Eng426 20th century english literature

Theatre of the Absurd and Waiting for Godot

The theatre of the absurd points out to the meaninglessness of life. The modern life is shown as an alienated and hopeless one which is void of meaning and full of confusion. The absurdity of human existence and the struggle to make meaning out of the nothingness of life is the major preoccupation of this theatre. Man is depicted as being helpless and hopeless. The drama that is staged in this theatre is an existential drama that shows that the fate of man is nothing and nothing can be done to change this fate. The plot of the absurdist plays are disjointed or fragmented, repetitive, with absurd characters.

The dramatists of the 20th century through their works show that the modern world does not have any God directing its affairs and men are the controllers of their own fate, though this fate cannot be really controlled as a result man’s existence is helpless and hopeless. The terrible experience of the world wars which shows that man’s life is perpetually threatened and weak largely influenced the thematic preoccupation of these works. The audiences of this theatre were left to draw their individual meanings from the play they had watched because meanings were not obvious or expressly stated. Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, and Arthur Adamov are the playwrights who are known as Absurdist playwrights.

In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot two friends Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for the arrival of Godot. While they wait endlessly for Godot for they do not know when he will come, they discuss the essence of waiting for Godot, they both do not know who Godot is but Vladimir is keen on waiting for Godot. As they wait they disagree, quarrel, try to sleep, eat, and contemplate suicide and act like friends who are frustrated about life. Two minor characters come along and a young boy tells the two friends that Godot will not be coming again that day but will come the next day. The two friends wait but Godot fails to come.

The theatre of the absurd was not a deliberate or conscious movement so it does not have a manifesto or thesis. The term “Theatre of the Absurd” was given by Martin Esslin who saw a sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition in the works of the absurdist playwrights. As a result of this, different absurdist playwrights have their style of writing and ideology which differentiates their works from the other writers. On the whole, their writings, irrespective of the focus or theme, all show the meaninglessness of life and how man is doomed to be lonely.

Samuel Beckett’s works stand out though, because despite the uniqueness of his works, his plays reflect almost all the features of the Theatre of the Absurd. A feature which separates Samuel Beckett from the other absurdist playwrights is that his main concern lies in the polarity of existence. In Waiting for Godot as well as some other plays like Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape, polarities such as sight /blindness, life/death, present/past, waiting/ not waiting, going/not going, etc. Also, as seen in Waiting for Godot (Vladimir and Estragon), the characters in Samuel Beckett’s plays are often grouped in pairs and are presented as a puzzle for the audience to solve. One of the things that surprised critics at the time was the fact that the audience enjoyed Samuel Beckett’s plays which often do not have much meaning and are a complete digression from the usual writing style.

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