The Concept of Absurdity in 'Waiting for Godot'

TOPIC : The Concept of Absurdity in 'Waiting for Godot'

PAPER 09 : The Modernist Literature

STUDENT'S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS : M.A., Sem-3

ROLL NO. : 15

YEAR : 2013

 The term ‘Theatre of Absurd’ was coined by Martin Esslin in his essay ‘The Theatre of Absurd’. The main exponents of this school were – Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet. Although these writers oppose the idea of belonging to a particular school, yet their writings do have certain common characteristics on the basis of which they can be clubbed together in one category.

The term ‘absurd’ has also been linked to the mathematical term ‘surd’, which means a value that cannot be expressed in finite terms. In terms of literature, therefore, we can say that it refers to something that is irrational.

The concept of ‘absurd’ seems to have begun with Sartre’s philosophy. “The absurd is not a mere idea”, says Sartre, “it is revealed to us in a doleful illumination – getting up, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.” The idea is similar to what Camus expressed in his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. The point stressed here is, beginning all over again as if it were a new life. The actions of the absurd hero are meaningless and illogical. 

          Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot largely deals with the absurd tradition. The play is without any plot, character, dialogue and setting in the traditional sense.
In this play the setting creates the absurdist mood. A desolate country road, a ditch, and a leafless tree make up the barren, otherworldly landscape whose only occupants are two homeless men who bumble and shuffle in a vaudevillian manner. They are in rags, bowler hats, and apparently oversized boots--a very comic introduction to a very bizarre play. There is a surplus of symbolism and thematic suggestion in this setting. The landscape is a symbol of a barren and fruitless civilization or life. There is nothing to be done and there appears to be no place better to depart. The tree, usually a symbol of life with its blossoms and fruit or its suggestion of spring, is apparently dead and lifeless. But it is also the place to which they believe this Godot has asked them to come. This could mean Godot wants the men to feel the infertility of their life. At the same time, it could simply mean they have found the wrong tree.

          This setting of the play reminds us the post-war condition of the world which brought about uncertainties, despair, and new challenges to the all of mankind. A pessimistic outlook laced with sadism and tangible violence, as a rich dividend of the aftermath of wars. It is as if the poignancy and calamities of the wars found sharp reflections in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

          Then next comes the plot. In the traditional sense a plot should concentrate on a single motivated action and is also expected to have a beginning, a middle and a neatly tied-up ending. But it’s almost impossible to provide a conventional plot summary of Waiting for Godot, which has often been described as a play in which nothing happens. It is formless and not constructed on on any structural principles. It has no Aristotelian beginning, middle and end. It starts at an arbitrary point and seem to end just as arbitrarily. Beckett, like other dramatists working in this mode, is not trying to "tell a story." He's not offering any easily identifiable solutions to carefully observed problems; there's little by way of moralizing and no obvious "message." The pattern of the play might best be described as circular. The circularity of Waiting for Godot is highly unconventional.

          As per as the portrayal of characters is concerned the play also fits into the absurd tradition. A well-made play is expected to present characters that are well-observed and convincingly motivated. But in the play we five characters who are not very recognizable human beings and don’t engage themselves in a motivated action. Two tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), are waiting by a tree on a country road for Godot, whom they have never met and who may not even exist. They argue, make up, contemplate suicide, discuss passages from the Bible, and encounter Pozzo and Lucky, a master and slave. Near the end of the first act, a young boy comes with a message from Mr. Godot that he will not come today but will come tomorrow. In the second act, the action of the first act is essentially repeated, with a few changes: the tree now has leaves; Pozzo is blind and has Lucky on a shorter leash. Once again the boy comes and tells them Mr. Godot will not come today; he insists he has never met them before.

          The speech of the play begins with ESTRAGON’s disgust at his work, though here his work is very absurd, “to take off his boot”:
“Nothing to be done. 

These words symbolically shows the absurdity and meaninglessness of life which the characters will elaborate later. 

          In his play, Beckett presents before us a highly absurd situation of two tramps – Vladimir and Estragon – waiting for their appointment with the never defined Godot, who doesn’t come. Both the tramps follow the same routine every day. They cannot but wait: 

Valdimir: Let’s go
Estragon: Let’s go
(They both don’t move.)
Martin Esslin comments,
“The subject of the play is not Godot but waiting, the act of waiting is an essential aspect of human condition.”(p.44)

Therefore, in order to only pass time, they indulge themselves in some senseless activities, talk on and on, argue, joke, imagine themselves in different characters, rebuke, protest and question each other. 

ESTRAGON: That's the idea, let's contradict each another.
…………..
ESTRAGON: That's the idea, let's ask each other questions.
But again they keep on waiting the whole day and find that
“Nothing happens, nobody comes … nobody goes, it’s awful!”

Estragon’s putzing about with his boot is a central iteration of absurdity in the play. Look at their absurd activities
(Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off his boot. He peers inside it, feels about inside it, turns it upside down, shakes it, looks on the ground to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, feels inside it again, staring sightlessly before him.) Well?
ESTRAGON: Nothing.

The unreliability of memory is one of the reasons that Waiting for Godot lacks rationale and establishes a world of absurdity and purposelessness. 

ESTRAGON : What did we do yesterday?
VLADIMIR : What did we do yesterday?
ESTRAGON : Yes.
VLADIMIR : Why . . . (Angrily.) Nothing is certain when you're about.
ESTRAGON : In my opinion we were here.
VLADIMIR : (looking round) You recognize the place?
ESTRAGON : I didn't say that.
Estragon can’t recall his original question: the questions of the past have no meaning in the present. 

Vladimir and Estragon switch rapidly from serious subject matter to absurdly inane details. This is part of the play’s attempt at "tragicomedy," but this is also the reason why Vladimir and Estragon can’t take part in anything meaningful: they are too distracted by the petty habits of everyday life.
VLADIMIR : I thought it was he. 

ESTRAGON : Who?
VLADIMIR : Godot.
ESTRAGON : Pah! The wind in the reeds.
VLADIMIR : I could have sworn I heard shouts.
………….
ESTRAGON : (violently) I'm hungry!
VLADIMIR : Do you want a carrot?

Lack of communication:
Vladimir asks his question five times without response
VLADIMIR
You want to get rid of him?
   

           The characters of the play recognize like Macbeth, though there is fundamental difference between them in their action, that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”:
VLADIMIR : (sententious). To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
ESTRAGON : In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.

            In the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ many times, a possibility is suggested then immediately undercut by its unhappy opposite. This technique is used by Beckett to relay his theme that life is uncertain and unpredictable at its best, unfortunate and unending at its worst. To further state this theme, Estragon asserts that "There's no lack of void" in life. It is actually of little importance where they were the previous day, as everywhere every day the same empty vacuum envelops them. Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in the play.

            In this way we can say the play Waiting for Godot contains almost all the elements of a absurd play. The play depicts the irrationalism of life in a grotesquely comic and non-consequential fashion with the element of "metaphysical alienation and tragic anguish." It was first written in French and called En attendant Godot. The author himself translated the play into English in 1954. The uniqueness of the play compelled the audiences to flock to the theaters for a spectacularly continuous four hundred performances. At the time, there were two distinct opinions about the play; some called it a hoax and others called it a masterpiece. Nevertheless, Waiting for Godot has claimed its place in literary history as a masterpiece that changed the face of twentieth century drama.

Edgar Allan Poe : Master Story Teller

TOPIC : Edgar Allan Poe : Master Story Teller

PAPER 10 : The American Literature

STUDENT'S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS : M.A., Sem-3

ROLL NO. : 15

YEAR : 2013

  

             Edgar Allan Poe has mastery in short story writing. He is known for his horror stories. Of all the major American writers, perhaps none has had more of an influence on the short story than Edgar Allan Poe. His success was won at great personal cost. Poe’s life was short, spanning a mere forty years. Further, those forty years were filled with torment, suffering, alcohol addiction, and financial hardship... Perhaps even more remarkable vas Poe’s continued willingness to follow his “art” despite the critical disfavor he encountered in America. Yet, in a bizarre twist of fate, Poe’s tragic life provided substance for his art. Likewise, his work as an editor and literary critic for a variety of publications helped him perfect his craft. His life and his work experiences enabled Poe to develop his theory regarding the short story, and they provided him with the creative ideas to bring his theory into literary reality. In his book, The Genius of Edgar Allan Poe, Georges Zayed states, “One fact which is nevertheless certain is that Poe brought the short story to its perfection, and excelled in all kinds of tales” (87). One such example is the much admired, often anthologized “Tell-Tale Heart.” A careful analysis of this story illustrates how Poe incorporated his theory in the construction of a short story.

             Poe was born on January 19, 1809. His parents, traveling actors, died when he was only three years old. Poe was then raised by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan. Poe’s life was fairly uneventful until he went to the University of Virginia where he gambled and consumed alcohol to excess. Angered by Poe’s college gambling and drinking, Mr. Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts and his educational expenses. Because of this, Poe was unable to return to college. Poe enlisted in the army rather than work as a clerk. After a two year tour of duty, and following a brief period as a cadet at West Point, Poe was once again rejected by Mr. Allan. Poe decided to live with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. Poe eventually fell in love with his cousin, Virginia, and in 1836, he married her. She was just thirteen years old at the time of their marriage. Poe, lacking any financial support from Mr. Allan, began to support Virginia and himself through his writing. When Poe was twenty-seven years old, Mr. Allan died leaving Poe without an inheritance. In fact, Mr. Allan had raised him as “. . .an unadopted son, without the assurance of a permanent legal— or psychological—identity”. Poe resented his disinheritance. He wanted to become a poet, and he had hoped his inheritance would provide a financial base to pursue his poetry. Not having the inheritance meant Poe had to use his writing skills as an editor and journalist instead. The impact of not having a psychological identity surely played an important part in shaping the type of person and writer that Poe would become. Mr. Allan’s death was just one of many that Poe would have to face in his short life. The deaths of his loved ones and friends led to Poe’s preoccupation with death.     

     

             Throughout his life Poe experienced nightmares. As was typical of Poe, rather than fear his dreams, he came to an understanding of -how he could use them in his writing. According to Vincent Buranelli in his book, Edgar Allan Poe: 

He took to inspecting with meticulous exactitude his psychological states when he hovered between sleep and wakefulness, found his mind occupied with shadows of ideas “rather Psychical than intellectual,” and learned to some degree to control them.

             Poe’s exposure to death and his willingness to analyze his dreams led him to write in a different style. The resulting characters and plots caused a great deal of misunderstanding regarding Poe. This misunderstanding is centered on his subject matter more so than his ability as a writer. Poe’s unique background, coupled with his genius and his ability to use his imagination to take readers where other writers had not gone before, created uncomfortable topics for his short stories. While his contemporaries were critical, the readers responded to his stories. Poe recognized people’s fears and put those fears into his short stories: 

Vices which we carefully hide out of shame or fear, ignoble acts which we only dare to commit in the imagination, crimes which we perpetrate coldly but, through weakness, only mentally; vengeances which we have not put into execution but whose accomplishment we have secretly and ardently desired. Poe had the audacity to realize them for us in his stories. 

            Poe’s work as editor provided him with another skill that would serve him well in the development of his short story theory. In addition to his duties as an editor, Poe also worked as a literary critic, a task at which he excelled- Undoubtedly, his exposure to the works of the best writers of the era benefited Poe greatly and helped sharpen his knowledge and his exposure to the works of the best writers of the era benefited Poe greatly and helped sharpen his knowledge and perception of the development of the short story.

            To illustrate Poe’s theory, an analysis of one of his short stories would be helpful. One such story, the “Tell-Tale Heart,” has appeared in many anthologies and is familiar to many readers. To guide its analysis, the following recap of Poe’s theory will be used.

•        The story must be readable in a single sitting.

•      The story contains a single effect and the reader’s attention is focused on     this effect.

•      The short story will not attempt to develop characters or a variety of             incidents.

•      The structure is carefully planned with all intervening actions supporting      the single effect. 

•    The story will contain a unifying element.
•  

While “The Tell-Tale Heart” takes the average reader no more than a fifteen minute sitting to finish, these are certainly an affective fifteen minutes as Poe produces and sustains the single emotion of guilty terror. His words, sentences, and pacing create a tightly-knit, single effect that has become legendary. From beginning to end, the reader is under Poe’s spell.

             Poe begins his control as the story’s narrator, a madman, describes his sharpened senses. In a nervous, choppy manner, the madman says, “TRUE!—NERVOUS—VERY, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them” . By using short, abrupt phrases and sentences with a variety of punctuation, Poe alerts the reader to the narrator’s mental state. The reader feels that he is about to sit down with an unstable individual.

             Poe continues to use the right words and sequencing as the narrator describes the object of his discontent: the old man’s eye: 

I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees— very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Certainly, the phrasing, the punctuation, and word choice create the desired effect. Poe masterfully employs this technique throughout the story and his brilliance with it reaches a peak when the madman is murdering the old man:

The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I had dragged him to the floor and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. 

             As a counterbalance, Poe changes patterns after the murder. The narrator seems to relax once the deed is done and to imitate this, Poe’s prose slows. He achieves this by using longer sentences with a gentle rhythm. This gentleness does not last long. Guilty terror is beginning to take its toll on the madman. His heart is beating wildly even though he has seemingly fooled the inspecting police officers. By the last paragraph of the story, the madman has gone over the edge, and Poe’s words and pacing clearly capture this. The madman relieves his guilt with an overcharged, passion-filled confession. By the story’s end, the reader is thoroughly aware of Poe’s remarkable ability to create a single effect.

Relying on this one effect, Poe wastes no effort adding elaborate, unnecessary details about the characters to divert the reader’s attention. His madman has one goal in mind: killing the old man. The reader isn’t burdened with day-to-day, menial interactions between the two men, for example. His character is good as what he does, and he does only one thing. Poe has carefully planned the story’s structure and its focus so that an eight night span of time for the madman is compressed into fifteen minutes of unabated terror for the reader.

             The story has one unifying element tracing through it. The madman’s senses, especially his hearing, have been sharpened by an unexplained disease. This thread is introduced in the opening paragraph and intensifies as the story moves forward. His beating heart contributes to the murder. “It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage” . His own beating heart also contributes to the confession when, at first, he realizes “that the noise was not within my ears”. Tension mounts for him as he feels the sound increasing. “It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not”. The beating continues to increase until the madman snaps. His guilty terror forces his confession: “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!’”. The madman, along with the reader, feels the pulsating effect of this unifying element. 

            Poe’s troubled life and morbid imagination gave birth to his gripping short stories. During his life, fame and financial success eluded him. Now, one hundred forty-three years after his death, his place in the history of literature has been secured. Perhaps Georges Zayed summed up Poe best:

...it must be acknowledged that no one knows better than Poe how to create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense and how to captivate the reader and to make him tremble with terror or with anguish, truly seizing him by his mind and senses...

            So, this is how Poe has mastery in short whether one is reading “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or any of Poe’s sixty-eight short stories, Poe’s genius as a master story teller is forevermore.