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Endgame and Waiting for Godot

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Endgame and Waiting for Godot 百me, Being，，且nd 』ngi』且ge: Toward 且 Phenomenological Reading of Endgame and F站iting for Godot 1 Time, Being, and Language: Toward a Phenomenological Reading of Endgame and Waiting for Godot :le Cheng-chen Chien Abstract Critics often label Beckett’s plays as 叮 absurdity" and ''nothingness.” Contemporary readers tend to characterize them as postmodern plays and strip their "meaning. ＂ τbis pa­ per will discuss the insu血den叮 of present pheno血enological studies of his plays on the one hand; on the other, it will speculate on the ”meaning” of the pla戶旭 the postmodern scene. Phenomenology must enter into a dialogue with contempora可 discourse to assert its 屯ein忌” While the postmodern critic or deconstructionist questions the so-called "presence, "presence” must face the presence of dialogue to be present. With reference to Heideg­ gerean philosophy, this paper will point out: when the playwriught seems to transform the" presence” into a simulacrum and empty the textual meaning, through the simulacrum of the characters and the modulating intentionality, the reader reads the meaning of the te且 Keywords: phenomenology, Heidegger, Simulacrum, factica!, Being-with, presence , silence, Idle talk, authentic being *Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Litera阻re, J:iational CJ:!ullg-Hs旭E Unive自 ity 固立中興大學畫中 夜間吉！：學報（Journal of Taichung Evening School, ;\'CHU), Vol.2(1996), 79~ 100 一 79 一 2 〈固立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉 In Endgame and Waiting for Godot, the individual, living not sequentially but 區 dis­ connected fragments of time, has no reassurance of his e泊stence or identity except through language. The broken dialogue reflects a dislocation of being and time. The essence of being is vanishing like a meaningless drop falling from the eaves. E芷istence to the charac­ ters' consciousness is so inconsequential and insigr世1cant that they anticipate its quick end( and aoso their own end). But life drags on; it washes back and forth in a desperately slow tempo. For both Beckett and his characters, this slow cadence of deterioration inflicts more suffering on the individual than a severe thrashing. The world is o世y the remains of a by-gone world, and the survivors are not of the kind who could mtegrate the remains and launch a recycle.τhey are left there only to witness and endure the glacially slow approach of death.τbe world is seen as an enonnous hole, an empty cave or human skull, 1 or a bar­ ren stretch of land on which nothing stands except a single tree.2 In Beckett’s world, time often appears stagnant: Clov remarks that time is always the same (En申amι29 ）﹔ Winnie sees nature "No better, no worse, no change" and man "No pain”（品rppy Da戶， 13), and the characters in 的＇it品g for Godot find themselves sus­ pended in dubious duration. In Beckett’s plays, stillness is a kind of tranquillity that beto­ kens the impending yet delayed end. Being hangs on the dangling drops of time, frag­ mented and scattered; existence, though nearly emptied, must be endured--when time comes, its roo血 has to be filled. Language parallels humans' concept of being and time. To view this kind of world, one is liable to embark on a serious thinking of existence in phenomenological perspective. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s classical study of Beckett’s theater smacks of Heideggerean apprehension.τbe stage, for Robbe-Grillet, in accordance with. Heidegger's Being-there, is the locus of presence. With absence of programme or a priori pr扭ciples, the playwright endows the characters like Vladimir and Estragon in I平台itingfor Godot with freedom and presence on the stage. Another noted Heideggerean reading comes from Lance Butler’s book Samuel Beckett and the Meaning of Being in which a trace of ’,ontological parable” is mediated through language to be a presence. Yet the idea of presence is complicated and questioned by the later deconstruction and post­ modernism. Presence therefore is to be modified to enter into a dialogue with contempo­ ra可 scenes. In a contempora可 context, presence may still affirm itself in its self- 口。nu Time. Bei 嗯，且nd Language : Toward a Phenomenological Reading of Endgame and Waiting for Godot 3 reflexiveness. Presence does not have to be limited to the presence of the characters. Stag­ ing may question their presence by giving them a seeming presence. Presence 血ay also point beyond itself to the presence of a simulacru血， of the being of a reality, or the reality of being. Moreover, the contemplation of the presence of the playwright and the charac­ ters turns out to sigr吐E扭扭ly spotlight the being or the self of the reader. It is through this point of departure that a phenomenological (and mostly Heideggerean) re-reading of Beckett's plays alleges its "being.” Heidegger in his Being and Time points out that humans "are thrown into” or "fall into” the world. But beings are always beings-in-the world or beings-with-the world.3 ， τbe world of Dasein is a w的－ world mjtwe.句 Being-in is E血ig－叫th Others’＇（Heidegg 叮 155) Being-with Others clothes existence with pre-understanding of the outside world. Heideg ger proceeds: Being alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its ve可 possibility is the proof of this On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occurr巴nee of a sec ond example of a human being "beside" me, or by ten such examples.(157) In 附j[ing for Godot, the world where Estragon and Vladimir are in binds them in such a dialectic of being alone and being with others. On the one hand, they are "alone可﹔ on the other hand, there is someone else keeping them waiting. This ”someone else," Godot, in a sense seems to suggest a possibility to terminate their being-aloneness and their predica­ ments. But the unending delay of the arrival of the other renders the duration of existence in time to be a literal va叩um. A possibility with being-with others ironical句 inte自由自 由 eir sense of being-alone. The waiting also a血plifies the more pernicious aspect of time. Before Godot comes, a vast infrnitude of ti血e has to be passed; a dialogue or an action becomes necessary to fill the empty time and finish with it. Thus the dialogue in 研討血g for Godot may appear loosely connected to the spec­ tator or the reader yet it emerges 企om an implicit struggle with time. Time imposes on any mo血ent of existence; life finds itself disseminated but it has to deal with this impact be­ cause humans are destined t。”fall into” the world to sustain this moment in life. For them, to be or not to be, in or out of time, is not a meaningful question. Time is to be done with even though it is beyond the concern or care. Heidegger regards care as an ontological nHM 4 〈 國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉 ground from which one projects oneself onto the other. Being-with others is riveted in care.4 In Waitng for Godot, however, existence reveals itself in its carelessness. Estragon can suggest "To t叮 him [Pozzo] with other names, one after the other. It’d pass the time. And we'd be bound to hit on the right one sooner or later" (54). The question of name is one of Beckett’s major concerns. To assert a name is to assert a subjectivity. Here Es­ tragon’s lines not only touch on the uncertain self, they also deal with playing the game of names or identities as a means of passing the time. The change of names from Pozzo, to Abel, to Cain virtually means the change of faces--faces are overlapped and identities are commingled.τ'he disappearance of a face implies the vanishing of a self; the mixture of faces suggests the ambiguity of identity.5 Beckett’s language thus, with terse phrases and simple sentences, throws light from one lamp simultaneously on two different facets. Iden­ tities are extremely tenuous with this easy coming and going of names; and the coming and going of the m血es is the coming and going of time. Every name pronounced is a moment spent. In these two plays, for the characters, meaning does not reside in significant actions but in action the main significance of which is that it fills a particular moment and kills that moment. So the function of Estragon’s dreaming overrides the dream thought and the dream content. But the function is not the character’s intentional appropriation; rather, it is unintentionally adopted to kill the time, which ironically fulfills the intentionality of the text. The manifold function, to a different degree of reception, for the character and for the te泣 and the i血plied author of the te泣， is that, as Vladimir says’”passed the time"(58). While waiting for Godot, the vast span of time requires them to say or do something­ -anything. The response to this silent imposition is to say something meaningless, and to do something absurd. In this meaningless duration, aspects of absurdity become a corol­ la 可. Estragon and Vladimir talk about an erection and play at master and slave. Trivial thoughts and actions, yet reflections of a sad necessity. Those common phrases, "passing time" and ”killing time’” suggest that humans nor­ mally regard time as flow旭g and alive. In l平妞，ting for Godot, time does ”ooze” by: evening, night, the following day succeeds one another in chronological order. A future will follow the present but their ”waiting’, anticipates an ascertained unce rtainty.τ'heir nonru Time. Beir唔， and Language : Toward 且 Phenomenologi臼I Reading of Endgame and I平'ailing for Godot 5 game of passing time is to temporal泣e a moment. While Heidegger’s temporali可 is a human act to temper with physical time of present, the characters' te血porality of time in this play just empties the present.
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