SOURCE: Cardullo, Bert. “Pinter's The Homecoming.” Explicator 54, no. 1 (fall 1995): 45-6.

In the following essay, Cardullo explicates the significance of Teddy's Uncle Sam in Pinter's The Homecoming.

At the end of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, right before Teddy leaves, his uncle Sam, with whom he seems to have a good relationship, “croaks and collapses” (78). Sam is not dead, yet no one does anything to help him, not even Teddy. Max, Lenny, and Joey, Teddy's father and brothers respectively, are more interested in whether Teddy's wife Ruth will really be remaining with them as their mother-whore (she finally agrees to terms of “employment”). Teddy is so concerned with getting out of the family home and back to his teaching duties, as well as his three sons in America, that he neglects Sam. Now that his wife has joined his father and brothers, he believes he has no alternative but to...