drama ii modern drama lecture 20 1. synopsis 1. analytical mapping: social significance 2....

DRAMA IIModern Drama

Lecture 20

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SYNOPSIS

1. Analytical Mapping: Social Significance 2. Philosophical Background: ThemesA. SocialB. PsychologicalC. Religious3. Dramatic references: Themes

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Social Acceptance Beckett

Plot Obscure, non consequential

Setting Symbolic, bare

Theme Meaninglessness of human experience

Stage Directions Repetitive, frequent

Language Everyday, meaningless

The Theatre of the Absurd and Samuel Beckett

Beckett: Critical Analysis

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Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot received its first impressions of the type of drama against which Beckett reacted in his rejection of what he has called “the grotesque fallacy of realistic art – that miserable statement of line and surface and the penny-a-line vulgarity of a literature of notations”

In Beckett’s work there is a deep existential anguish that is the keynote of Beckett’s work.

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Regarding the public’s lazy demand for easy comprehensibility he said:

Here is a direct expression – pages and pages of it. And if you don’t understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it. You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to read the other. This rapid skimming and absorption of th scant cream of sense is made possible by what I may call a continuous process of copious intellectual salivation.


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The form that is an arbitrary and independent phenomenon can fulfill no higher function that that of stimulus for a tertiary or quartary conditioned reflex of dribbling comprehension.

Beckett and Language

Waiting for Godot is the attempt to communicate where no communication is possible.


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For an artist therefore, according to Beckett, the only possible spiritual development is in the sense of depth. The artistic tendency is not expansive, but a contradiction. And art the apotheosis of solitude. There is no communication because there are no vehicles of communication.

Beckett’s work was one of the first works to point to the fallibility of language as a medium for communication of metaphysical truth.


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Anyone who speaks is carried along by the logic of language and its articulations.

Thus the writer who pits himself or herself against the unsayable must use all his/her cunning so as not to say what the words make him/her say against his will, but to express instead what by their nature they are designed to cover up: the uncertain, the contradictory, the unthinkable.

The play is of a difficult reception because is so enigmatic, so exasperating, so complex, and so uncompromising in its refusal to conform to any of the accepted ideas of dramatic construction.


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One of the best examples of how language is brought to the limits of signification, is Lucky’s speech (p. 45), that is, how his speech reflects and performs the limits of speech by presenting almost a pure signifier at work, where the signified has slide under the signifier.

This limit situation of language is also revealed by the cross-talk which prevent Vladimir and Estragon to become aware of their situation, and thus they attempt to escape anguish and suffering.

Is the meaning of the play related to language or is beyond language? What is the meaning of this play: Beckett once said: “If I knew, I would have said so in the play”.

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The cross-talk also provide a good example of the impossibility of language to communicate, in fact, they reveal the very failure of language. (p. 14, 22-23 and 68-69).

Any endeavour to arrive at a clear and certain condition is difficult, and always open to uncertaintiy.

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Structure and Circularity

The form, structure, and mood of an artistic statement cannot be separated from its meaning, its conceptual content; simply because the work of art as a whole is its meaning, what is said in it is indissolubly linked with the manner in which it is said, and cannot be said in any other way.

This is particularly clear in the circular structure of the play. There are many examples of this circularity.


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Here some examples:

For instance the cross-talk, not only has the function to pass time and neutralizing meaning, but also structurally functions in both acts (p. 14, 22-23 and 68-69).

At the beginning of both acts there is a tree, and the space is the same, indescribably barren and desolate.

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The static situation is developed in this circular manner:

Both acts begin in the same manner:

Estragon playing with his boot (2, 62)

Both acts finish in the same manner: “Estragon: Well? shall we go? Vladimir: Yes, let’s us go. They do not move” (59). “Vladimir: Well? shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let’s go. They do not move” (109)

Both acts end with the same lines of dialogue but spoken by the characters in reversed order.

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In both acts they attempt suicide but fail. In fact, the suicide is more a game than a serious attempt, and allows them to pass time

Also, in both acts Pozzo and Lucky appear, although in different circumstances: during the first act, Pozzo is the Master and Lucky the salve; in the second, Pozzo I blind and therefore dependent, and Lucky is more his Lazarillo who guides him through the road.

This static situation and circularity is also assured by the repetitive quality of the dialogue, a dialogue that does not communicate, but simply fills up time.

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If only we could discover some hidden clue, it is felt, these difficult plays could be forced to yield their secret and reveal the plot of the conventional play that is hidden within them.

Such attempts are doomed to failure. Beckett’s plays lack plot even more completely than other works of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Instead of a linear development, they present their author’s intuition of the human condition by a method that is essentially polyphonic.

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Waiting for Godot confronts its audience with an organized structure of statements and images that interpenetrate each other and that must be apprehended in their totality, rather like the different themes in a symphony, which gain meaning by their simultaneous interaction.

These structures are circular, as is the waiting of the two tramps.

Rather than attempt to answer questions we should attempt to see what questions are being asked.

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Social Acceptance Beckett

Plot Obscure, non consequential

Setting Symbolic, bare

Theme Meaninglessness of human experience

Stage Directions Repetitive, frequent

Language Everyday, meaningless

The Theatre of the Absurd and Samuel Beckett

Beckett: Critical Analysis

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Philosophical Background

(No Exit by Sartre)absurd content butrational form or presentation

form and content merge to form a truer art

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Cause Effect: Themes

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Cause Effect : Themes (cont…)

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Waiting for Godot: Themes

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Social Themes

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Social Themes

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Social Themes

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Social Themes

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Psychological Themes

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Religious Themes

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Waiting and Nothingness

Waiting for Godot does not tell a story; it explores a static situation.

This is the central question: waiting for what?

The play it is not about Godot, but about waiting, and this central theme determines all the others.

This central theme, waiting, will be a recurrent reality within the play, one that it seems to remind Vladimir and Estragon why they are where are: in no man’s land.

Dramatic references: Themes

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Here some examples:

Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (8).

“Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says. Estragon: Who? Vladimir: Godot” (13).

“Estragon: Simply wait. Vladimir: We’re used to it” (39).

“Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (76).


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“Estragon: What do we do now? Vladimir: While waiting. Estragon: While waiting” (86).

“Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot” (88).

Vladimir: Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come” (91)

“Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (96).

“Pozzo: What is he waiting for? Vladimir: What are you waiting for? Estragon: I’ am waiting for Godot” (100).


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What becomes evident is that both of them are ‘tied’ to Godot, they cannot but wait for him endlessly.

Godot, then becomes the only hope for survival.

He is the one that controls their lives and the only possibility of redemption.

They can only be saved by Godot and therefore waiting until his arrival is a fate.


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This becomes clear in several places in the text:

“Estragon: We are not tied? We’re not” (15)

“Estragon: I am asking you if you are tied. Vladimir: Tied? Estragon: Tied? Vladimir: How do you mean tied? Estragon: Down. Vladimir: But by whom? By whom? Estragon: To your man. Vladimir: To Godot? Tied to Godot! What an idea! No question of it” (17).


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Being tied implies that their lives are totally and irremediably dependent on Godot, and salvation is his decision alone:

“Vladimir: We’ll hang ourselves to-morrow. Unless Godot comes. Estragon: And if he comes? Vladimir: We’ll be saved” (109).

Time and Void

Waiting, as the central theme of the play leads the two characters to avoid time and make the waiting bearable by filling in time with futile actions.


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They are aware that there is ‘nothing to be done’ while waiting, and this becomes and obsessive statement throughout the play.

First, is the awareness that there is

nothing that can help them in their waiting, and the void and anxiety have to be confronted, and this is restated time and again, throughout the text.

This [nothing to be done] will be come the second, most important theme of the play.


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Here some examples:

“Estragon: Nothing to be done” (2).

“Vladimir: Nothing to be done” (4).

“Vladimir: Nothing to be done” (6).

“Estragon: Nothing to be done” (17).

“Estragon: In the meantime nothing happens” (40).

“Estragon: Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful! (43).


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“Vladimir: We’ve nothing more to do here. Estragon: Nor anywhere else (57).

“Estragon: What do we do now, now that we are happy?” (66).

“Vladimir” There is nothing we can do” (76).

“Estragon: What’ll we do, what’ll we do! (80).

“Vladimir: There’s nothing to do” (84).


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But it is critical for them to fill in time, which will also becomes the third, most important theme of the play.

It will travel throughout the entire text, becoming an obsession for the two of them.

Here some examples:

“Vladimir: Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story. Estragon: No. Vladimir: It’ll pass the time” (6).

“Vladimir: What do we do no? Estragon: Wait. Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting. Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?” (12)


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“Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but no so rapidly” (51).

“Vladimir: We could start all over again perhaps. […] Estragon: That’s the idea, let’s contradict each other” (70*).

“That wasn’t such a little canter” (72).

“Vladimir: No, I mean the boots. Estragon: Would that be a good thing? Vladimir: It’d pass the time. I assure you, it’d be an occupation” (77).

Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?” (77).


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“Estragon: Then it’ll be day again. What’ll we do, what’ll we do!” (80).

“Vladimir: We could play at Pozzo and Lucky” (82)

“Vladimir: How time flies when one has fun!” (86)

“Vladimir: What about a little deep breathing?” (86)

“A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s get to work!” (92).

Estragon: To try him with other names, one after the other. It’d pass the time” (95).


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Passing the time, filling in time avoids thinking about their present, absurd, condition:

“Vladimir: We’re in no danger of ever thinking any more” (71).

Vladimir: What is terrible is to have thought” (71).


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Pozzo and Lucky / Godot-God

Many interpretations have been provided about Pozzo and Lucky, and most are wanting.

However, there some basic questions that must be answer: Why Pozzo and Lucky are in the Play? Why in the first act, their presence lasts for almost half of the act?

It is not enough to say that say, as Martin Esslin does, that Pozzo and Lucky represents materiality and spirituality respectively.


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I believe that Pozzo is Godot/God, and he functions as a material deployment of the two tramps dependence.


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On page 17 they state that they are ‘tied’ to Godot.

In the first act, Pozzo has in fact tied Lucky to him, with a rope that allows him to control Lucky.

In the second act, Pozzo is tied to Lucky, does this suggest that Pozzo is a creation of Lucky?

Does Lucky, then, represent Vladimir and Estragon, and therefore Humanity?

Pozzo comes and goes, he never reveals who he really is, and with his departure leaves Vladimir and Estragon waiting for ever.


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Some Conclusions

Moreover, it is in the act of waiting that we experience the flow of time in its purest, most evident form. If we are active, we tend to forget the passage of time, we pass the time, but if we are merely passively waiting, we are confronted with the action of time itself.

As Beckett points out: There is no escape from the hours and days. Neither from tomorrow nor from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us. […] The flow of time confronts us with the basic problem of being.


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Waiting is to experience the action of time, which is constant change: Pozzo is blind, Lucky is dumb. And yet, as nothing real ever happens, that change is in itself an illusion.

The ceaseless activity of time is self-defeating, purposeless and therefore null and void.

The more things change, the more they are the same. ‘The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops’ says Pozzo (32).


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One day is like another, and when we die, we might never have existed: Pozzo: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time?… One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other day, he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we’ll die, the same day, the same second… They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams and instant, then it’s night once more (103).

Vladimir and Estragon live in hope: they wait for Godot, whose coming will bring the flow of time to a stop.


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Again, it seems to be concerned with the salvation: (Lucky 45). God, who does not communicate with us (aphasia), cannot feel for us, and condemns us for reasons unknown.


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That Waiting for Godot is concerned with the hope of salvation through the workings of grace seems clearly established both from Beckett’s own evidence and from the text itself.

But the act of waiting for Godot is shown as essentially absurd.

And suicide remains their favourite solution. The failure to commit suicide leads them to rationalize waiting: ‘I’m curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we’ll take it or leave it’ (13).


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Godot’s function seems to be to keep his dependents unconscious.

In this view the hope, that habit of hoping, that Godot might come after all is the last illusion that keeps Vladimir and Estragon from facing the human condition and themselves in the harsh light of fully conscious awareness.

For a brief moment Vladimir is aware of the full horror of the human condition: The air is full of our cries….But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on… I can’t go on. What have I said? (105).


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The routine of waiting for Godot stands for habit, which prevents us from reaching the painful but fruitful awareness of the full reality of being.

Vladimir’s and Estragon’s pastimes are, as they repeatedly indicate, designed to stop them from thinking. ‘We’re in no danger of thinking any more… Thinking is not the worst… What is terrible is to have thought’ (71).


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The hope of salvation may be merely an evasion of the suffering and anguish that spring from facing the reality of the human condition.

And this is the play all about. It does not provide answers, but hints that we should accept nothingness.

In this there is a clear relationship to the Existentialist philosophy of the time (Jean-Paul Sartre).


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If, for Beckett as for Sartre, human beings have the duty of facing the human condition as a recognition that at the root of our being there is nothingness, liberty, and the need of constantly creating ourselves in a succession of choices, then Godot might well become an image of what Sartre calls ‘bad faith’ – ‘The first act of bad faith consists in evading what one cannot evade, in evading what one is’ (L’Être et la Néant, 111)


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Review Lecture 20

1. Analytical Mapping: Social Significance 2. Philosophical Background: ThemesA. SocialB. PsychologicalC. Religious3. Dramatic references: Themes

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Agenda Lecture 21

1. PYGMALION by George Bernard Shaw2. The Myth Behind the Play3. Contextual Background4. George Bernard Shaw’s Philosophy5. Plot Overview6. Characters, Role, Relationship, Conflicts

& Significance 7. Themes and the major Conflicts

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drama ii modern drama lecture 20 1. synopsis 1. analytical mapping: social significance 2....

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