start208
Jun 19, 2011
Book Reports / An analytical study to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. [12]
here is a part of the introduction.
After the brutal World Wars, first and second, many philosophers and writers expressed their pessimism towards life. After the war, life became more complicated and meaningless. Even though there was an industrial revolution which enhanced the society and brought so many positive aspects to every day life, the Second World War evokes the belief that the new life is unsafe and the new technology itself has bad effects on people and industry's disadvantages outweigh its advantages. New weapons are created and massive destruction felt among ordinary people. There was a huge number of innocent people who were killed for no worthy reason. Victims of the war were too many and those who weren't killed were left in miserable conditions. The picture of that era is fairly depicted by Thomas Carlyle "doubt, desire, sorrow, remorse indignation, despair itself, all these like hell dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day worker, as of ever man?(Lionel trilling and Harold bloom, Victorian prose and poetry, 1973?P;54;
In these same conditions the philosophy of absurdity emerged and the theatre of the absurd had birth. But what is the theatre of absurd?
The theatre of the absurd refers to a particular type of plays which describe human conditions as basically meaningless and arguing that the world must ultimately be seen as absurd. It aims at creating a vision of confusion which is stemming from the fact that it is difficult, if not impossible, to find answers to the basic existential questions: why are we alive? Why have we to die? Why there's injustice and people have to suffer.
"Absurdist Theatre" discards traditional plot, characters, and action to assault its audience with a disorienting experience. Characters often engage in seemingly meaningless dialogue and/or activities which make the audience senses what it is like to live in a universe that doesn't "make sense." Besides Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett is one of the well-known playwrights of the absurd theatre. These writers felt that this disoriented feeling was a more honest response to the post World War II world than the traditional belief in a rationally ordered universe.
here is a part of the introduction.
After the brutal World Wars, first and second, many philosophers and writers expressed their pessimism towards life. After the war, life became more complicated and meaningless. Even though there was an industrial revolution which enhanced the society and brought so many positive aspects to every day life, the Second World War evokes the belief that the new life is unsafe and the new technology itself has bad effects on people and industry's disadvantages outweigh its advantages. New weapons are created and massive destruction felt among ordinary people. There was a huge number of innocent people who were killed for no worthy reason. Victims of the war were too many and those who weren't killed were left in miserable conditions. The picture of that era is fairly depicted by Thomas Carlyle "doubt, desire, sorrow, remorse indignation, despair itself, all these like hell dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day worker, as of ever man?(Lionel trilling and Harold bloom, Victorian prose and poetry, 1973?P;54;
In these same conditions the philosophy of absurdity emerged and the theatre of the absurd had birth. But what is the theatre of absurd?
The theatre of the absurd refers to a particular type of plays which describe human conditions as basically meaningless and arguing that the world must ultimately be seen as absurd. It aims at creating a vision of confusion which is stemming from the fact that it is difficult, if not impossible, to find answers to the basic existential questions: why are we alive? Why have we to die? Why there's injustice and people have to suffer.
"Absurdist Theatre" discards traditional plot, characters, and action to assault its audience with a disorienting experience. Characters often engage in seemingly meaningless dialogue and/or activities which make the audience senses what it is like to live in a universe that doesn't "make sense." Besides Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett is one of the well-known playwrights of the absurd theatre. These writers felt that this disoriented feeling was a more honest response to the post World War II world than the traditional belief in a rationally ordered universe.