Existentialism

Meaning:

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of philosophers since 19 th

century. Existentialism philosophers often focused more on what is subjective,
such as beliefs and religion, or human states, feelings, and emotions, such as
freedom, pain, guilt, and regret, as opposed to analyzing objective knowledge,
language or science.

Features:

-Themes of loneliness and dehumanization in a commercialised world

- Reject logic and devalue language

- Meaningless non-sequential dialogue and repetitive actions. (This is also a feature

of absurdum)

- Stereotypical and flat characters

Major Practioners and texts:

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Novel- Nausea-1938

His next drama- No Exit-1944- an existentialist play

Samuel Beckett’s waiting for Godot-1953

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Trial

Albert Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus”

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead -1959

Existentialist themes are displayed in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel
Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Kafka’s works, in which themes of alienation and persecution are repeatedly

emphasised, hopelessness and absurdity that are considered as the emblematic of
existentialism.