Name : Anjali M. Rathod
Enrollment no. : 4069206420220024
Roll no. : 02
Batch : M.A. Sem. 2 (2022-24)
Subject Code : 22400
Paper no. : 107 - The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War 2 to the End of the Century
Email Address: rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : Smt. S.B. Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar - 364002
Waiting For Godot As Absurd Theatre
Introduction :
Samuel Beckett, in full Samuel Barclay Beckett was an author, critic, and playwright. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. He wrote in both French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting for Godot).
Samuel Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin. Samuel Beckett is widely considered one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century, and his works have had a significant impact on modern literature and theatre. Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland, and studied French, Italian, and English literature at Trinity College Dublin. He spent several years teaching English in France before World War II and later joined the French Resistance during the war. After the war, he settled in Paris and began writing full-time.
Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, ‘Waiting for Godot,’ has been described as a masterpiece of 20th-century Play or drama and is widely considered one of the most important plays of the modern era. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, and his works continue to be studied and performed around the world. He died in Paris in 1989.
About the Play:
‘Waiting for Godot’ is a play by Samuel Beckett, first performed in 1953. It is a classic of 20th-century theatre and one of the most famous and influential plays of the modern era. Waiting for Godot was a tragicomedy in two acts by Irish writer Samuel Beckett. It was published in 1952 in French as En attendant Godot and first produced in 1953. Waiting for Godot was a true innovation in drama and the Theatre of the Absurd first theatrical success.
The play consists of conversations between Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting for the arrival of the mysterious Godot, who continually sends word that he will appear but who never does. They encounter Lucky and Pozzo, they discuss their miseries and their lots in life, they consider hanging themselves, and yet they wait. Often perceived as being tramps, Vladimir and Estragon are a pair of human beings who do not know why they were put on earth, they make the tenuous assumption that there must be some point to their existence, and they look to Godot for enlightenment. Because they hold out hope for meaning and direction, they acquire a kind of nobility that enables them to rise above their futile existence.
‘Waiting for Godot’ is known for its minimalist set design, sparse dialogue, and absurdist themes. It has been interpreted in many ways, with some critics seeing it as a commentary on the human condition and others as a critique of modern society. It has been staged in many different languages and countries and has been adapted into film, television, and other media.
The play's title character, Godot, is often seen as a symbol of hope or salvation, but the play's open-endedness leaves the interpretation of his significance up to the audience. Despite its seemingly bleak subject matter, ‘Waiting for Godot’ is also noted for its humour and wit, and its innovative approach to theatre has inspired countless artists and playwrights in the years since its first performance.
Theatre of Absurd :
In the Theatre of the Absurd, the real content of the play lies in the action. Language may be discarded altogether, as in Beckett's Act Without Words or in Ionesco's The New Tenant, in which the whole sense of the play is contained in the incessant arrival of more and more furniture so that the occupant of the room is, in the end, literally drowned in it.
In this, the Theatre of the Absurd also reveals its anti-literary character, its endeavor to link up with the pre-literary strata of stage history : the circus, the performances of itinerant jugglers and mountebanks, the music hall, fairground barkers, acrobats, and also the robust world of the silent film. Ionesco, in particular, clearly owes a great deal to Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Keystone Cops, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers. And it is surely significant that so much of successful popular entertainment in our age shows affinities with the subject matter and preoccupation of the Avantgarde Theatre of the Absurd. It is a sophisticated, but nevertheless highly popular, film comedian like Jacques Tati uses dialogue merely as a barely comprehensible babble of noises, and also dwells on the loneliness of man in our age, the horror of our mechanization and over organization gone mad. Danny Kaye excels in streams of gibberish closely akin to Lucky's oration in Waiting for Godot.(Esslin)
Waiting For Godot as absurd theatre:
The Theatre of the Absurd was influenced by existentialist philosophy and aimed to reveal the meaninglessness of everyday life, with the goal of inspiring change. Samuel Beckett's play ‘Waiting for Godot’ deconstructed traditional theatrical elements, such as plot and character, to comment on post-World War II society. The genre of Theatre of the Absurd challenged audiences to question their own existence, leading to a shift in societal attitudes and behaviour. The genre's innovative approach to theatre encouraged millions of people around the world to reconsider the meaning of their lives and seek change.
The Theatre of the Absurd was influenced by existentialist philosophy and aimed to reveal the meaninglessness of everyday life, with the goal of inspiring change. Samuel Beckett's play ‘Waiting for Godot’ deconstructed traditional theatrical elements, such as plot and character, to comment on post-World War II society. The genre of Theatre of the Absurd challenged audiences to question their own existence, leading to a shift in societal attitudes and behaviour. The genre's innovative approach to theatre encouraged millions of people around the world to reconsider the meaning of their lives and seek change.
The characters in Absurdist plays differed significantly from the well-defined and psychologically realistic characters of Realism. The Absurdist characters lacked identity, development, and were often portrayed as dull. In ‘Waiting for Godot,’. The two main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, were depicted as clown-like tramps who engaged in meaningless linguistic games, ritualistic behaviour, and improvised actions that led nowhere.
Absurdity means meaninglessness, purposelessness, silly, strange, incongruence, ridiculousness, bizarre, and nonsense. An absurdity is a thing that is awfully unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously or the state of being so. The Theater of Absurd is a form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development. In a simple word a type of drama that tries to portray the absurdity of human life using illogical, meaningless, and deliberately confusing action and dialogue.
In the opening scene of the play, Estragon struggles to remove his boots and expresses his frustration by saying "Nothing to be done." Vladimir responds by saying, "I'm beginning to come round to that opinion," which creates a comedic effect by playing on the dual meanings of the phrase. While Estragon refers to the physical struggle of removing his boots, Vladimir alludes to the philosophical struggle of waiting for something that may never come.
In this play, the main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for a character who never arrives to give them a sense of purpose, however their only sense of purpose comes from the act of waiting. By doing this Beckett comments on the fact that people adopt unconscious mechanical routines and ritualistic behaviour however fail to see their significance. This causes them to be stuck in an endless cycle, just as Vladimir and Estragon are in.
Samuel Beckett also commented on how people rely on hierarchical society just as Estragon. We are stuck in a world where our actions dictate what our meaning is. The technique of repetition in the dialogue of the characters emphasize the characters unawareness of and inability to solve problems and thus remain stuck in a cycle of similar thoughts and actions.
Conclusion :
Overall , the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett contains almost all the elements of an absurd play. It delineates all the elements of absurdity through the two main characters ‘Vladimir’ and ‘Estragon’. Waiting for Godot emphasizes on the absurdity of human existence by employing repetitions, meaningless dialogues, and purposeless, foolish, nonsensical, silly, and confusing situations which are opposed to truth or reason. Roby Cohn, an American theatre scholar and a leading authority on playwright Samuel Beckett, looks upon ‘Waiting for Godot’ as one of the masterpieces of Absurdist Literature.
As Nealon puts it ‘Waiting for Godot’ is an attack on modernism with its ideological and Grand Narrative that claims to interpret the world Estragon and Vladimir are trapped by their modernist nostalgia for legitimation in Godot’
Works Cited:
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ebrahim Alkazi". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ebrahim-Alkazi. Accessed 27 March 2023.
Esslin, Martin J.. "Samuel Beckett". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Beckett. Accessed 27 March 2023.
Esslin, Martin. “The Theatre of the Absurd.” The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1960, pp. 3–15. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1124873. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.
“Evaluation of Waiting for Godot as an Absurd Play.” Edubirdie, 27 Dec. 2022, edubirdie.com/examples/evaluation-of-waiting-for-godot-as-an-absurd-play/
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