Summary
While Mr. Kidd is off stage, Rose sits in the rocking chair. When the door opens, a blind Black man enters, closing the door behind him. He uses a stick to feel his way through the room and stops when he reaches the armchair. Kidd says, “Mrs. Hudd?” Rose tells him he just touched a chair and invites him to sit in it. The man sits and thanks her. Rose tells him not to thank her, saying she doesn’t want him up there; she doesn’t know who he is and the sooner he gets out the better.
After a pause, Rose stands, and speaks curtly, demanding to know what he wants. When the man looks around the room, Rose asks what he’s looking at if he’s blind. She asks to know what he wants so he can get out. He replies that his name is Riley. Rose says she doesn’t care, but then stops herself, telling him that Riley isn’t his name.
As if he trying to fool her, she reminds Riley she is a grown woman and not a little girl; she can keep up with his whatever he is doing, staying ahead of “people like [him].” When he doesn’t respond, she asks if he is deaf too, adding, “You’re all deaf and dumb and blind, the lot of you. A bunch of cripples.”
Riley comments that it is a large room. Rose angrily tells him he knows nothing about the room because he can’t see a thing. She asks again what he wants, and he says, “I want to see you.” Rose reminds him in a taunting voice that he can’t see her, as a blind man—“an old, poor blind man.” She says she doesn’t know him. She launches into a speech about people coming in and stinking up her room. She gives him grief for upsetting her landlord, saying she and her husband are his favorite tenants, and now Riley has dragged her name into whatever Riley is up to. She tells him to spit it out.
Riley says he has a message for her. She rants at him for a moment, insisting again that he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him, so it’s impossible he would have a message to deliver. When given a chance to speak more, Riley says her father wants her to come home. After a pause, Rose asks, “Home?” Riley confirms. She tries to send him off, saying it is late, but Riley repeats the request for her to come home. He calls her Sal. Rose tells him to not call her that. Riley says, “Now I touch you.” Rose tells him not to touch her. He says "Sal" again, and Rose says, “I can’t.”
Riley says, “I want you to come home. With me.” He tells her he waited to see her, and now he sees her. Rose answers in one- or two-word responses, saying she can’t. When he refers to her as Sal, she says, “Not that.” Rose says she has been here “long.” She says the “day is a hump. I never go out.” She repeats, “I’ve been here.” Riley replies, “Come home now, Sal.”
Rose extends her hands and touches Riley’s eyes, the back of his head, and his temples. Bert enters. He stops at the door before going to the window and drawing the curtains: it is dark out the window. Bert goes to the center of the room and looks at Rose. Bert says he got back all right. Rose moves toward him and says, “Yes.” She asks if it is late.
Bert replies, “I had a good bowl down there,” launching into a monologue about how he drove "her" (his van) hard even though it is icy and cold out. In short sentences, he says the van was good and he could see the road all right. He had the road mostly to himself there and back, aside from one other car, which he bumped to make it get out of his way. The van took him there and brought him back.
Bert takes a chair from the table and sits close to Riley’s chair (in the stage directions, Riley here is called the Negro, as he was called when he walked on stage). Bert looks at Riley before lifting the armchair with his foot, causing Riley to fall to the floor. Slowly, Riley stands, saying, “Mr. Hudd, your wife—” Bert shouts, “Lice!” and hits Riley, knocking him back to the floor. Bert kicks Riley’s head against the gas stove several times.
The play ends with Riley lying still on the ground next to the stove. Bert walks away. In the silence, Rose stands clutching her eyes. She says, “Can’t see. I can’t see. I can’t see.” The lights go out and the curtain falls.
Analysis
Having built up so much menace and mystery in anticipation of Riley’s entrance, Pinter presents an oddly destabilizing image by showing Riley to be vulnerable and serene as he enters the stage as a blind man who relies on a walking stick to navigate physical space. Rose does not know him, and her hostility toward him suggests she believes he is trying to swindle her in some way. Her words imply that she may even doubt Riley’s disability, assuming it is part of his effort to con people like her into giving a “handout.” Her attitude toward him also suggests she is prejudiced against him because of his race.
As Rose hurls abuses at Riley, growing increasingly animated in her monologue, Riley sits calmly and listens—something of a mirror to Rose’s first scene with Bert. However, the scene, which has so far been grounded in reality, develops a sharply surrealist edge when Riley tells Rose he has brought a message from her father, and it is time to “come home.” Although thrown off by these unexpected replies, Rose’s instinct is to reject what Riley says as nonsense. She even disputes that Riley is his name, as though she has her own association with the name.
However, a crack appears when Riley addresses Rose as Sal, a name she seems to recognize and is comfortable being called. While it is still unclear who exactly Riley is and what he knows about Rose’s past, Pinter allows for the audience to make their own informed guesses. Among those guesses, there is evidence to suggest Rose once went by the name Sal; it may have been a name her father used for her. Coupled with Riley’s request that she “come home,” it is possible that Rose has abandoned a former identity or family to live with Bert, and now someone has managed to track her down.
Alongside the above interpretations, which are based in the tangible world, there is also evidence to suggest that Riley is a Grim Reaper–like figure who has come to claim Rose’s soul. In this more symbolic, otherworldly interpretation, the “father” in question is God, and the request to “come home” amounts to a request to enter the afterlife. Further support for this interpretation can be found in Riley’s appearance. Instead of wearing a black cloak, he has dark skin whereas other characters are white. He also uses a stick to see—a replacement for the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Further, Riley says, “I want you to come home,” as if a God-like entity is speaking through him. Lastly, Riley says, “Now I touch you,” as though touching her is necessary to confirm that she is going with him to the world of the dead—just as the Grim Reaper touches people to claim their souls.
While Rose resists and rejects everything Riley says to her, an internal transformation occurs, and she moves toward Riley to touch his head, temples, and eyes in the way visually impaired people gain an understanding of what someone looks like. Intriguingly, it is Rose who touches Riley, instead of Riley touching her as he threatened. However, the moment is interrupted by Bert returning home. As if broken from Riley’s spell, Rose moves toward her husband and listens to his bizarre short monologue about how well he drove his van.
The formerly mute Bert personifies his van, speaking of “her” as though she is a reliable and stimulating sexual partner. While it isn’t made explicit in stage directions how Rose reacts to Bert’s speech, Robert Altman’s TV-movie adaptation from 1987 shows Rose listening raptly, as though she is sexually stimulated herself by Bert’s language. Without asking for an explanation from Rose about who Riley is, Bert proceeds to tip Riley out of his chair and viciously assault him, screaming, “Lice!” While Riley lies unconscious or dead against the stove, Rose suddenly realizes she has lost her vision. With this peculiar and unsettling ending, Pinter may be suggesting that Rose has acquired Riley’s blindness because she must now assume his place as an emissary of the underworld. Whatever the case, it is clear that Rose’s mundane but secure existence is lost.
