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Samuel Beckett

The document discusses key concepts of absurdism through analyzing plays by Samuel Beckett. It explores Beckett's plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame, which depict hopeless situations where language breaks down. It also summarizes Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, where an old man reviews his life through tape recordings and realizes separating love and art was a mistake. Overall, the document examines how Beckett used the theater of the absurd to show humanity's meaningless existence and breakdown of communication.

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Natasa Tucev
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90 views

Samuel Beckett

The document discusses key concepts of absurdism through analyzing plays by Samuel Beckett. It explores Beckett's plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame, which depict hopeless situations where language breaks down. It also summarizes Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, where an old man reviews his life through tape recordings and realizes separating love and art was a mistake. Overall, the document examines how Beckett used the theater of the absurd to show humanity's meaningless existence and breakdown of communication.

Uploaded by

Natasa Tucev
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Samuel Beckett

Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus"


• For Camus, Sisyphus is the archetypal absurd hero:
he defies gods, hates death and passionately loves
life. His punishment is to endure an eternity of
hopeless struggle.
• Camus is especially interested in Sisyphus's state of
mind when the rock rolls away from him at the top
of the mountain. As he walks down, he is briefly free
from his labour and he can contemplate his
condition. His awareness and understanding places
him above his fate.
The Theatre of the Absurd
• Term coined by Martin Eslin (and based on
Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus)
• Post-WW2 plays written by European
playwrights in the late 1950s
• Their work focuses on what happens when it
is established that human existence has no
meaning: all communication breaks down and
speech becomes illogical and irrational
The Theatre of the Absurd
• Man’s reaction to a world apparently without
meaning, or man as a puppet controlled
(menaced) by invisible forces.
• Comedy (similar to vaudeville), mixed with
horror and tragedy; characters forced to do
repetitive actions; nonsense, wordplay and
parody
• Beckett, Pinter, Albee, Ionesco, Stoppard
S. Beckett, Endgame
• Waiting for Godot is a 'despairing play about
hope', Endgame is a 'despairing play about
despair'. Godot: two pairs of characters/
relationships - Vladimir and Estragon
(freedom, friendship, hope); Pozzo and Lucky
(master and servant; destructive). Endgame:
only one type of relationship - Hamm and Clov
(master/slave, hammer/nail, father/son,
dominant/submissive)
Endgame
• Hamm: selfish proprietor; story about the
beggar; incapable of compassion; 'you're on
Earth, there's no cure for that'. Clov: 'I'm
leaving you’
• Endgame: series of movements in chess when
the outcome is already known; Clove and
Hamm - red; Nagg and Nell - white; Hamm -
king (immobile, vulnerable); Clove - knight;
end of the play: stalemate
Endgame
• Stage setting: skull; two windows - eye sockets;
Nagg and Nell - parents (remain in one's mind).
The world outside: after nuclear or ecological
catastrophe - also spiritual wasteland - 'zero’
• Circularity: echoing Dante's Inferno (characters
repeating rituals). Individual grains - 'the
impossible heap' - human life - never a final
product to scrutinize. Fear that humanity might
start all over again: flea, rat, the little boy.
Endgame
• Boy: symbol of resurrection. Hamm: son of
Noah (flood and regeneration)
• Nell: did not laugh because of the story, but
because she was in love. 'The lake was deep...
you could see down to the bottom... So white.
So clean.' Clear vision of meaningful life
through love. Final words: desert. Nagg: 'We
moved you out of earshot.'
Krapp’s Last Tape
• Monological play, treating an isolated
consciousness: however, Krapp’s tape recorder
multiplies voices
• A monologue which does not confirm an
individual identity, but destabilizes it
• An old man reviews his life and ponders the
decisions he once made – the means of review
is a tape recorder
Krapp’s Last Tape
• Krapp at 69: short-sighted, bored, clownish;
his voice is cracked; passion for bananas.
Krapp at 39: strong, pompous voice, physically
’sound as a bell’, intellectually ’at the crest of
the wave’
• Krapp is a habitual separator: ’separating the
grain from the husks’ – isolating the moments
of value in his life
Krapp’s Last Tape
• By vocation a writer: fascination with words
(spool, viduity). He switches the tape recorder
off and on, winds forward and back, repeats,
thus editing the story of his life.
• However, all the stories Krapp creates are
narratives of separation. Mother: death
signalled by the rolling down of a blind
(window, symbolically an eye); a black ball and
a dog
Krapp’s Last Tape
• ’Memorable equinox’: light and darkness,
howling wind at the end of the jetty – moment
of artistic vision when Krapp decides that he
must say ’Farewell to love’ in order to realize
the energy of his creative fire. (Larkin: ’Waiting
for Breakfast’)
• At the very moment of separation from his
beloved, Krapp strives for union: ’Let me in’.
Krapp’s Last Tape
• ’Let me in’ was a plea to heal separation and
exclusion: the moment is ’more maternal than
erotic’ (P. Lawley)
• At 69, as a failed artist, Krapp realizes it was a
fatal mistake to say ’Farewell to Love’ and
keeps returning to the tape recording which
describes the episode on the lake.
• Energy of creation/energy of relation (A. Rich)

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