Ballesteros’ analysis:

Two hired killers who belong to a strange organisation are waiting.

In one room, the dramatic situation unfolds.

Filling the time.

Ben doesn't question anything. He is aware of his role as a hitman.

Gus is the one who seems to be desperate and transgressing the rules of the organisation.
No political system likes constant dissension.

Realistic setting

- Ben, reading the newspaper.

- They flush the toilet, and it doesn't work, but later, it does.

Claustrophobic work of a closed room.

Ben is adapted to the situation and no questions asked.

Gus, looking for explanations, jaded with his job, moral problems (I hope it's not a woman
because they break down sooner and you get more traumatic reactions).
He has been shocked by these victims.
From a political point of view, he questions the system.

Ben reads the newspaper, the everyday, but they are subject to interpretation.
Ben narrates strange and violent events
- an 87-year-old man is going to cross the road and, as there is a lot of traffic, he wants to
crawl under a lorry, but is run over and killed by the lorry.
- a girl who drowns a cat. “How did she do it Gus asks himself why. I bet he did it. The
brother.” He is presented from the beginning questioning things, not believing everything
he is told.

Silence is important, and the stage director must understand how long this stage silence
must last, otherwise the plays would not work as the playwright designed them.

Important
Pinter refuses to let his plays start from an abstract or allegorical idea.
The characters and the context are concrete.
There are no absolute truths.

In silence, the characters become more evident to him.

Types of silences:
1) when no words are articulated.
2) when a verbal torrent is expressed which means nothing and carries nothing.
Repetitions dialogue in which there is no understanding of what is being said or
happening.
Ben ironically gives Gus the instructions he has received in a somewhat comical, if bizarre,
way. In the scene depicted it would lack that solemnity that is intended to be tragic or
dramatic. The humour arises from these absurd scenes. Ben says let me give you your
instructions. Gus sighs, and sits next to Ben and that is ironic and paradoxical for the
denouement. These repetitions are a constant linguistic game
The long silence at the end of the play in which Ben and Gus stare at each other is very
significant.

The sensibility of the language is somewhat hollowed out by the ambiguity of the
language.
When Gus says that you can't light the kettle but the gas. What he does is to prolong the
conversation, as phatic utterances. The speaker wants to break the silence.

Strange things: the cistern works well for a long time after it has been turned on.

Important semiotic or theatrical elements for the spectator to understand what is

happening
- Who cleans the rooms after the crimes are committed?
Who takes the corpse and removes the blood?
- The envelope with the matches.
- They want to make tea and they can't.
- We don't know what this room is, but it could be the kitchen of a restaurant.
- In a room we feel comfortable and safe, but here, the characters are in strange and alien
rooms. And there's this dumb waiter where absurd orders for food appear, which they ask
the hitmen for. We see that Gus has hidden from Ben that he has a bag of chips, because
he feels tense and out of the system. That's why Ben feels betrayed.
We are not told who's operating that dumbwaiter.
"Dumbwaiter" refers not only to the hatch but to the characters, who are waiting (waiting)
and have no say in what they do (dumb). They only carry out orders, and therefore the title
is ambiguous and polysemous.
The dumbwaiter is asking, and they fill it with what they have to eat (biscuits, bars of
chocolate, a pint of milk, a packet of tea...).
In this way we realise that Gus is not prepared, as they don't have the material to satisfy
the orders.
It seems like a test of the organisation. What is important is this sense of secrecy.
And most of the stuff that Gus puts on the dumbwaiter is in bad condition.

The orders the dumbwaiter gives are increasingly bizarre or sophisticated:

"One Bamboo Shoots, Water Chestnuts and Chicken. One Char Siu and Beansprouts.
BEN. Beansprouts?"
GUS. Yes. BEN. Blimey. GUS. I wouldn't know where to begin

And so there are these situations of silence and conflict, and we see how the
communicator appears, very significant for Ben to receive the orders to which he is
completely oblivious.

There is a very humorous moment in the scene when the machine starts asking for
"Macarounada," "Macaroni Pastitsio. Ormitha Macarounada," which we don't know what it
is.

The final mystery of who sent the matches, who gives the orders by the intercom. Ben,
meanwhile, tries to remain calm because he is alarmed by what is happening.

Ultimately, Gus loses his temper

Gus: What's he doing it for? We've been through our tests, haven't we? We got right
through our tests, years ago, didn't we? We took them together, don't you remeber, didn't
we? We've always done our job. What's he doing all this for? What's the idea? What's he
playing these games for?
So, Gus, in the end, completely loses his composure when he receives one last order:
"Scampi!"

Gus: WE'VE GOT NOTHING LEFT! NOTHING! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

At the end, Ben gets his last orders from the communicator while Gus is offstage, in the
bathroom.

Ben: Understood. Repeat. He has arrived and will be coming in straight away. The normal
method to be employed. Understood.

He's listening to what he has to do, which is to kill the person who comes through the door,
and the person who comes through the door is Gus.
And we have that frozen moment in the scene where there is that long silence and that
look from one to the other and where we understand that what seems to be going to
happen is that Ben, the hitman who doesn't question the orders, ends up killing his own
partner, who is someone who has doubts and confusion about what is happening and who
asks too many questions, tries to probe too much, and takes a stand against a system that
seems unfair, violent, arbitrary and absurd.

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Paloma’s Analysis

The style of dialogue between Ben and Gus is different from that between either of them
and the boss.
When Ben and Gus talk to each other it is thug language.
When they talk to the upper classes they change register to talk to the upper classes.
They go out of their way to sound more than they are.

The upper classes ask them for ready-made meals, fine things.

Gus has to die because he is a liability to the organisation, because he asks too many
questions. His conscience starts to prick at his job (the girl's murder), and he hadn't
thought about it before (who cleans up after the body falls to the ground?).
Ben answers him evasively, changing the subject by replying with the news in the paper so
as not to answer.
So, if Gus asks something, and Ben answers, but doesn't answer the question, there is a
"silence." Dialogue is used as silence.

Gus is clumsy because he has trouble understanding instructions, and he even tells him to
tie his shoelaces.

On the last job a girl was killed.

We know that Gus was being set up for the murder all day because he asks:

GUS. Why did you stop the car this morning, in the middle of that
road?
BEN (lowering the paper). I thought you were asleep.
GUS. I was, but I woke up when you stopped. You did stop, didn't
you?

Pause.

In the middle of that road. It was still dark, don't you remember?
I looked out. It was all misty. I thought perhaps you wanted to
kip, but you were sitting up dead straight, like you were waiting
for something.
BEN. I wasn't waiting for anything.

Ben stopped the car because he was waiting for orders.

They receive an envelope under the door with 12 matches. It could be a signal to tell him
to burn, to kill Gus.

The fact that the cistern doesn't work could mean that there is a weapon hidden in there.

When Ben gives Gus the instructions he repeats part of the conversation

"BEN. He'll look at us."

"GUS. And we'll look at him."
matches the last line of the play:

"He raises his head and looks at BEN."

In other words, throughout the play there are hints that he is going to kill him.

It is called theatre or comedy of the absurd because the conversations lead to total
absurdity, even with sudden changes of subject.
Another example is the instructions at the end, which are a play on words in the indirect
style and confusion of persons.

BEN. He won't see you.

GUS. He won't see me.

BEN. But he'll see me.

GUS. He'll see you.

BEN. He won't know you're there.

GUS. He won't know you're there.
GUS. He won't know I'm there.

BEN. I take out my gun.

GUS. You take out your gun.

BEN. He stops in his tracks.

GUS. He stops in his tracks

Another example is the absurd arguments over language.

BEN (powerfully). If I say go and light the kettle I mean go and

light the kettle.
GUS. How can you light the kettle?
BEN. It's a figure of speech! Light the kettle. It's a figure of
speech!
GUS. I've never heard it.
BEN. Light the kettle! It's common usage!
GUS. I think you've got it wrong.

Another example, the names of the food dishes are absurdities that lead to humour,
although it should be tragicomic because they are two hitmen.

All these absurdities can be considered as silences, because talking nonsense is like a
silence in which nothing is said.

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When we are reading the play we have to imagine the duration of the silences, and this
includes the importance of the reader, as a postmodernist characteristic.

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Ben is physically and verbally dominant and violent towards Gus, hitting him with the
newspaper, grabbing him by the throat,
"BEN (grabbing him with two hands by the throat, at arm's length)",
and insulting him: "THE KETTLE, YOU FOOL!". Also, the news he reads in the paper is
violent (the man run over when he wanted to cross the street squatting and the cat
drowned by an 8 year old girl).
Ben makes Gus see who's in charge: "BEN. Who's the senior partner here, me
or you?"

Gus is a bit of a dullard, he has trouble figuring it out.

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Characteristics of postmodernism:

- Black humour.
- Irony: Hints are given that Gus is going to be killed, but he doesn't realise it.
It is ironic that one of the assassins ends up murdered.
- Metanarrative or metalanguage: The fight over the kettle is about differences over
language.
They mean the same thing, but in different ways.
It is as if they are two different readers talking about the same thing.
Ben claims it is "a figure of speech"→ metalanguage.
- Self-reflection: Ben questions everything, even asking how can it be a restaurant if there
is no kitchen.
- Intertextuality: The newspaper Ben reads.
References to Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
- The importance of the reader: It is important because the reader brings new meanings to
the play because we fill in the gaps that the car leaves on purpose.
For example, we don't know if Ben kills Gus, but we assume that he does, because Ben is
given the code to kill.
- Indeterminacy: Well, with the gaps there is no certainty as to how the play ends.
- Fragmentation:
There is the construct of good and evil. A murderer is dead, is that good or bad?

Title:
- The dumbwaiter.
- The waiting fool: Gus, that would be the waiting fool.

It's comedy of menace because there are guns, and because Ben threatens Gus more
and more violently. There are more and more unanswered questions, and the atmosphere
seems more and more threatening. Or when they discover the pipe.