The theatre of the absurd

Two aspects are connected, the point of view expressed and the masters and means of
expression. The play expresses a sense of futility and despair since they are based on a savage
presentation of the inadequacy of human: thought, feeling and action. They are a demonstration
of the failure of human relationships and communication. Mankind seems lost and alone in a
present that terrifies and seems to have forgotten about the past and the future. The plays are
always reduced to the present, the vision on the universe and existence is absurd because of
unexplained incongruous and incompatible elements in mans life, because of this absurdity the
action is presented in both comic and tragic, savage and inert. No moral judgment is involved
and there is no request to make any decisions starting from immediate human existence, from
everyday reality, the writers enters an unexplainable universe and a relentless eternity. The
audience is left to its conclusions: Does Godot represent God? the answer of the author: if you
like. When Pinter was asked what one of his plays meant he answered it meant what it said.
The form: Writers create a new attitude in theatre by destroying the traditional conceptions
they reject the old conception of the plot, language, the final resolution, the typical
characterization and they create a new dramatic language by emphasising the typical nature of
the theatre: lack of scenery and sonorous effects are characteristic of this plays. The five act play
is rejected being replaced by a one or three act play without divisions, no beginning, no end, no
gradation climax, but circularity and a static attitude. The lack of conventions frees the theatre
from the narrow restrictions of the past and enriches it creating an anti theatre. Shaw's plays
meant a revolution because he rejected melodrama but insisted upon debates, discussions,
language. The absurd theatre rejects that too, the word has no importance it shows the
impossibility to establish communication, the spectator is included in the show. The plays turn
into metaphors of reality and dream suggesting the natural and the hallucinatory. There is a
certain ambiguity that makes this plays the opposite of the realistic theatre: the difficulty in
decoding the message, the spectator brings his own contribution, interpreting the play in his own
way.
Samuel Beckett (1906- 1989) Waiting for Godot, End Game ( 1958), Act without Words,
Happy Days, Silence, That Time, Footfalls. He also wrote 3 novels Malloy, Malone Dies,
Murphy. His masterpiece is Waiting for Godot.
Samuel Beckett was an Irish man who was for some years a secretary for Joyce his main
work Waiting for Godot is a tragic comedy in two acts in which the action takes place on two
successive evenings, on a deserted country road whose only scenery is a stunted tree the down-
and-outs Estragon and Vladimir occupy the time revealing the grotesque helplessness of the
human lamentation each has his own private to contend with, both are waiting for Godot the
deliverer, who is somehow to relieve them from their torment all that happens is that in each act
Pozzo a wealthy land owner passes with his slave Lucky. Pozzo arrogantly displays his wealth he
also reveals his own lonely need for an audience. Lucky is shown as a kind of subhuman
automaton that performs to order. Each act ends with the appearance of a boy, a messenger from
Godot who assures them that the latter will meet them in the same spot the following evening
without fail. Beckett has created in this play a vague disembodied world, populated by
extraordinary character who are simple, almost lunatic, but somehow recognisably human in
their distortion of human traits. We sympathise and feel with Estragon and Vladimir and despite
the way in which the play presents despair and sordid nothingness it is saved from unrelieved
nihilism by a muted sense of human comradeship which emerges from the relationship between
the two protagonists. It is a static play without much action, man being presented as an ignorant
powerless creature. The concept of waiting, which combined with nothing to be done" are basic
for the play and convey a hopelessness that underlines the tragedy of human life combine with
the impossibility of communication. For Pozzo and Lucky there is no hope and no future
everything is vague and absurd the outer reality is completed with a deep inner reality that
tortured the minds of characters the dialog ranges from the realistic and earthly, to the mysterious
and disturbing being based on graded repetitions (parts of or entire sentences are repeated) the
play includes elements of the circus and of the silent film comedy. The same ideas are to be
found in End Game where two characters Hamm and Clovv are aware of their anxieties. Hamm
is blind and he tortures his servant. Nagg and Nell are Hamms crippled parents who he keeps in
dustbins they are also waiting for something to happen, Hamm is waiting for sedatives, Nell for
food and Clovv for Hamm to die, is the game of life that everybody loses. The language is
simple ordinary everyday speech made absurd by breaking the sentences into short units. All try
to find solutions, language creates a sense of paradox and futility, it is used in two ways a literary
dramatic ways and a direct way contemporary American speech. In Happy Days the characters
are hidden in sand which covers them completely. Winnie cannot speak; she represents the
desperate situation of mankind. In Footfalls a mother in her 60s and a daughter in her 40s try to
communicate, but their dialogs are two parallel monologues. In Act without words Beckett gives
up words complete Man the quite sense of mankind interprets some gestures that represent the
myth of Tantalus.