, Winter Genre : Tragicomedy in form of the theatre of the absurd
  • 8. Summary The play takes place in one room of a house in West London during the 1950s. It is winter. The play begins with Mick sitting on a bed in the room, but when he hears a door open and shut somewhere offstage, he leaves. Aston, his brother, and Davies, an old tramp, enter. Aston has helped Davies in a fight at the cafe where he was working an odd job. Aston offers Davies clothes, shoes, and a place to stay the night. Davies is loud and prejudiced, complaining about the "blacks" and people of other races. Aston, by contrast, is reserved, shy, and speaks haltingly. Davies accepts Aston's offer, and says he will have to go down to Sidcup to get his papers, which will confirm who he is. The next morning Aston tells Davies that he was being loud in his sleep, a statement that Davies strenuously rejects. Aston prepares to go out, and tells Davies he can stay there. The tramp says he will try to find a job. After Aston is gone, Mick enters and engages Davies in a silent tussle. He asks Davies what his game is.
  • 9. Summary Mick asks Davies strange questions and discourses on random topics, discombobulating the older man. He finally says that Davies can rent the room if he wants. Aston returns with a bag of Davies's belongings. Mick leaves. The bag turns out not to be Davies', and he is annoyed. Aston asks Davies if he wants to be the caretaker of the place; he, in turn, is supposed to be decorating the landing and turning it into a real flat for his brother. Davies is wary at first because the job might entail real work, but he agrees. Later Davies is in the room and Mick uses the vacuum cleaner in the dark to frighten Davies. Adopting a more casual manner, he asks Davies if he wants to be caretaker. Davies asks who really is in charge of the place, and Mick deceives him. He asks Davies for references, and Davies promises to go to Sidcup to get them. The next morning Davies prolongs his decision to go out, blaming bad weather. Aston tells him about how he used to hallucinate and was placed in a mental facility and given electroshock treatment against his will. His thoughts are slower now, and he wishes he could find the man who put the pincers to his head. All he wants to do, though, is build the shed in the garden.
  • 10. Summary Two weeks later, Davies is full of complaints about Aston, delivering them to Mick. One night Aston wakes Davies to make him stop making noise in his sleep, and Davies explodes, mocking him for his shock treatment. Aston quietly says he is not working out and ought to leave. Davies curses him and says he will talk to Mick about it. Davies speaks with Mick and argues that Aston should be evicted. Mick pretends to agree with him for a bit, and then starts to ask Davies about his claim that he is an expert interior decorator. Confused at this claim he did not make, Davies tries to correct Mick. At one point he calls Aston nutty, which causes Mick to order him to leave. He gives Davies money to pay him out for his services. Aston enters, and both brothers are faintly smiling. Mick leaves, and Davies tries to plead with Aston again. He grows more and more desperate, persuading and promising to be better. All Aston says is that Davies makes too much noise. The curtain descends on Davies' protestations.
  • 11. Character Analysis Aston The older brother of Mick, Aston appears shy, reserved, and slow. He speaks haltingly and has trouble finishing projects. He reveals that when younger he was subject hallucinations, and then, against his will, was put into a mental facility and given electroshock treatment. He confesses he has difficulty ordering his thoughts. He is also very compassionate, offering Davies a place to stay and a job. He is finally pushed to his limits when Davies mocks his treatment and "make[s] too much noise" (60). He has a good relationship with Mick, although they do not speak to each other.
  • 12. Character Analysis Davies Davies is an itinerant and a tramp. After a fight at his cafe job, he is brought by Aston to the room where he is offered the caretaker position by both Aston and Mick. Davies is loud, confident, arrogant, and full of himself. He has a martyr complex, believing that everyone else, particularly other races, is out to get him. His identity is questionable, as his papers have been at Sidcup for a long time. He eventually alienates Aston with his irritability, laziness, and mean-spiritedness, and is forced out of the room.
  • 13. Character Analysis Mick The younger brother of Aston, Mick is rather mysterious and complex. He cares deeply for his brother and deftly deceives Davies. He is intelligent and ambitious, and talks frequently about his projects and desires to expand. He lives outside the room but resents Davies's entrance into it. While he admits to getting frustrated with Aston, his dream is to fix up flat and live there with him.
  • 14. Theme Isolation The characters in the play are profoundly isolated from one another. They orbit their own personal universes and cannot quite maintain deep, meaningful relationships with others. Communication is fractured or impossible; they misunderstand each other and remain in their private, personal worlds. Furthermore, they are not engaged with society; they are isolated from the world outside, finding it hostile or confusing. The room in the play acts as a shelter or a womb; within here they expect to be safe, which explains why, to Mick and Aston, Davies must leave, and why Davies finds it so terrifying that he cannot stay.
  • 15. Theme Race and National Origin Pinter's characters live in a time and place when race and national origin matter: after WWII and the end of the imperial age, borders became porous, and citizens of Southeast Asia, India, and Africa made their way to European countries to settle. The result was, unsurprisingly, suspicion and prejudice. Race and national origin were of central importance in order to determine who deserved what from society and the government. Davies manifests the contemporary obsession with the hierarchy of race, denigrating "Poles, Greeks, Blacks, the lot of them, all them aliens," (6) while asserting his own rights. Aston and Mick are not racist like Davies, but still query him about his birthplace and, in Mick's case, tell stories about people's identifying factors like where they live and travel to. Overall, the play evinces the unease of racial tensions in 1950s London.
  • 16. Theme Communication Communication is not something that comes easily to the three characters. They find it hard to truly listen, or to answer direct questions. They speak slowly or not at all, or, in Davies' case, are full of sound and fury but have nothing meaningful or objectively truthful to say. Their communication styles are influenced by their social class and their treatment by society; Aston is slow and thoughtful as a result of his treatment, Davies is loud and boastful to cover up his lack of a place in the world. Mick uses language to his advantage -to manipulate Davies -but finds it hard to articulate the pressures he feels. They are isolated and oppressed, and are unable to use language to communicate fully with each other.
  • 17. Theme Absurdity The Caretaker takes place in a world characterized by absurdity. Life has no meaning or meta-narrative; it is fragmented, chaotic, confusing, and hostile. The individual cannot rely on others, or society, or God, or even themselves to find meaning or value. The characters are isolated, lonely, and oppressed by forces outside their control. Desires they possess or choices they make seem to be wholly unconnected to the outcome. They seem adrift from history, both collective and personal. All that Mick and Aston can hope for is for things to remain more or less the same, and all Davies can hope for is another small respite from the gnawing emptiness of his life.
  • 18. Theme Social Class The issues of race and national origin seem much more prevalent than social class in the text, but that is only because they are discussed so openly. Social class on the other hand is a much subtler theme, and one that the audience/reader must consider in order to understand the revolutionary impact of Pinter's play (the lower classes were not often fodder for high drama) and the motivations of the characters. All three of them are oppressed by dint of their class, which means that they are privy to external authorities and controls that strip their autonomy from them. They are trying to eke out a living, and, in Davies' case, are completely untethered from the mechanisms of society that would allow him to fend for himself. He has no job, no papers, and has let his personality ossify into one characterized by martyrdom, prejudice, and misplaced self- regard. Aston's lower-class status made him a victim of medical authorities, and Mick cannot get ahead in his plans to better his life. Overall, the characters exemplify the beliefs, values, and behaviors of those deemed by society to be worthy of little regard.
  • 19. Theme Family Family relationships are significant in the play, but are depicted in a myriad of ways. Family can sometimes be detrimental, and representative of the larger absurdity and meaningless of life -Aston's mother allows her son to be given the electroshock treatment, and Davies' family is absent (whether or not it was he who rejected his wife or he is leaving part of the story out, he is still completely alone). Family can also be a burden, as Mick understands because he has to put up with his brother's slowness and ineptitude. However, the largely silent relationship between Mick and Aston is the closest the play comes to offering meaning and purpose. Mick and Aston care for each other; Mick sees them living in the house together, and is (mostly) indulgent of Aston's behavior. He resents Davies but does not want to hurt or annoy his brother, so he uses subtler means to oust the tramp. By the end of the play the slight smile exchanged between the brothers indicates that they fully understand and appreciate each other; it is a small gesture but one pregnant with meaning.
  • 20. Theme Identity Mick, Aston, and Davies are certainly memorable characters, but they do not possess fully- fledged identities. In fact, Pinter suggests that modern life so beats down a person that they are unable to maintain a sense of self. Aston was rendered pliable and meek due to electroshock treatment, and Davies has two names and goes without his identifying papers. He does not remember where he was born, and seems almost afraid to pursue answers to these questions, as if he were afraid to find out he really has no identity. Mick tries desperately to live out his ambitions, but is pulled in different directions by the claims on his attention. The characters are defined more in terms of their relationships to different objects rather than their actual characteristics or motivations: Davies is obsessed with shoes and his knife, Aston has his Buddha and the broken plug, and the brothers closely heed the bucket. Pinter reveals very little of their history or anything else about them, which is intended to call attention to their lack of fixed, unified identities.
  • 22. Thank you very much! Stay home! Stay safe!!