Andrea Mascarell

Is the theater of Samuel Beckett absurd? I am convinced that the majority of people would answer yes. And it is not surprising taking into account this is the way critics have labelled it through time: the Theater of the Absurd. This term was coined in 1960 by the critic Martin Esslin in his essay «Theater of the Absurd» inspired by the previous work of Albert Camus «The Myth of Sisyphus» (1942). Martin Esslin’s essay focused on the most representative authors of the absurd, which included Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and Jean Genet. The philosophy of this essay portrays the essence of their experimental plays, so ground-breaking for the time. They were considered ‘absurd’ because, in very general terms, they expressed the irrationality of the world: human existence has no purpose and therefore the communication turns illogical. Trying to rationalise the world does not make any sense anymore, as everything that happens is by random and we don’t have the capacity of control it. No gods, no human: life manipulates us mercilessly.

However, we have to be careful with the term ‘absurd’. On the one hand, ‘absurd’ can be correct if it refers to the painful and anguish life we have to live one we are born, that is, to what authors as Samuel Beckett represent in the plays. On the other hand, it can’t be related to the intention of the author and to everything that happens in the stage during the representation. Samuel Beckett, although he can have a different perspective of life, of understanding human existence in comparison to modernist authors, he also has concerns, thoughts, feelings and opinions. He has a strenght inside him that, along with his inquisitiveness or artistic aspirations, need to be turned into a creation (the fiction play) and communicated or transmitted to an audience. Thus, in this sense, as there is a purpose or an end, absurdity here is not the precise term. The second point is that just because it is labelled as ‘absurd’ it does not mean that all actions and dialogues of a play are completely illogical and contingent. In fact, there is also a purpose showing irrationally the irrationality. And in these senseless actions we see ourselves reflected.

The concept of the ‘absurd’ is also very linked to the existentialist philosophy. Both deal with human existence, as the first is a kind of definition or calification, and the second is the study of it. The work of Samuel Beckett have been often contemplated as a product of this theory. It could be right in the sense that existentialists and Beckett share this predispositon of going into the roots of human feelings and behaviour and how they confront their own world. The Heideggerian concept of being-there in the world and the anguish it entails are some philosophic ideas the both Beckett and existentialist thinkers deal with. Existentialist playwrighters and philosophers as Sartre, Marcel and Camus have exposed these themes in their plays in a rational way, that is, the style, actions, dialogues and the structure of the play in general does not abandon at all the rational forms. Instead, Samuel Beckett is able to represent these irrational and metaphysical issues studied by existentialist in a irrational form. In fact, «nothing distinct from the silence can express the silence», and «only the emptiness is able to transmit what the emptiness is about»1 (Fernández-Santos, 19).

Consequently, Beckett’s theater is not only derived from Existentialism, but also denies it in a way. We can think about it as «an attempt to express to what extent is ridiculous the effort of the existentialist philosophy to decipher the indecipherable», as the critic Ángel Fernández-Santos points out in his essay «The Sceptic Theater of Samuel Beckett»2 (16). As the drama of Beckett is a complete break up with the rational processes and the speculative thinking, it seems a little contradictory trying to find an absolute truth in his plays. Nevertheless, many critics have interpreted them as if they hide dark and very abstract elements which need to be unmasked and therefore rationalised. Who represents Godot in the real life? Is God? And what about Pozzo and Lucky? Are they materializing the body of the owner and the slave? Is Hamm symbolizing Joyce and Clov Beckett? Numerous questions of this kind has received Samuel Beckett after his theater representations, but no explicit statements have been replied: «(…)if by Godot I had meant God I would [have] said God, and not Godot» (Beckett). The critic Fernández-Santos defends that this interpretative effort «has to be abandoned completely» when we face Beckett’s theater, as we would be»destroy[ing] the true meaning of his theater work»3 (21).

It may be true that Beckett’s intentions are not about expressing a veracity in his dramatic creations; he leaves everything open to the audience and it is the key for this peculiar perplexity that his artistic work cause on us. But it does not imply that critics have to abstain themselves from establishing interpretative or symbolist theories. In fact, this common behaviour among critics does not destroy Samuel Beckett’s essence, but affirm or support it. Precisely, these efforts confirm Beckett’s concerns about human weakness: we need to take refuge in something to feel more comfortable and safe. Watching one of his plays with an interpretative intention would give us later the impression that we have understood the ‘abstract meaning’ of the play. Consequently, elaborating distinct theories about one certain topic is a natural human impulse, but it is important not to consider them as perfectly settled. In the play Endgame there is a dialogue that clearly defines this aspect. The characters (Hamm and Clov) talk about what would do a ‘rational being’ (the symbolist) when watching them (while they are acting in the play):

Hamm: I wonder. Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough (Voice of rational being) Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they’re at! (…) To think perhaps it won’t all have been for nothing! (27)

And another that subtly mocks the interpretative effort again:

Hamm: We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?

Clov: Mean something! You and I, mean something! Ah that’s a good one! (27)

Thus Hamm and Clov could mean anything or everything one is inclined to think. What Beckett refers to is that the characters are just a mean for express general human concerns (or the idea of the man and the world). As Maurice Nadeau states, the language of Beckett’s theater is that «of our own interior voice hitherto unknown and suddenly found».

Since now I have briefly introduced some angles of view to understand better Beckett’s theater, contrasting the term ‘absurd’ with ‘existentialist’ and also finding the elements in common. Secondly I have argued to what extent is contradictory trying to find symbolisms in an absurd play, but defending that although it is incongruous it does not mean we don’t have to do it. My purpose with this is to go into detail about the essence of his artistic personality and consequently of his literary products, so then understanding the topic of my paper can result easier and more interesting. Finally I am going to focus on Beckett’s theater more specifically, and soon I will develop my central idea or topic (the tragic and comic aspects in three of his plays) as well as my method in what could be the main body of the essay.

The playwright John Spurling once said: «Samuel Beckett was waiting for the theatre as the theatre was waiting for Samuel Beckett». As I explained in my first paper, particularly in the part 02 (LINK!), he «abandoned the notions of rationality and logic of the so well constructed modern plays», getting to «disrupt the dramatic conventions». John Fletcher remarks that Samuel Beckett «has found the means of setting out the metaphysical doubts that torment us» (16-17). And not only have puzzled us in terms of the content, but also of the form. The author is a great «manipulator of, exploiter of, and performer [with all the] possibilities of language» (Fletcher, 19). In his plays are often present «the use of banal, everyday conversations mixed with literary language, the slang, puns, and modified clichés, as well as the careful creation of rhythms and use of repetitions», which contribute to a «new and powerful dramatic expressiveness». (Fletcher, 19, quoting from French Review). Another characteristc is Beckett’s plays are the metatheatrical aspects introduced in a subtle manner. We can see this in some of the dialogues of Endgame:

1. – I’ll soon have finished with this story. Unless I bring in other characters. But where would I find them? Where would I look for them? (37)

2. – There are days like that, one isn’t inspired. Nothing you can do about it, just wait for it to come. No forcing, no forcing, it’s fatal.

3. – […] Me to play. We’re getting on. (44)

4. – What is there to keep me here?

   – The dialogue. (39)

The first and second dialogue allude to the role of writer, who could be Samuel Beckett. The third refers to the role of actors who represent Hamm and Clov, and finally the fourth suggests the situation of the characters, which are product of the creation of Samuel Beckett. These metaphysical scenes demonstrates us how important is the theater, the artistic conception of a fiction situation where the characters are just these characters, and their actions are just their actions, etc. One could see them as being more than just that, as symbolic elements, but Beckett will not give you the answer as there is none.

Having illustrated briefly the theater of Beckett within a theatrical and philosophical background, now I am going to expose what is my intention with this paper. In my first paper I talked about Waiting for Godot not only from an analytical point of view, but also from a psychological and biographical perspective from the personality and life of its author Samuel Beckett. I focused more on the tragic aspects of the play, but in the conclusion I discussed the humorous aspects which so much characterizes Beckett’s plays and are frequently forgotten by the critics when studying Beckett. As the critic John Fletcher defines, «Beckett, despite his reputation as a gloomy pessimist, certainly did not lack a sense of humour» (Fletcher, 13-14). It is clear that the playwright portrays how absurd and irrational is the world, and the anxiety and emptiness this entails sometimes, but we must not forget HOW he does it: mocking the pain itself with comic elements that the silly and illogical situations produce. ‘Humour’ and ‘absurd’ are two words that should be always together, as the absurdity is the humour’s basis. Only Beckett knows how to create this sublime contradiction presenting us a negative or pessimistic perspective and at the same time another more comical and tender. A cold and bleak speech pronounced in a rational tone and voice (typical of a depressed intellectual) can be suddenly collapsed by a cynical guffaw, or interrupted by a childish action or expression. This idea can’t be more plainly expressed in the subtitle of the play Waiting for Godot: a tragicomedy in two acts. What I want to achieve with this is to make that the reader realize how important is the humour in Beckett’s plays, but from a point of view in which it contrasts with the dramatic aspects. Drama and humour, comedy and tragedy, as I said before, complement each other and constitute the essence of Beckett’s theater.

In this paper I will bring into focus this topic, developing it from the analysis of three plays: Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape. These plays were written in the late 1950’s, when Samuel Beckett was in a period of intense experimentation. The Second World War caused him great pain, coming to mean a traumatic experience. But it, paradoxically, also inspired and motivated him incredibly, as we will check later in the analysis of the three plays.

«After a rational attempt to order the outside world, his fiction should deal with the ‘darkness’ of the inner self» (Pattie 29)

With regard to my method, first I will introduce in a general way on what are based the tragedy and the comedy and how Beckett approaches them in his plays with a different perspective. Beckett’s concept of tragedy is not that of the Ancients, where the freedom of a brave hero is depends on the power of a deity or on any external circumstance. This classic hero will have to overcome obstacles to get it, and while doing that, his life is full of action, motivation and expectations. Whilst this hero accepts the pain but looks for a solution, the Beckettian anti-heros also accept the pain but deny the tragedy. By denying the tragedy I mean that they turn it into comedy: they tease the suffering of living.

In this part of the tragedy and comedy I will deal for the first time with some key concepts: physical and psychological decay and death. These three issues considered as tragic are present in the three plays I will analyze, but in each one with different nuances. Then I will dip into the individual analysis of each play: Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape, exposing the tragic and comic aspects and how they are interrelated, that is, contrasted or mixed.

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1″Nada distinto del silencio puede expresar al silencio. Sólo el vacío tiene la voz capaz de transmitir en qué consiste el vacío»

2″Como un intento de expresar hasta qué punto es descabellado el esfuerzo de la filosofía existencialista por descifrar lo indescifrable»

3″cualquier hábito mental de esta especie debe ser abandonado por completo al enfrentarnos con un teatro como el de Beckett […] es una forma de destruir el verdadero sentido de su materia teatral»

Life is illogic, contradictory, absurd and hazardous. There is no security, miracles or a salvation waiting for us. All what happens is contingent: it has happened, but it could have not happened. The doubts, the uncertainty and the open questions disturb and hurt us. Man always has been fighting for freedom, for be able to choose his destinity, his future and his life, and it turns out that precisely this is what we intensely fear. When facing this circumstance one can behave rationally and reject this unpleasant idea about reality, so he will fight for maintain the order in his life; he will consol himself with the certainty that one has to see the positive side of life in every moment. This is the prototype of the optimistic man with his (more or less) stable life. Madness, silliness, irrationality: all of them are taboo words. Another option is to accept this reality and to escape from it with suicide, or to stay teasing it. Someone like this would be Samuel Beckett, or at least, as an artist. In his plays the characters use the absurd to turn their lives into a game. We can observe how all of these kind of persons depart from the same point but find different alternatives. But we are going to focus on Beckett’s alternative.

Beckett’s theater is an exposition of contradictory situations, as in the classic tragedy. The tragedy assumes a «game of the coexistence between freedom and necessity»4 ( Fernández-Santos, 29). Beckett reflects these tragic conditions but in a different way. In the ancient tragedy freedom was broken or obstructed by an exterior order or power, necessary and involuntary: decisions and impositions by gods or the enemies and villains. It was always about a battle where the freewill and the destinity or the predestination were confronted. In other words, heros had to fight against an exterior hostile Nature in order to finally get their reward, which could be the freedom. In the theater of Beckett «it is not longer the objective cosmic force that opposes a particular freedom, but an inner dimension of this specific freedom»5 (Fernández-Santos, 30).  The fight takes places inside the man himself, in his mind. He is the prison from which he can’t nor want to escape. And what are the consequences of this spiritual conflict? An unknown sadness, an inexplicable emptiness which puts us into a situation of constant panic. A hero in a traditional tragedy is an antihero in a play of Beckett. The action of the first is constant movement with a purpose. The energy of the hero is fed by motivation, expectations and freewill: it is inexhaustible. And although the traditional heros suffer, they know the tragic experience they are living is being confronted at least, so the action avoids them from thinking and reasoning. The antiheros of Beckett are aware of their unhappiness but they do not even imagine how tragic are their lives, so they will not solve anything. Due to this Beckett’s plays tend to an action which is in truth ‘no-action’: the characters wait while they are filling the time with whatever. Their lives are based on inertia, repetitions and routine which they themselves are not able to stop, because is the costum and is not worth trying to change it. What McDonald quotes from another critic (Vivian Mercier) reflects perfecty this idea of the antiheroism:

«(…)Beckett’s anti-heroes do not aspire, so they can never fall.» (McDonald, 127)

«They can never fall» because they directly do not suffer for something in particular; they do not miss something nor know what love is. A grey decay has caught them completely and they are in a state of which we can’t say if they are alive or dead. The audience see them moving around the stage like lost souls walking in spirals: the same steps all the time, however, still unpredictable as they may suddenly guffaw and seconds after become engrossed with silence as the background music. There is no real communication between the characters and the relationships are broken. Anyway, time will pass and life will go on while they continue staying without knowing nothing, without changing nothing and without wanting nothing. All the time is occuring something, however, the fact that many things happen one after the other causes that no one thing is more important than the rest. The ‘Absurd’ lies here, in a tension which does not lead to anything.

This is the reason why Beckett’s plays «tend toward disintegration, toward shapelessness» (Pattie, 64), with an end that is always as open and confusing as the existence of the characters. He bets on simplicity, on removing rather than adding, thus it is not surprising that all this characteristic grandiosure of the ancient plays is completely avoided. Ronan Mcdonald explains this in his work Tragedy and Irish Literature: «The structure of the drama resolutely refuses the closure, resolution or catharsis expressed by great tragedy.» (Mcdonald, 128)

Another interesting point related to the tragedy on Beckett’s plays is the feeling about how hateful is to have been born. It was not our decision, nobody asked us if we wanted to stay in an awful and meaningless world until the date of our death. However, the decay and the apathy are so intense that resorting to the suicide is also absurd: too much action. Thus what one can only do is to blame his parents, ‘his progenitors’, as Hamm does continuously in Endgame. I will return to this detail later in the essay when I analyse Endgame. Beckett himself commented this:

Tragedy is not concerned with human justice. Tragedy is the statement of an expiation, but not the expiation of a codified breach of local arrangement, organized by the knaves for the fools. The tragic figure represents the expiation of the original sin, of the original and eternal sin of him and all his ‘soci malorum’, the sin of having been born.

Once born, we have no choice but to expiate the sin that our progenitors commited, in other words, to bear the problems which we did not choose. Their decision of procreation was a sin, because birth is a sin. But not resorting to suicide implies an acceptation of the pain that existence entails although one does not wonder where it comes from. Thus, for the Beckettian antiheros pain «is arbitrary and it has no purpose»6 (Fernández-Santos, 32). And to affirm that an emotion with such tragic connotations is useless, stupid or absurd, it can’t be said by anyone but a comedian. In this way the tragedy become ridiculous, and the pain is still the same but instead of cries and tears we have laughs and tears. Philosophical meditations and serious speeches about the crucifixion life entails are like an enormous red balloon suddenly poked with the needle of the acid irony and sarcasm. Nevertheless, «the comic and tragic moments permeate each other in ongoing reciprocity». This is that for the fact each one has place at different moment, it does not mean they are not strongly interrelated: «If ‘comic relief’ is sometimes designed as a respite from tragic bleakness, it can also serve to sharpen its impact.» (Mcdonald, 130). Thus as comic is tragic, tragic is also comic. John Fletcher quotes from Roger Blin (Beckett’s first director) a great definition that reflects this idea about the relation between comic and tragic:

He is unique in his ability to blend derision, humour and comedy with tragedy: his words are simultaneously tragic and comic’ […] There is no conflict between the circus fun of the dropping of Estragon’s trousers and the intense sadness of the end of the play. (Fletcher, 22)

Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape contain tragic and comic elements which are very interraleted although this supposes a contradiction or a paradox, but life itself is contradictory. Godot and Endgame share more aspects in common: multiple characters, dependent relationships, characters without biography… Instead, in Krapp’s Last Tape there is only one character, so the dialogues adopt the form of an interior monologue. We could say that Krapp, the main and only character, talks alone and for himself, but this form of communication could be seen as dialogues too if we take into account he communicates with their past selves trough a tape recorder, in which some speechs are recorded.

All the characters in these plays fulfil the prototype of the ‘antihero’, suffering some kind of physical and psychological decay. Regarding the physical aspect, they all look like old tramps with mundane and dirty clothes. This slovenliness is also evident in the stages where the beauty, the colours and the armony are as invisible as the energy of the characters. A great disorder and devastation symbolize the physical putrefaction of our Beckettian ‘antiheros’, whose «afflictions should be viewed as limitations that affect the characters’ physical being, making their lives more difficult to endure and their struggle onwards more painful» (White, 9). These «afflictions» take shape of any kind of diseases, wounds or handicaps which «acknowledge the inadequacy of the physical body and recognize its inevitable failure», moreover, trough their pain we see «illustrated [an] intensification of our own suffering» (White, 9). This physical decline is obviously connected to pyschological problems such as weariness, frustration and desolation. Sometimes these tragicomic heros feel so sick of life that only wish death to come as soon as possible; in this case death would be a miracle, a windfall, only for the luckiest. In contrast, death in some occasions is something incredibly feared. But especially, death in Beckett’s plays is «frequently enacted as a form of diminished or moribund existence rather than an absolute nothing […] voices speak and bodies move, but we are told that this somehow is not really “it”» (Fifield, 128). This means that death not only refers to the absolute end of life, but to the characters’ spirit. However, suffering as much death constitute the cynical entertainment of the characters. As the critics Steven Barfield and Philip Tew argue «death and its seemingly endless variations and derivations provide among the greatest source of humor in Beckett’s world» (1)

Now I will proceed to examine separately the three plays in the following order: 1. Waiting for Godot, 2. Endgame, 3. Krapp’s Last Tape. I will do it focusing on the themes I have previously explained: on the one hand on tragedy and what it entails (physical and psychological decay, cruelty, dependence, emptiness, death…) and on the other hand on comedy (irrational behaviour, absurd, irony, sarcasm…). 

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 4″el juego de la coexistencia entre la libertad y la necesidad»

5″No es ya la fuerza cósmica objetiva que se opone a una libertad concreta, sino una dimensión interior de esta libertad concreta»

6″el dolor es arbitrario y carece […] de finalidad»

*note: in the quotations I will use the acronym ‘WFG’ to refer to the tittle of the play Waiting for Godot, in order to economize time and effort.

In my first paper I analyzed some essential traits of the play Waiting for Godot of which I will offer a brief summary and also I will link it to my previous essay. In this play, as I suppose most of you already know, the main characters Vladimir and Estragon are two old tramps in a desolate place who spend all the time waiting for someone who never arrives, Mr. Godot. The tragic experience here is reflected in these two men ‘being-in-the-world’ due to contingent circumstances. They were born and the fact that they did not decide this is frustrating and hateful. For their experience they have confirmed life is totally absurd, but as Estragon says at the very beginning of the play, «is nothing to be done» (9). All days seem the same: cycles, repetitions, routines… First birth, then death, and after death life emerge again. Pozzo express this with a poetic and beautiful verse: “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more” (89). Evey day is exactly the same for Vladimir and Estragon: during the day they try to overcome their emptiness filling the time while waiting for the arrival of Godot, who will save them; and during the night they sleep.

–Let’s go

-We can’t

-Why not?

-We’re waiting for Godot (WFG, 14)

These antiheros are completely free as they do not have any external obligations or moral attachments imposed by any deity or king. They just stay in a determined space and time, in Heidegger terms, they just are ‘being-there-in-the-world’, and precisely from that intrinsic freedom comes the desperation and anguish. The cruel uncertainty is the tragedy of their lives and ‘brings them inevitably to the wishful thinking that there is something to wait for (Godot)’. LINK 01!! Hope is their salvation, as is the only thing retaining them in such solitary place: «Tomorrow everything will be better.» (WFG, 52) The moment of waiting reflect their state of complete paralysation because they seem as asleep all the time, but take for granted they will do not anything for change their situation:

–Nothing you can do about it

-No use struggling

-One is what one is

-No use wriggling

-The essential doesn’t change (WFG, 21)

…

Vladimir: -Now it’s too late (WFG, 10)

As Fernández-Santos puts it, in Beckett’s theater «pain is a totally arbitrary phenomenon, and for this reason […] any attempt of justification is absurd […] pain is like something unconscious»7 (31).

Pain is their necessary and internal condition of free men, so unhappiness is as natural as their hands, or their ears, or their hair:

–I’m unhappy.

–Not really! Since when?

-I’d forgotten (WFG, 50)

As we said before, they are not the traditional heros nourished with this ‘will to power‘8,  which is a «driving force in humans: achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible position in life» (wikipedia). They haven’t any ambition so any motivation. Nothingness and ignorance areg so significant that they even have any notion of time and space:

–What are you insinuating? That we’ve come to the wrong place? ( WFG, 14)

(…)

–We came here yesterday.

–Ah no, there you’re mistaken.

–What did we do yesterday? (WFG, 14)

(…)

–But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it no rather Sunday? Or Monday? Or Friday? (WFG,15)

Nevertheless, pain in Godot is not only psychological and consequently, something uncertain or indefinited. Pain is also physical and the characters know which part particularlly hurts in their bodies. For instance, the feet of Estragon are damaged because his boots are too little and he is not able to remove them: -Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing! (WFG, 10) Kathryn White has interpreted his physical condition as something that «limits his movements, [so] he rarely finds relief, as his journey appears never-ending. Godot never comes, therefore Estragon never reaches a safe place where he can rest and recuperate, and without rest his problem can never heal» (9). Moreover Estragon (as he is a the tramp) is usually beaten by a group of people: -Beat me? Certainly they beat me. (WFG, 9) and also he is always hungry while the food is scarce:

Estragon: (violently). I’m hungry

Vladimir: Do you want a carrot? (WFG, 20)

In addition, in the second act of Godot Pozzo is suddenly blind and Lucky dumb, besides that Lucky is an unfortunate slave abused by his owner Pozzo. The play makes reference to death in different senses. From a very abstract and psychological point of view Estragon could be dead if we take into account the words of the critic Peter Fifield quoting Matthew Feldman: «for Beckett […] deathliness […] appears not only in the process of dying, but in analogous psychological maladies [such as] memory loss, […] responsible for both temporal and linguistic amnesia» (16). Estragon is always forgetting everything: what are they waiting for, where are they, what day it is… The other sense of death is that seen as the end of a life, which is reflected in this dialogue, when Vladimir and Estragon have a great idea:

–What do we do now?

-Wait

-Yes, but while waiting

-What about hanging ourselves? (WFG, 17)

However, this suicidal act that might be considered as something very worrying is just a funny game between two innocent children: Hmm. It’d give us an erection! (17). This is a clear example of how tragedy is suddenly turn into comedy. The critic John Flecther is not wrong affirming that «Beckett, despite his reputation as a gloomy pessimist, certainly did not lack a sense of humour» (Fletcher, 13-14). The humour in Waiting for Godot is also evident in the way Vladimir and Estragon communicate with each other. In the conclusion of my first paper this is what I remarked about the humour in this play:

[Vladimir and Estragon] were like children playing absurd games and expressing funny comments […] both tramps represent “opposite comic identities” (Pattie 75), that is, each one plays a role which is similar to one of a clown, so their sentences and expressions can be often interchangeable and consequently this produces rhytmical dialogues which tend to cause a comical effect. They play with the language as if they were composing a poem, a song or a pun:

Estragon: Looks to me like a bush.

Vladimir: A shrub.

Estragon: A bush. (Beckett 14)

The fact is that «Godot borrows images from domains which are distinct from (if not foreign to) highbrow theatre: the musica-hall tradition, the comic tradition of silent cinema, for example. The images of the tramps, their hats, their slapstick routines…» (Uhlmann, 17).

Vladimir and Estragon laugh at the tragedy of their destiny (about waiting and waiting) ‘to make the time pass faster’ as they usually say, because it is a way of entertainment. With dialogues like the following is difficult to know if they are really suffering while waiting or if they are enjoying the experience like little boys:

Estragon: -Then adieu.

Pozzo: -Adieu

Vladimir: -Adieu.

Pozzo: -Adieu

Vladimir: Adieu

Pozzo: Adieu

Estragon: Adieu

Pozzo: And thank you

Vladimir: Thank you

Pozzo: Not at all

Estragon: Yes yes,

Pozzo: No no.

Vladimir: Yes yes

Estragon: No no (WFG, 50-51)

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7″el dolor es un fenómeno totalmente arbitrario y que, por esta razón, se sitúa en un plano donde cualquier intento de justificación es absurdo»

8. A philosophic concept by Friedrich Nietzsche

Endgame at first sight is a play very alike to Waiting for Godot, in the sense that the main characters are a couple, Hamm and Clov, as Vladimir and Estragon; moreover we have another two characters, Nagg and Nell (as Pozzo and Lucky), Hamm parents. Both plays present the philosophic concern about existence which presupposes a tragedy for the characters and for the audience. However, in their deep essence they are quite different. Generally, in Endgame we can find more negativeness, cruelty and violence. Effectivley, the story is about a handicapped old man, Hamm, the owner of the house, who lives with his slave Clov and has his disabled and immobile parents in dustbins. Hamm depends on his wheelchair to move and consequently in Clov who moves the wheelchair. At the same time, as Vladimir and Estragon, they depend on each other although the hostility is evident. While Clov hates intesenly Hamm (although he feels compassion), Hamm hates still more their parents for having conceived him.

The tragedy is more intense in Endgame than in Godot, as John Flecther puts it «Waiting for Godot seem a work almost of social realism in comparison » (32). Waiting for Godot was a play of two acts, and although the second was a repetition of the first with some changes, we could perceive more activity; Endgame, however, is more similar to a «claustrophobic set» (Fletcher, 32) where we can’t tell night from day because the stage is a close space (the room of Hamm’s home supposedly). We do not absolutely nothing about the characters, at least in Godot Vladimir and Estragon told some things about their past together. And especially, if in Waiting for Godot the characters were hopeful believing in the arrival of Mr Godot, in Endgame there is no sign of hope, wishes or illusions. «If Godot is based on the premiss of an arrival that never occurs, then Endgame is premissed on a departure that never happens» (Mooney, 47). On the other hand, «if in Waiting for Godot there is someone that waits for something, in Endgame there is something that departs, something that progress, something that goes towards something, something that is taking its course»9 (Fernández-Santos, 24). In effect, Endgame creates us the illusion of progression as the characters Hamm and Clov are always talking about an end , about something that is »nearly finished». The ‘end’ for them represents the depart of Clov, who constantly says to Hamm: «Then I’ll leave you» (Endgame, 29). If Clov leaves the house, the room, the everyday routine and coexistence, then the game ends. This game consists of «moments for nothing» (Endgame, 52), of a life that seems desperately eternal always with «the same questions, the same answers» (Endgame, 13), but as it is already the custom, «then there’s no reason for it to change» (Endgame, 13). The critic Sinéad Mooney interprets Endgame as symbolizing a game of chess «indicating the final phase of the game, when the board is almost empty» (50) Hamm is the king who should win the game, as Clov is going to leave him, and his parents die. But Clov never leaves finally, and anyway, «no matter how skilfully the pieces are moved about the board, […] death will inevitably checkmate all manoeuvres» (Mooney, 50). Thus some changes take place, the progression is just an illusion because all finishes as it began: emptiness and misery are still intact. In this sense Endgame is a «refusal to make any concessions to the audience’s hunger for progression or development of the situation onstage» (Fletcher, 32); it is a ‘regression’ rather than a progression. Nevertheless, although nothing decisive happens at the end, during the play ‘something is taking its course’ (Endgame, 26). The scholar expresses this in detail:

[Endgame is] the representation of a depart, of a course, of an unstoppable flow that, however, one senses it can be stopped forever in the most unexpected moment. This is the most basic and fundamental activity of men: the life, the act of living. Life is a movement tending to something: it has a direction […] [It is an] evanescent, coherent and inexpressible movement [which] tends to a order of progression or degradation […] The action progresses moving towards the definitive denial: death. Endgame portrays this everyday phenomenon, inexpressible through reason.10 (Fernandez-Santos, 25) 

The psychological decay of the characters brings them closer to a state of death where the heart beats by inertia. They are located in the middle of nowhere because as Vladimir and Estragon, have no notion of time and space: they are in a ‘zero land’ (Endgame, 25), there is nothing outside the house, ‘only death’. And ‘what time is it?’ ‘The same as usual, zero’ (Endgame, 13). Like lost souls talking about humanity, they assume that crying means being alive:

Clov: He’s crying.

Hamm: Then he’s living. (Endgame, 42)

Moreover, being a child is also a sign of being alive, of having emotions and energy:

Clov: He would have climbed the trees

Hamm: All the little odd jobs.

Clov: And then he would have grown up. (Endgame, 41)

But Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell are not children anymore:

Hamm: (…) One day you’ll say to yourself, I’m tired, I’ll sit down, and you’ll go and sit down. Then you’ll say, I’m hungry, I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up. You’ll say, I shouldn’t have sat down, but since I have I’ll sit on a little longer, then I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up and you won’t get anything to eat. (Endgame, 28-29)

Then one could think, why they do not try to change their lives if they feel so unhappy? But Hamm would answer you: ‘You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that! […] The end is at the beginning and yet you go on.’ (Endgame, 44). For the pessimistic Hamm there’s no solution, no miracles o salvation at the end, so what he can only do is to despise their parents for their decision of having a child. He insults and curses his father Nagg incessantly: ‘Accursed progenitor!’ (15); ‘Accursed fornicator!’ (16); ‘Scoundrel! Why did you engernder me?’ (Endgame, 35)

This psychological torture is very linked to the physical suffering, as happens in Waiting for Godot and to a lesser extent in Krapp’s Last Tape. As Kathryn White explains, «to be alive in Beckett’s world is to be physical and to be physical in Beckett’s world is to be damned, and Endgame personifies the defective physical condition» (10).

On the one hand, Hamm, as Pozzo in Godot, is blind and handicapped. One sees him covered with an old sheet in his wheelchair and continuously bleeding from the nose, moreover, he needs his painkillers at night. Unlike him, Clov is condemned to not being able to sit down as he is the slave who must do the housework for Hamm. For this reason his legs and back always hurt. It is curious to see how their limitation complement each other. Nagg and Nell are physically damaged too. They have two stumps instead of legs, since they lost them in an accident many years ago, and due to his they are completely immobile in the dustbins: they can’t kiss each other. As in Godot, hunger here is also displayed, and again, there is no much food, only some sugar plums and biscuits.

And seeing all these tragic characteristics of Endgame, how can be one laughing all the time while reading the play? Because, as we said before, Beckett is a great humourist and Endgame contains some dialogues really ingenious. For the characters themselves their lives, the play, it is not a tragedy, but a comedy: «Why this farce, day after day?» (Endgame, 18). As Nell concludes, «nothing is funnier than unhappiness…it’s the most comical thing in the world» (20). Beckett himself confessed once:

«All that matters is the laugh and the tear- and in that moment we experience a great truth; to be able to laugh at our condition is the only way we can set about the necessary business of putting up with it.”

Reflections of this in Endgame are quite numerous. For instance, when Hamm is telling a cruel story about a poor man that was looking for job:

Hamm: He comes crawling on his belly- whining for bread for his brat. He’s offered a job as gardener. (Clov bursts out laughing). What is there so funny about that? […] The whole thing is comical, I grant you that. (40).

Occasionally they think of laughing suddenly without any reason:

Hamm: What about having a good guffaw the two of us together? (40)

…

Hamm: No phone calls? Don’t we laugh? (16)

To conclude, Endgame is full of stage directions where the words ‘laugh’, ‘chukle’ , ‘guffaw’ or ‘game’ are plentiful although the situation of the characters may be the most terrible and catastrophic one can see. «Beckett subtitled Waiting for Godot ‘a tragicomedy’, and this would also fit Endgame, but this time the tragicomedy dips towards the tragic end of the spectrum» (Mooney, 51).

______________________________________________________________

9″Si en Esperando a Godot hay alguien que espera algo, en Final de Partida lo que hay es algo que marcha, algo que progresa, algo que va hacia algo, algo que sigue su curso»

10″la representación de una marcha, de un curso, de una fluencia imposible de detener y que, no obstante, se presiente que puede detenerse para siempre en el momento más inesperado. Se trata de la actividad más básica y fundamental de los hombres: la vida, el acto de vivir. La vida es un movimiento tendencial: tiene una dirección […] [Es un] movimiento evanescente, inexpresable y coherente que tiende a un orden de progresión o degradación […] La acción progresa orientándose hacia la negación definitiva: la muerte. Endgame escenifica este fenómeno cotidiano, inexpresable mediante la razón»

«The breakthrough came with Krapp’s Last Tape, perhaps his most perfect theatre piece» (Flecther 16-17). In effect, this play had a great impact on the audience as it resembles to a lesser degree Waiting for Godot and Endgame. First of all, it is much shorter; secondly, there is only one character (Krapp); and thirdly, it focuses more on the memories, the past and the nostalgia. But although the play has a monological structure, Krapp is not completely alone as he communicates with two of his past selves (one of 29 years old and the other of 39) trough a magnetic tape recorder. Sitting on a chair enfront a table full of boxes containing spools he looks for a particular tape, that of the ‘box five, spool three’. And this is how an old Krapp of 69 encounters a younger Krapp of 39 who talks about an even younger Krapp of 29. Fletcher describes the play as a «radical monodrama in which the characters are reduced to one, an old man communing with an earlier self via the tape recorder that brings back voices from his past» and opines that «although at first sight the dramatic situation appears dangerously compressed, the play succeeds brilliantly in conveying the agonizing poignancy of Krapp’s loss» (33). Effectively, «Krapp’s loss» are the key words for the description of tragedy here. Krapp throughout his life has lost many things, but first of all, he has lost the memories recorded in the tape he listens to since he is not able to recognize many details. A clear exemple is when his recorded voice says once the word ‘viudity’ and he has to look up it in the dictionary. For Krapp is difficult to accept his past ‘selves’ since he can’t remember them at all. So when listening them he feels surprise and hate: «Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that» (Krapp’s, 17). We have again the incompatibility so characteristic in Beckett’s plays: incompatibility in Vladimir and Estragon, in Hamm and Clov, and in the different selves of Krapp. Perhaps this anger towards what he can’t recognize is due to his early psychologic (and physical) decay, in fact, Krapp describes himself as a solitary man: «With all this darkness round me I feel less alone. I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to….(hesitates)….me.» (Krapp’s, 12), and a lonely and decadent man will never be able to accept himself. Through the memories that only «serve to reinforce the horror of the present» of the old Krapp, we observe the progression of a life by which finally we «comprehend the complexities of growing old» (White, 23). The decay in Krapp is obvious when the 39-year-old Krapp’ abandoned love to center on his artistic carreer. He thought that through art he would achieve the immortality «triumphing over the ephemeral nature of the physical body» (White, 26)This attitude reminds us ‘of Schopenhauerian pessimism’, as the critics Steven Barfield and Philip Tew propose (3).

Since now I have focused on losses but from a more psychologic perspective, thus then I will describe the emotional or sentimental losses. The recording of the spool three narrates us some important episodes in Krapp’s life: his parents death and a lost lover (Bianca).

The younger Krapp does not seem very affected for the death of his family:

«Mother at rest at last…» (Krapp’s, 11) ;»Last illness of his father» (13); «the house on the canal where mother lay a-dying, in the late autumn, after her long viduity…» (Krapp’s, 14).

These recordings are only heard once, while the registration of the romantic incident is heard more than once and it shows the interest of the old Krapp on that particular memory. This part of his life is represented with the name «memorable equinox» (11), and it is the favourite of the old Krapp because he felt real happinness: «Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indigence until that memorable night in March» (15); «my face in her breasts and my hand on her» (16). However, as we explained before, he preferred to choose the solitude: «I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed» (16), and this decision hurts the old and empty Krapp: «Could have been happy with her, up there on the Baltic, and the pines, and the dunes» (18)

Krapp is another tragic antihero who can’t find any sense to life. As Estragon, Vladimir, Clov and Hamm, he won’t do anything for change the ‘nature of life’. He only will accept the pain and curse his luck: «Perhaps my best years are gone when there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back» (20). But Kathryn White puts this in question: «We wonder if Krapp would prefer to age on and die, or recover his lost youth.» (White 23). Go back to the past it is an idea that always has excited us but at the same time it has frustrated us because it is completely impossible. Krapp affirms with security that he wouldn’t do it, but only for the fact that he has spent an evening (or a night, or a morning…) listening to past memories recorded in a machine it is clear that he has romantic whishes of «recover his lost youth», or at least, possess it only for some minutes while the tape-recorder works.

As Krapp himself wonders, «what remains of all that misery?» (13) And what remains is, apart from his solitude, his pyshical failures; in fact, the three Krapps have always suffered from constipation and stomach problems in general: «Slight improvement in bowel condition» (11) «Unattainable laxation» (13). But his degradation is so extreme that he does not mind if he keeps drinking alcohol and eating bananas, two habits that have become even obsessive: «To drink less, in particular» (13).

Death in Krapp’s Last Tape is revealled in the memory loss of Krapp, as what occurs to Estragon in Waiting for Godot. The process of forgetting is parallel (symbolically) to that of dying. If time passes and we go forgetting things in the course, we enter in a process of abandoning our identity little by little. Death seen as the end of life is embodied by Krapp’s mother and father who died many years ago. For Kathryn White the tittle of ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ means that death could be near so this is why Krapp decides to record his last tape «appearing resolute in his acceptance that his present recording may ultimately be his final effort.» (24)

Although hard to believe, this play is also characterized by humouristic contents. In fact, when one sees the play begin, could have the false impression that it will be a comedy. Krapp wears ridiculous clothes that makes him seem a clownish old man probably a little lunatic: «narrow trousers too short for him»; «heavy silver watch and chain»; «surprising pair of dirty white boots, size ten at least, very narrow and pointed» (9). A peculiar old and awkward man addicted to bananas, is not that comical? This ‘adult’ sometimes acquires the attitude of a child when he looks for the tape:

Krapp: (briskly) Ah! Box…thrree…spool….five….spool! Spoooool! (Happy smile […]) ….ah! The little rascal! […] ah! The little scoundrel! (10-11)

His actions, movements and gestures occasionally seem irrational and unjustifiable:

«He turns, advances to edge of stage, halts, strokes banana, peels it, drops skin at his feet, puts end of banana in his mouth and remains motionless, staring vacuously before him» (10)

Pain here is again laughed at rather than cried when Krapp is listening to his past self in the tape recorder: «(Prolongued laugh in which Krapp joins) What remains of all that misery?» (13). This contrast inspires to the audience a perplexity which does not impede them from chuckle.

Having analyzed Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape properly from a perspective in which I have considered tragededy as important as comedy, now we are arriving at the end of the paper. After summarizing which structure I have followed in my paper and which contents I have treated in order to make clar how my purpose have been achieved, I will discuss a little more extensively the aspect of the comedy or of the humour in Beckett’s theater and also focusing specifically in Godot, Krapp’s and Endgame.

First of all, I have talked about Samuel Beckett in a existentialist background. Effectively, his period of artistic development as an author took place in a literary and philosophical context where the Existentialism was spreading its ideas about human and the world, more concretely about the existence, as the doctrine’s name indicates. The ideas basically were concerned about the absurdity of life and how people confront this spiritual and psychological problem. This philosphy more inclined to a post-modern world than to a modern thought, did not bet anymore for rationality and progress, since a terrible war recently had demonstrated the madness of humanity. We can locate Samuel Beckett in this worldview, but not completely. Actually, Beckett theater deals with the deep human’s essence: an irrational and fragile creature who intensely fears freedom and uncertainty. The main difference between Beckett’s theater and other Existentialist playwrights such as Jean-Paul Sartre is that Beckett’s plays are as irrational in content and in form as life itself. Until he came, absurdist or existentialist plays portrayed the senselessness of the world maintaining the rational and conventional forms.

After introducing this philosophical background, I have argued that as Beckett’s theater is in a way existentialist since it deals with the absurdity of life, therefore it has been labelled as ‘Theater of the Absurd’. But we have to be careful with this term because it is more complex than that. Moreover, for the fact that his plays are ‘absurd’, many critics (as the Spanish Ángel Fernández-Santos or the English John Flecther) believe that it does not make sense trying to interpret them as symbolist pieces of theater. Here we have an example of what Fletcher thinks (I already put one of Fernández-Santos in the introduction):

[In Waiting for Godot many interpreations have tried to establish a truth: Chrisian, Marxist, Atheist… But it is absurd] »in fact Beckett’s play have been more aptly termed ‘drama of the non-specific’ »(Alec Reid). [It is senseless to] «look for a ‘specific’ meaning». Beckett’s art avoid definition because he believed passionately that ‘art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear’. The writer is no ‘magus’ possessing privileged insight or knowledge not revealed to other mortals; all he or she can do is distil in words, however imperfect, a vision or experience of the misery and desperateness of life. That, for Beckett, was ‘poetry’ broadly defined, and it was for him the only thing that ultimately had any value.» (48)

It is exactly what Fernández-Santos opines, and from my point of view thy are in a subtle way contradicting themselves with regard Beckett’s theater. If we are admiring Beckett’s dramatic essence because it depicts the absurdity of life, why are we critizicing those critics or ordinary people that have tried to interpret his plays as hiding symbols to be decoded? This academic or intellectual impulse is natural. I did so myself in the first paper, but I haven’t considered my interpretative conclusions are totally correct and absolute, but just what they are: subjective interpretations. I think Santos and Flecther are right in the sense of what Beckettian plays are about ‘distil in words a vision or experience of the misery and desperateness of life’, but it does not entail necessarily to that moralistic thought of not seeing Beckett’s plays as symbolists. What really cares in my opinion is the intensity and enthusiasm of analyzing something, not the ‘objective truth’.

Jumping to another theme, to the concept of ‘absurd’ is very linked that of the humour if we observe what produces us laughing in the everyday: when a person acts in an unexpected way (comically or innocently) enfront a tense situation. This translated in terms of Beckett theater refers to his characters seeming children, clowns or insensitive people giggling, laughing or guffawing when they have listened to a cruel story about a poor man needing desperately a job to feed his children (Endgame). Then one can think that Beckett is cruel and malevolent, but is not as simple as that. If he only had represented scenes like that (laughing at the miseries of life) then this person opining about his immorality maybe would be right. But the fact is that he plays with many ‘comic tones’, as Fintan O’Toole has theorized, and I have selected some as I consider they could be of the reader interest:

Within the parameters of his exploitation of the humour of theatre itself and the dark comedy of a bleak and depressed society, Beckett uses a dazzling range of comic tones.

–Gallows humour (literally so in the pathetic attempts of Didi and Gogo to hang themselves).

–Slapstick (that multitude in transports of joy-Endgame)

-Elements of farce (the elaborate business with boots, carrots, hairbrushes, ladders, telescopes and all the inanimate objects that cause so much trouble throughout the plays).

-Comic irony (the blind Hamm in Endgame lavishing his affection on a three-legged toy dog). -Mock-heroic posturing (Didi and Gogo’s absurdly grave discourse on radishes).

-Mock-epic satire (the way, for example, that Endgame makes a mockery of Hamlet).

-Sheer [pure or simple] absurdity (Krapp’s banana).

In my opinion it could be no better explained with this example, although obsviously one could extract so many more ‘comic tones’ as one wants, because imagination and sensitiveness are limitless. As we can see, Beckett mocks in general all related to seriousness or formality: classic works of literature, academicity, ancient heros, traditionality and sadness. And because he teases the tragic aspects of life it does not mean that he thinks we have to be positive, always smiling, to make of the world a better place. Beckett, at the same time that he accepts pain, he denies tragedy. And from this peculiar and exquisite contradiction are based his artistic productions. To finalize with this point of the humour, I will present another example of how Beckett plays with humour in his theater: through the metatheater. I previously explained in the introduction this theme, saying that the character’s dialogues makes reference to the general concept of theater itself. Thus they can point to the idea of characters, to the idea of author, or even to the role of actors. But also to the audience, for instance, when Clov in Endgame looks directly towards the audience with his telescope:

Clov: “I see . . . a multitude . . . in transports . . . of joy.” (Pause) That’s what I call a magnifier.

(He lowers his telescope, turns toward Hamm.) Well? Don’t we laugh?

As Harbin Leigh clarifies, “the audience does not remain outside the line of fire of Clov’s sarcasm, and his use of “we” here implicitly includes everyone in the theater. (3) And he also concludes from this that “Beckett’s comedy leads to a subtle, yet complex self-reflexive theater.” (2)

With this more detailed explanation of the humour’s paper in Beckett’s plays I hope the reader have understood what is my purpose with this essay. The theater of Samuel Beckett «represent a clear and intelligible, if admittedly complex, metaphor about the nature of existence» (Fletcher 49). And the ‘nature of our existence’ is with no doubt an unstable and hazardous combination of happy-comical moments with painful-tragic experiences.

Primary sources

-Beckett, Samuel. Endgame, London: Faber and Faber, 1964. Print.

-Beckett, Samuel. Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers, London: Faber and Faber, 1965. Print.

-Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot ‘A tragicomedy in two acts’, London: Faber and Faber, 1956. Print.

Secondary sources

-Fletcher, John. About Beckett: the Playwright & the Work, London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Print.

–Fernández- Santos, Ángel, Italo Ricardi, Juan Guerrero Zamoral, Alfonso Sastre, and Ricardo Doménech. La Última Cinta, Acto sin Palabras; dos obras de Samuel Beckett con estudios y comentarios. Barcelona: Aymá, 1965. 11-37. Print.

-O’Toole, Fintan. Localmotives. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://www.localmotives.com/hoved/tema/nr_3/Beckett/butnotinthe.html>.

 -Harbin, Leigh. The Modern Word. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://themodernword.com/beckett/papers/harbin_silence.pdf>.

–White, Kathryn. «Continuum Literary Studies : Beckett and Decay.» . Continuum International Publishing, Feb. 2009. Web. 10 May 2013.

 –Barfield, Steven, Matthew Feldman, and Philip Tew. «Continuum Literary Studies : Beckett and Death.» . Continuum International Publishing, Oct. 2009. Web. 10 May 2013.

 -Uhlmann, Anthony. Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print

 –McDonald., Rónán «Tragedy and Irish Literature : Synge, O’Casey, Beckett.» Palgrave Macmillan, n.d. Web. 2002. <http://site.ebrary.com/lib/universvaln/Doc?id=10041636&ppg=140>.

 -Pattie, David. Samuel Beckett. Oxfordshire, New York, Canada: Routledge Guides to Literature, 2000. Print.

-Mooney, Sinéad.Samuel Beckett, United Kingdom: Writers and Their Work, 2006. Print.

-McDonald, Rónán. The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print

-Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot ‘A tragicomedy in two acts’, London: Faber and Faber, 1956. Print.

-Kaelin, Eugene F. The unhappy consciousness : The poetic plight of Samuel Beckett : An inquiry at the intersection of phenomenology and literature. (Analecta Husserliana; v. 13). Holland: Francis. ED. Reidel, 1926. Print.

-Pattie, David. Samuel Beckett. Oxfordshire, New York, Canada: Routledge Guides to Literature, 2000. Print.

-Mooney, Sinéad. Samuel Beckett, United Kingdom: Writers and Their Work, 2006. Print.

-McDonald, Rónán. The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print

-«http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett.» Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. 

This paper has shown principally an analysis of ‘Waiting for Godot’ whose allegoric elements I have connected to some biographical data of the author Samuel Beckett, whose events have could mark or influence his personality and way of thinking in general.

Thus I have tried to the reflect this interconnexion between artistic and personal and psychological ideas, following a biographical order. In first place, the childhood of Beckett in which he was very close to his parents, and I have chosen this stage because the parent’s influence, treatment and education is decisive in a future for a child. With ‘future’ here I refer to his later artistic work that so characterizes his peculiar personality. However, I have not forgotten his natural identity which begins to make itself present in his young and innocent behaviour, and I take into account it has not to be social and cultural constructed in a necessary way. Thus I have linked some traits of his parents’ personality and of his relationship with them to the Beckett’s artistic composition of Vladimir and Estragon.

In what could be the second part of the paper, I have argued that Beckett’s friendship with the writer James Joyce, following the biographical order as now it refers to the adulthood of the author. I think this part of his life is of great relevance as under his admiration and idealization for Joyce he one day realizes they go trough different ways and at last he finds his identity (or at least begins the search for it), which is next reflected in his experimental plays and novels, but I focus on ‘Waiting for Godot’, evidently. And then I mention another determining scene of his life story: his social activity fighting against the Nazi’s invasion in Paris, which I have not developed narrating in detail what happened and what was his social activity in France. It is not relevant in the sense that I only wanted to reflect the general idea of how all the cruelties he witnessed affected in his personality or way to see the world, and how then this traumatic event appeared as disguised of innovative artistic ideas in Godot which represent the social injustices: the solitary and grey stage, the desperation of the characters which seem two lost tramps, the relationship of explotation-subordination between Pozzo and his slave Lucky…

Since now I have interpreted ‘Waiting for Godot’ as an extraordinary play which inspires the reader and the audience a cold and bleak sensation, the absurdity of the everyday life where one seems that always is needing something to wait and to live for… For connect this dramatic aspect with the author’s psychology I have described some events of his life that could be seen at first sight as ‘negative’: Beckett’s obscure childhood, the incompatiblity with his mother, the death of his father, his illness, the war experience… However, there is another important facet of Godot: the humour. This aspect is especially reflected through the main characters Vladimir and Estragon. The tramps not only cause a pessimistic and negative feeling for their routine actions, but also they are endearing and tender. Didi and Gogo (even their names express this innocence) were like children playing absurd games and expressing funny comments. Thus the incomprehension that the audience could feel in watching their childish (or childlike) actions was more curious and lovable than distressing. As I explained before in the main body of the paper, both tramps represent «opposite comic identities» (Pattie 75), that is, each one plays a role which is similar to one of a clown, so their sentences and expressions can be often interchangeable and consequently this produces rhytmical dialogues which tend to cause a comical effect. They play with the language as when composing a poem, a song or a pun:

Estragon: Looks to me like a bush.

Vladimir: A shrub.

Estragon: A bush. (Beckett 14)

We can find this aspect of the humour and irony in a joke that Estragon tells to Vladimir: «An Englishman having drunk a little more than usual goes to a brothel. The bawd asks him if he wants a fair one, a dark one, or a red-haired one» (Beckett 16). And especially in the peculiar and extensive dialogue of Lucky in the middle of the play which have not any logical structure, as it is formed by invented words, stutters, different themes mixed together without any coherence… The »message» is told with a serious or intelectual tone and intention, and this contrast is which provokes the absurd situation for the humour basis.

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown (…)

What I want to demonstrate explaining the humour’s aspect in Godot is that Samuel Beckett  could also be seen as a man with a great sense of humour, always ready to say some ironic or satirical commentary, and not only as a depressive and pessimist man obsessed with the nihilist idea about how absurd is the world where we live. To sum up, Waiting for Godot is a play as ambiguous as its author Samuel Beckett, and although it can provoke a variety of reactions (like, dislike, surprise, attraction, rejection…) what is clear is that its essence produces a kind of confussion and bewilderment which make the audience and critics see it as groundbreaking and exceptionally creative.