期刊名称：Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
电子版ISSN：0975-2935
出版年度：2019
卷号：11
期号：2
页码：1-10
DOI：10.21659/rupkatha.v11n2.18
出版社：Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
摘要：Waiting for Godot ushered in an era of Absurd drama that drew on not only modern thought about life butalso the modern image of life. Samuel Beckett, unlike Sartre and Camus as playwrights, stripped the façadeof the modern existence and laid bare the scene with the minimum in its real image. To project such a starkcondition of human experience Beckett chose to present us the maximum with “mere-most minimum.” Themessage in Godot appears to be existentialist, which Beckett denied, for he asserted that if ever he readphilosophy it was Descartes, who gave the dictum ‘cogito ergo sum,’ or “I think therefore I am,” somethingthat reflects a positive undertone of the play. Minimalism of form and content thus becomes the vehicle ofthe Absurd in Waiting for Godot. Beckett becomes the pioneer of the minimalist art in modern drama andchampions ‘linguistic gravity’ without any traditional structure of plot. There are series of incidents but theydon’t amount to anything and even incidence maybe too big a word. The characters sort of improvise inorder to fill the time. The dialogue is repetitious, illogical and nonsensical; the characterisation is sketchyand inconsistent. Although theatre is the most concrete literary form available, when you see Waiting forGodot you are definitely seeing a set that consists of a tree and a road and you see five actors impersonatingfive people. That much is concrete. But no fact or relationship about that place or those people is evercertain. All is questioned and all is in flux. Beckett is not presenting an argument toward the conclusion ofexistential absurdity. He is presenting images of absurdity.
