Absurd drama is a play that takes the shape of man's response to a world clearly without meaning or man as a puppet. It tells the response of people without goal and direction. A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human presence by employing disconnected, monotonous, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and befuddling circumstances, and plots that need reasonable or logical development.
Waiting for Godot is an absurd drama. In reality, the absurd drama presents human life and human circumstance as absurd. This sort of show is free from the conventional plot, story, or division into acts and scenes. Here we get few characters. They have symbolic centrality. Dialogues are very brief and fresh. Nothing noteworthy happens on the organize. It prefers existential topics. Things are not clarified but they are just indicated. One can find all these highlights in Waiting for Godot.
A deficiency of activity is one of the major characteristics of an absurd play. There's nothing significant within the play. So is the case with Waiting for Godot. In this play nothing noteworthy happens but waiting and waiting. The waiting moreover gets to be insignificant because no Godot arrives. As soon as the play opens, we find Estragon, a tramp. He is attempting to remove his shoes. The first comment of this character is, ‘Nothing doing.’ This comment echoes all through the play. In this way within the world of Godot indeed negligible activity is impossible.
The setting of the play reminds us of the post-war condition of the world which brought around instabilities, lost hope, and modern challenges to all of mankind. A critical viewpoint bound with perversion and substantial violence, as a rich profit of the consequence of wars. It is as if the impact and calamities of the wars found sharp reflections in Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
Next comes the plot. Within the conventional sense, a plot ought to concentrate on a single motivated activity and is additionally expected to have a starting, a center, and a neatly tied-up finishing. But it's almost incomprehensible to provide a routine plot outline of Waiting for Godot, which has frequently been portrayed as a play in which nothing happens. It is amorphous and not developed on any basic principles. It has no Aristotolean beginning,middle, and end.It begins at an arbitrary point and appears to end just as arbitrarily. Beckett, like other producers working in this mode, isn't attempting to 'tell a story.' He's not offering any effortlessly identifiable arrangements to carefully watched issues; there's small by way of moralizing and no self-evident 'message.' The pattern of the play might best be portrayed as circular.The circularity of Waiting for Godot is profoundly unconventional.
As per as the depiction of characters is concerned the play moreover fits into the absurd convention. A well-made play is anticipated to present characters that are well-observed and convincingly persuaded. But within the play we five characters who are not exceptionally recognizable human beings and don't engage themselves in motivating action. Two tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), are waiting by a tree on a nation street for Godot, whom they have never met and who may not even exist. They contend, make up, contemplate suicide, examine entries from the Bible, and experience Pozzo and Lucky, a master and slave. Near the conclusion of the primary act, a young boy comes with a message from Mr. Godot that he will not come today but will come tomorrow. Within the second act, the activity of the first act is rehashed, with a couple of changes: the tree presently has cleared out, Pozzo is blind, and has Lucky on a shorter leash. Once once more the boy comes and tells them Mr. Godot will not come nowadays; he insists he has never met them before.
‘Waiting for Godot’ fulfills every prerequisite of an absurd play. It has no story, no characterization, no starting nor any conclusion, unexplained subjects, impersonation of dreams and bad dreams and overall it contains useless dialogues.:
‘Waiting for Godot’ does not tell any story nor does it has a plot. The play starts with waiting and closes with it. Characters don't go anyplace. They stand still before an audience and do nothing but pass the ball. The conversation and pass the time. The play needs activity. The activities of the characters are not related to the plot but to themselves. Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and the audience see that perhaps the real story of the play will begin after Godot's arrival but Godot does not appear on stage nor is he presented to the gathering of people. Eventually, the play closes with waiting. In this ways, ‘Waiting for Godot’ fulfills to begin with the prerequisite of an absurd play.
We don't know the past of the characters. They are not presented to the audience. We know only their names and their miserable circumstance. Their themes are unclear. Although it is expressed that they are Waiting for Godot however it isn't told to the audience what reason Godot will serve if he comes. Subsequently, the need for characterization proves that ‘Waiting of Godot’ is a play of absurd theater.
It has no start nor any conclusion. It begins with a circumstance and closes with it. Both acts begin and conclude in the same way. For occurrence, when characters come on stage they uncover their purpose. They say they are Waiting but Godot does not come and the act ends with waiting. The second act is also a duplicate of the first act with minor differences. The play goes on and eventually ends with the wait. Subsequently, there's no proper start of the play nor does it has a proper conclusion. It is a journey from nothingness to nothingness as watched by famous critics.
Most of the dialogues of this play serve no reason. Incomprehensible chattering is also an important ingredient of the theater of the absurd as specified by Esslin. The whole play is based on the conveyance of dialogues but most of them have no clear implications. Every dialogue is full of images. Every word alludes to something in a hidden meaning but it needs the intrigued of the audience because it needs activity.
Dialogues make activity in every play. Activity loses its significance without worthy dialogues. In the case of ‘Waiting for Godot’, no activity has been displayed, in this manner, exchanges are boring and they are composed fairly to pass the ball. Thus, they are meant to pass the time. The word ‘nothing’ has been repeated numerously within the play. It shows nothingness in it. Thus, exchanges of the play are nothing but incomprehensible chattering. ‘Waiting for Godot’ can be called an absurd play due to this characteristic of absurd theater.
Unclear subjects also make ‘Waiting for Godot’ a play of absurd theater. The audience doesn't watch any obvious theme within the play. The predominance of a play is continuously subordinate to its themes. ‘Waiting for Godot’ has no self-evident theme. If there's any, it is hidden. Additionally, it presents the individualistic vision of the author. There's an impact of alienation within the play about themes.
Thus from the focuses of view of the structure, subject, theme, characters, setting, and language, Waiting for Godot is an absurd drama. It derides the worthlessness of man's life and its inaneness. Life, as well as passing, is treated as a joke. God is made a non-entity. There's nothing to do in man's life.
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Critical Analysis of Waiting for Godot.
(2022, December 27). Edubirdie. Retrieved November 2, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/critical-analysis-of-waiting-for-godot/
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