He picks up the paper.
What about this? Listen to this!
He refers to the paper.
A man of eighty-seven wanted to cross the road. But there was a lot of traffic, see? He couldn't see how he was going to squeeze through. So he crawled under a lorry.
GUS. He what?
BEN. He crawled under a lorry. A stationary lorry.
GUS. No?
BEN. The lorry started and ran over him.
GUS. Go on!
BEN. That's what it says here.
GUS. Get away.
BEN. It's enough to make you want to puke, isn't it?
GUS. Who advised him to do a thing like that?
BEN. A man eighty-seven crawling under a lorry!
GUS. It's unbelievable.
BEN. It's down here in black and white.
GUS. Incredible.
Silence.
By Pablo Vindas
ResponderEliminarHarold Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter" points out the ephemeral quality of life. During the play, the characters discuss how monotonous their job is. Ben, knowing that he will come out alive just states that he has his hobbies and that he can fight idleness back; ironically, Gus, which is the character that knows the less about the job, complains that this job is taking time out of his life. Without knowing for sure if Gus was the target, the reader can deduce that he is the best candidate to be at the end of the play. Having this interpretation at hand we can compare the times these characters hear the toilette being flushed with the times that we can change our lives. Every time they hear the sound of water, Ben has the opportunity to strike and Gus does not even know. The unpredictable destiny of these characters is the one that we share everyday. Death is a random element. The title of the play underlies a double meaning: the explicit and implicit. We have the Dumb Waiter as a device, but at the same time to criticize people that only wait for something that will never come by waiting. People have to live their lives as if it were the last day of their lives since there is not point in waiting when death can be around the corner. The uncertainty if Greg is or not the victim is the same that we have every day, in which we don’t know if we will or not be the victims of our destiny.