William Backett’s Waiting for Godot : An Absurd Play

Authors

  • Tripti Sonowal

Abstract

- The present paper has made an attempt to read William Beckett’s paly Waiting for Godot
from an absurdist perspective. The term ‘Absurd’ is understood as anything that militates against
human happiness, meaning, commonsense, justice. Related to this the absurd dramas deal with the
life and situation of human being as absurd, irrational, or foolish. This kind of drama breaks the rules
of conventional drama like linear development of plot, story, and well division of acts and scenes.
Dialogues are short and fragmented here. Through dialogues, the playwrights try to communicate the
absurdity of life. Characters are significant for the symbols they represent. Nothing important
happens in the whole setting of the play.
Although the term ‘Theatre of Absurd’ is derived from Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of
Sisyphus”, but we get a clear conception on the subject of absurd drama in Martin Esslin’s The
Theatre of Absurd. The term is referred to a group of dramatists from 1950s. Eugene Ionesco,
Samuel Backett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter were some of the significant
playwrights whose plays mostly dealt with absurdity of human world. The lesser figures of this
school of theatre are Edward Albee, N.F. Simpson, and Robert Pignet etc.

Published

2020-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles