Waiting for Godot - Play by Samuel Beckett

About the author

Life and works:

· Born in Dublin in 1906

· Middle class Protestant – describes himself as “almost a Quaker”

· Later loses his religious faith

· At 14, sent to a boarding school – brilliant at scholarly pursuits and sports

· In 1923, entered Trinity College and graduated in 1927

· Went to Paris on a Fellowship program and spent three years there

· Met James Joyce in Paris, and became a member of his literary circle

· At the age of 20, his first contribution – the first essay opening a collection

o Anthology was called: ‘Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress’

o Beckett’s essay: “Dante…Bruno. Vico…Joyce”

o The collection contained twelve essays on Joyce and his masterpiece Finnigan’s Wake

o “The essay asserts the artist’s duty to express the totality and complexity of his experience, regardless of the
public’s lazy demand for easy comprehensibility”

· During his stay in Paris, he also made a mark as a poet, by winning a literary award of 10 pounds on the subject
of Time. The poem was entitled ‘Whoroscope’ and was a kind of description of Descartes meditating on time, hen
eggs, and evanescence

· At the age of 24, he obtained his Masters’ degree, and in 1931, wrote an essay on Proust – much of the essay
deals with his own feelings on art, literature, artists, solitude. At some point in the essay, he says, “Art is the
apotheosis of solitude”

· After his MA, worked four terms at Trinity College

· To him, routine was cancer of his time, and he resigned his job, and started traveling

· During his jouneys, wrote and did odd jobs to earn his living – in many of his later writings, the major characters
are wanderers.

· In 1938, novel Murphy. Murphy seeks all kinds of breaks from worldly ties, and his girlfriend tries to make him
get a job – semi-autobiographical – Joyce’s daughter Lucia was infatuated with Beckett

· Settled in Paris in Mount Parnass

· In 1937, he was stabbed by a thief – Beckett visited him in jail – man informed him that it was merely for fun –
was a revelation that could be no purpose behind actions.

· When he heard the news of the outbreak of war, he was with his mother in Dublin – immediately left for Paris –
was a supporter of war because he was opposed to Hitler – joined the resistance movement and fought against the
Nazis – had long arguments with Joyce who was a Pacifist

· Wrote Walt

· After the war was his most productive period – Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, Endgame and novels
like Malone Dies.

· Wrote all his major works in French

· Died on 17 July 1989. Interred with his wife - simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it
should be "any colour, so long as it's grey".

Characteristics of Beckett's work

Was influenced by existential thoughts and disturbed by the ravages of the II World War, his basic concern is
illustrating the pathetic human condition in the world.

In his attempt to convey his view of the human condition, he employs deliberately recurring features in his themes,
characters, and techniques

1. Persistent mood of brooding decay: a static world, a world in which bright, clear light does not penetrate.
Landscape is bleak and desolate. It is a world devoid of dynamic actions

2. Central characters are usually pictures of the anti-hero. We don’t find resourceful, virile human beings, but
deformed, crippled ones; insecure, bewildered and idle. They are the antithesis of royal figures of earlier dramas.
Physical incapacity is a reflection of their spiritual incapacity. Relationships are sterile; the only fellowship they know
is the fellowship of common misery.

3. Futile search for meaning – the characters themselves are not sure what they are searching for. Their concern is
metaphysical in two main aspects: they seek some clue to meaning in what they perceive to be an essentially absurd
world; and they search for self-knowledge

4. Stream of consciousness technique is a fitting vehicle for the metaphysical concern: the technique rejects the
formal structured dialogue of the traditional novel, and instead we have the monologue. Dialogue still appears but
appears firmly embedded in interior life of the narrator.

5. Strong note of pathos: Beckett’s human beings are degraded figures, physically incapacitated, their
characteristic behaviour is to wait helplessly. Helplessness is often emphasised by the grotesque humour which
intrudes on their world.

6. Picture of man confronting the void as he encounters the threat of nothingness – the writer does more than
describe the void, he involves the audience in it

7. There are recurring motifs which appear in Beckett’s work, i.e. situations found in more than one work and in
their relation to the theme of the writer, they take on a deeper, suggestive significance.

What is theatre of the absurd?

· Term coined by Martin Esslin (a Hungarian born British dramatist, producer, critic, scholar, and professor of
drama), who wrote The Theatre of the Absurd

· Term applied to a group of dramatists in the 1950s who did not regard themselves as a school but shared
certain attitude to the predicament of man in the universe

· Works in drama and prose fiction with a common theme:

o Human life is purposeless – in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings (absurd literally means out of
harmony)

o Human condition is essentially absurd

o And this condition can be represented only by literature that is absurd in itself

· Movement emerged in France after World War II against the traditional beliefs and values of traditional
literature and culture

o Assumption that man is a rational creature

o Part of an ordered social structure

o Capable of heroism and dignity even in defeat ("I will not yield, to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
and to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of
no woman born, yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield.

· After 1940s, tendency to see man as

o Isolated

o Living in an alien universe which has no truth, value, or meaning (no idea of divine retribution etc)

o Life is a meaningless movement from nothing to nothing – no discernible reason for existence

o Awareness of the lack of purpose in all man does produces a state of metaphysical anguish which is the central
theme in the Theatre of the Absurd

o An existence anguished and absurd

· Eugene Ionesco of the Theatre of the Absurd puts it:

“Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his

actions become senseless, absurd, useless”

· In his La Tentation de l’occident, Andre Malraux remarks:

“At the centre of European man, dominating the great moments of his life, there lies an essential absurdity”

· This theme is expounded in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus: A vision of life essentially absurd

o Without apparent purpose

o Feeling of solitude in a hostile world

o Sense of isolation from other human beings

o Out of harmony with his surroundings

o Life sad to the point of anguish

o At the same time, in a laconic fashion, funny

Methods:

· Distinguishing feature of the writers of the Absurd from earlier dramatists who have mirrored a similar concern
in their works (senselessness of life and loss of ideals had been reflected in earlier writers, but they presented
irrationality in terms of old conventions)

o Ideas are allowed to shape form as well as content – do not argue about absurdity, they ‘present; it in being

§ All semblance of logical construction is destroyed

§ The rational linking of ideas in an intellectually viable argument is abandoned

§ And the irrationality of experience is transferred to the stage

1. Drama consciously does away with traditional plot structure

2. Character and motivation abandoned in favour of states of mind

3. Shows human beings struggling with irrationality of experience, in a state that has been described as
‘metaphysical anguish’

4. Leads the spectator to a complicated situation which seems illogical and absurd
5. Complication does not lead to a climax, resolution, or logical ending

6. Violates the expectation of the audience

7. Language is not poetic but banal

8. Language is devalued as a means of communication

9. Lack of formal logic and conventional structure emphasise the difficulty of communicating

10. Thus, artistically portrays the general feeling of anxiety – the absurd predicament

11. Theme of alienation, solitude, and search for meaning

12. No didactic purpose

13. Achieves the effect of ‘alienation’ – audience does not identify with the characters, it challenges the audience to
make sense of nonsense, to face the situation consciously rather than feel it vaguely, and perceive, with laughter the
fundamental absurdity

o Such a theatre presents the anxiety and despair and the purposelessness and the sense of loss at the
disappearance of solutions and illusions. Facing up to this loss means that we face up to reality itself. According to
Esslin,

Today when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, … the need
to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to
face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions – and to laugh at it.

o Esslin’s elucidation of absurd drama, in The Theatre of the Absurd:

If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged
by subtlety of characterisation and motivation, these are often without recognizable characters and present the
audience with almost mechanical puppets; if a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly
exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to
nature and portray the manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem to be reflections
of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of
incoherent babblings.

· Proponents: Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Tom Stoppard etc.