Unknown Girl

Poetry Analysis: An Unknown Girl- Moniza Alvi.

28MAY

In the evening bazaar
Studded with neon
An unknown girl
Is hennaing my hand
She squeezes a wet brown line
Form a nozzle
She is icing my hand,
Which she steadies with her
On her satin peach knee.
In the evening bazaar
For a few rupees
An unknown girl is hennaing my hand
As a little air catches
My shadow stitched kameez
A peacock spreads its lines
Across my palm.
Colours leave the street
Float up in balloons.
Dummies in shop-fronts
Tilt and stare
With their western perms.
Banners for Miss India 1993
For curtain cloth
And sofa cloth
Canopy me.
I have new brown veins.
In the evening bazaar
Very deftly
An unknown girl
is hennaing my hand
I am clinging
To these firm peacock lines
Like people who cling
to sides of a train.
Now the furious streets
Are hushed.
I’ll scrape off
The dry brown lines
Before I sleep,
Reveal soft as a snail trail
The amber bird beneath.
It will fade in a week.
When India appears and reappears
I’ll lean across a country
With my hands outstretched
Longing for the unknown girl
In the neon bazaar.

An Unknown Girl is about Moniza Alvi’s attempt to find her place in a country to which she does belong to but which she cannot call her own.

The poems starts with a description of the setting: it is an evening in a market place where neon signs are the main source of lightening. As the persona sits, perhaps in a stall, getting her hand decorated by henna by a mysterious ‘unknown’ girl who works for a few rupees. As time passes and colors fade away, the persona imagines that the mannequins in the shop windows are staring at her. As the design is completed and a peacock unfurls its feathers on the palm of her hand, the persona feels that she has achieved a new identity, with the henna running in her veins. She desperately tries to hold on to the intricate lines of henna unwilling to let go and she thinks that despite the fact that when she removes the dried henna from her palm that night and even when the design fades away in a week, she will still remember the experience, the feeling of belonging, and long for it in her dreams.

This poem is written in free verse but makes use of many other literary techniques to further emphasize the message. Ethnic words such as ‘bazaar’, ‘henna’, ‘shalwar kameez’ give an exotic feel to the place, which one finds out later is a market place in India. The girl who is applying the henna comes across as almost sensual in her mysteriousness: she is a deft worker, clad in satin, artistically creating designs and patterns. The passing of time is described in a metaphor which again because of the implicit imagery provoke the reader’s senses: ‘the colors which float up in balloons.’ This creates a gradually darkening atmosphere as it grows late and the evening turns to night.

The contradictory feelings that the persona feels as she sits in the bazaar are brilliantly portrayed in the metaphorical description of the dummies with western perms turning their heads and staring at the persona as she tries her best to fit into a culture not quite her own. At this point it is safe to assume that the persona depicted is Alvi herself. Having origins in two different countries-Pakistan and Britain, but having been brought up in London, Alvi might as well be writing about herself when she talks of a girl who tries desperately to find her roots in an almost foreign culture, a fact which becomes evident in the metaphoric statement that she has ‘brown veins.’

The year becomes evident as a contrast is presented between the previous traditional scene by the description of the banners of ‘Miss India’ which adorn the street. Alvi feels such a sense of belonging at the time, sitting in that bazaar that she feels like as if the curtain cloth hanging in the windows of shops is covering her, engulfing and accepting her. She tries to hold on to this feeling metaphorically describing her unwillingness to let go similar to that of those people who ride on the sides of trains, as is common for villagers to do in India and Pakistan.
Again the passage of time is described by the fading of noise, proving the auditory sense of the reader. The previous hum of activity described recedes as the bazaar becomes quiet and the future tense is used to show Alvi’s thoughts as she muses on how despite the fact that the color on her hand will fade away, she shall always remember the time she felt that she really belonged to her country, and will yearn for the reoccurrence of the feeling in her dreams.

After analyzing the poem at great depth it becomes apparent that the title is not only for the girl who is applying the henna, who remains unnamed and therefore unknown throughout. Rather it can also define the persona, and thus Moniza Alvi herself, as she is a stranger amidst her own people on account of having lived her whole life elsewhere.

The dilemma which she is faced with is in today’s world a common phenomenon with bi-cultural marriages becoming more and more common. What Alvi feels, the sense of detachment from either of the two countries she belongs to is something that most of us can relate to as we are the generation which was born to parents who immigrated to other countries and therefore have lived all our lives in a foreign home. Such people do not feel that they wholly belong anywhere. The place where they have lived all their lives and that which they call home isn’t really enough as they would always have a different set of origins calling out to them; and the quest to find one’s roots and culture leaves one not only dissatisfied, but also all the more desolate and alone. Neither country will whole heartedly accept them, nor can they accept only one country. They are torn between two worlds, two different realities, each of which constitutes half of their identity. Thus their sense of self is shaken, and even lost as their identities are torn apart, distanced by oceans and deserts.

Life of Pie Analysis

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura   071-8309137

GCE (A.L) English Literature

Though it raises complex philosophical and religious questions, Life of Pi's plot is almost ridiculously easy to summarize: dude gets stuck on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a tiger, thinks about God. Done!

Okay, maybe that's a little too simplistic.

So we'll take you through the main events in a tad more detail—but remember much of the novel happens through digression and in Pi's meditations sprinkled throughout the novel.

The book doesn't begin with Pi, but with an "Author's Note." We learn how the "author" (who shares some of Yann Martel's biography) found Pi's story. We should note one point of complexity: the author admits any mistakes in the narrative are due to him and not Pi, since he's presumably put together Pi's story from interviews, notes, and Pi's diary. What we read, then, in Part 1 and Part 2 is Pi's voice as the author has written it.

And then, without further ado, we launch into Pi's story.

Part 1 details Pi's childhood in Pondicherry, India. His father owns a zoo and Pi spends a lot of his time thinking about animals: after all, they're always around. But zoology is only one of Pi's passions: he also loves religion. He's a Hindu from birth; then at fourteen he adds Catholicism to his repertoire; at fifteen he adds Islam. He's inquisitive, joyful, and an all-around wonder of a human being.

Things, however, aren't so joyful in India. The Prime Minister, one Mrs. Indira Gandhi, institutes martial law (this is in the mid-1970 – see "Setting" for more). Pi's parents decide to leave India. They sell most of the animals and pack up their belongings. They board, along with some of the animals they're selling to North American zoos, a Japanese cargo ship. They're headed for Canada.
All of Part 2 takes place at sea, but without many of the characters we met in Part 1. Tragedy strikes and the ship sinks halfway to the Midway Atoll. No one survives except Pi and a menagerie of animals: a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. All these creatures, including Pi, are packed into a twenty-six-foot-long lifeboat. Before long, as you'd expect, there's some bloodshed. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan. And then the tiger, whose name is Richard Parker (a.k.a. RP), kills the hyena. 

Richard Parker and Pi, however, work out an uneasy living arrangement—Pi slowly trains RP until he's more or less master of the lifeboat. (Way to use those zookeeper skillz, Pi.) Pi is often despondent, though Pi and RP manage to survive. Pi catches fish and he has a few tools (like solar stills) from the lifeboat's locker. It's true that Pi's survival skills develop, but it's also true that he's just lost his entire family. Pi is alone except for a man-eating tiger. He endures through cleverness, prayer, and willpower. 

At the end of Part 2, however, some strange things happen. Pi meets another castaway on this gigantic ocean who tries to eat him. Instead, RP eats the castaway. And then Pi lands on an island made entirely of algae. Pi and RP are malnourished at this point and it's not far-fetched to think Pi has gone mad. The chapter ends with Pi and RP landing in Mexico. RP bounds off into the jungle without so much as a goodbye.

Part 3 isn't long at all. Two civil servants for the Japanese Maritime Department in the Ministry of Transport interview Pi to try and shed some light on the sinking of the cargo ship. While they don't get any answers about the ship's sudden shipwreck, they do get Pi's story. When they question the more implausible portions of Pi's story, Pi delivers an impassioned defense of "the better story." To prove his point, he tells a version of his story without any of the animals mentioned above. It's an utterly ghastly story since human beings, instead of animals, literally tear each other to shreds.

Pi asks the investigators which story they prefer. They prefer the story with animals. There's some wrapping up, but the book basically ends there. The reader is left having to decide whether Pi has concocted a totally elaborate story with animals instead of human beings to explain the horrific events on the lifeboat.

Life of Pie Analysis

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura   071-8309137

GCE (A.L) English Literature

Though it raises complex philosophical and religious questions, Life of Pi's plot is almost ridiculously easy to summarize: dude gets stuck on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a tiger, thinks about God. Done!

Okay, maybe that's a little too simplistic.

So we'll take you through the main events in a tad more detail—but remember much of the novel happens through digression and in Pi's meditations sprinkled throughout the novel.

The book doesn't begin with Pi, but with an "Author's Note." We learn how the "author" (who shares some of Yann Martel's biography) found Pi's story. We should note one point of complexity: the author admits any mistakes in the narrative are due to him and not Pi, since he's presumably put together Pi's story from interviews, notes, and Pi's diary. What we read, then, in Part 1 and Part 2 is Pi's voice as the author has written it.

And then, without further ado, we launch into Pi's story.

Part 1 details Pi's childhood in Pondicherry, India. His father owns a zoo and Pi spends a lot of his time thinking about animals: after all, they're always around. But zoology is only one of Pi's passions: he also loves religion. He's a Hindu from birth; then at fourteen he adds Catholicism to his repertoire; at fifteen he adds Islam. He's inquisitive, joyful, and an all-around wonder of a human being.

Things, however, aren't so joyful in India. The Prime Minister, one Mrs. Indira Gandhi, institutes martial law (this is in the mid-1970 – see "Setting" for more). Pi's parents decide to leave India. They sell most of the animals and pack up their belongings. They board, along with some of the animals they're selling to North American zoos, a Japanese cargo ship. They're headed for Canada.
All of Part 2 takes place at sea, but without many of the characters we met in Part 1. Tragedy strikes and the ship sinks halfway to the Midway Atoll. No one survives except Pi and a menagerie of animals: a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. All these creatures, including Pi, are packed into a twenty-six-foot-long lifeboat. Before long, as you'd expect, there's some bloodshed. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan. And then the tiger, whose name is Richard Parker (a.k.a. RP), kills the hyena. 

Richard Parker and Pi, however, work out an uneasy living arrangement—Pi slowly trains RP until he's more or less master of the lifeboat. (Way to use those zookeeper skillz, Pi.) Pi is often despondent, though Pi and RP manage to survive. Pi catches fish and he has a few tools (like solar stills) from the lifeboat's locker. It's true that Pi's survival skills develop, but it's also true that he's just lost his entire family. Pi is alone except for a man-eating tiger. He endures through cleverness, prayer, and willpower. 

At the end of Part 2, however, some strange things happen. Pi meets another castaway on this gigantic ocean who tries to eat him. Instead, RP eats the castaway. And then Pi lands on an island made entirely of algae. Pi and RP are malnourished at this point and it's not far-fetched to think Pi has gone mad. The chapter ends with Pi and RP landing in Mexico. RP bounds off into the jungle without so much as a goodbye.

Part 3 isn't long at all. Two civil servants for the Japanese Maritime Department in the Ministry of Transport interview Pi to try and shed some light on the sinking of the cargo ship. While they don't get any answers about the ship's sudden shipwreck, they do get Pi's story. When they question the more implausible portions of Pi's story, Pi delivers an impassioned defense of "the better story." To prove his point, he tells a version of his story without any of the animals mentioned above. It's an utterly ghastly story since human beings, instead of animals, literally tear each other to shreds.

Pi asks the investigators which story they prefer. They prefer the story with animals. There's some wrapping up, but the book basically ends there. The reader is left having to decide whether Pi has concocted a totally elaborate story with animals instead of human beings to explain the horrific events on the lifeboat.

Life of Pi Themes

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GCE (A.L) English Literature

Themes

The Will to Live

Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable odds. The shipwrecked inhabitants of the little lifeboat don’t simply acquiesce to their fate: they actively fight against it. Pi abandons his lifelong vegetarianism and eats fish to sustain himself. Orange Juice, the peaceful orangutan, fights ferociously against the hyena. Even the severely wounded zebra battles to stay alive; his slow, painful struggle vividly illustrates the sheer strength of his life force. As Martel makes clear in his novel, living creatures will often do extraordinary, unexpected, and sometimes heroic things to survive. However, they will also do shameful and barbaric things if pressed. The hyena’s treachery and the blind Frenchman’s turn toward cannibalism show just how far creatures will go when faced with the possibility of extinction. At the end of the novel, when Pi raises the possibility that the fierce tiger, Richard Parker, is actually an aspect of his own personality, and that Pi himself is responsible for some of the horrific events he has narrated, the reader is forced to decide just what kinds of actions are acceptable in a life-or-death situation.

The Importance of Storytelling

Life of Pi is a story within a story within a story. The novel is framed by a (fictional) note from the author, Yann Martel, who describes how he first came to hear the fantastic tale of Piscine Molitor Patel. Within the framework of Martel’s narration is Pi’s fantastical first-person account of life on the open sea, which forms the bulk of the book. At the end of the novel, a transcript taken from an interrogation of Pi reveals the possible “true” story within that story: that there were no animals at all, and that Pi had spent those 227 days with other human survivors who all eventually perished, leaving only himself.

Pi, however, is not a liar: to him, the various versions of his story each contain a different kind of truth. One version may be factually true, but the other has an emotional or thematic truth that the other cannot approach. Throughout the novel, Pi expresses disdain for rationalists who only put their faith in “dry, yeastless factuality,” when stories—which can amaze and inspire listeners, and are bound to linger longer in the imagination—are, to him, infinitely superior.

Storytelling is also a means of survival. The “true” events of Pi’s sea voyage are too horrible to contemplate directly: any young boy would go insane if faced with the kinds of acts Pi (indirectly) tells his integrators he has witnessed. By recasting his account as an incredible tale about humanlike animals, Pi doesn’t have to face the true cruelty human beings are actually capable of. Similarly, by creating the character of Richard Parker, Pi can disavow the ferocious, violent side of his personality that allowed him to survive on the ocean. Even this is not, technically, a lie in Pi’s eyes. He believes that the tiger-like aspect of his nature and the civilized, human aspect stand in tense opposition and occasional partnership with one another, just as the boy Pi and the tiger Richard Parker are both enemies and allies.

The Nature of Religious Belief

Life of Pi begins with an old man in Pondicherry who tells the narrator, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” Storytelling and religious belief are two closely linked ideas in the novel. On a literal level, each of Pi’s three religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, come with its own set of tales and fables, which are used to spread the teachings and illustrate the beliefs of the faith. Pi enjoys the wealth of stories, but he also senses that, as Father Martin assured him was true of Christianity, each of these stories might simply be aspects of a greater, universal story about love.

Stories and religious beliefs are also linked in Life of Pi because Pi asserts that both require faith on the part of the listener or devotee. Surprisingly for such a religious boy, Pi admires atheists. To him, the important thing is to believe in something, and Pi can appreciate an atheist’s ability to believe in the absence of God with no concrete proof of that absence. Pi has nothing but disdain, however, for agnostics, who claim that it is impossible to know either way, and who therefore refrain from making a definitive statement on the question of God. Pi sees this as evidence of a shameful lack of imagination. To him, agnostics who cannot make a leap of faith in either direction are like listeners who cannot appreciate the non-literal truth a fictional story might provide.

An Unknown Girl‘by Moniza Alvi

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura   071-8309137

GCE (A.L) English Literature

An Unknown Girl‘by Moniza Alvi is a forty-seven line poem written in free verse. The poem has very minimal punctuation thus creating the effect of a stream of consciousness narrative. The speaker is looking from place to place, taking in the setting and expressing her thoughts at the same time without pause. Each line is fairly short making the poem cohesive in appearance and steady in its rhythm when read aloud. 

 Summary of An Unknown Girl

“An Unknown Girl” by Moniza Alvi speaks on an intense connection between an “unknown girl,” a bazaar, and Indian culture.

The poem begins with the speaker sitting in a marketplace getting a henna tattoo from an “unknown girl,” this girl, like the speaker, is never named or described in greater detail. The speaker looks down at the peacock that has been “iced” onto her hand and then around at the shops. She feels a connection to the market stalls, and mannequins in the shop windows with their western style wigs. She wants to remember this moment, hold onto it, and force to it becomes part of herself. 

She looks forward in time and sees herself returning home with the henna tattoo, picking off the dark brown lines and watching the light brown markings fade over the next days. She will have a temporary connection to this place for which she will always yearn.

 Analysis of an Unknown Girl

Lines 1-9

Alvi begins this poem by describing the setting in which her speaker is placed. She is in an unnamed city, in an “evening bazaar” or market. The market is most likely made up of individual stalls some of which are “Studded with neon.” There are electronic, neon lights guiding visitors from place to place. Immediately there is a sense of contrast to this place. It is called a “bazaar,” evoking an image of old fashioned market places, but this is clearly not the case. 

The speaker continues describing what she is experiencing. She has entered one of the stalls and is having her hand tattooed, with henna, by “An unknown girl.” As it will become clear by the end of the poem, this “unknown girl” is not who the title is referring to, rather the speaker herself.

The henna artist squeezes out the liquid from “a nozzle” as if she is “icing” the speaker’s hand. She is steadying herself, balancing the speaker’s hand on her “satin peach knee.”

While the specifics of where they are and who they are might be patchy, the narrator is clearly paying close attention to the small details. She is taking note of everything around her but is unable to paint a clear, entire, picture of the place. 

 Lines 10-18

This “unknown girl” is working cheaply, “hennaing” the speaker’s hand for only “a few rupees.” With this detail the reader now knows that this scene is taking place in a market in India. The scene is broken by a “little air” that blows through the street and “catches” the speaker’s “kameez,” a type of traditional Indian dress. 

Once more the reader might be tempted to place this scene further back in time than is appropriate. It is taking place in a contemporary Indian city in which there are both markets and neon lights and one can wear a “kameez” and get henna in the street. 

The speaker glances down at her hand and sees the artist’s work. A “peacock” now “spreads its lines” on the palm of her hand. It is as if it came into being by itself or perhaps had always been there. 

Lines 19- 25

The speaker is now spreading her view beyond what is directly in her line of sight. She is looking around and describing the areas within, and next to, the market. In the shops that surround her she can see “Dummies” or mannequins. Their heads are tilted as if analyzing her, and their eyes “stare” out past the window. They are wearing “western perms.” The wings have been styled to mimic popular trends in the west. This is one more out of place element in the scene. The speaker, feeling out of place herself, is noticing all those things around her that stick out. She is not the only one that is stuck between two worlds. All of India, or at least this representational portion presented here, seems to be split between the past and present. 

She continues looking around and can see “Banners for Miss India,” advertisements for the Miss India competition in 1993, being used as “curtain cloth / And sofa cloth.” These old pieces of cloth are being repurposed in the market. They are strung up and around the stalls, separating them and creating a “Canopy” around the speaker. 

Lines 26- 34

In the next lines of the poem, as her continuous strain of thought progresses, she returns the reader to her observations about the “unknown girl” who is hennaing her hand. 

She looks down once more at her hand and sees the peacock that has been painted onto it. She sees the design as “new brown veins.” She is becoming more Indian, more part of this world she feels separate from. 

She is “clinging” to these new lines, She compares her need to the desperation of 

…people who cling 

 to sides of a train. 

They are a lifeline to a different life she did not have.

 Lines 35-42

The poem starts to concludes in these next lines. The moment that the speaker has lived through, this desperate need to remain part of the Indian culture around her has passed. The “furious streets” and her racing thoughts are “hushed.” She is ready to “scrape off” the brown henna lines from her hand and allow the more permanent, lighter brown lines to remain. They will stay on her skin, “soft as a snail trail” for a week, and then begin to fade. 

The speaker’s connection to India is temporarily raging and strong, it will quiet down to a simmer, and then fade away entirely as she returns to her previous life. 

Lines 43-47

The last lines of the poem return the speaker to the country in which she lives. From there, when memories or thoughts of India “appear” and reappear, she will lean into them. She’ll reach from one land to the other, her “hands outstretched” and feel a longing for the “unknown girl” in the bazaar. 

This last mention of the “unknown girl” if the most obvious in it’s connection to the speaker. She is reaching for a past version of herself, the Indian version that is sitting in the marketplace. 

 About Moniza Alvi 

Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan and grew up in England. While there she studied at the University of York and the University of London. This experience, of being from one world and living in another, has inspired much of her poetry. Her first collection, The Country at My Shoulder was published in 1993. It earned her a spot on the list of New Generation Poets list in 1994. Since 1993 she has published seven collections, one of which was a collected edition of earlier poems. These publications have earned her a number of nominations for prizes such as the T.S. Eliot award. 

The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura   071-8309137

GCE (A.L) English Literature

The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

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.^[1][2] It premiered at the Arts Theatre Club in London's West End on 27 April 1960 and transferred to the Duchess Theatre the following month, where it ran for 444 performances before departing London for Broadway.^[2] In 1964, a film version of the play based on Pinter's unpublished screenplay was directed by Clive Donner. The movie starred Alan Batesas Mick and Donald Pleasence as Davies in their original stage roles, while Robert Shaw replaced Peter Woodthorpe as Aston. First published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter's most celebrated and oft-performed plays.

Act I

A night in winter

[Scene 1]

Aston has invited Davies, a homeless man, into his flat after rescuing him from a bar fight (7–9). Davies comments on the flat and criticises the fact that it is cluttered and badly kept. Aston attempts to find a pair of shoes for Davies but Davies rejects all the offers. Once he turns down a pair that doesn't fit well enough and another that has the wrong colour laces. Early on, Davies reveals to Aston that his real name is not "Bernard Jenkins", his "assumed name", but really "Mac Davies" (19–20, 25). He claims that his papers validating this fact are in Sidcup and that he must and will return there to retrieve them just as soon as he has a good pair of shoes. Aston and Davies discuss where he will sleep and the problem of the "bucket" attached to the ceiling to catch dripping rain water from the leaky roof (20–21) and Davies "gets into bed" while "ASTON sits, poking his [electrical] plug (21).

[Scene 2]

The LIGHTS FADE OUT. Darkness.

LIGHTS UP. Morning. (21) As Aston dresses for the day, Davies awakes with a start, and Aston informs Davies that he was kept up all night by Davies muttering in his sleep. Davies denies that he made any noise and blames the racket on the neighbours, revealing his fear of foreigners: "I tell you what, maybe it were them Blacks" (23). Aston informs Davies that he is going out but invites him to stay if he likes, indicating that he trusts him (23–24), something unexpected by Davies; for, as soon as Aston does leave the room (27), Davies begins rummaging through Aston's "stuff" (27–28) but he is interrupted when Mick, Aston’s brother, unexpectedly arrives, "moves upstage, silently," "slides across the room" and then suddenly "seizes Davies' "arm and forces it up his back," in response to which "DAVIES screams," and they engage in a minutely choreographed struggle, which Mick wins (28–29), ending Act One with the "Curtain" line, "What's the game?" (29).

Act II

[Scene 1]

A few seconds later

Mick demands to know Davies' name, which the latter gives as "Jenkins" (30), interrogates him about how well he slept the night before (30), wonders whether or not Davies is actually "a foreigner"—to which Davies retorts that he "was" indeed (in Mick's phrase) "Born and bred in the British Isles" (33)—going on to accuse Davies of being "an old robber […] an old skate" who is "stinking the place out" (35), and spinning a verbal web full of banking jargon designed to confuse Davies, while stating, hyperbolically, that his brother Aston is "a number one decorator" (36), either an outright lie or self-deceptive wishful thinking on his part. Just as Mick reaches the climactic line of his diatribe geared to put the old tramp off balance—"Who do you bank with?" (36), Aston enters with a "bag" ostensibly for Davies, and the brothers debate how to fix the leaking roof and Davies interrupts to inject the more practical question: "What do you do . . . when that bucket's full?" (37) and Aston simply says, "Empty it" (37). The three battle over the "bag" that Aston has brought Davies, one of the most comic and often-cited Beckettian routines in the play (38–39). After Mick leaves, and Davies recognises him to be "a real joker, that lad" (40), they discuss Mick's work in "the building trade" and Davies ultimately discloses that the bag they have fought over and that he was so determined to hold on to "ain't my bag" at all (41). Aston offers Davies the job of Caretaker, (42–43), leading to Davies' various assorted animadversions about the dangers that he faces for "going under an assumed name" and possibly being found out by anyone who might "ring the bell called Caretaker" (44).

[Scene 2]

THE LIGHTS FADE TO BLACKOUT.

THEN UP TO DIM LIGHT THROUGH THE WINDOW.

A door bangs.Sound of a key in the door of the room.

DAVIES enters, closes the door, and tries the light switch, on, off, on, off.

It appears to Davies that "the damn light's gone now," but, it becomes clear that Mick has sneaked back into the room in the dark and removed the bulb; he starts up "the electrolux" and scares Davies almost witless before claiming "I was just doing some spring cleaning" and returning the bulb to its socket (45). After a discussion with Davies about the place being his "responsibility" and his ambitions to fix it up, Mick also offers Davies the job of "caretaker" (46–50), but pushes his luck with Mick when he observes negative things about Aston, like the idea that he "doesn't like work" or is "a bit of a funny bloke" for "Not liking work" (Davies' camouflage of what he really is referring to), leading Mick to observe that Davies is "getting hypocritical" and "too glib" (50), and they turn to the absurd details of "a small financial agreement" relating to Davies' possibly doing "a bit of caretaking" or "looking after the place" for Mick (51), and then back to the inevitable call for "references" and the perpetually necessary trip to Sidcup to get Davies' identity "papers" (51–52).

[Scene 3]

Morning

Davies wakes up and complains to Aston about how badly he slept. He blames various aspects of the flat's set up. Aston suggests adjustments but Davies proves to be callous and inflexible. Aston tells the story of how he was checked into a mental hospital and given electric shock therapy, but when he tried to escape from the hospital he was shocked while standing, leaving him with permanent brain damage; he ends by saying, "I've often thought of going back and trying to find the man who did that to me. But I want to do something first. I want to build that shed out in the garden" (54–57). Critics regard Aston's monologue, the longest of the play, as the "climax" of the plot.^[3] In dramaturgical terms, what follows is part of the plot's "falling action".

Act III

[Scene 1]

Two weeks later [… ]Afternoon.

Davies and Mick discuss the flat. Mick relates "(ruminatively)" in great detail what he would do to redecorate it (60). When asked who "would live there," Mick's response "My brother and me" leads Davies to complain about Aston's inability to be social and just about every other aspect of Aston's behaviour (61–63). Though initially invited to be a "caretaker," first by Aston and then by Mick, he begins to ingratiate himself with Mick, who acts as if he were an unwitting accomplice in Davies' eventual conspiracy to take over and fix up the flat without Aston's involvement (64) an outright betrayal of the brother who actually took him in and attempted to find his "belongings"; but just then Aston enters and gives Davies yet another pair of shoes which he grudgingly accepts, speaking of "going down to Sidcup" in order "to get" his "papers" again (65–66).

[Scene 2]

That night

Davies brings up his plan when talking to Aston, whom he insults by throwing back in his face the details of his treatment in the mental institution (66–67), leading Aston, in a vast understatement, to respond: "I . . . I think it's about time you found somewhere else. I don't think we're hitting it off" (68). When finally threatened by Davies pointing a knife at him, Aston tells Davies to leave: "Get your stuff" (69). Davies, outraged, claims that Mick will take his side and kick Aston out instead and leaves in a fury, concluding (mistakenly): "Now I know who I can trust" (69).

[Scene 3]

Later

Davies reenters with Mick explaining the fight that occurred earlier and complaining still more bitterly about Mick's brother, Aston (70–71). Eventually, Mick takes Aston's side, beginning with the observation "You get a bit out of your depth sometimes, don't you?" (71). Mick forces Davies to disclose that his "real name" is Davies and his "assumed name" is "Jenkins" and, after Davies calls Aston "nutty", Mick appears to take offence at what he terms Davies' "impertinent thing to say," concludes, "I'm compelled to pay you off for your caretaking work. Here's half a dollar," and stresses his need to turn back to his own "business" affairs (74). When Aston comes back into the apartment, the brothers face each other," "They look at each other. Both are smiling, faintly" (75). Using the excuse of having returned for his "pipe" (given to him earlier through the generosity of Aston), Davies turns to beg Aston to let him stay (75–77). But Aston rebuffs each of Davies' rationalisations of his past complaints (75–76). The play ends with a "Long silence" as Aston, who "remains still, his back to him [Davies], at the window, apparently unrelenting as he gazes at his garden and makes no response at all to Davies' futile plea, which is sprinkled with many dots (". . .") of elliptical hesitations (77–78).

The Caretaker Summary

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GCE (A.L) English Literature

The Caretaker 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 opinionated, 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.

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.

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. Befuddled 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, wheedling and promising to be better. All Aston says is that Davies makes too much noise. The curtain descends on Davies' protestations.

Life of Pi

After deciding to sell their zoo in India and move to Canada, Santosh and Gita Patel board a freighter with their sons and a few remaining animals. Tragedy strikes when a terrible storm sinks the ship, leaving the Patels' teenage son, Pi (Suraj Sharma), as the only human survivor. However, Pi is not alone; a fearsome Bengal tiger has also found refuge aboard the lifeboat. As days turn into weeks and weeks drag into months, Pi and the tiger must learn to trust each other if both are to survive.