Darko Suvin in his famous critical book on Beckett and
Post-World War II theatre entitled To
Brecht and Beyond : Sounding in Modern Dramaturgy (1984) tend to
identify Samuel Beckett’s position as a dramatist in Waiting for Godot as expressive of the general human
condition. The play is based on Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). It does not tell a story; it
explores a static situation. Martin Esslin in his famous work The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)categorizes
the seminal properties of an absurd drama which present lack of
plot-construction, lack of characterization, limitation of language, absurdist
situation in space and time and man’s waiting for the sake of waiting for a
better tomorrow. In a drama dealing with these themes, the dictum is “Nothing
to be done”.
If we look into the four characters treated as pairs
we can easily understand the universal phenomenon. Estragon is from France;
Vladimir is from Russian; Lucky from English and Pozzo Italian. Four different
nationalities are being presented and they comprise with two different groups –
Estragon-Vladimir and Lucky-Pozzo. Darko Suvin’s comment on Samuel Beckett can
be noted : “...in his nightmare and horrors of the same presumably identical
and relevant for a Vietnamese pageant, a Yugoslav worker, a French
intellectualist and an American businessman.” Our critical response to Suvin’s
word would be the specific condition as located in the play is the microcosm of
human experience characterized by a plurality – Estragon and Vladimir, Lucky
and Pozzo.
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The late 1940’s has also witnessed the indescribable
situation of the slave; the suppression of the political prisoners. The drama
also highlights the binary division between the supremacy of the colonizer and
the oppression of the colonised. We also understand that a homogenized human experience
cannot be put forward to one universal category. Man in this generation has
lost faith in himself. He has seen bloodshed, brutality and murder and he is
reduced to the level of non-entity. No bond can attach him with anyone.
The traumatic picture we get in the drama give a negative
history of mankind. The historicity of the sense of “being” is reduced to the
nothingness; man’s position in the discourse of space and time is absolutely
absurd. It is seemingly incomprehensible nightmare of the history where things
fall apart. The drama also highlights the theme of empty promise. The stage
direction of the Tree alludes to life it remains unrealised even at the end.
The characters wait for Godot as a routine habit but Godot never appear
physically on the stage. The Boy announces Godot’s arrival, he promises a
better tomorrow is never going to be fulfilled. ‘Godot’ also stands for “a
better social order” (Keith Whitlock in his book The Varied Scene). The better social order happens to be
socialist’s promise which is a far cry, a remote possibility.
Waiting
for Godot is a
universal condition – the quest for mythological human being. The characters
discuss about the ‘ape man’, the physical stage before the human formation. In this
drama man’s identity has been challenged, his position in space and time has
been questioned. All these ontological questions deal with the central crisis
of being nothingness. In the drama Pozzo and Lucky refer to the Atlas, the
mythological reference to a man who carries the weight of the heaven. Man’s
life is burdensome – the irrationality, cruelty and brutality are in the year. The
situation was so horrid that it had a significant impact on the middle class intelligentsia
in the post-war Western society.
Socialism practises anti-bourgeois socialist framework which stand as a sharp
contrast to the feudal colonizer.
As
a Post-World War absurd drama, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a response to the brutal advance of capitalism,
rampant individualism and the consequent loss of community life, large scale
devastation of the World-War, loss of man’s internal goodness and liberal
traditions and a threat of nuclear holocaust.
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