Waiting for Godot is Not an Absurdist Play :: Waiting for Godot Essays

Waiting for Godot is Not an Absurdist Play Samuel Becketts stage plays are white-haired(a) both in color and in subject matter. Likewise, the answer to the head teacher of whether or not Becketts work is Absurdist also belongs to that realm of gray in which Beckett often works. The Absurdist label becomes problematic when applied to Beckett because his dramatic works carry to overflow the boundaries which scholars attempt to assign. When discussing Beckett, the critic inevitably becomes entangled in contradiction. The playwrights ingest denial that there is a philosophical system behind the plays and his limpid refusal to reduce them to codified interpretations suggests, one could argue, that to search for such systems or interpretations in Becketts work is, at best, a fruitless endeavor (Beckett quoted. in McMillan 13). allow me suggest, however, that Becketts own statements and criticisms not be taken as a obstructer to the study of his work. His objections threa ten only those interpretations which reduce his work. The challenge for the critic, then, is to evaluate and psychoanalyse Beckett in such a way that his works are not reduced but enhanced. The problem with designating Becketts work as Absurdist is, precisely, that this interpretation reduces his work. When a critic describes a work as Absurd, she does not simply mean value that the work is outrageous or nonsensical or merely silly. Coined by American critic Martin Esslin, the term theater of the Absurd can be defined as a kind of drama that presents a have of the risibleity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or sagacious devices and by the use of nonrealistic form....Conceived in perplexity and spiritual anguish, the theater of the absurd portrays not a series of connected incidents telling a invoice but a pattern of images presenting people as bewildered beings in an incomprehensible reality. (Holman 2) In the introduction to The Theatre of the Absurd , Martin Esslin provides a comprehensive exposition of Absurdist theater. He quotes Albert Camus jThe Myth of Sisyphus A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly take of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised