Irish author, critic, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, he wrote in both French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) published in 1952, an emblematicexample of the so-called Theatreof the Absurd.

SECTION SUMMARY

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SAMUEL BECKETT 1906: he was was born in a suburb of Dublin

and he came from a Protestant, Anglo-Irish background.

1923 - 1927: as a young man he studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College.

1928: he went to Paris for the first time to teach English.

There he met the self-exiled Irish writer James Joyce, the author of the controversial modernnovel Ulysses, and joined his circle. Joyce would become one of the dominating influences on Beckett’s thought together with Dante and the French philosopher René Descartes.

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SAMUEL BECKETT 1931 – 1936: he embarked upon a

period of restless travel in London,France, Germany, and Italy.

1937: he decided to settle in Paris and there he met Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnuil, a piano studentwho would become his life-long companion.

During World War Two, his Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris and he worked as a courier for the French resistance. Following the arrest of members of the group by the Gestapo, he fled to the unoccupied zone, where he remained until the end of the war supporting himself as an agricultural labourer.

1945: he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his work.

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SAMUEL BECKETT 1945 onwards: he began a prolific period as a writer

with his trilogy of narrative prose works, Molloy and Malone meurt (Malone Dies), both published in 1951, and L’Innommable (The Unnamable) in 1953.

Most of his work was written in French and later translated into English by Beckett himself.

1953: it was with the amazing success of his play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) at the small Théâtre de Babylonein Paris that Beckett’s rise toworld fame began.

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1954 onwards: he continued writing, but more slowly than in the immediate postwar years.

He stripped reality to its naked bones moving towardan ever greater concentration, sparseness and brevity.

1957: Fin de partie (Endgame), a one-act play, focused on the dissolution of a human personality.

1958: in Krapp’s Last Tape he examined the mystery of the self while in Happy Days (both written only in English) man’s loneliness, pretense and failure become central themes.

SAMUEL BECKETT

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1962: his work became increasingly experimental and minimalist, stripped down toonly the most essential elements. Play places its characters in funeral urns with only their heads visible.

1969: he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

His total dedication to his art extended to his complete avoidance of all personal publicity, of appearances on radio or television, and of all journalistic interviews so he accepted the award but declined the trip to Stockholm to avoid the public speech at the ceremonies and gave away the money of the prize.

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He continued to write throughout the 1970s and 80s mostly in a small house outside Paris.

1972: his play Not I consists of just a mouth, speaking at speed in the darkness!

It has been described as ‘the rendering of the consciousness of a person confined in a small, bare white room, a person who is evidently underextreme duress, and probably at the last gasp of life.’

late 1980s: by then he was in failing health and had moved to a small nursing home.

1989: his wife died in July and he followed her a few months later.

SAMUEL BECKETT

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THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

It is a post–World War II type of play written by European playwrights in the late 1950s, focused largely on the idea of existentialism.

The decade was characterized by the disillusionment with socialist ideals, brought about by totalitarianism, as well as materialism and consumerism.

Playwrights wanted to express what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose andthe traditional theatre was inadequate to do so.

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AIM & MESSAGEAccording to Martin Esslin, the Hungarian-born British critic who coined the term “theatre of the absurd” in 1962,

❑ it attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy, aiming to bring its audience face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it….

❑ the challenge behind this message … is to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly… because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world.

❑ The shedding of easy solutions… leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair butthe laughter of liberation.

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FEATURES & THEMES Its main features are:

❑ absence of a real story or plot;

❑ no action since all actions are insignificant;

❑ vagueness about time, place and the characters.

Its main themes are:

❑ the sense of man’s alienation;

❑ the cruelty of human life;

❑ the absence or the futility of objectives;

❑ the meaninglessness of man’s struggle.

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LANGUAGE

• All communication breaks down so the value of language is strongly reduced:

❑ logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech;

❑ what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters;

❑ extensive use is made of pauses, silences, miming and farcical situations which reflect a sense of anguish;

❑ incoherent babbling makes up the dialogue.

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WAITING FOR GODOT Waiting for Godot is a two-act absurdist-

tragicomic piece, famously described by Irish critic Vivian Mercier as a play in which “nothing happens, twice”!

As the title suggests, it is a play about waiting: two men meet each day waiting for a third one who never appears. It prompts many questions, and answers none of them.

It confused some critics, who could make neither head nor tail of it, and delighted others who believed that the play had changed the rules of theatre.

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BECKETT’S QUESTIONS

Beckett’s work dealt with human beings in extreme situations: he was interested in the essential aspects of human experience.

The basic questions for him seemed to be these:

❑ Who are we?

❑ What is the true nature of our self?

❑ What does a human being mean when he says “I”?

❑ How can we come to terms with the fact that, without ever having asked for it, we have been thrown into the world, into being?

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SETTING, PLOT & STRUCTURE The setting is precisely laid out by

the stage directions: a ‘country road’, a tree, evening, two waiting men, seemingly tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, or Didi and Gogo, who meet each day by the solitary tree to wait for a man called Godot.

Divided into two acts, the play has a circular structure: it ends almost exactly as it begins.

The two acts are symmetrically built: the stage is divided into two halves by the tree while the human race is split into two parts by what the protagonists represent.

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DIDI & GOGO The two main characters are

essentially a comedy double act transplanted into a tragedy: they are c0mplementary in as much as

❖ Vladimir (or Didi), presented as ‘an ineffective man of the world’, represents the intellect;

❖ Estragon (or Gogo), ‘marvellously incompetent’,stands for the body.

• Bowler-hatted and shabbily suited (much like Chaplin’s character in his 1915 film “The Tramp”), they are in this world without knowing what they are here for.

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POZZO & LUCKY Midway through the first act, another

two characters, Pozzo and Lucky, appear: their relationship is clearly one of master-servant in which

❖ Lucky, the servant, harnessed by a rope around his neck, represents the intellect: he performs the longest unbroken speech in the play;

❖ Pozzo, the master, with his loud voice and dominating manner stands for the body: he acts as a tyrant but his frayed rope represents his crumbling authority.

• In the second act they are greatly changed: Pozzo can no longer see, and Lucky can no longer speak.

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GODOT & THE BOY The character which the whole play hinges on is

Godot, a man who never appears on the stage but whose presence pervades it. Who is he?

The critic Hugh Kenner warns us that “We shall not find out who Godot is, and shall waste our time trying”. Godot’s purpose in the play is to be that which is waited for… and that is that!

• The last character is a boy who appearsat the end of each act to inform Didi thatGodot will not be coming that night. He calls him Mr Albert and does not seem to recognise him from one day to the next.

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THEMES Its main themes are exemplary of the theatre of the

absurd, i.e.

❑ the static situation of waiting in a static world where nothing happens;

❑ human impotence in the face of life’s meaning-lessness;

❑ absence of a traditional time ➔ there is no past, present or future, just a repetitive present;

❑ disintegration of language➔ absurd exchanges, broken and fragmented dialogues;

❑ lack of communication➔ use of para-verbal language: mime, silences, pauses and gaps.

TRADITIONAL THEATRE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Instead of having a problem that is

solved...… it resolves nothing(Godot never arrives).

Instead of having a plot with

beginning, middle, and end...

… it features no plot

(Act II in Godot repeats the basic pattern of

Act I).

Instead of having dialogue

expressing the play’s meaning...

… it reveals meaning from both

words and deeds that sometimes

conflict (Vladimir and Estragon agree to leave, but neither moves).

Instead of having either comedy or

tragedy...

… it blends elements of unlikely

comedy with painful situations(Estragon loses his trousers as he and Vladimir

try to figure out how to hang themselves).

Instead of having distinctive and

varied characters...

… its characters are less distinctive(Vladimir and Estragon have similar back-

grounds and dress alike; all the characters

are male). 24

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WHAT IS THE PLAY REALLY ABOUT?

It has been interpreted as ❑ a modern morality play, heavily Christian in its

symbolism;

❑ an existentialist piece straight out of Sartre;

❑ the embodiment of Beckett’s rage at his Irish religious upbringing…

Beckett himself wasn’t much help! When asked directlywhat the play was really about he answered

“If I knew, I would have said so in the play” !!!

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT!!! Hesitating to say what Godot is really about, or where

it’s really going, is probably entirely the point: the play won’t supply solutions to its mysteries.

As the Irish drama critic Fintan O’Toole writes:

‘Waiting for Godot is essentially a joke on the whole theatrical experience, an extended invitation to the audience to get up and leave. Nothing is going to happen, the play keeps telling us, it’s going to get more boring… Why do you insist on hanging around in futile expectation? Like Didi and Gogo, our decision to stay is the triumph of hope over experience’.

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Staging in IMPOSSIBLE PLACES …

In 2017 the author, journalist and critic Andrew Dickson examined the ways in which Beckett’s play has resonatedin different communities and political climates wheremaking any kind of theatre at all seems impossible.

In particular

❑ inside prisons, like San Quentin in 1957, because “it depicts a vacantlandscape and characters imprisoned within themselves, but with great humour”. Beckett himself was moved to receive a note from a prisoner who wrote to him “Your Godot was our Godot”;

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… IMPOSSIBLE TIMES…

❑ in 1976, during the apartheid era in South Africa, less than a month after the Soweto Uprising, an all-black cast play staged at Johannesburg, was “a tumultuous experience, but one not lacking in hope”

❑ in New Orleans in 2007, twoyears after Hurricane Katrina,the audience’s reaction to the line ‘at this place, at this moment, all mankind is us’ was stunned silence. “It was like a prayer recited on hallowed ground.”

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… and IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS!

❑ in West Berlin in 1975: the playwright’s own long-awaited production seemed almost eerily topical even there, where divisions were more broadly political and the play was received enthusiastically;

❑ during the Siege of Sarajevo in 1993, a local castmixed Croats and Serbs, with three separate sets of Vladimirs and Estragons – one all-female, one all-male and one mixed – in an attempt to suggest the universality of the play’s struggle. Beckett’s scenario seemed agonisingly accurate: the waiting game looked as though it would never end.

CONCLUSIONS Though it might seem timeless like all great plays, Waiting

for Godot is anything but!

Dr Ronan McDonald, Director of the Samuel Beckett International Foundation,has written:

“If Waiting for Godot has an appeal or meaning that endures, it is not because it speaks directly to an ahistorical human condition, but rather because it can come alive in various contexts and historical moments …”

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LEGACY Beckett’s shadow is a long and indeed

diffuse one: as we read in Beckett’s Literary Legacies (2007) the play-wright’s revolutionary project

❖ pushed at the very boundaries of literature leaving a legacy which is both philosophically rich and artistically challenging;

❖ influenced writers all over the world: from Japan (Kenzaburo Oe) to the United States (Don DeLillo), from South Africa (J.M. Coetzee) to Britain (Sarah Kane), from France (Maurice Blanchot) to Ireland (John Banville). 33