The term was explicitly adopted as a self-description by Jean-Paul Sartre, and through the wide dissemination of the postwar literary and philosophical output of Sartre and his associates-notably Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus-existentialism became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950. ExistentialismĮxistentialism is a term like “rationalism” and “empiricism”, “existentialism” that belongs to intellectual history. Each moment of life is dictated by chance and circumstance, bestowing fortune on some while misery on others. If one accepts this existentialist view of existence, then the concept of fate and predestiny simply cannot exist. The momentary experiences and memories that define what lies between these two truths have been structured into a linear progression of the human mind into the concept known as time. Life has two absolute truths, birth, and death. Time is essentially meaningless, as it is only experienced by a terminal repetition of waiting with no end in sight, except death. Time cannot be applied in this World where a day can end without notice and where one cannot remember their actions from the previous day. In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Beckett represents the world of Vladimir and Estragon as one of chaos, devoid of any meaningful structure or pattern. The innovation of these texts lies in the unique way in which this topic is presented, through the abandonment of the conventions of realism, rather than in the topic itself: The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition it merely presents it in being – that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This existential perspective, at first developed in conventionally structured plays that followed logical reasoning, has then become the core of absurdist drama as a genre, which emerged after the horrors of World War II. He thus suggests that life is inherent without meaning. Camus presents Sisyphus, the archetypal absurd hero, as a reflection of the absurdity that pervades the human condition, namely the alienation of humans from their universe and their condemnation to being pointlessly preoccupied perpetual action while accomplishing nothing (Simpson, 1998: 35). That is, Esslin sees the work of these playwrights as giving articulation to Camus“ philosophy as expressed in his philosophical essays entitled Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942). As Ionesco (1989: 45) maintains, Esslin uses the term ”absurd” to describe this genre because of the broad discussion around this notion at that time. Rather, he proposes a common label for those post-war dramatists who express in their work the sense of loss and the futility of existence after the modern human has declined religious faith and is faced with the absurdity of his or her essence. With this term, Esslin does not suggest a proclaimed school or an organized movement. The theatre of the absurdĮsslin (1960) introduced the term “Theatre of the Absurd” to describe the pioneering work of some playwrights who appeared in the early 1950s, such as Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov, as well as of the younger generation of playwrights who were inspired by them, including Harold Pinter. Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco are the most important names of absurd theater. After the outbreak of the Second World War, different reflections in all areas of art have emerged in the field of theater and absurd theater has emerged. Modern world literature puts up many sorrowful and melancholic works by the influences of horrifying actions of wars. New trends showed up in the literature and arts in that period. If God exists, why people suffer? Why man was created by God? Or Was it not the God who created us? Who are we indeed? These kinds of questions changed people’s points of view. People started to question both the existence of God and the existence of mankind. People began to lose faith in God and question this atrocity. In the post-war period, emotions such as pessimism, despair, and helplessness were experienced intensively. He was influenced by the post-war period like thousands of people. So based on this, we can say that Samuel Beckett saw two World Wars as well. He was provided with an excellent education, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, with a major emphasis in French and Italian. Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1906. To analyze the play we have to consider about author’s life and what kind of effects of his life exist in the play. This paper aims to reflect on themes of ”Waiting for Godot” and analyzing the characters of the play.
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