theatre of the adsurd
...re is any meaning in human existence at all. The human explanation has always been satisfied by religions. The desire of human to get to know the world more has been fulfilled by the idea of God. As we look at the play, on the surface, its central theme seems to deal with religions but the truth is that the play come from nothing and ultimately end with nothing. It is the play for greater truth which has the meaning in its meaninglessness. It is because of Beckett’s language technique which fools the audience, letting them think about religions at the first time watching the play. For instance, in the opening moments of the play, he distorts the quotation from the Bible as Vladimir asks "Hope deferred make something sick, who said that?" The real quotation is "Hope deferred make the heart sick", which comes from Proverbs 13:12 of the Bible. Shortly after that, Vladimir asks Estragon has he ever read the Bible and continues on a discussion of the Gospels, the Savior, and the two thieves surrounding Christ during the crucifixion. The play firmly introduces Vladimir and Estragon as the faithful adherents of the god, whom they wait and expect him to come. But on the other hand, if we look for the deeper meaning, it shows the foolishness and blindness of human to believe in such thing, and is questioning the existence of god. Beckett also rejects the notion of truth in language through the insignificance of the title character's name. The name “Godot” may represent god, but still the name may be a connection between Godot and Godeau (a character who never appears in Honore de Balzac's Mercadet; Ou, le faiseur). Or maybe it actually is meaningless. It doesn’t have any special meaning and doesn’t represent anything at all. The meaning of Godot is nonexistent, and the effort to find one is futile and exhausting. No matter how many times we try to search, we will not find significance in the word. The word keeps changing itself to other forms as the play goes on. For example, Pozzo, the master in the play, affirms the lack of meaning in a name as he periodically refers to "Godin . . . Godet . . . Godot . . . anyhow you see who I mean". It is clearly that he confuses the name with other words and seemingly feels no need to learn the right one. Regardless of the language he uses, Vladimir and Estragon understand what he means anyways. In addition, Vladimir and Estragon expand the scope of meaninglessness to other names as they continue to repeat the name of Pozzo, but interchange it with Bozzo and Gozzo. The insignificance of all the words comes to the fore. Pozzo, Bozzo, Gozzo, and Godot are definitely indistinguishable nonsense. Moreover, when Vladimir and Estragon are referred to with their nicknames, all five names of them have two syllables and end in a vowel sound. Furthermore, if the silent, final letter is removed from Godot, it appears as a mere variation of Gogo and Didi as Godo. In this way, characters' names are reduced to incomprehensible utterances that an infant might make. This shows that Beckett's language is totally separate from knowledge or truth. His characters also engage in ridiculous language to pass the time and to give the impression that they exist. Another play belongs to Harold Pinter, who is the leading English language playwright. His play “The Birthday Party” is considered as one of the great black comedies of the twentieth century. It is the story which takes place in the English boarding house, where Stanly Webber is the only lodger. His fear starts when two visitors come to stay over for a night, in which Meg, the owner of the boarding house announces that it’s Stanley’s birthday. The celebration takes place, but eventually turns into a nightmare. And by the morning, Stanley leaves the house in a mute with two visitors. Pinter’s play is pretty much as same as Beckett’s play in the way that it emphasizes on the failure, uncertainty and untruthfulness of the language and try to encourage the audience to think beyond the meaning that the language provides, along with the insignificant of characters’ name as the play goes on. His plays are called the comedy of menace. He always focuses more on real life and has the kitchen sink feature in the play, as we see in the Birthday Party that the scene is set in the living room of the boarding house in a seaside town. But he goes a step further as he moves ahead of the social realism to portray the absurdity of human existence in theatre of the absurd. His absurdism, however, borders on the insecurity of human life. The characters in his play are lost; their actions become useless and senseless. They are placed in the absurd situation, with the ambiguous purposes. The Birthday Party is rather a serious play because it concerns the matter of losing the self-possession, which is what Stanley experience. However it is not ...