SAMUEL BECKETT

SAMUEL BECKETT

In his novels and plays alike, Beckett focused on the wretchedness of living in an attempt to expose the essence of the human condition, which he ultimately reduced to the solitary self, or to nothingness. He also pared language down to its bare bones in a lean, disciplined prose seasoned with sardonic wit and relied by vaudevillian patter and clowning. His influece on subsequent dramatists, particulary those who followed him in the so-called absurdist tradition, was significant, and the impact of his prose works was considerable.

Beckett was born in 1 333c24d 906 near Dublin and attented Portora Royal School and Trinity College - a university in Dublin where he studied French and Italian. The latter opened his way towards Dante`s work and made him travel to France and Italy.

Between 1928 -1931 he was a teacher of English at Ecole Normale Superieure and his friendship with James Joyce introduced him to his international circle in Paris where he met Ezra Pound. He returned to Dublin, then London, but his oscillation between France and his native country ended with his permanent residence in Paris from 1937.

After he had published Murphy in England in 1938, he returned to France where he was blocked by the German occupation and he fought in opposition. In 1942 he wrote another novel Watt in English, too, followed by several works in French: Mercier et Camier, Le Calmant, Premier Amour.

Although Beckett`s prose works are extremely interesting, but difficult, the readers do not receive them very well since the author oscillates among different currents: from the burlesque poem Whoroscope to the propensity for Proustian prose - the essay Proust - and to the poems Echo`s Bones.

Actually Beckett`s well-known play Waiting for Godot made of him a playwright of international reputation. It is followed by other plays: Endgame ( 1957 ), Krapp`s Last Tape ( 1960 ), and Happy Days ( 1962 ). Beckett widened the sphere of his works by writing for radio. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969 and died in 1989.

Peter Griffith comments that Beckett goes beyond temporal and spacial limits: "Carnival, utternace, dialogue, struggle: these are terms that apply to drama as much as they do to the analysis of discourse, and it is time to apply them in this way. One of the resons why Beckett and Pinter have often bracketed together is that they are both frequently seen as writing hermetically-sealed dramatic texts which deliberately and willfully bear no relation to the world outside the play; another version of this criticism is that they create a spurious and a historical picture of The Human Condition which neglects existing social conditions and processes".

Any person who is reading Beckett`s prose or watching his plays has a strange feeling of being nowhere, of living no time. It seems that a certain element is taken from life and placed in the centre of his work, which recurrently develops around it. The plot of Beckett`s novels and plays are limited; but his works allow different readings, one hidden behind the previous one, like a palimpsest. Molloy for example has a very limited plot, but it can also be read as a thriller or at another level it can acquire the features of a picaresque novel. Even Waiting for Godot, which is a play where nothing happens shows us that something changes, it combines permanence - Estragon and Vladimir`s situation - with transience - Lucky and Pozzo`s different appearances.

His characters are "remains of human beings" living in a lowering world whose sufferance is accurately followed and described by Samuel Beckett. Beckett`s universe is degrading; it is dominated by confusion and darkness, like a maze of memories and dreams.

This chaos and ambiguity make of Beckett a representative of the absurd literature. The set is very simple and symmetrical: Waiting for Godot requires a tree and a country road in frant of it; Endgame is placed in a bare interior and the set of Happy Days is reduced to maximum of simplicitly and symmetry with Winnie in the centre of a mound of earth. Therefore the audience`s interst is directed towards the dialogue.

Waiting for Godot is Beckett`s most representative play; it was published first in French in 1952 and two years later in English in New York, but the definitive text appeared at Faber and Faber in 1956.

The plot is extremely simple and consists in turning nothing into something since the main characters have nothing else to do but wait for Godot, who will never come, and play with thoughts. Starting from setting to characters, everything is symmetrical in the play, everything is separated in couples, the play is structured in two acts. Beckett indicates only two elements on the stage - a tree and a road, and three paires of characters - Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky, Mr.Godot and a boy. The characters in a pair are opposite, complementary and doomed to be together but sometimes the author creates a certain confusion which makes them change their places, they are the embodiment of the same situation at different levels.

Estragon and Vladimir are both comic heroes, their first appearance as clowns speculating on the strangeness of language, of things turns into a couple of tragic characters whose situation is helpless. They seem to be kept together by the tree which could be a symbol for hope. In the line of Beckett`s oppositions Vladimir might be associated with the mind or the spirit, while Estragon might be the body. Their dialogues deviate into a suggestive game reminding us of the decay of humanity.

Vladimir has a mediative nature showing a great preoccupation with the Bible and especially with the story about salvation and damnation. Except this obsessive preoccupation with the Bible, Vladimir is the voice of reason, he is the thinker who tries to give explanations, " to bring dark things into the light of day" , to protect Estragon who is a very sensitive person and the prisoner of his nightmares. Estragon`s sensitiveness seems to have its roots in the war`s horrors, his reactions hint at traumatic happenings: " Don`t touch me! Don`t question me! Don`t speak to me! Stay with me!"

The other characters, Pozzo and Lucky, are really tied but their relationship is more unpleasant. The contrast between Pozzo and Lucky is more powerful, the split between mind and body is not very firm since it implies coexistence suggested by the rope. Lucky, who in the first act is the "good angel" , has an awful aspect, is a miserable figure and cannot even think without an order. In the second act, he is dumb, he is a fallen angel but he drives Pozzo by a shorter rope.

Pozzo is a character built up on contradictions, described as "tyrannical, confident, self-satisfied, he is also childishly dependent, nervous and helpless, unable even to sit down on occasion without a signal from outside". Pozzo is an example of selfishness, always preoccupied with his comforts, he doesn`t even think of sharing his food with any of the characters.

In the second act, Pozzo changes, becomes a more serious person, because of his blindness he is supported by Lucky. In spite of this new situation, communication is still impossible since this time Lucky is dumb.

The boy appears only at the end of each act and as a messenger he should bring some light in the play. The message is the same and all the Boy has to do is to confirm:

"Vladimir: You have a message from Mr Godot.

Boy: Yes, sir.

Vladimir: He won`t come this evening.

Boy: No,sir.

Vladimir: But he`ll come tomorrow.

Boy: Yes,sir.

Vladimir: Without fail.

Boy: Yes,sir."

Yet, the main character of the play is also always absent and the awaited Godot who could be God or future but "Nothing is certain". However there is a relation between Godot and the characters` hope sustained by Vladimir`s preoccupation with Crucifixion and the salvation.

There are some hints at the relation between Christ and Godot in Vladimir`s words since he believes that if Godot comes they will be saved from hell and death.

In Waiting for Godot the words acquire the most important place because rhythm, repetition, pauses imply a greater attention on the part of the reader. Certain deviations of the text by virtue of a musicality are not accidental or meaningless, they can suggest at least the opposition life - death, light - dark: "leaves" and "ashes".

It seems that Beckett`s language always leads the reader towards concepts like repetition, recollection, reconstruction, recurrence, therefore circularity. With Peter Griffith repetition is a kind of quotation since language itself by its usage supposes repetition.