Absurdity of Absurd: Samuel Beckett’s Inactivity for Go dot
Posted by Essay Help on May 29, 2009What does ‘Absurd’ mean ?When I searched the glossaries ,I found the morpheme to be ‘out of harmony’(1).But yet the definitions trying hard to explain the constituent , just to end in come ‘Absurdity’ (assuming for a piece that we know the meaning of the morpheme),as they talk in come meaning, the nonsense about it and of course that means they fail(in their attempt ).But considering the constituent to be linked with literature (and other forms of art also!),when I searched for more I came across the lines that states that no ‘literary criticism’ [in which I include the attempts to explain the literary terms] can accept the literary activity itself ,or to be more circumstantial ‘…it [literary criticism]is no artificial for reading the activity itself’(2),as it [the piece of work]is the most exactly and precisely ,the cerebration conveyed or explained. So, I reached the idea that to believe ‘absurd’ .I must analyze an absurd activity by an artist, rather than poring over the talks about it. Hence as a literary educatee what first came to my mind at this instant is none, but Inactivity FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett, the so called absurd play organic around ‘Go dot’, the axis all absurdity[as soil the date none could declare with confidence ‘who’ or ‘what’ Go dot is !]
What I found in the dustbin of my memories about this go dot is:
“On 19 Nov 1957, a group of apprehensive actors were preparing to face their audience . The actors were members of the company of the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop . The audience consisted of fourteen hundred convicts at the San Quentin penitentiary . No live play had been performed at San Quentin since Sarah Bernhardt appeared thither in 1913 .Now ,forty four years later ,the play that had been chosen ,largely because no Black appeared in it , was Samuel Beckett’s Inactivity FOR GODOT’(3). …”Beckett real triumph ,…came when Inactivity FOR GODOT which appeared in book form in 1952,was first produced on 5 January 1953 , at the little House de Babylone (now defunct ),…’(4)
And I found also any lines of this play:
“…
ESTRGON:Didi.
VLADIMIR:Yes.
ESTRGON:I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you believe.
ESTRAGON:If we parted?That might be better of us .
VLADIMIR:We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow.(Pause)Unless Go dot comes.
ESTRAGON:And if comes?
VLADIMIR:We’ll be blessed
…”(5)
It is said about Beckett that when he was asked that what he meant by Go dot he answered “If I knew ,I would have said so in the play”(6).’WAITING FOR GODOT does not tell a account ;it explores a atmospherics situation ‘(7).So it is clear from the real beginning that Beckett proved to create a ‘character’ without a character’ as he himself doesn’t know him [Go dot], and again the movement of plot tends to adjust ,i.e. thither is absolutely no plot . Previously it was axiomatic that if thither exists a literary piece so thither must be either a account( or plot) to tellor any character to be represented .But did exactly opposite to revolutionize his concept .He presents a ‘character’ whom he himself does not know and tell a plot which is nothing but variations in arrangements and sequences of few events with negligible movement or action :’nothing happens , nobody comes nobody goes …’ (8).
But can be the constituent ‘Absurd’ assigned to merely these qualities of the play? No, thither are allay more as mentioned by critics .In an essay on Kalfka ,Ionesco defined his apprehension of the constituent as ‘ Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose…’(9).And the purposeless becomes evident when ‘ the more things change , the more they are the same ‘(10).And this is done by creating especial situations in the play by Breckett . For instance the boy who carries message of Go dot to Estragon and Vladimir fails to recognize them on each day of his reappearance .”The French variant explicitly states that the boy who appears in the 2nd act is the same boy as the one in the first act , yet the boy denies that he has even seen the cardinal tramps before , and insists that this is the first time he has acted as Go dot’s messenger’(11).And this is done piece ‘waiting’ which is interpreted by Martin Esslin as ‘Waiting is to experience the action of time , which is constant change . And yet , as nothing real ever happens , the change is itself an illusion .The ceaseless activity of time is a consciousness defeating purposeless…’(12).
And thusly by this purposelessness Beckett tries to prove the absurdity of his play .But is this really absurd ? If we analyze it from any different point of views we can short find something contradicting . It is because we know the fact that ‘ actuality is never real’ ,and what we define for a situation becomes a actuality for us , for that moment . So is the case of abnormality or normality of a situation . When any action is most common that becomes ‘ normal ‘ for us and this is the real base of our apprehension .We believe what is most common and general .We believe something especial by referring it to any common things or actions we believe .So our real base of apprehension is based upon any general actuality or common events ,the country which we call normal .Now when we something out of order in a play (e.g. WAITIG FOR GODOT) ,we interpret it in damage of those ‘ commons’ of our memory .But on this analyze we analyze , can especial or absurdity be perceived by us directly without any aid or reference to our definition of ‘normality’ ? It is similar to what Rene’ Wellek proved to explain in his essay ‘ATTACK ON LITERATURE’ by citing an example of Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME .Becket has portrayed a character in END GAME who was ‘ looking for the expression of his quiet ‘(13).’The artist’s dissatisfaction with language can only be expressed by language .Pause may be a device to express the inexpressible ,but pause can’t be prolonged indefinitely ,cann’t be simply quiet as much . It needs contrast , it needs a beginning and an end…’(14).
This evidence suggests the importance of contrast and this is as accurate in case of absurdity and non-absurdity as it is accurate in the case of quiet and music .
In this light we can reach decision that thither is no meaning of absurdity without the normality . But how this is accurate in case of Go dot can be analyzed as follows :
Beckett tries hard to achieve absurdity by doing finished his characters , the abnormal things (or at least normal things in abnormal film ), allay thither remains the elements of non-absurdity in every corner of the play . The boy who doesn’t recognize the cardinal tramps bring message from the same Go dot (It never happens ever that Go dot brings a message from the boy ;or the tramps bring message from the boy to go dot ;or tramps animadvert the message that the boy brings from the Go dot for them ;or Go dot never receives message from tramps and so many can be absurd case ).It was only one angle of interpretation of the situation .Other interpretations can be many in numbers :Go dot waits for tramps ;or tramps don’t act for Go dot piece they have they waited. etc. etc.
When I mean to have is that whatsoever action is done in the play has hence the elements of non-absurdity .We could have recognized them if what we call absurdity would be the most normal and what we now feel normal would have been absurd .In fact we can’t express absurdity itself and this is the deceiving nature of ‘Absurdity’ , because the moment we animadvert something it becomes a little different from what we originally meant to express . ‘Words , the medium of fiction ,are a fabrication of man’s intellect .They are a part of human lie ‘(14).And for this reason any literature needs that medium to be expressed , that becomes deceptive .So Roland Barthes of France says hence that ‘Literature is a group of deceptive signification…emphatically signifying ,but never finally meaning ‘(16).
Hence whatsoever actions Beckett proved to fabricated in to the play , stands soil today between in the limits of absurd and non-absurd and how this action is nearer to any of these cardinal limits depends on what words are old and how they are old to define the limits .
That’s why the play ‘..of the purportedly esoteric avant-grade make so immediate and so deep an impact on an audience of convicts…’(17),where as the critics could not easily accepted the play as an art in the beginning .
Martin Esslin writes : ‘ because it confronted them [the prisoners] with a situation in any distance analogous to their own ? Perhaps . Or perhaps because they were un blase enough to come to the house without any preconceived notions and readymade expectations ,so that they avoided the mistake that treed so many established critics who condemned the play for its lack of plot ,development , characterizations , suspense or plain common meaning ‘(18).And of course this is what we accompany as the attempt to define absurd with non-absurd .Similarly many other attempts have been made in the past and present to create especial out of common .For example the Dadaist Movement . ‘Attempts have been made not only to broaden the realm of art ,but to abolish the boundary between the art and the non-art . In music , noises of machines or the streets are old ; in painting, collage uses stuck-on news papers , buttons , medals and so on , or ‘found objects’ &ndashsoup cans , bicycle wheels , electric bulbs , any piece of junks&ndashare exhibited . the newest fad is ‘earth works’ , holes or trenches in the ground , tracks finished a corn field , conservative sheets of leads in snow . A ‘sculptor’ , Christo enwrapped a million conservative feet of Australian coastline in plastic . At 1972 Bicnnale in Venice , a painter ,Gino de Dominicis , exhibited a mongoloid picked up from the streets as a activity of art .In poetry poems have been concocted by the Dadaists by drawing news paper clippings from a bag at random ; more recently poems have been produced by computer and a shuffle novel (by Marc Saporta ) has appeared , in which every page can be replaced by another in any order …’(18).
Similarly we can cite the example of Pop-Culture now so popular by the adolescent generations ,which was once considered as absurd .So what conclusion we reached can be seen in the light of that contrast hypothesis of quiet and music told in this essay in the beginning , that whatsoever we deprivation to express (may it be ‘Silence’ or ‘Absurdity’ ) we need words to express . But ‘a morpheme can never be a abstraction ‘(20).So we can either achieve a situation or express it , but we cannot do both because , if we attempt to do , the situation won’t be the same .This is what we can imply when we communicate of absurdity ; i.e. we can’t be all absurd in expression as thither is no proper medium exists .
By concluding this I believe I have reached at the ‘ right place at the right time’ , because if I am right so I will reach the right abstraction , but if I reach the wrong (as I will get non-sense)that will be rather a right abstraction due to our context . My attempt of criticism , ‘ is an attempt to make us more reasonable’