Beckett’s writing and the ‘absurd’

I wrote this years and years ago, which is why it doesn't really go into too much detail

‘We are alone. We cannot know and cannot be known. Man is the creature that cannot come forth from himself…’[1]

Samuel Beckett along with playwrights Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco are thought to be the four defining figures in the movement known as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. The term was coined by Martin Esslin to account for the works of writers whose subject matter dealt with themes of humanities sense of scepticism and confusion regarding the purpose of their existence, the futility of language to express meaning, and the disintegration of societies valued concepts of faith, truth, and empirical knowledge. These feelings of disillusionment can be attributed to Modernism at the beginning and middle twentieth century, which saw the end of Romanticism, the outbreaks of World War One and Two, technological advancements, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that God was dead, increased secularism in Western societies and failed revolutions.  The ‘absurd’ is a term first applied in the work of the French existentialist Albert Camus who observes that the absurd emerges in ‘that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again’.[2] The theatre of the absurd deviated enormously from Realist theatre and the well made plays of Shaw and Ibsen. Beckett, (along with the writers mentioned) disliked being affiliated with any type of umbrella group, he simply wished to express his vision of the world as he saw it, yet similarities can be drawn within his work and that of the other ‘absurdist’s’. Beckett does flirt with ideas of French existentialism and symbolism, and these aspects of his work will be explored further. Esslin the introduction to his nineteen eighty-six book, writes that the theatre of the absurd must be understood as ‘a kind of intellectual shorthand for a complex pattern of similarities, approach, method, and convention, of shared philosophical and artistic premises, whether conscious or subconscious, and of influences from a common store of tradition’.[3]

Albert Camus

The ‘theatre of the absurd’ confronts it’s audiences with questions concerning man’s position within the world which then opens up other questions regarding the nature of the world. It is not concerned with supplying answers to these queries or the dilemmas of its characters; rather it just serves to present the authors subjective vision of the world into which his characters are placed. The absurd is found in the works of Beckett. It is presented through alienated characters that are often presented as grotesque or disembodied psyches, trapped in repetitive circular existences, through ambiguous philosophical queries regarding the purpose or purposelessness of living and the subversion of language and simple plot lines which serve to confuse audiences and deny catharsis. These are trademark fixtures in Beckett who has produced some of the most enduring visual theatre images, and reintroduced new possibilities within dramatic convention. Beckett’s characters find (or condemn) themselves to an inner reality from which meaningful outside contact with the world is denied. This will be emphasised in the play Endgame but it is also a current theme in Beckett’s other works. In Play we are presented with the enduring image of three protagonists, who are viewed in three large urns, their heads only visible. They are condemned to repeat themselves and their banalities for infinity, forever under interrogation by an omnipotent searchlight. In Not I, only a mouth is visible as it spits out a manic frenzied babble. The surrealism of the situations that the protagonists find themselves within further serves to emphasise the problem of trying to understand the nature of the world. Ruby Cohn notes that Beckett characters are ‘seeking sense and sensibility in an indifferent cosmos, reflecting the Absurdity of the Macrocosm in the absurd details of his microcosm, the Beckett hero cries out in the frustration of his humanity, which is our own’.[4]

Endgame

Bertolt Brecht in his plays used alienation affects to force his audiences into contemplating issues concerning their own personal and social environments. He broke down the fourth wall and allowed the ‘mechanics’ of the stage to be seen so that the audience is fully aware they are watching a play.[5] Beckett contemporises the alienation affect which still results in the confusion of his audiences. This philosophical confusion serves to mirror the confusing realities of the subject close to Beckett’s heart; the confrontation of man with his existence, what it means to be human and alive when death is always impending. In Play and Not I the monologue of each character is set to a very fast rhythm, often completely incoherent. It is difficult to follow every word that is being said. The idea behind this was that the content of the dialogue was not important. For Richard Begam, Beckett constructs a ‘universe of pure linguistic aesthesis…his sentences arrange themselves into shapely but increasingly meaningless patterns’.[6]  As language is a fundamental part of the process of theatre, the breakdown in the verbal structure comes as a surprise and confuses the audiences attending his plays. Beckett once told the actress Jessica Tandy who would be playing Mouth in Not I that ‘I am not unduly concerned with intelligibility. I hope the piece may work on the nerves of its audiences, not its intellect’.[7] The repetitiveness of the dialogue involving Mouth, the two W’s, and M, in Play perpetuates a perplexity involving the fact that nothing can ever be resolved within the characters minds. Self knowledge and peace are never attained because of the refusal of the characters to engage in or attempt understanding either their other selves (as in Mouths case) or each other (as in W1, W2, and M’s case). The characters are obsessed with their own states of mind.

Happy Days

Throughout Beckett’s writings are characters drowning under the burden of consciousness, out of which the self desperately tries to escape but cannot. “God the bastard, doesn’t exist’ and so cannot help end the suffering, the anguish continues without hope of an ending as time seems always to be ‘zero’ and so it is a game of waiting for the end which is never in sight.[8] This can be observed in Endgame and Happy Days. Endgame’s Hamm, (who cannot stand) and Clov (who cannot sit) are trapped within a room which separates them from the exterior hell of the other side. Endgame’s tragedy lies in the presence of an inescapable interiority. Time stands still, ‘What time is it? The same as usual’.[9]    The structure of the action is circular. From the opening lines of the play when Clov announces ‘it’s finished, nearly finished it must be nearly finished,’ we are aware that from the beginning there is a sense of ending.[10] The only journey Hamm makes is a circular one within the interior of the dark room that binds all characters. Clov repeatedly wishes to leave but cannot, Hamm  which rhymes with man, ignores the existentialist idea that man needs to find meaning in something to justify living. He repeatedly wishes to end it all but cannot, so instead of action he focuses upon his soliloquies and maintaining some aspect of control over Clov, ‘I’ll give you nothing more to eat. I’ll give you just enough to keep you from dying’.[11]  The threat of continuation is represented in sightings of a boy outside the window, the flea and a rat in the kitchen. This knowledge upsets Clov as they represent life, and new being beyond his own. This is the central predicament of the play, a stagnant waiting around to die, instead of trying to mean something, waiting for the day to end, a denial of life, a yearning to ‘be all gone’ which never comes.[12] Even at the end of the play Hamm assumes the position he held at the beginning placing the blood stained cloth over his face. Critics such as Vivian Mercer and Theodore Adorno have interpreted the outside of the room as post nuclear devastation or a war ravaged Normandy. I prefer Hugh Kenner’s interpretation that the setting represents a mentality. The room is the interior of a skull. [13] The two windows are the eyes, Hamm is the unmoving paralysed brain and Clov represents emotion. Whatever the interpretation, all can be related to nothingness, the refusal of the mentalities of characters to acknowledge anything outside the concerns preoccupying their own interiority, ‘to hell with the universe’.[14] The world beyond the window places emphasis on the emptiness of the inner.

The minimalist, bleak, ideas of alienation, suffering and death are also found in Happy Days.  The protagonist Winnie is one of the most cheerful optimistic characters in a Beckett play, despite her burial in a scorched mound of earth. The cheerfulness in her voice only distracts momentarily from the reality of her situation. Winnie in contrast to the compressed stagnant dialogue in Endgame talks incessantly because she needs to fill the void that surrounds her. She is dependant on her husband Willie as she needs to be seen and heard as a way of confirming her existence. She fears the day when ‘like all the others’ Willie will leave and the dialogue will change to a monologue.[15] Her obsessive meaningless routines of brushing hair and teeth are the response to the emptiness of her existence, and this emptiness is seen in the barren landscape that surrounds her. The presence of a revolver suggests that suicide has been considered an option although, as Clov cannot end Hamm’s life, neither is Winnie able to end her own, a symptom of humanities instinct for self-preservation perhaps? Like Hamm, Winnie is attached to a dying body in an empty universe waiting for the ‘happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundred hours’.[16]

 The situations of the previously mentioned characters have nurtured their denial of reality and retreat into repetitive self contained consciousnesses, fleeing from their place (if any) within a chaotic universe. The causes of torment for the characters in Endgame and Happy Days and Beckett’s other works are never apparent, just as the absurdist’s belief that the world is beyond rational comprehension, and chaotic. In order to mean something man must commit himself to something to make life significant. The lack of a final reconciliation in the plays contributes to making Endgame and Happy Days ‘absurd’ plays, and it ties up with the ‘universalising pessimism, the nihilistic strand in the whole of Becketts work’.[17]

The characters are on a journey from nothing to nothing.  In life there is nothing, hence Hamm’s cries to ‘mean something!’ and that is what makes living and the task of self-actualization so pointless so why go on living?[18] Each character fails to answer this question so they simply retreat from the physical world into the inner recesses of the mind, from which there is no way out. This conflict leads to the feelings of Absurdity and to fundamental existential questions about the meaning of human life in a world where man lives confused. Beckett’s plays are firmly grounded in the category of the ‘absurd’, due to their attempts to examine the metaphysical questions regarding the attempt to find meaning within the chaos of existence.

[1] Eric P. Levy, Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality. (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007) p.167.

[2] David Sprintzen, Camus: A critical Examination, ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988 )p.52

[3] Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd. (London:  Penguin Books, 1986) p. 3

[4] Ruby Cohn, Samuel Beckett: the comic gamut, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1962) p.290.

[5] Bertolt Brecht, ‘From Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting 1936’, pp.303-305, Richard Drain, Ed, Twentieth-Century Theatre. (London: Routledge, 1995

[6] Levy. p.1.

[7] Sinead Mooney, Samuel Beckett. (Travistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2006) p.69.

[8] Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works. (London: Faber and Faber, 2006)  pp.119, 94.

[9] Ibid. p.94.

[10] Ibid. p.93.

[11] Ibid. pp. 94-95.

[12] Ibid. p. 107.

[13] Levy. pp. 165-166

[14] Beckett. p. 114.

[15] Ibid. p. 139.

[16] Ibid. p. 152.

[17] Andrew K. Kennedy, Samuel Beckett. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) p.63.

[18] Beckett, p. 108.

Bibliography

• Acheson, James, Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice, (London: Macmillan 1997)
• Beckett, Samuel, The Complete Dramatic Works, ()
• Bloom, Harold, ed, Modern Critical Interpretations: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988)
• Brater, Enoch, ‘The Absurd Actor in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett’, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol 23, No. 2, (May 1975) pp.197-207
• Cohn, Ruby, Samuel Beckett: the Comic Gamut, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1962)
• Davis, Robin J, Butler, Lance St J, ed, Make Sense Who May: Essays on Samuel Beckett’s Later Works, (Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe 1990)
• Drain, Richard, ed, Twentieth-Century Theatre, (London: Routledge 1995)
• Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, (London: Penguin Books, 1963)
• Kennedy, Andrew, Samuel Beckett, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
• Levy, Eric P, Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007)
• Mooney, Sinead, Samuel Beckett, (Travistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2006)
• Sprintzen, David, Camus: A Critical Study, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)