University of Aleppo

Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Department of English

The Theatre of the Absurd: A Comparative Study of British and American Drama as Portrayed in Selected Plays of Beckett, Pinter, Albee and Shepard

By

Ahmad Tarek Al Sayed Ali

Supervised by

Prof. Dr. Iman Lababidi

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Literature

2018 Al Sayed Ali i

Declaration

I hereby certify that this work, The Theatre of the Absurd: A Comparative Study of British and American Drama as Portrayed in Selected Plays of Beckett, Pinter,

Albee and Shepard , has neither been accepted for any degree, nor has it been submitted to any other degrees.

Date: / / 2018

Candidate

Ahmad Tarek Al Sayed Ali

Al Sayed Ali ii

Testimony

We testify that the described work in this dissertation is the result of a scientific research conducted by the candidate Ahmad Tarek Al Sayed Ali under the supervision of

Prof. Iman Lababidi, professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts and

Humanities, Aleppo University. Any other references mentioned in this work are documented in the text of this dissertation.

Date: / / 2018

Candidate

Ahmad Tarek Al Sayed Ali

Al Sayed Ali iii

Acknowledgements

I thank the Almighty for granting me all help and guidance. I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Iman Lababidi, who helped me conduct this study with her immense philosophical insights and critical comments. I also owe a lot to the Head of the English

Department, Dr. Adnan Al-Sayed. I cannot but offer my thanks to the staff of the English

Department at Aleppo University. Finally, I would like to thank all my colleagues, friends, and family members, who enhanced my thesis with their encouragement, patience, and prayers.

Al Sayed Ali iv

Abstract

This research studies the absurdist themes and features in selected plays of Samuel

Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Sam Shepard. One main theme is Alienation and isolation of the modern man. Characters in these plays felt alienated not only from the world around them but also from themselves. On the one hand, man is detached from nature and lives in separate places. On the other hand, he becomes a stranger to himself as he cannot find a whole identity or find answers to his questions. Another theme is the uncertainty of identity; self and the other. Moreover, the obscurity of existence are analyzed closely in both Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Albee's The Zoo Story, The American

Dream. Beckett raises various questions in his plays, which are left unanswered. Thus, there is an overall ambiguity in his works. Albee follows Beckett in dramatizing the theme of uncertainty. However, he does not analyze ambiguities in such philosophical or metaphysical depths like Beckett. These ambiguities that pervade the works of both writers stem from the following points: uncertainty of identity, uncertainty of existence and illusion versus reality. This is what makes their characters suffer from being human, having been born, being thrown on the earth.

Moreover, the study goes on to examine the techniques and the dramatic effects as they are discussed in absurdist drama in the third chapter. Lightning, for instance, is an essential feature in absurdist plays. Mostly all absurdist plays are set in gloomy atmosphere which in turn affects the language and the whole theme of the play. Al Sayed Ali v

Setting, language and style are the major points of discussion in Chapter Four. Style in absurdist drama differs thoroughly from traditional drama. Language in an Absurdist play is often dislocated, full of cliches, puns, repetitions, and non sequiturs. Setting is bare, furnished only with some chairs and scattered items, a tree, a park bench…etc.

The aim of this study is to analyze the elements of the Theatre of the Absurd both in

British and American Theatre. To trace these characteristics, selected plays of British and

American drama are analyzed and compared in the light of the themes and the techniques of the theatre of the absurd.

This research will follow a comparative method in order to have a better view of the absurdist visions of these different playwrights. The common themes are analyzed in the same chapters. Absurdist elements, techniques and all the features that helped in creating these absurdist visions are compared and discussed in separate chapters. Finally, the conclusion draws the similarities and differences of the plays being discussed.

In this study, eight plays will be analyzed and compared, two plays for each playwright: Beckett's Endgame and Waiting for Godot; Pinter's The Room and Dumb

Waiter; Albee's The Zoo Story and The American Dream; and Shepard's Buried Child and

Geography of a Horse Dreamer which will be referred to as Endgame, Godot, Room,

Dumb, Zoo, American, Buried and Dreamer when they are cited.

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Table of Contents

Declaration i

Testimony ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract iv

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Alienation and Isolation in Harold Pinter's The Room, The Dumb Waiter 15 and Sam Shepard's Buried Child, Geography of a Horse Dreamer

Chapter Two: Ambiguity of Identity and Obscurity of Existence in Samuel Beckett's 31

Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Edward Albee's The American Dream, The Zoo Story

Chapter Three: Technique and Dramatic Effects in the Plays in Question 50

Chapter Four: Critical and Artistic Evaluation of the Plays in Question 64

Conclusion 95

Works Cited 99

Works Consulted 103

Al Sayed Ali 1

Introduction

The Theater of the Absurd refers to a literary movement in drama popular throughout

European countries from the 1940s to approximately 1989. Absurdist playwrights adhered to the theories of French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, in particular his essay The

Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1942. In this essay, Camus introduced his Philosophy of the

Absurd, in which he argues that man's quest for meaning and truth is a futile endeavor. He compares man's struggle to understand the world and the meaning of life to Sisyphus, a famous figure in Greek Mythology condemned to an existence of rolling a heavy stone up a mountain only to watch it roll to the bottom.

The Theater of the Absurd arose as a movement from the doubts and fears surrounding

World War II and what many people saw as the degeneration of traditional moral and political values. It flourished in France, Germany, and England, as well as in Scandinavian countries. Several of the founding works of the movement include Jean Genet's The

Maids (1947), Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950), Arthur Adamov's Ping-

Pong (1955), and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953). Beckett's death in 1989 is said to mark the close of the movement's popularity

The absurdist plays categorized in this movement typically represent human existence as nonsensical and often chaotic. They rarely follow a clear plot, and what action occurs serves only to heighten the sense that characters (and human beings in general) are mere victims of unknown, arbitrary forces beyond their control. The Dialogue is often redundant, Al Sayed Ali 2

setting and passage of time within the play are unclear, and the characters express frustration with deep, philosophical questions, such as the meaning of life and death and the existence of God.

The Theatre of the Absurd was an outstanding success in Europe, but it ventured slowly towards the United States. Following the postwar of World War II, Europeans felt a sense of disillusionment and were unable to find any purpose in life. This sense of abandonment made a significant impact upon the writers of France, Italy, Spain, Germany,

Switzerland and Great Britain. Not only were they looking for a way to express themselves but they wanted also to rebel against the total idea of man’s existence and life itself.

Dramatists found their outlet through play writing and they developed the Theatre of the

Absurd (Esslin 267).

The United States was not feeling a loss of meaning or purpose, but it was experiencing the American dream of good life which did not reflect absurdist views. Yet there was a time that United States patriotism, self-confidence and optimism dropped to a severe low. Specifically, the assassination of President Kennedy, the rise of racial tension in the United States and the Vietnam War caused Americans to look at the world differently as well as themselves (Esslin 267). It was at this time that the Theatre of the Absurd began to make itself known in America as avant-garde theatre. Al Sayed Ali 3

American avant-garde playwrights derived from the European dramatists of the

Absurd. Their plays were written in an absurdist view point and they expressed the feeling of those dramatized in the Theatre of the Absurd.

Edward Albee (12 March 1928 – 16 September 2016) is perhaps the most representational of the avant-garde and absurd styles of theatre. His works actually attack the foundation of America’s spirit and optimism. Using wit and sensibility, Albee writes about human outcast as in The Zoo Story, and scorns national pride and patriotism as it appears in The American Dream. Albee and other playwrights represent avant-garde theatre which was influenced by the European dramatists of the Theatre of the Absurd.

The Theatre of the Absurd is an expression of emptiness and searching which flourished in Europe and influenced avant-garde styles in American. Themes reflect man confronting a universe deprived of its purpose in a world lost of explanation. These themes are expressed in the Theatre of the Absurd and they carry over into American avant-garde theatre. Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Inonesco, Jean Genet and Harold

Pinter of the European Theatre of the Absurd, influenced such playwrights as Arthur Kopit,

Megan Terry, Sam Shepard and Edward Albee of the American avant-garde theatre style.

Their prolific, risk-taking style of play writing was a significant contribution to the development of style in American Theatre.

The Modern period, beginning around the turn of the twentieth century, has its roots in the late Victorian transition from the belief in art as a vehicle for pleasure and instruction to Al Sayed Ali 4

a belief in "art for art's sake." The sense of alienation—the distance between the artist and the public that marked the early twentieth century—grew out of this sense of art for art's sake. Men of letters discarded old traditions and worked hard to set their readers free from their shackles.

By the last decades of the Victorian period (the 1880s and 1890s), authors were turning away from the optimism to the pessimism that had marked the early and mid-

Victorian periods. This is mainly related to the industrial revolution and the new scientific discoveries that started to question old religious beliefs.

The development of psychoanalysis in the early twentieth century had a profound impact on the artists of the time. Psychoanalysis challenged the traditional ways of understanding human beings as fundamentally rational individuals. Art's main concern turned from society to the individual and his inner whims and motivations. The First World

War (1914-1918) truly marked the end of whatever optimism about progress produced by the Victorian Age and the "Great War", as it was called, shattered the landscape and produced death on a scale that the world had not previously witnessed.

The Second World War came as the final blow for humanitarian mottos, such as fraternity, friendship, democracy, and cooperative living. It was the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd to life. Paris, the most ravaged city by war, was the cradle of this new theatre. The global nature of this conflict and the resulting trauma of living under the threat of atomic annihilation put into perspective the essential precariousness of Al Sayed Ali 5

human life. Men of letters were assured that man was left on his own to fight the coercive measures of the universe, his fellow human beings, and even his own human nature.

The Theatre of the Absurd derived its principles from existentialism, a philosophy that questions fundamental issues in man's life, such as time, the purpose of our creation, and our final destiny. It lived for a short while, yet it was a significant theatrical movement, centred in Paris in the 1950s. Largely based on the philosophy of existentialism, absurdism was implemented by a small number of European playwrights. A common element of the absurd drama was illogical plots inhabited by characters who appeared out of harmony with their own existence. One of the main themes tackled in the Theatre of the Absurd is related to the individual’s search for identity in an unfriendly environment and the fear and difficulty of communicating with others. As a result, absurd plays assumed a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle the viewer, shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday concerns. Absurd plays attract our attention to phenomena whose causes and retaliations are usually taken for granted. The main questions that absurdism raises without giving final answers are related to man's existence and sense of life.

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant- garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet, and literary translator who lived in Paris for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His works offer a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and Al Sayed Ali 6

gallows humor, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the

"Theatre of the Absurd." (3)

Samuel Beckett in his plays describes characters who refuse any real relationship with others as they are lost and unhappy, and they have only the pleasure of language left. Harold

Pinter also shows the impossibility of communication between characters in a closed situation, as in The Birthday Party and The Caretaker. The Theatre of the Absurd will be remembered in history for many things, the most significant of which is Samuel Beckett’s

Waiting for Godot, one of the most valued plays of the twentieth century. "From Godot in

1953 to What Where in 1983, Beckett always makes us aware of an elusive spiritual dimension which the imagination continually seeks to express creatively." (Luckhurst 237).

Beckett started a new kind of fashion in drama. He did not follow the traditional form of well-made plays. He believed in absurdism, and his plays tried to show the essential tragic condition of the modern man. For Beckett, the human life is absurd, and happiness in human life is never possible. Waiting for Godot consists of two acts. Nothing happens in the play except that two tramps are waiting for the arrival of the mysterious Godot. They hope that

Godot will give some direction in their lives. Godot never comes, and they do not know who he is. Perhaps, he may not exist, but they keep on waiting for him. The play presents the essence of the human condition in a deep sense. Like Godot, happiness and substantial Al Sayed Ali 7

aims in human life are always out of reach. The pain and fear of the two men are presented in a humorous way.

In the other plays of Beckett, the characters seem to be hopelessly struggling against the emptiness and pointlessness of their lives. The goal of absurdist drama is not solely to depress audiences with negativity, but to attempt to bring them closer to reality and help them understand their own "meaning" in life, whatever this meaning may be. The best sentence which represents this philosophy is when Beckett states it in Endgame, '' Nothing is more real than nothing.'' In Endgame, Beckett portrays characters who refuse not only love, but also to establish any relationship with anyone else. They are lost and unhappy. The language in these plays is very carefully used, and there is more humor than the despair of their themes might suggest.

Harold Pinter, (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War

II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Harold Pinter tackled the theme of the impossibility of communication between the characters in a closed situation. In his early plays, the comfort and safety of the closed situation, often a room, is compared with the dangers of the world. The world is full of dangers, so there is fear and difficulty in communicating with other individuals, especially Al Sayed Ali 8

with the strangers of the outside world. Pinter's main focus is politics. His plays are described as a development from absurdism to political drama. Barbara Kruger states that:

"As the Theatre of the Absurd is mainly thought of as apolitical and incompatible with dramatizing political issues, the apparent decline of absurdist features in Pinter's plays seems to go along with simultaneous rise of the political substance." (Kruger 9).

Pinter is particularly preoccupied with the hypocrisies of western democracies in relation to torture, especially those among the one hundred and fifty nation-state signatories of the Geneva Convention in 1949 who renounced torture as criminal in both international and non-international armed conflicts, yet continued to turn over massive profit by producing and exporting the tools of torture. Western democracies themselves, especially the USA, as Pinter argued, increasingly abuse the very human rights they have instigated.

Pinter's characters’ daily behavior does not reflect their inner being. This reflects their superficiality. (Bradbury 17).

The Theatre of the Absurd in Europe is based on the philosophy that the abstract is presented in an absurdist cloth. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Theatre of the Absurd is based on social norms. The ideology of the two versions of the Theatre of the Absurd differs. The main concern of the American absurd theatre is the American dream of success and its implementations on the individual and the society.

The theatre of the absurd found resonance in the United States. One of the prominent figures in this regard is Sam Shepard who gained a critical regard, a media attention, and an Al Sayed Ali 9

iconic status which were enjoyed by only few American dramatists. Throughout his career,

Shepard amassed numerous grants, prizes, fellowships, and awards, including the Cannes

Palme d’Or and the Pulitzer Prize. Shepard sought space free from conventional and patriarchal demands. While Shepard’s early plays channeled the personal angst of the young writer, they also spoke to the mood of the times, finding favor with the counterculture and making Shepard a celebrity of the avant-garde. Shepard frequently used Western motifs in his works. The Holy Ghostly (1969) and Operation Sidewinder (1970) both utilize Native

American characters as counterpoints to establish culture. Representing seekers and questioners, Western characters appear prominently in Cowboy Mouth (1971) and Mad Dog

Blues (1971).

In these works, Shepard used Western motifs to celebrate freedom and to efface social constraints; cowboys act as embodiments of liberation.

"Hailed as ‘‘the poet laureate of the American West’’, Shepard

developed an early understanding of the Western sensibility that

involved a blending of actual experience and myth. Though born in

Illinois, Shepard grew up on a ranch in Duarte, California, and had

personal experience with the physical labor of ranching and raising

livestock." (Krasner 287).

It is ironic that critics saw Shepard’s 1990s work as 1960s nostalgia, for Shepard had been immensely influential in the challenge to domestic realism. Shepard’s plays moved Al Sayed Ali 10

audiences into a surreal world in which the icons of American culture became caricatures in an emerging, revisionary culture and a resistant dramatic form. The main characteristic of the absurd drama is the failure of communication between characters. There is a breakdown of communication between individuals. This theme is found in the Edward Albee’s plays in which there is no communication between the characters. When the play begins, the audience can see the characters quarrelling. They attack each other verbally with no sense of a real communication, which encouraged early critics "to compare his work to that of

Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco." (Kranser 249).

The Theatre of the Absurd had grown as a response to what many saw as a collapse of moral and social values in the twentieth century. The primary aim of its plays was to point out the absurdity of life. Albee was clearly influenced by European playwrights, namely,

Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter. His early efforts were initially produced in Europe, but after their American productions in 1960 and 1961, the possibilities and the impact of this new type of theatre echoed throughout American dramatic circles.

This study focuses on the reasons why the aforementioned four playwrights are considered absurdist dramatists, according to the distinguished absurdist characteristics in their plays. The points of similarities and contrast in the American British absurd theatres are of main interest throughout the study. Al Sayed Ali 11

This study deals with the comparison of British and American absurdist dramas in selected plays of Beckett, Pinter, Albee and Shepard. It consists of an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion.

The introduction presents the major tenets of the Theatre of the Absurd and the major playwrights of the this movement. It also tackles the reasons behind its appearance in

Europe and in The United States. Moreover, it introduces the four dramatists who are the subject of the research.

Chapter one (titled Alienation and Isolation in Harold Pinter's The Room and Dumb

Waiter; and Sam Shepard's Buried Child and Geography of a Horse Dreamer) tackles the theme of alienation and isolation of the individual in the modern world. Alienation is a means for man to protect himself against those forces which cause his annihilation in the world of nothingness, which is rooted in the absurd situation. Pinter and Shepard in The

Room, Dumb Waiter and Buried Child, Geography of a Horse Dreamer show the absurdity of man's situation through the mingling of reality and symbolism. Pinter and Shepard believe that man is alienated and that alienation is a major element of the human predicament.

Chapter two (titled Ambiguity of Identity and obscurity of the Existence in Samuel

Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame; Edward Albee's The American Dream and The

Zoo Story) discusses the uncertainty of identity and the obscurity of existence of the modern man in both Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Albee's The Zoo Story, The Al Sayed Ali 12

American Dream. Beckett's and Albee's characters do not have fixed identities. “Doubt and uncertainty…are general over Beckett’s theatrical universe” (Gluck 153). The ambiguity of existence presents another problem for these characters. Their lives are based on illusions and the line between reality and fantasy. On the one hand, Beckett's characters are in a constant search for their own identity, and this creates the first cause of existential anguish about their identity as they come face to face with nothingness. On the other hand, Albee is concerned with the uncertainty, which involves both the uncertainty of identity and the uncertainty of existence. Alan Lewis notes that “In a mechanical, standardized existence, individuality ceases to exist; therefore, characters either do not have names, or do not remember their names, or interchange names.” (50) Albee gives his characters genderic names. The characters are named Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma. Albee skips naming another character and calls him Young Man. They are indeed close to caricatures.

Chapter three, titled Technique and Dramatic Effects in the Plays in Question, deals with the techniques and the dramatic effects that conduced to the categorization of these plays as absurdist. Opening in absurdist drama differs from that in classical plays.

Characteristically, an absurdist play opens with a gesture which is not understood on the part of the audience. The plot is far from being conventional. The costumes and the decorations are always symbolic. They seem to be meaningless. Examples include as a tree or a park bench and a country road. All of these dramatic devices help to reflect the feeling of absurd and the meaningless of the human condition. Dénouement is essential in absurdist Al Sayed Ali 13

drama. In a typical absurdist play, the audience is not supposed to go home satisfied that they knew the solution to the problem posed in the play. However, this does not mean that the objective of the absurdist plays is to make man give up on life. Its aim is to make man think.

Chapter four, titled Critical and Artistic Evaluation of the Plays in Question, examines setting, language, and style in the selected plays of British and American drama. Setting in absurdist drama is bare, furnished only with some chairs and scattered items which in turn play a major role in reflecting the meaninglessness of life and the absurdist condition of the modern world.

Language in these plays is mainly used to play games and to pass the time. Therefore, language loses its meaning when these characters use it as an evasion from the harsh reality underlying it. Beckett develops a language which is used as an inconvenient medium for communication. Language is a habit and nothing more. Becket shows the devaluation of language through characters who generally talk in monologues even if they appear to talk to another character. Albee's characters follow Beckett's strategies to dramatize the lack of communication in the society which he portrays. His characters are unwilling to converse with another character, and their speeches tend to be in the form of monologue.

Unfinished and fragmented sentences, unanswered questions, and interruptions—all serve to reveal the insufficiency of language which are later discussed in detail in due time.

The conclusion, however, presents the findings of the study. Al Sayed Ali 14

The first two chapters tackle the thematic study of Absurdist British and American theatre as portrayed in selected plays of Pinter, Shepard, Beckett and Albee. The last two chapters deal with the structural elements and the dramatic effects of the plays.

Finally, the conclusion draws the similarities and differences between the works in question and presents the findings of the study.

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Chapter One: Alienation and Isolation in Harold Pinter's The Room, The Dumb

Waiter and Sam Shepard's Buried Child, Geography of a Horse Dreamer

The concept of alienation is not restricted to the Theatre of the Absurd. The industrial revolution affected the human relations with the concept of alienation and isolation rooted in the Romantic heritage. The Romantics felt that the world lost its glamour and brilliance , which brought them closer to Mother Nature as a consolation. Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, is the first to shed light on the way in which the Romantics responded. In his Notes from the Underground, the main character is not given a name and is reduced to a shadow of his own apprehensions and conceptions. Kafka also tried hard to awaken human conscience because people changed into numbers, files, and even animals in a merciless world that is ruled by jungle law. It was nihilism, which is a philosophy of skepticism that originated in 19th-century Russia with most absurdist playwrights basing their philosophical arguments on nihilism.

The philosophical thinking of nihilists was profoundly influenced by such men as

Ludwig Feuerbach, Charles Darwin, Henry Buckle, and Herbert Spencer. Since nihilists denied the duality of man as a combination of body and soul, of spiritual and material substance, they came into violent conflict with ecclesiastical authorities. Nihilists questioned the doctrine of the divine right; therefore, they came into similar conflict with secular authorities. Because they scorned all social bonds and family authorities, the conflict Al Sayed Ali 16

between fathers and sons became equally eminent, and it is this theme which is best reflected in Turgenev's works.

A comparison between Turgenev's hero, Bazarov, and the hero of

Leonid Andreyev's drama, Savva, written during the early 20th

century, reveals the deterioration of nihilist philosophy, which

changed from a faith in science into a justification of terror and

destruction as a means to attain the set goals (Britannica).

The concept of alienation has been deepened in Britain by the First and Second World

Wars which were the final blows that brought the old ideas of fraternity, humanity, and cooperative living to an end. Men of letters in general and the absurdist playwrights in particular mourn this precious essence whose loss has made man feel that he is severed from the universe and alienated from his own being.

Alienation is a means for man to protect himself against those forces which bring about his annihilation in the world of nothingness. Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard in The

Room, Dumb Waiter and Buried Child, Geography of a Horse Dreamer show the absurdity of man's situation through the mingling of reality and symbolism. Pinter and Shepard believe that man is alienated, and that is a major element of the human condition.

In Pinter's plays, characters have very realistic conversations, often with long silences, and they often misunderstand each other. This is mainly because they are isolated and they Al Sayed Ali 17

do not trust each other. “In his plays, even the virginal page protected by its candour is polluted, for the blanks convey a substructure of evil intentions and vile meanings."

(Bradbury 13)

The Room (1957), Pinter's first play, is about two people in a room. Pinter played the role of Rochester, and Vivien Merchant, his wife-to-be, played the role of Jane Eyre in the

Bournemouth Repertory Company when he went into a room on the tour and saw two men.

One was a small barefooted man, and the other was a large lorry driver. The little man talked to and fed the other who remained silent. This odd but hardly mysterious scene became a compelling image which Pinter felt compelled to give a dramatic embodiment. In an interview with Harold Pinter about his play The Room, he states:

I went into a room one day and saw a couple of people in it. This

stuck with me for some time afterwards, and I felt that the only way

I could give it expression and get it off my mind was dramatically. I

started off with this picture of the two people and let them carry on

from there. (Hollis 20)

In the course of Pinter's The Room, the lorry driver who Pinter had seen remains a silent, morose lorry driver named Bert Hudd, and the small man is transformed into Bert's garrulous wife, Rose. The setting in which Rose and Bert find themselves is not abstract but intensely concrete. Things are things and not signs or symbols pointing beyond the clutter to something else. Perhaps, because the common experience of the theatre leads the audience Al Sayed Ali 18

to expect a door to be something other than or in addition to a door, the audience are vaguely discomfited. A door which does not explain itself or from which some kind of explanation is expected becomes mysterious, or even ominous. It seems absurd to think of a door as ominous, but the audience find themselves wondering if someone will knock on the door, come in, and make some demands. Man is left alone to fight a battle against the coercive measures of his fellow humans and the universe at large. Hence, man is reduced to silence because he has no logical explanation for the mysterious restrictions imposed upon him.

In a 1960 BBC interview, Kenneth Tynan asked Pinter what the people in the room were afraid of, and Pinter replied, "Obviously they are scared of what is outside the room.

Outside the room there is a world bearing upon them which is frightening. I am sure it is frightening to you and me as well." (Hollis 21) Thus, concrete things, without ceasing to be things, become charged with subconscious wishes and fears. Without ceasing to be a thing, the door becomes an extension of one's identity as well. The Room, then, is about two people in a room and how they invest that room with the secrets of their concealed lives.

The two characters are severed from reality and isolated from the universe as well as from their own being. The room works as a protective shelter that may keep man safe and detached from the atrocities of reality. This is evident when Rose tells Bert that the room is a source of warmth, unlike the outside world which is cold and threatening. "Here you are. Al Sayed Ali 19

This'll keep the cold out." "It's very cold out; I can tell you. It's murder." "Still, the room keeps warm. It's better than the basement, anyway" (95).

Although Bert keeps silent, Rose asks him about the basement and reassures herself that it cannot be cozy. She dares not explore the outside world even when it comes to its neighborhood. As long as the individual is sheltered in his own dwelling place, other people are of little or no importance. In the following lines, Rose speculates about the basement and wonders if there is anyone down there: "I've never seen who it is. Who is it? Who lives down there? I'll have to ask. I mean, you might as well know, Bert. But whoever it is, it can't be too cosy" (96). Bert's silence indicates that the room cannot function as a protective shelter for him. If it had been so, he would have felt comfortable and responded to Rose.

Bert's reticence is superficially humorous to the audience, but it is

horrifying to Rose. His silence is the silence of one who has

nothing to say while her loquacity is the silence of one who is

trying desperately but failing to say what she really wants to say.

She really wants to say that she is afraid of the cold, of the night,

and of the terrific forces that may lurk in the basement. She is

asking Bert to respond to her needs, to bring her warmth, and to

accept her hesitant overtures of love. But Bert is silent. (Hollis 22)

According to Pinter, the trangers are a source of threat because they may break into the shell one has constructed and are therefore regarded with fear and suspicion. Rose is Al Sayed Ali 20

haunted by the idea of strangers in the basement, and that becomes an obsession to her.

"This is a good room. You've got a chance in a place like this...I wonder who has got it now.

I've never seen them, or heard of them. But I think someone's down there" (99). While speculating on aliens "down there", the caretaker, Mr. Kidd, knocks on the door. He announces "I knocked." "The ominous threat is materialized as a harmless old duffer who, though he is the caretaker, is no longer certain how many floors there are in the house or who else lives there." (Hollis 22). When asked about his family who are all now dead, he gives a very mysterious answer.

[pause]

Rose You full at the moment, Mr. Kidd?

Mr. kidd Packed out.

Rose All sorts, I suppose?

Mr. kidd Oh yes, I make ends meet.

Rose We do, too, don't we, Bert?

[pause] (Room 103)

Philosophical apprehensions are conveyed not only with words, but also with silence and pauses. This applies to Pinter when he ponders upon man's isolation and alienation. To

Pinter, there are two silences; there are silences and a failure of communication. The first silence is " when no word is spoken." The other is when perhaps a torrent of language is Al Sayed Ali 21

being employed." (Grimes) This speech reflects a kind of oppression beneath it. The speech the audience hear triggers the speech the audience cannot hear. "It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness." (Grimes)

Pinter confirms that failure of communication is recurrent in his plays. However, to

Pinter, silence is a better means of communication because when characters are silent, they give their inner selves a chance to express themselves. "Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility." (Grimes) That is why Bert seldom responds to Rose's comments and questions, and the caretaker gives very short answers. Because man is alienated from his own being, he is sure that language cannot reveal his true essence since he has no idea about it.

I [Pinter] am not suggesting that no character in a play can never

say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there

invariably does come a moment when this happens, when he says

something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this

happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back

(Wikipedia). Al Sayed Ali 22

Because man has turned into a mere file in a hostile world, a Pinter audience is not given key details about the characters and their histories—at least, not as much as a Beckett audience is. However, Pinter’s plays operate in everyday, realistic situations. "In The Room,

The Dumb Waiter, and The Birthday Party, the dramatic situations initially appear familiar and realistic, but an undercurrent of anxiety and hostility runs through the action. There is menace between characters, but the audience is not provided with explicit motivations or resolutions. Characters in these plays, usually working-class and rarely likeable, feel the need to protect, defend, and prohibit other characters in different ways. "A minimalist void is imposed around a realistic situation; and an atmosphere of uncertainty and menace permeates the action." (Saccio 14)

For example, in The Room, Bert reads the newspaper without uttering a word as his wife chatters on. Every one curtails his domain to one's own self simply because communication is futile and the atmosphere is threatening. Abusing the black man and ultimately killing him proves the spiritual insecurity that Rose and her husband suffer from.

Because aliens cause discomfort, as Rose says earlier in the play, the couple need to fortify themselves against menace; however, the big question is whether their efforts can be of any use. This is a rhetorical question that needs no answer simply because most people in the world have become strangers; therefore, killing a man is a sign of insecurity rather than a means for gaining security. Al Sayed Ali 23

Pinter's The Dumb Waiter is about two assassins who wait for the directions that may tell them about their next target. Ironically, the directions ask one of them to kill the other, but it is not clear whether Gus is to kill Ben or the other way round. Once again, killing is presented as a source of more menace and threat. The confusion of who is to kill whom indicates the absurdity of the "game"—namely, murder. Who kills whom makes no difference since the main objective is killing for the sake of killing. The waiter, whose sudden appearance terrifies the two killers, has lost his own identity to the extent that he has no idea about his past or present. Being alienated from his own being, the waiter is reduced to a physical shape that has the least spiritual affiliations. To Pinter, the waiter is no more than "a character on the stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives, is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things." (Hollis 32).

Two men, Gus and Ben, are on assignment and wait for the specific details in a basement room. Life for the two is a "slow dance on the killing ground." They are bored; they are surrounded by silence; they wait. Ben reads the paper while Gus fidgets. Amid the mundane stories which Ben quotes from the newspaper, Gus interjects, "I hope it won't be a long job, this one." There is no answer from Ben who reads another story. "What time is he getting in touch?" There is no rise from Ben, and Gus takes another tack.

Gus [moves to the foot of Ben's bed] Al Sayed Ali 24

Well, I was going to ask you something. Ben : What? Gus : Have you noticed the time that tank takes to fill? Ben : What tank? Gus : In the lavatory. Ben : No. Does it? Gus : Terrible. Ben : Well, what about it? Gus : What do you think's the matter with it? Ben : Nothing. Gus : Nothing? Ben : It's got a deficient ballcock, that's all. Gus : A deficient what? Ben : Ballcock. Gus : No? Really? Ben : That's what I should say. Gus : Go on! That didn't occur to me. (Dumb 88, 89) Gus and Ben talk about insignificant matters simply because they are unwilling or unable to broach the more important matter at hand. Gus admits that he cannot say what he really wants to say. "He is a professional who feels very unprofessional." (Hollis 44). The two characters cannot find security, save in the few words they exchange.

The dumb waiter symbolizes the broken communication between

Ben and Gus: they speak at one another rather than to one another.

The pulleys of the dumb waiter symbolize the strings that Winston, Al Sayed Ali 25

the boss and puppet master, manipulates as he controls Ben’s and

Gus’ lives (Maraden 18).

Because silence presents a kind of personal security, their conversation, having pushed

Gus to the brink of his personal abyss, is resolved in silence. Ben cannot confront the abyss either, but he keeps his hands busy. He is perfectly adjusted. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, Ben would likely argue. But Gus does not have recourse to hobbies; he is a malcontent; he has recourse only to silence.

The situation of a character reading a newspaper, while another is talking about his/her anxieties recurs in the two plays in question. This is because Pinter's characters do not trust each other and try to keep safety distance or build fortifying walls that may keep others away. The character is not interested in the content of the articles of the newspaper; rather, he resorts to reading as a means of avoiding communication that seems to cause a threat. This attitude can be attributed to the alienation and isolation which man suffers from in the modern world. When the character who is talking asks to borrow the newspaper, the other character rejects and crumbles the paper. This action indicates that they would like to keep their defenses to themselves rather than lend them to their "opponents" in existence.

Ray Bradbury comments of the use of the newspaper in these plays: "Contemporary dramatists like Pinter seem peculiarly interested in the newspaper as a medium, perhaps because of the alienating effect that such trivia can have on its readers; but also Al Sayed Ali 26

because…the newspaper is 'one of the most effective barriers to communication devised by man' " (Bradbury 37).

Similarly, the technique of serving food plays up the defensiveness that Pinter's characters are after. Although Bert likes strong tea, Rose does not serve it as her husband likes. Gus and Ben's inability to make tea refers to the futility of their mission and the superficiality of their allegiance to the unnamed organization.

A mysterious power seems to dominate the destiny of Pinter's characters and is, therefore, responsible for their alienation and estrangement. Certainly, both Gus and Ben seem to suspect from the start that something is up, but in the denouement, Ben has to make the logical connection that if he is expected to eliminate his partner, then he may be next on the list.

In The Dumb Waiter the torturers become the tortured, and if it is a

homage to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, in which two men wait for

an authority figure who never shows up, then Pinter has created a

Godot who is decidedly present yet never seen, sadistic, ruthless,

and apparently the head of a mysterious killing organization

(Luckhurst 359).

The Theatre of the Absurd in American drama focuses on the social norms of the modern world and the breakdown of communication between the American family Al Sayed Ali 27

members. Sam Shepard suggests resorting to the past, the time when America was pure and free from the shackles of modern life, as a relief for Americans who are suffering from estrangement and the deterioration of families. "Wynn Handman, artistic director of the

American Place Theatre, once described Shepard as ‘a conduit that digs down into the

American soil and what flows out of him is what we’re all about’.” (Kranser 285). In many plays, such as Buried Child, True West, Fool for Love, and A Lie of the Mind, Shepard explores the American family and in so doing exposes deep-rooted aspects of the national character. In these plays, the West is not just a background to the action but also a state of mind and a complex of ideals that give the material of Shepard’s dramatic world.

Buried Child is linked thematically in its examination of troubled blood relationships in a fragmented society. The characters, though interacting with each other, are alienated from one another. "The play depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a context of disappointment and disillusionment with American mythology and the American

Dream , the 1970s rural economic slowdown, and the breakdown of traditional family structures and values." (Wikipedia). Dodge and Halie's best son, Ansel, was murdered in vague circumstances. His murder indicates the superficiality of American ethos and ideals since he was a perfect example of an American young man.

The whole play is dominated by uncertainty: the identity of Ansel's murderer is not clear, and the child that is buried by Tilden at the end of the play might be the offspring of an incestuous union of Tilden and his mother. This uncertainty reflects the perplexity which Al Sayed Ali 28

most characters in the play suffer from. This perplexity is a natural consequence of their disappointment with American values and ideals, such as the American Dream.

Tilden carries in from the garden the corpse of a small child that

may be the product of an incestuous union of Tilden and his

mother, or the dead, American Dreamlike mythic hero Ansel, or the

murdered offspring of some other forbidden relationship. (Kranser

261)

In Buried Child, "Shepard’s America is not that of the twentieth-century immigrant experience" (Kranser 286); that is, America is no more the land of great opportunities and dazzling success. It has become the land of suspicious relationships: Tilden and his mother, mysterious murder, Ansel's one, and corrupt parents, Dodge and Halie.

Despite the differences in both Pinter's and Shepard's views, they involve murder in their portrayal of the estrangement of their characters. However, murder in Shepard's plays is more mysterious. This might be attributed to Shepard's disappointment with the ideal

America and his failure to find an explanation for this deterioration.

After Shepard’s Broadway adventure, he went into a period of retreat and introspection and sought to investigate who he was as an artist and as an individual. His experience in London supported his notion of cultural difference and sharpened his sense of his own American heritage. In London, he wrote a number of important works, including Al Sayed Ali 29

The Tooth of Crime, Geography of a Horse Dreamer, and Action. All of these works deal with dislocation and the attempt to find existential and cultural intimations. Geography of a

Horse Dreamer is about a sheep rancher, Cody, who has been kidnapped by London highway men; he is ultimately saved by the unexpected arrival of his Wild West brothers.

"Cody’s fear of displacement and dispossession parallel the playwright’s own outlook at the time, as he soon desired to return to the United States and its more familiar environment."

(Kranser 289). This play might have reconciled Shepard to his American identity and cultural roots. In many perspectives, Cody is the playwright himself who finds in America a lighthouse that ushers his a way to escape the feelings of estrangement and loss.

In short, Pinter presents real situations in which characters unconsciously reveal their feelings of isolation and alienation from their society. In The Room, for example, Bert estranges himself from his wife, Rose, and seeks superficial defensiveness in his newspaper.

In The Dumb Waiter, Gus and Ben are isolated in a basement waiting for instructions from an organization which they seem to know nothing about. However, Shepard's situations are more daring; incest is tackled in Buried Child as an indication to the collapse of the

American family whose members are completely severed from each other to the extent that one of them cannot recognize his own house upon returning with his girlfriend.

The four plays in question shed light on murder and relate it to the alienation which characters suffer from. Killing the black man in The Room uncovers the defenselessness which Rose and Bert are haunted by. In The Dumb Waiter, Gus and Ben are left with no Al Sayed Ali 30

choice but to kill one another. However, Cody is rescued from death by his fellow

Americans because Shepard suggests that true cultural heritage can serve as a defensive technique against estrangement.

It is worth noting that both playwrights tackle alienation and isolation in their own ways; to Pinter, alienation is inevitable and predestined by a mysterious power. This might be attributed to Beckett's impact upon Pinter. To Shepard, alienation is closely related to social and cultural disillusionment. This estrangement can be played down by true cultural and social roots.

Al Sayed Ali 31

Chapter Two: Ambiguity of Identity and Obscurity of Existence in

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Edward Albee's The

American Dream, The Zoo Story

A great deal of absurdist drama may be humorous or irrational in nature. The hallmark of the genre is neither comedy nor tragedy, the study of human behavior under

which appears to be purposeless ــــ whether realistic or fantastical ــــ circumstances and philosophically absurd. Beckett consistently refused to explain his work: "nothing is more real than nothing." Absurdist drama posits little judgment about characters or their actions, and this task is left to the reader. Moreover, the moral of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters' realizations—if any—are often ambiguous in nature.

Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which two characters are waiting for someone called

Godot and killing the time discussing silly themes besides doing purposeless actions, is shrined with a halo of uncertainty and vagueness of identity. This is evident in the way the two major characters, Vladimir and Estragon, keep asking about things that happened not long time ago and about people they came across a day before. Waiting for Godot is representative of the Theatre of the Absurd, which implies that it is meant to be irrational.

Theatre of the Absurd discards the concepts of drama, chronological plot, logical language, themes, and recognizable settings. "There is also a split between the intellect and the body Al Sayed Ali 32

within the work: Vladimir represents the intellect and Estragon the body, each of whom cannot exist without the other." (Glenton 25).

The two characters conclude the two acts of the play considering committing suicide since they find no meaning for their existence; however, being unsure that death has more certainty than life makes them have a second thought, and the two acts of the play end with the two characters doing nothing. "Nothing to be done" seems to be the only note taken for granted and to have a spirit of certainty. Not only their existence and actions, but also those of other people are being questioned and doubted. For example, Vladimir wonders whether

Lucky will again resort to violence and resolves finally, ''Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed.'' But instead of going straight to

Pozzo's assistance, he continues to speculate: ''What are we doing here, that is the question."

At the same time, Vladimir becomes aware that they are wasting a potential diversion, and he attempts to help Pozzo, but he fails to pull him to his feet, falls over in his turn, and is unable to rise.

Beckett’s works have been interpreted as religious ideologies, chess analogies, atheist texts, and Eastern existentialism, yet Beckett warned against trying to perceive his intended thought, often commenting that his works have no definitive meaning and advocating the individual's right to personal interpretation (Glenton 27).

Waiting for Godot is a two-act play which is primarily cyclical. It begins with two lonely tramps on a roadside who are awaiting the arrival of a figure referred to as Godot and Al Sayed Ali 33

ends with the same premise. Vladimir and Estragon may forever be “waiting for Godot.”

The audience are never given an answer to their predicament. The audience can only watch them do the same things, listen to them say the same things, and accept the fact that Godot may or may not come. Man is stuck in a world where actions dictate his survival. He may search for an answer or a meaning to his existence, but most likely he will never find it.

Anthony Jenkins writes, "there can be no answers; Godot may or may not exist and may or may not arrive; we know no more about him than do Vladimir and Estragon"(40). Thus, this play is structurally arranged in such a way as to make us believe that Godot will probably never come, and that the uncertainty of life must be accepted.

The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their days reliving their past trying to make sense of their existence, and even contemplate suicide as a form of escape.

As characters, however, they are the prototypical absurdist figures who remain detached from the audience. They essentially lack identities and their vaudeville mannerisms, particularly when it comes to contemplating their suicides, have a more comic effect on the audience than a tragic one. This is perhaps best observed in the opening scene of the play when they contemplate hanging themselves:

Vladimir: What do we do now?

Estragon: Wait.

Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting. Al Sayed Ali 34

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

Estragon: (highly excited). An erection! (Godot 12)

What follows is a discussion of who should hang himself first. Vladimir suggests

Estragon go first since he is lighter and therefore will not break the bough and leave the other one alone and alive. The conversation continues:

Estragon: (with effort). Gogo light- bough not break- Gogo dead. Didi heavy- bough break- Didi alone. Whereas-

Vladimir: I hadn't thought of that.

Estragon: If it hangs you it'll hang anything.

Vladimir: But am I heavier than you?

Estragon: So you tell me. I don't know. There's an even chance. Or nearly.

Vladimir: Well? What do we do?

Estragon: Don't let's do anything. It's safer.

Vladimir: Let's wait and see what he says.

Estragon: Who?

Vladimir: Godot.

Estragon: Good idea. (Godot 13)

It is evident that their hesitance reflects their being lost in a world whose rule they cannot comprehend, nor can they adapt themselves to the passage of time. "Beckett's Al Sayed Ali 35

characters have contradictory and ambivalent relationships with each other. Their search for their identity through their inner thoughts’ interaction with the external world" (Çakirtas 1).

The previous comical scene, replete with the image of death, ends up making the audience laugh rather than take the two tramps seriously. And, the fact that Estragon and

Vladimir choose to not hang themselves suggests a much more existentialist, absurdist view of death and a less tragic one. "Waiting for Godot is a landmark drama that introduces us to

Beckett’s notion of the alienated consciousness." (Saccio 12)

What remains archetypal in Godot concerning the absurdist metaphor is the way in which each character relies on the other for comfort, support, and above all, meaning.

Vladimir and Estragon desperately need one another in order to avoid living a lonely and meaningless life. The two together function as a metaphor for survival. Like the characters who proceed and follow them, they feel compelled to leave one another, but at the same time compelled to stay together. "Alen Schnider has asked Beckett what he meant by Godot, he answered if he had known he would have told us. With this Beckett leaves us in the climax of uncertainty, indefiniteness and maximum communicative entropy exposing us to indefinite number of interpretations." (Rahimipoor 915).

At the end of Act One, Vladimir and Estragon discuss their partnership, saying:

Estragon: Wait! (He moves away from Vladimir.) I

sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off Al Sayed Ali 36

alone, each one for himself. (He crosses the stage and sits

down on the mound.) We weren't made for the same road.

Vladimir: (without anger). It's not certain.

Estragon: No, nothing is certain.

The same conversation takes place again at the end of Act Two:

Estragon: Didi.

Vladimir: Yes.

Estragon: I can't go on like this.

Vladimir: That's what you think.

Estragon: If we parted that might be better for us.

Vladimir: We'll hang ourselves to-morrow. (Pause). Unless Godot comes.

Estragon: And if he comes?

Vladimir: We'll be saved. (Godot 61)

They consider parting, but, in the end, never actually part. Andrew Kennedy explains these rituals of parting saying, "each is like a rehearsed ceremony, acted out to lessen the distance between time present and the ending of the relationship, which is both dreaded and desired."(57) Therefore, Vladimir and Estragon's inability to leave each other is just another example of the uncertainty and frustration which they feel as they wait for an explanation of Al Sayed Ali 37

their existence. For them, death seems forever on the horizon, and therefore ending becomes

"an endless process." (Kennedy 48)

Samuel Beckett's other absurdist play, Endgame, carries on this same kind of thinking but is much more tragic and serious in its metaphor for death than Godot. Like Godot, there is no apparent action in the play. Hamm and Clov, the two main figures, are even more isolated than Vladimir and Estragon. Confined to a small, bare room, the blind and disabled

Hamm postulates on the subjects of life and death, while interacting with and depending on his servant/son Clov to fill in meaning where there appears to be a void. Resembling

Estragon and Vladimir are Hamm's parents Nagg and Nell, who are confined to trash bins at the front left of the stage. They, like the two tramps, exchange memories of a once coherent world and spend their time eating pap and biscuits. However, unlike Waiting for Godot,

Endgame is not absolutely cyclical. Instead, it emphasizes only one cycle and works its way toward some kind of ending, or in other words, has the vague feeling of a finale. Even though death does not come at the end of Endgame, there is a strong sense that it is nearby, and the waiting will not be as long, as suggested by the chess-like title.

Like Waiting for Godot, Endgame's comic quality keeps it from being too tragic in its metaphoric message. Sarah Lawall writes, "The characters popping out of ashcans, the jerky, repetitive motions with which Clov carries out his master's commands, and the often obscene vaudeville patter accompanied by appropriate gestures, all provide a comic perspective that keeps Endgame from sinking into tragic despair" (248). However, the Al Sayed Ali 38

seriousness with which Hamm talks about death and ending in his soliloquies is not entirely undercut by the comedy. References to death are abundantly scattered throughout the play.

While Waiting for Godot emphasizes survival no matter what the cost, Endgame is doing virtually the same, but with a much more serious, empathetic tone. The audience is still somewhat detached from the characters on stage, but at the same time there is more of a feeling of sorrow for the characters in Endgame than in Waiting for Godot. As Lawall suggests, this may have something to do with the fact that Endgame "describes what it is like to be alive, declining toward death in a world without meaning"(249). Jacques

Lemarchand describes it another way, "this may be the very game we play all the time, without ever believing it to be as close as it is to its end" (484).

The metaphor for death or coming to the "end" of something is apparent in the very first lines of the play as Clov states, "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished."(46) Hamm's response to Clov's ramblings as he awakens is "Me to play."

Hamm's reluctance to die, however, follows shortly after as he says, "And yet, I hesitate to end. Yes, there it is, it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to- to end" (47). This opening scene suggests something that is quite common in most absurdist plays, the unwillingness to end or to die. Yet, there remains a struggling to understand death, to give it some meaning so that life has meaning. So as not to completely depress his audience, Beckett begins the play with a fairly comical musing on death. For example, two scenes in the first four pages concerning death are actually quite funny. Al Sayed Ali 39

The vagrants' time and again flashback to their consciousness on the

way of the reality of their being and identity in the Waiting for Godot

and the storytelling or thinking aloud of half paralyzed characters of

Endgame from the existential orientation shows the chaotic state of

their being too (Rahimipoor 16).

Clov and Hamm discuss the connection between food and death saying:

Hamm: I'll give you nothing more to eat.

Clov: Then we'll die.

Hamm: I'll give you just enough to keep you from dying. You'll be hungry all the

time.

Clov: Then we won't die. (Endgame 48)

A few lines later Hamm implores, "Why don't you kill me?" to which Clov replies, "I don't know the combination of the cupboard"(458). Both of these are meant to make the audience chuckle just a bit. On the other hand, Beckett juxtaposes a conversation between

Nagg and Nell shortly after, which takes a more serious view of unhappiness and longing for death. It involves more introspection and a clearer understanding of the situation. After listening to Nagg's joke, Nell responds:

Nell (without lowering her voice): Nothing is funnier than

unhappiness, I grant you that. But- Al Sayed Ali 40

Nagg (shocked): Oh!

Nell: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we

laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing.

Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it

funny, but we don't laugh anymore. (Endgame 41)

Certainly, the theme of the play resides in Nell's concluding words about life and meaninglessness. Nevertheless, the comic aspects of the play help the actors and the audience deal with the potentially negative issue about death in a more positive, cathartic way. "Samuel Beckett in Endgame primarily focuses on the importance of depicting an existence with few words in an era when the importance of existence is incessantly challenged by the recognition that man’s life can end anytime" (Tan 33).

Another absurdist element that is present in Waiting for Godot and is also reiterated in

Endgame is the love/hate, dependent relationship of Hamm and Clov. Like their predecessors Vladimir and Estragon, Hamm and Clov need each other emotionally, and more so, physically. Hamm's disabled state makes him need Clov more than Clov needs

Hamm, but Clov needs Hamm simply because Hamm's home is the only home he has, and even if he did leave there is no place for him to go in the void which exists outside. Whereas in Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon may have the luxury of meeting others should they choose to leave one another, Hamm and Clov do not appear to have that option in

Endgame. An early conversation establishes this: Al Sayed Ali 41

Hamm: Why do you stay with me?

Clov: Why do you keep me?

Hamm: There's no one else.

Clov: There's nowhere else. (Endgame 48)

Midway through the play, a similar reference to leaving is brought up again:

Clov: So, you all want me to leave you.

Hamm: Naturally.

Clov: Then I'll leave you.

Hamm: You can't leave us.

Clov: Then I won't leave you. (Endgame 66)

Thus, by the end of the play, it is clear that Clov will not leave Hamm. He has had plenty of chances to do so, just as Vladimir and Estragon have, but in the end he never does.

Clov even says he will never leave in one of his more contemplative speeches about life with Hamm. Standing at the door, he says:

Clov: I say to myself- sometimes, Clov, you must learn to suffer better

than that if you want them to weary of punishing you- one day, I say

to myself- sometimes, Clov, you must be there better than that if you Al Sayed Ali 42

want them to let you go- one day. But I feel too old, and too far, to

form new habits. Good it'll never end, I'll never go. (Endgame 79-80)

Just as the audience know that Clov will not leave Hamm, Hamm also realizes Clov will not leave him. The closing lines of the play echo this acceptance as Hamm states, "Old stancher! You...remain" (81). So, while Waiting for Godot and Endgame are alike in the absurdist methods they use, they differ in their level of metaphorical importance. Clearly,

Endgame is a beginning to move beyond absurdism. Where Beckett only hints at the inevitability of death in Waiting for Godot, it becomes more obvious in Endgame that death is inching ever closer and is within our sights.

In conclusion, the anxieties of the characters in Endgame display Beckett’s concern with reflecting the spirit of twentieth century in terms of the anxieties than the men experienced. These anxieties signify the absurdity of the life in which the individual feels isolated in an alienated world, uncertain about his/her existence and meaning of the life, and hesitated to finish due to the basic human instinct of surviving despite of all the pain.

Through their anxious characters, Beckett’s plays not only reflect the spirit of the 20th century but also they touch on universal and stable conditions of human beings; thus, they provide a realistic aspect of the life itself.

The psychological development of Beckett’s characters striving for

concrete answers to their fragmented souls in the meaningless world Al Sayed Ali 43

in Endgame are depicted as fragmented psyches. ‘Ego integrity versus

despair’ has been covered from a psychological perspective (Çakirtas

20).

The American Dream, first performed a year earlier in 1961, will recognize in it this very same theme, albeit in a different guise. In this play, it turns out that Mommy and

Daddy had adopted a son many years earlier. As they objected to the child's actions, they mutilated it as punishment, eventually killing it. Now a Young Man appears at the door looking for work. After hearing his life story, we are informed that this Young Man, who is dubbed "The American Dream," is the twin of Mommy and Daddy's first child. Because the first child was mutilated, the twin has experienced all of its pain and has been left physically beautiful, but also a psychological cripple, completely superficial and completely empty.

As one Albee critic, Gerry McCarthy, pointed out, “if the boy in The American Dream is left as a shell, it is because Albee is dramatizing a soulless aspect of American society.”

Albee first dealt with the theme of the missing son in his political allegory, The American

Dream, where the original son and his twin are the American Dream, both past and present.

The original American Dream was so badly mutilated that it died, and its twin in the present is beautiful but completely void. The American Dream is essentially an expressionistic satire dedicated to revealing the inadequacies of contemporary American society. If its characters are impotent and apparently helpless, this is a direct result of their failure to Al Sayed Ali 44

confront the essential reality of their situation rather than an expression of their cosmic insignificance. In other words, the play's basic assumption is that real values do exist and that there is a realizable potential for amelioration which would have been denied by

European dramatists. The sterility of contemporary life is seen as an expression of man's failure of nerve, but Albee clearly implies that this failure is by no means inevitable.

By often choosing not to give names to his characters, Albee wants to stress their anonymity or their being representatives of anyone. The figures are denoted only by their job position (as the Nurse, the Intern, the Orderly in The Death of Bessie Smith) or by the formal relations within a family, as the Wife, the Mistress, the Son and the Best Friend in

All Over. In The Sandbox and The American Dream, the names “Mommy” and “Daddy” are endearing terms of empty affection and point up the pre-senility and vacuity of the characters. In The Sandbox and The American Dream, the principal characters are

“Mommy,” “Daddy,” “Grandma,” and “Young Man”—all involved in banal conversations and weird situations. “Mommy” and “Daddy” are symbolic American parents imprisoned in their stereotypical thinking and clichéd language, completely devoid of human feeling and compassion for “Grandma” and for a son.

Edward Albee (born 1928) is one of the few American exponents of the Theatre of the

Absurd. An adopted child, he has the sense of loneliness in an alien world, and the image of the dream child which exists only in the adoptive parents' imagination recurs in a number of Al Sayed Ali 45

his plays, notably The American Dream.

Albee’s characters also have physical sufferings. In The American Dream, Daddy mentions Grandma’s whimpering in the toilet “for hours” (103). Grandma also notes that

“My sacks are empty, the fluid in my eyeballs is all caked on the inside edges, my spine is made of sugar candy, I breathe ice” (117). Like Lucky, who is the eldest character in

Waiting for Godot, Grandma is the eldest one in this play. Both of them suffer most compared to the others, which emphasizes that as man gets older, and as he experiences more absurdity, he is racked with more pain. Mommy also has a physical defect. Talking to

Mrs. Barker, Grandma refers to this problem: Grandma: Mommy comes from extremely bad stock. And besides, when Mommy was born… well, it was a difficult delivery, and she had a head shaped like a banana. (120)

The defect is a sign of Mommy’s problematic identity even from the start of her life, which implies that man’s existentialist agonies start at the moment he is born. Daddy,

Mommy’s husband, claims that he has “definite qualms” due to an operation he went through. This operation interferes with his sexual organs, and as Mommy explains: “Daddy has tubes now, where he used to have tracts” (121). Hence, he has lost his masculinity, which is a part of his identity, and he suffers due to this loss. Discussing the naming of the characters, Alan Lewis notes: “In a mechanical, standardized existence, individuality ceases to exist; therefore, characters either do not have names, or do not remember their names, or Al Sayed Ali 46

interchange names” (87).

Mommy and Daddy adopt a child, and they refer to him as a “bumble of joy”. They do not name him and forget about it: Mommy: Daddy? What did we call the other one [their first adopted child]? Daddy: (Puzzles) Why…(147) Albee erases the individuality of these characters in this way. Grandma tells Mrs. Barker a memory about Mommy and Daddy and says: “Once upon time…there was a man much like Daddy, and a woman very much like

Mommy…they lived there [in their apartment] with an old woman who was very much like yours truly” (125). She reminds the audience of Beckett’s existential idea upon the fluidity of the identity which reveals the individual as “the seat of a constant process of decantation”

(Esslin 17). At this point, the dramatist shares Sartre’s ideas upon the pursuit of the self, and the state of his characters echo the plight of Beckett’s characters. The changes of the names of these characters reflect the change of the identity, which becomes blurred.

In Albee's The Zoo Story, Peter, a middle-class publishing executive who lives in ignorance of the world outside his married life, sits on a park bench, reading. Along comes

Jerry, an isolated, disheartened man who is very troubled and probably mentally ill. Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on

Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to his life story and the reason behind his visit to the New York Zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense Al Sayed Ali 47

are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level and initiates a shocking ending. Peter denies Jerry, just as the original Peter denied Jesus, whose name also began with a “J.” Both Jesus and Jerry are crucified, in a way, by a world which cannot or will not understand them.

But even when the play progresses, and Jerry’s reality is made clearer to him, Peter continues to remain uninvolved. Like the beautiful but empty boy of The American Dream, he seems wholly to lack the human equipment that could make him really sympathetic to or in any way involved in Jerry’s predicament. Even if he were so equipped, why should he bother caring? Jerry, after all, is a total stranger to him! The easy way in which Peter accepts this comfortable logic also suggests that he bears a certain kind of responsibility for the problem. After all, an educated man who reads should know what reality is like, because art is not only supposed to mirror life; rather, it is supposed to give people a heightened experience of it. If Peter does know it, why hasn’t he at least tried to do something about it?

The Zoo Story takes its title from the fact that just before Jerry comes across Peter in the park, he has also been to the zoo which is also located there, the Central Park Zoo. He seems to be particularly proud or happy about this fact, and at the very beginning of the play, he announces to Peter, whom he has just met, “MISTER, I HAVE BEEN TO THE

ZOO!” This seemingly meaningless piece of information gains in resonance as the play moves inexorably toward its violent denouement because the zoo is, of course, America, Al Sayed Ali 48

where one half live like human beings and the other half live like animals. Jerry has been to the zoo in the sense that he knows from first-hand experience that this is true of America, but Peter, even though he frequents the park where the zoo is located, has never bothered to close his book and walk over to it. He finds it comfortable believing that everyone else is as comfortable as he is. The Zoo Story, therefore, is a story about America. It is surprising in this context to note how angrily Albee has rejected the notion that his plays show the influence of the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd.” In The Zoo Story, Peter calls his wife and daughters with animal names when Jerry tickles him in order to make him stay longer in the park: Peter: Hee, hee, hee. After all, stop, stop…the parakeets will be setting dinner ready soon. Hee, hee. And the cats are setting the table…(33) In fact, Albee reduces the human being to an animal this way.

In The Zoo Story, Peter plays the role of a family man and a businessman who is supposed to have clear ideas upon several subjects. When Jerry discusses the results of

Peter’s smoking a pipe, which also signals his social position, Peter’s statements show that he is an educated man:

Jerry: What you’ll probably get is cancer of the mouth, and then

you’ll have to wear one of those things Freud wore after they took

one whole side of his jaw away. What do they call those things?

Peter: A prosthesis? Al Sayed Ali 49

Jerry: The every thing! A prosthesis. You’re an educated man, aren’t you?

Are you a doctor?

Peter: Oh, no; no. I read about it somewhere, Time magazine, I think. (He

turns to his book).

Jerry: Well, Time magazine isn’t for blockheads. (16)

It is crystal clear that Samuel Beckett ushered the way for other dramatists, in this case

Albee, to contemplate on the vagueness of existence and the uncertainty of man's identity in a world that seems to be controlled by an irrational power and whose only logic evolves from "nothing to be done". In the Theatre of the Absurd, characters look for the meaning for their existence fruitlessly. Man is left with two choices; killing himself or taking life as it is without trying to interpret its intriguing predicaments since such efforts are in vain.

Al Sayed Ali 50

Chapter Three: Technique and Dramatic Effects in the Plays in Question

This chapter discusses the techniques and the dramatic effects that serve to consider these plays as absurdist. The opening in absurdist drama differs somehow from that in classical plays. An absurdist play opens with a gesture which is not understood on the part of the audience. Shepard says

I think beginnings are by far the most exciting. That’s where the

fire starts. I have no problem with beginnings. But then you have to

go on your nerve, and you have to follow your nerve, and that’s

why beginnings are also very important. It’s just like music: you

have to start with just the right note, or else the song can go bad

fast. It’s a question of paying attention to the potential (Bartels 17).

In absurdist drama, there is no conventional plot. The costumes and the decorations are always symbolic. They seem to be meaningless such as a tree or a park bench. All of these features help to reflect the feeling of absurd and meaningless of the human condition.

Dénouement is a key word in absurdist drama. In an absurdist play, the audience is not supposed to go home satisfied that they know the solution to the problem posed in the play.

Still, we should not get the impression that the message of the absurdist plays is to make us give up on life. Its aim is to make the audience think. Al Sayed Ali 51

As an experimental form of theatre, Theatre of the Absurd employs techniques borrowed from earlier innovators. Writers and techniques frequently mentioned in relation to absurdism include nineteenth century nonsense poets like Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear;

Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz; the Russian Absurdists, Daniil Kharms,

Nikolai Erdman, and many others; Bertholt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "Epic

Theatre"; and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg.

The Theatre of the Absurd departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare- like moods. There is a fine line, however, between the careful and artful use of chaos and non-realistic elements and true, meaningless chaos. While many of the plays described by this title seem to be quite random and meaningless on the surface, an underlying structure and meaning is usually found in the midst of the chaos. Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, absurdist plays have something to say and can be understood.

The characters in absurdist drama are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe, and they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate. Many characters appear as automatons stuck in routines speaking only in cliché. Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal, or flat character types. The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is Al Sayed Ali 52

incomprehensible. Many of Pinter's plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by some force which the character cannot understand. An atmosphere of mystery runs through the drama of Harold Pinter. Although the characters are involved in natural conversations, the way they behave resembles dream figures rather than people with whom one can easily identify, at least on superficial levels.

Pinter’s first play was "The Room", in which the main character, Rose, is menaced by

Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of menace remains a mystery, and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside force is repeated in many of his later works (perhaps most famously in The Birthday Party). To Wilensky, "Pinter gives us characters trapped under a watchful eye, often at the whim of an unknown power or force, as in two plays indicative of Pinter's style and themes, The Dumb Waiter and The

Birthday Party. By contrasting these two key Pinter texts and their stage realizations, one can see how, in the language of Michel Foucault, Pinter's "panoptic vision" can be understood as social commentary, a dramatic enactment where the individual is a site of struggle in the continual circulation of power." (1)

Characters in absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco’s recurring character Berenger, for example, faces a killer without motivation in The Killer, and Berenger’s logical arguments fail to convince the killer that killing is wrong. In Rhinocéros, Berenger remains the only human on earth who has not turned into a rhinoceros and must decide whether or not to conform. Characters may Al Sayed Ali 53

find themselves trapped in a routine or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular characters in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, for example, find themselves in a story (Hamlet) in which the outcome has already been written.

The plots of many absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. The two characters may be roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence (like Vladamir and Estragon in Waiting for

Godot or the two main characters in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are

Dead). Kelsch suggests that "This connection between the two characters can be seen in any production of the play. In most productions, the two men wear nearly identical outfits consisting of olddress pants, baggy jackets, scuffed shoes, and bowler hats. The

“mind/body duality” is emphasized not only by the “bodily afflictions” common to both men but by the disparity between Vladimir as “an intellectual who operates primarily in terms of the past and the future, whereas Estragon is more concerned with creature comforts.” (20) One character may be clearly dominant and may torture the passive character (like Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot or Hamm and Clov in Endgame); the relationship of the characters may shift dramatically throughout the play as in Ionesco’s The

Lesson or in many of Albee’s plays, The Zoo Story, for example.

Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in absurdist plays is naturalistic. Language frequently gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness. Distinctively, absurdist Al Sayed Ali 54

language will range from meaningless clichés to vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense. In other cases, the dialogue is purposefully elliptical; the language of Absurdist

Theatre becomes secondary to the poetry of the concrete and objectified images of the stage.

Many of Beckett's plays devalue language for the sake of the striking tableau. Harold Pinter presents more subtly elliptical dialogue; often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes. The following exchange between Aston and Davies in The

Caretaker is typical of Pinter:

ASTON: More or less exactly what you...

DAVIES: That's it ... that's what I'm getting at is

... I mean, what sort of jobs ... ("Pause".)

ASTON: Well, there's things like the stairs ... and the ... the bells ...

DAVIES: But it'd be a matter ... wouldn't it ... it'd be a matter of a broom ...

isn't it?

Spall suggests that "The Caretaker may appear at first to be very realistic but more detailed exploration reveals a tightly structured, very rhythmic and stylised use of language.

Pinter was breaking with previous conventions in placing working class characters, and their way of speaking, on stage. The characters often speak nonsense and platitudes, rarely able to actually communicate their life experience or needs. (20) Much of the dialogue in absurdist drama (especially in Beckett's and Albee's plays) reflects this kind of evasiveness Al Sayed Ali 55

and inability to make a connection. When language that is apparently nonsensical appears, it also demonstrates this disconnection. It can be used for a comic effect, as in Lucky's long speech in Waiting for Godot when Pozzo says that Lucky is demonstrating a talent for

"thinking" as other characters comically attempt to stop him.

Nonsense may also be used abusively, as in Pinter's The Birthday Party when

Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley with apparently-nonsensical questions and non- sequiturs:

GOLDBERG: What do you use for pyjamas?

STANLEY: Nothing.

GOLDBERG: You verminate the sheet of your birth.

MCCANN: What about the Albigensenist heresy?

GOLDBERG: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?

MCCANN: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?

Words become weapons in the mouth of Pinter's characters. The one who gets hold of the more elaborate or more accurate expression established dominance over his partner. The victim of aggression can be swamped by language which comes too thick and fast, or is too non sensual to be comprehended, this happens, above all, to Stanley in The Birthday Party, who is subjected to a process of brainwashing through a torrent of incomprehensible questions and assertion fired at him by the two terrorists. Al Sayed Ali 56

As in the above examples, nonsense in absurdist theatre may be also used to demonstrate the limits of language while questioning or parodying the determinism of science and the knowability of truth. In Ionesco's The Lesson, a professor tries to force a pupil to understand his nonsensical philology lesson:

PROFESSOR: ... In Spanish: the roses of my grandmother are as

yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic; in Latin: the roses of my

grandmother are as yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic. Do you

detect the difference? Translate this into ... Romanian.

PUPIL: The ... how do you say "roses" in Romanian?

PROFESSOR: But "roses," what else? ... "roses" is a translation in

Oriental of the French word "roses," in Spanish "roses," do you get it?

In Sardanapali, "roses"...

Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in the Theatre of the Absurd. Plots can consist of the absurd repetition of cliché and routine, as in Waiting for Godot or The

Bald Soprano. Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery; in The

Birthday Party, for example, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at the end, but it is never revealed why. Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in many absurdist plots: for example, in The Chairs an old couple welcomes a large number of guests to their Al Sayed Ali 57

home, but these guests are invisible so all the audience see is empty chairs, a representation of their absence. Likewise, the action of Waiting for Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. In many of Beckett's later plays, most features are stripped away and what is left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls, for example, or in Breath only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.

The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in Ionesco’s Amédée, or How to Get

Rid of It, a couple must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it is continually growing, but the corpse ultimately—and, again, without explanation—floats away.

Like Pirandello, many absurdists use meta-theatrical techniques to explore role fulfillment, fate, and the theatricality of theatre. This is true for many of Genet's plays: for example, in The Maids, two maids pretend to be their masters; in The Balcony brothel patrons take on elevated positions in role-playing games, but the line between theatre and reality starts to blur. Another complex example of this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are

Dead: it is a play about two minor characters in Hamlet; these characters, in turn, have various encounters with the players who perform "The Mousetrap", the play-within-the-play in Hamlet. Al Sayed Ali 58

Plots are frequently cyclical. For example, Endgame ends where it begins—some lines at the beginning responding to some lines at the end—and it can be assumed that each day the same actions will take place.

Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answers to the basic existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering. Ionesco defined the absurdist everyman as “cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots…lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” The Theatre of the Absurd, in a sense, attempts to reestablish man’s communion with the universe.

One of the most important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust of language as a means of communication. Language has become nothing but a vehicle for conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Spiteri suggests that "Beckett succeeds in capturing the very experience of how a human life is able to fare under the worst imaginable conditions.

However, one might still wonder what the Nothingness in Beckett's plays actually is." (30).

Words fail to express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd Al Sayed Ali 59

drama uses conventionalised speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically.

The action of the absurd plays is typically intended to demonstrate symbolically the ideas of the playwright and to create the dramatic temperature necessary to maintain the interest of the audience. At first glance, some of their plays appear to be utterly illogical until we realize that the logic of the author’s thought is not directly expressed but rather symbolically stated in action. The absurdists are not afraid of obscurity in art since they employ it as a direct symbol of the obscurity they find in life.

The absurd plays seek to explore the spiritual loneliness, complete isolation, and anxiety of the down-and-outs of society, of those who are social failures and social outcasts.

The first and more obvious role of absurd plays is satirical when these plays criticize a society that is petty and dishonest. The Theatre of the Absurd presents anxiety, despair and a sense of loss at the disappearance of solutions, illusions and purposefulness. Other features include the following: life is essentially meaningless, hence miserable; there is no hope because of the inevitable futility of man’s efforts; reality is unbearable unless relieved by dreams and illusions; man is fascinated by death which permanently replaces dreams and illusions. Al Sayed Ali 60

Most of Albee’s dramas lack specific setting. Audiences never know the situation and the place where things are happening in the play. This is the important feature of absurdist drama. Most of the characters presented by Albee in his works are restless and uncomfortable in their own self. The characters in Albee’s plays seem to suffer from loneliness because they cannot or will not make any connection with each other. Through such an image of the characters, it can be assumed that Albee’s view about human condition is that it is always overpowered by separateness and loneliness, which according to him may be the result of a collapse of values on the western world in general and in the United States in particular. Love is also presented in his plays, not in the way of romantic situation but in the way of loss, decay, fall and failure. Albee’s plays are full of violence both physical violence like in The Zoo Story or verbal like in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which is taken as a metaphor to the 1960s American society. Characters like George and Martha are husband and wife whose life is very much frustrated. They only argue all the time. The violence could not let them to continue their partnership. They seem to be tired of arguing.

This shows the common American life style.

Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in absurdist plays is naturalistic. The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés, when words appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the characters, make Theatre of the Absurd distinctive. Al Sayed Ali 61

Nonsense may also be used abusively, as in Pinter's The Birthday Party when Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley with apparently nonsensical questions and non-sequiturs:

GOLDBERG: What do you use for pyjamas?

STANLEY: Nothing.

GOLDBERG: You verminate the sheet of your birth.

MCCANN: What about the Albigensenist heresy?

GOLDBERG: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?

MCCANN: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?

GOLDBERG: Speak up Webber. Why did the chicken cross the road?(124)

Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in The Theatre of the Absurd.

Plots can consist of the absurd repetition of cliché and routine, as in Waiting for Godot.

Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery; in The Birthday Party, for example, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at the end, but it is never revealed why. Another example of this kind of plot is in Albee's A Delicate Balance: Harry and Edna take refuge at the home of their friends

Agnes and Tobias because they suddenly become frightened. They have difficulty explaining what has frightened them:

HARRY: There was nothing ... but we were very scared. Al Sayed Ali 62

EDNA: We ... were ... terrified.

HARRY: We were scared. It was like being lost: very young

again, with the dark, and lost. There was no ... thing ... to be ...

frightened of, but ...

EDNA: WE WERE FRIGHTENED ... AND THERE WAS

NOTHING.(129)

Likewise, the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. In many of Beckett's later plays, most features are stripped away and what's left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls, for example, or in Breath only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.

The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in Ionesco's Amédée, or How to Get

Rid of It, a couple must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it's continually growing, but the corpse ultimately – and, again, without explanation – floats away.

Plots are frequently cyclical: for example, Endgame begins where the play ended – at the beginning of the play, Clov says, "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished." Themes of cycle, routine, and repetition are explored throughout. Al Sayed Ali 63

At the base of much of this black humour (and especially in Absurdist Theatre and in

Monty Python) is the absurdity of language itself. Instead of being the keenest (if often deceptive) way of coming to an understanding of ourselves and the world around us, language in the absurdist world becomes one more unpredictable, unreliable, slippery, deceiving feature of experience. In one of Stoppard's play, this point applies even to the characters' awareness of their own names. But it also emerges repeatedly in the frequently very funny ways in which they are always misunderstanding each other.

GUIL: You can't not-be on a boat

ROS: I've frequently not been on boats.

GUIL: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.

ROS: I wish I was dead. (65)

Through their use of unconventional techniques, awkward characters, untraditional plots, surprising dialogues, and simple language, the pioneers of the Theatre of the Absurd tried to express their frustration with human language, daily-life routines, and the illogicality of life matters. These techniques are intended to de-familiarize readers and audience's perceptions to make them see the unseen and feel the unfelt.

Al Sayed Ali 64

Chapter Four: Critical and Artistic Evaluation of the Plays in Question

This chapter presents critical and artistic evaluation of the selected plays of British and

American drama. One of the artistic features of absurdist drama is that the setting is bare and unfurnished, except for some chairs and scattered items, which in turn play a major role in reflecting the meaninglessness of life and the human absurdist condition of the modern world.

Another point to be discussed in this chapter is that of language. Language in these plays is used to play games and just to pass the time. Thus, language loses its meaning when these characters use it as an evasion from the harsh reality lying beneath it. Beckett develops a language as an inconvenient medium for communication. Language is a habit and nothing more. To present the devaluation of language, on the one hand, Beckett's characters generally talk in monologues even if they appear to talk to another character. On the other hand, Albee follows Beckett's strategies to dramatize lack of communication in the society which he portrays. His characters are unwilling to converse with another character, and their speeches tend to be in the form of monologue.

Unfinished and fragmented sentences, unanswered questions and interruptions all serve to reveal the insufficiency of language, which will be discussed in detail in this chapter. While many authors spend their lives creating their own prosaic style, others focus on drama. Samuel Beckett, through the creation of his plays Endgame and Waiting for Al Sayed Ali 65

Godot, was able to spend time adapting his style in these two different types of literature. In developing his own personal style, Beckett seems to have thrown out most of the rules in conventional writing. His plays definitely have a simple style that makes them his own, and his plays are written with such an unconventional style that almost separates them from the rest of literature all together; however, Beckett’s style also has some overarching traits found in both his drama and his prose. It is almost entirely due to his style that Beckett’s works are easily set apart from those of other authors.

Beckett is perhaps best known for his plays, which are written quite differently from many other plays from around his time in how simply they are written. One feature that sets

Beckett apart is his overly simplified settings. This trait is perhaps most apparent in Waiting for Godot, in which the entire setting for the first act is explained in a few simple lines: “A country road. A tree. Evening.” (6) This description could not be more basic, which is unlike many other authors who include great detail in their first stage directions. Beckett creates a nondescript setting not only in appearance but also in regards to the time and place of the play. Throughout the entirety of the play Endgame, Beckett gives a view vague to the setting when Hamm wonders what would happen “if a rational being came back to Earth,” and when he mentions that from a crablouse “humanity might start from there all over again!” (33). From Hamm’s comments, it is determinable that there are no people on Earth, however, the audience members cannot be positive why, or when, or how society ended nor where the characters are now. In these plays, Beckett has stripped his scenes down to the Al Sayed Ali 66

bare basics; whether he does so in order to insure no superfluous details to detract from his message or in order to create a barren and empty atmosphere (or both) is up for debate.

Moreover, Beckett’s short and choppy sentences differ greatly from the so-called

“great monologues” written by other playwrights. Very seldom does one see any of

Beckett’s characters speaking more than a single line of text, and even if they do, sentences are normally spread out with stage directions in between. One of Beckett’s most common tools for breaking up dialogue and slowing down pace is the stage direction “(Pause).” For instance, in Endgame, when Nell and Nagg are having a conversation, neither one speaks more than a sentence without the stage direction “(Pause)” between each of their sentences

(20). It is also interesting to note that the longest sentence in that same conversation is merely nine words long. Indeed, it is quite astonishing that Beckett is able to portray so many of his complex ideas through such short sentences.

Beckett’s prosaic style is a style on its own, and contains many aspects that set his style not only apart from other authors’ but also from his own dramatic style as well. What is most noticeable about his style is his stream of consciousness writing—the narrators in

Molloy, Jacques and Molloy, spew forth their ideas continuously, often without transitions between ideas. This stream of consciousness is often extremely apparent in his prose because it is the reason that Beckett chooses to disregard many of the most basic rules of grammar. For instance, when writing prose, Beckett disregards the normal rules for tense. Although Molloy is told from the point of view of Molloy looking back at past Al Sayed Ali 67

events, which would normally warrant past tense, Molloy bounces back to present tense even while describing the past. Beckett has Molloy acknowledge to the reader that he does indeed disregard tense, simply narrating how it is easiest for him: “I speak in the present tense, it is so easy to speak in the present tense, when speaking of the past,” (26).

In addition to breaking common rules of tense, Beckett also has a tendency to break other rules, such as the use of paragraphs. Throughout the first 91 pages of text, there is only one paragraph break; this makes for very little distinguishable transitions between his flowing thoughts. Another result of Beckett’s stream of consciousness is that since most all of the ideas in the book are the thoughts of the narrator, Beckett makes dialogue a minimal aspect in his plays. Just how little Beckett cares for dialogue is apparent in a few different ways: he uses very little dialogue, and when characters do speak, there are no quotation marks or paragraph breaks to indicate a speaker. Every time there is a speaker, Beckett always uses the plainest indication word—“said.” Finally, Beckett’s stream of consciousness often results in long run-on sentences that express multiple ideas without transitions between those ideas.

Despite their differences, Beckett’s dramatic styles do share some aspects that are unique to Beckett. One such aspect is the use of repetition. Beckett exhibits repetition not only in his word choice but also in character’s actions. An excellent example of this can be found in Waiting for Godot, when Vladimir and Estragon attempt to determine which of three hats are theirs: “Estragon takes Vladimir’s hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky’s hat on his Al Sayed Ali 68

head. Estragon puts on Vladimir’s hat in place of his own which he hands to Vladimir.

Vladimir takes Estragon’s hat,” (46). This cycle is repeated two and a half more times.

Obviously, Beckett intended an audience to recognize the repetition in the characters’ actions. Whether it is physical repetition or rhetorical repetition, Beckett purposefully uses it throughout his works.

Another stylistic aspect can be found in both Beckett’s plays: having characters talk to or allude to the presence of an audience. Beckett references his own audience in Endgame, although he does not have characters talk directly to the said audience. The best example of this is when Hamm makes a comment to himself that is overheard by Clov, and Hamm explains that it was meant to be an aside: “An aside, ape! Did you never hear of an aside before? I’m warming up for my last soliloquy,” (78). By having one of his own characters make a reference to his own soliloquy and aside, Beckett is clearly acknowledging the presence of an audience and is thus breaking the third wall— something which is seldom done in dramatic works. By referring to his own readers or audience members in his works,

Beckett is distancing himself even further from typical authors.

No definite conclusion or resolution can ever be offered to Waiting for Godot because the play is essentially circular and repetitive in nature. The structure of each act is exactly alike. A traditional play, in contrast, has an introduction of the characters and the exposition; then, there is a statement of the problem of the play in relationship to its settings Al Sayed Ali 69

and characters. (In Waiting for Godot, the audience never know where the play takes place, except that it is set in "a country road.")

Furthermore, in a traditional play, the characters are developed, and gradually the audience come to see the dramatist's world view; the play then rises to a climax, and there is a conclusion. This type of development is called a “linear development.” In the plays of the

Theatre of the Absurd, the structure is often exactly the opposite. There is, instead, a circular structure, and most aspects of this drama support this circular structure in one way or another.

The setting is the same, and the time is the same in both acts of Waiting for Godot.

Each act begins early in the morning, just as the tramps are awakening, and both acts close with the moon having risen. The action takes place in exactly the same landscape—a lonely, isolated road with one single tree. (In the second act, there are some leaves on the tree, but from the viewpoint of the audience, the setting is exactly the same.) The audience are never told where this road is located; all that they know is that the action of the play unfolds on this lonely road. Thus, from Act I to Act II, there is no difference in either the setting or in the time and, thus, instead of a progression of time within an identifiable setting, there is a repetition in the second act of the same things seen and heard in the first act.

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More important than the repetition of setting and time, however, is the repetition of the actions:

Vladimir and Estragon Alone

Arrival of Pozzo and Lucky

Vladimir and Estragon Alone

Arrival of Boy Messenger

Vladimir and Estragon Alone. (Godot 45)

There are many lesser actions that are repeated in both acts. At the beginning of each act, for example, several identical concerns should be noted. Among these is the emphasis on Estragon's boots. Also, Vladimir, when first noticing Estragon, uses virtually the same words: "So there you are again" in Act I and "There you are again" in Act II. At the beginning of both acts, the first discussion concerns a beating that Estragon received just prior to their meeting. At the beginning of both acts, Vladimir and Estragon emphasize repeatedly that they are there to wait for Godot. In the endings of both acts, Vladimir and

Estragon discuss the possibility of hanging themselves, and in both endings they decide to bring some good strong rope with them the next day so that they can indeed hang themselves. In addition, both acts end with the same words, voiced differently:

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ACT 1:

ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR: Yes, let's go.

ACT II:

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, let's go. (Godot 23)

The stage directions following these lines are exactly the same in each case: "They do not move." With the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky in each act, we notice that even though their physical appearance has theoretically changed, outwardly they seem the same; they are still tied together on an endless journey to an unknown place to rendezvous with a nameless person.

Likewise, the Boy Messenger, while theoretically different, brings exactly the same message: Mr. Godot will not come today, but he will surely come tomorrow. Vladimir's difficulties with urination and his suffering are discussed in each act as a contrast to the suffering of Estragon because of his boots. In addition, the subject of eating, involving carrots, radishes, and turnips, becomes a central image in each act, and the tramps' involvement with hats, their multiple insults, and their reconciling embraces—these and many more lesser matters are found repeatedly in both acts. Al Sayed Ali 72

Finally, and most importantly, there are the larger concepts: first, the suffering of the tramps; second, their attempts, however futile, to pass time; third, their attempts to part, and, ultimately, their incessant waiting for Godot—all these make the two acts clearly repetitive, circular in structure. The fact that these repetitions are so obvious in the play is Beckett's manner of breaking away from the traditional play and of asserting the uniqueness of his own circular structure.

At first glance, the Beckettian stage is designed in a way that makes it difficult for the observer to decide whether the characters on it, to a large degree, are free or encircled by uncontrollable factors. However, it is does not take too long to establish how problematic this environment can be. In fact, it becomes obvious that the expanse (in Happy Days), the road (in Waiting for Godot) or the outer place (in Endgame) are not as they seem for the eye; they turn to be a kind of entrapment where it is difficult, almost impossible, for the characters involved to decide which choice is viable for them: living in these places or leaving them, this is not to ignore the bitter question of whether living there is an option or obligation.

The setting can be practically surveyed in Waiting for Godot as “a country road,” where there is only “a tree,” and it is the “evening” time. Though looking simple, this set in

Waiting for Godot stimulates multiple observations and consequent interpretations. There is just one tree standing on the stage, empty of leaves, void of green. As Helen L. Baldwin says, “there is sufficient evidence to constitute a presumption that Beckett deliberately Al Sayed Ali 73

chose the tree to be his setting and symbol.” Excluding the tree, the setting is a bare stage.

This almost naked stage background becomes eventually an inseparable part of the action; it is indicatory surrounding of helpless situation in both time and place.

In Endgame, the stage setting, which is regarded as a “shelter” stage, has raised hard discussions due to the metaphorical indications that can be assumed from this symbolically significant stage. The visual impression one can see is a bare shelter set with its centred wheelchair and off-centred two ash bins, with the two high windows that Clov can reach only by means of a ladder to see the outer world, the world that is seen by Hamm through the eyes of others, and a door leading to an off-stage kitchen, to which Clov can go when required, a place that he describes in measures as “ten feet by ten feet by ten feet,” as an illustration of his kitchen quite early in the play, a suggestion to the way he is constrained within these dimensions and proportions. This is not to ignore that Hamm, Nagg and Nell are also restricted in a no less painful way made worse, additionally, by virtue of their physical inabilities and the element of time.

The scenery here is almost deadly silent, picturing loneliness and infertility with an unending view, a symbol of the endless expanse amidst which two individuals (Winnie and

Willie) are stuck, or perhaps lost. In this barren atmosphere, the mound, which “actually occupies the centre of the stage,” becomes plainly the tantalizing part where “the 'heap of time' in which Winnie is buried, up to her waist, later up to her neck—the heap which always promises, yet never actually grants, a death, an end.” (8) Al Sayed Ali 74

The way Beckett presents his characters, stage props, themes, dialogues, the preoccupation of his characters and their internal relationships on the one hand, and as characters in connection to everything around on the other hand, strikes the attention to see some “gaps.” Nevertheless, the overall picture of Beckett’s plays is very instigating to design various interpretations to those plays. Critics have always tried to pick up points or scenes to claim them as the true spirit of Beckett’s plays; paradoxically, those opinions stood sometimes in diametrically opposed directions to each other. Some critics tried to find biblical origins in them while many others were speaking of scepticism and uncertainty in this world; others referred the plays to individual experiences; some others maintained that these plays, actually, express the “endless suffering” of all “human kind.”

Though there seem to be, in general, no absolute truths in Becket’s plays, there is one dominant, permanent fact in them: it is the state or condition which human beings endlessly experience, it is “waiting.” There is no shortage of criticism on this considering it aimless, endless, hopeless, meaningless absurd waiting. On top of the aforementioned pessimistic labels, there has always been, though righteous, a negatively implicated “W” question as:

Whom for? What for? Where? When? etc. Though difficult to grasp the best awareness that allows the audiences to interpret more than what is apparently depicted, “waiting” in the above-mentioned three plays can be conceptualized in a way that enables the audience to move imaginatively free in, within, by, through viable latitudes in order to designate significance to what appears as motionless, endless and absurd, and to examine the impact Al Sayed Ali 75

of waiting (whether it is productive or counterproductive, to see whether it is a choice or an obligation.)

Waiting for Godot is Beckett's most accessible play. In it, the situation seems to be simple enough where two men, Vladimir and Estragon, are joined at a place where they seem to have been before the play began: “Vlad. I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone for ever.” (10) In the same place, they remain also when the play ends. Although it has been very often argued that to Vladimir and Estragon, it is only a situation that necessitates aimless and absurd movements to cope with, it can be, rather, argued that what they play and say gives the situation a meaning and signification of its own. If Vladimir and

Estragon are there, one can regard that in one of two possibilities: first, their presence in that location should be for a reason which must be “waiting;” it is for the promised arrival of

“Godot;” second, they are there because they have no other place to go to, nor are they capable of moving due to many reasons—including physical, psychological, emotional and, above all, economical reasons; thus, they preoccupy themselves with the self-invented illusion (the arrival of Godot), and that gives them hope and energy to cope with the difficulties encountering them.

Vladimir and Estragon do not know where that road would lead them to; therefore, they convince themselves that Godot will come. Even when this has been repeated frequently without Godot arriving, they attempt to find excuses by blaming themselves and speaking of the uncertainty of the exact days where he is supposed to arrive, or even Al Sayed Ali 76

suspecting that there must be some kind of misunderstanding regarding the tree, precisely whether there is another tree or the very bare tree nearby which they keep waiting.

In Endgame, the old parents Nagg and Nell, whose lives have approached their ends owing to time and age factors, struggle at a difficult point where they are not capable of reaching exactly their “end” or moving outside the dustbins where they are situated. They can neither arrive nor depart because they cannot “go in”; “they can only wait.” 11 The same kind of questions that were posed earlier surrounding the characters being in a specific place are aroused, and again the answer is summed up in the word “waiting”. By contrast to waiting for an arrival, this time “waiting” is made for a promised “departure.”

Beckett’s characters exist in pairs that are clearly in physical or mental contrast to each other. In Waiting for Godot, one is tall and thin, while the other is short and fat; one has a stinking mouth, while the other has got stinking feet; one has a problem with the shoes, while the other appears to have a problem with the hat. In Endgame, Hamm cannot stand while Clov cannot sit. These can be categorised as sub-problems that criss-cross each other for the functional theatricality of presenting a broad view of how the architect of those characters wants them to be seen.

With the spontaneous act of mitigating the effects of loneliness, isolation, and the futility in what seems to be an endless time for them, the characters in Endgame talk and tell stories, such as the one told, and over told, by Nagg about the Englishman and the trousers, or Hamm’s readiness to give away a sugarplum after his story is told, or Nell’s longing for a Al Sayed Ali 77

past of which the audience know nothing. The characters in Endgame are, psychologically and physically, encircled with the harsh realities embodied in a long painful present, a remote past of which only sketches of memories are left, and a nostalgia for a future that will never happen the way they want. This can be unmistakeably understood as their cry for self-assertion amidst the brutal element of time and physical limitations; their stories become the proof of their existence. Likewise, given the realities within which Winnie exists, her relentless attempt to talk and tell things is, more or less, a kind of self-assertion.

Still, it is difficult to be consistent in receiving those characters’ relationships with each other.

The relationship between Vladimir and Estragon can be labelled as enigmatic in the sense that they are never quietened by what they have or capable of stepping outside the implicitly permissible. Their communication echoes their relationship with the broader spheres. Thus, words and sentences such as "nothing;" "nothing to be done," "nothing to be shown;" "boots must be taken off everyday, I often said that," etc. are frequently repeated.

In the same way, their movements and their gestures seem to the audience as insignificant.

If met elsewhere, such words, dialogues, unfinished sentences would seem trivial.

In Endgame, Hamm's relationship with Clov is like the one Pozzo has with Lucky.

Clov is likened to a dog: he comes to his master, Hamm, dutifully whenever the latter whistles, and the master wears a whistle round his neck for this purpose. Moreover, among the stage props, there is a stuffed dog, and once, using the plural, Clov hands it to Hamm Al Sayed Ali 78

saying “Your dogs are here,” thus referring to himself as a dog. This is embodied even more cruelly in what Hamm tells Clov that he will give him just enough to keep him from dying.

Hence the linkage between the two is not that of a man to man level; rather, it reveals a kind of enslavement. Their closeness to each other, paradoxically, parallels their remoteness from each other.

The ubiquitous sadness or anguish showcased in the relationship between Pozzo and

Lucky is demonstrated, mainly, by body language, the only time verbal language is given a role is in the long speech which Lucky utters. Lucky’s notorious speech discloses a human explosion which is caused by chronic pressure; Lucky’s speech divulges a deep desire coming out of a long imprisoned self to complain and report everything that could not have been otherwise disclosed. In the rush to seize that rare opportunity and speak up everything about his human worries, Lucky fails to coherently point up a single well-expressed question; rather, he ends up speaking inconsistently and sweepingly, saying a bit of each.

Lucky’s speech wavers between utterances that are nonsensical sounds, if taken by their own, and short statements, to move sometimes to long sentences that apparently do not lead to any thread related to one single problem; nonetheless, the overall title under which his speech can be categorized is delineating the suffering and compulsion of all humanity. He kept silent for a long time, and when he spoke, he had more and more to say; he seemed to have got rid of his fears and got, instead, the power to express his mind and protest, and he Al Sayed Ali 79

seemed as if he would never stop talking; only a forceful removal of the hat of his head could silence him.

It seemed as if the removal of the hat from Lucky’s head were the means to bring him back to the normal position. By having the hat on his head, Lucky loses all sorts of control imposed on him and becomes fashioned with an entirely different personality—one that thinks and complains, while removing the hat is disrobing him off the short-lived mode of thinking and expressing. Moreover, he could not speak after that and was brought back to his “normalised” position, on which Pozzo comments after snatching the hat from Vladimir, throwing it on the ground and trampling on it: “There’s an end to his thinking!” Equally to

Pzzo’s animosity to Lucky’s thinking and speaking, Lucky often directs his speech not to

Pozzo but rather to the audience. This gap, or lack of common language, is emblematic to

Beckett’s characters that are remote from each other, despite being positioned together in the tiny places they occupy.

It is stunning how the minds and thoughts of the examined Beckettian characters freely fly over and move beyond horizons, floating over the elements of time and space, though their bodies are incarcerated within narrow spots. It should be righteous for the audiences accordingly to question the genuine motives for characters like Vladimir and Estragon who are engulfed by endless Weltschmerz and have difficulties drawing the difference between a

“carrot” and “turnip” to speak fancifully of a supposedly rich past which they somehow Al Sayed Ali 80

enjoyed: “Vlad. Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were presentable in those days.”

One of the most evident troubles with characters like Vladimir and Estragon, Ham and

Clov, Nagg and Nell, Winnie and Willie, is the sharp contrast between limitations and aspirations, between desirability and availability. They represent their fellow humans not only in distress, confusion and impotence, but also in despair. Nevertheless, the comic accounts which the characters make are, more or less, hard attempts and struggling to do something, to change something, to move outside and beyond an enclosed circle, and, above all, to act and be productive.

In Endgame, Clov is repeatedly frightened of the unknown outer world; therefore, he sorely stays with Hamm and the known inside. The equation “outside here” would mean

“death,” but the question is still whether the inside is a viable alternative to what is classified as “death;” where everything is “finished.” In other words, is this inside, where darkness with weak grey light are universal, and nothing is pleasant in this melancholic gloomy atmosphere, really a place where life is desirable? The danger lying in the outside world is one thing, and the futility inside the shelter is another—they are, by no means, equal. Nevertheless, the battling to escape one leads to experiencing the bitterness of the other and to effortful attempts to cope with a situation as an accomplished fact. Al Sayed Ali 81

There is fear of endless time of suffering and torment in the three plays which destroys some sort of forged serenity of the characters. In the nightfall, Vladimir and Estragon see the kind of rest which they seek.

Vlad: It'll fall all of a sudden, like yesterday.

Estr: Then it'll be night.

Vlad: And we can go.

Estr: Then it'll be day again (pause. Despairing)

What'll we do. What'll we do!.(Godot 53).

Vladimir and Estragon's pattern is, perhaps, the logical culmination to the state of being which they created for themselves in connection to time, waiting, and changing. It is, therefore, unclear what their real intention is; hence, we ask “Will they wait for the 'night to fall'? Or for 'Godot to come'? Or will they struggle to discover a mode of being which would place them in such bearable relation to Time.” (54)

Although the claimed promise of Godot's appearance is not made from without but by the characters themselves, the audience is left with the feeling that something is yet to be done since arrival remains an unfulfilled promise in the two acts. To this fact, Beckett’s

Endgame has been observed as a third act where waiting is still the main issue, and the characters have the same attitude. Hamm always orders Clov to wait, he says “Nothing you can do about it, just wait for it to come. (Pause) No.” Thus, all characters have the same Al Sayed Ali 82

mode of thinking where their existence, with everything around, is enigmatic and does not enable them to know much about themselves and the world around. Their self-given promise that something is going to happen, or someone is going to materialize, is an attempt to self-comforting together with an inner assumption that some kind of interruption to their imposed way of life embodies fruitfulness; it is the dream by which they reward themselves.

However, to talk about the absent is meaningful only when the present is equally regarded.

Hamm and Clov think that they nearly said all what they might and “There is nothing to say” (61) and:

This is not very much fun (pause.) But that's always

the way at the end of the day, isn't it, Clov?

Clov: Always.

Hamm: It is the end of the day like any other day, isn't

it Clov?

Clov: looks like it. (Endgame 62)

Edward Albee succeeded in combining two types of drama: realism and absurdism.

Realist playwrights set out to write plays that seem real: the dialogue is similar to everyday speech; the settings are everyday kinds of locations, and the conflicts are generally issues that everyday people face. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? fits the bill for the most part Al Sayed Ali 83

because the characters all speak in a way that is believable; it is set in a totally normal living room, and it centers on a bickering couple.

In an Albee play, however, nothing is ever quite what it seems. What starts off as a realistic seeming situation quickly spirals into the realms of the absurd. Through cutting insults and gross humiliation, the characters of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? gradually strip away the illusions that they have hidden behind. With the destruction of the imaginary child at the play's climax, George and Martha's last illusion is destroyed. They are trapped, alone together in an absurd and uncaring universe.

Albee does not consider directors and actors to be creative artists. Their role, in his view, is a strictly interpretive one: they are there to realize the vision of the playwright. The theatre is not a democracy, and making people happy is not its mission—Albee will never compromise for the sake of social harmony. His vision is comprehensive. He knows exactly how each sentence should be enunciated—how loudly or softly, how quickly, how emphatically, at exactly what pitch and with what emotional coloring. He is reluctant to cut lines out of a play, and he will not tolerate an actor skipping a word or accidentally paraphrasing.

Albee feels that a playwright should notate his writing with the same commanding precision as a composer notates his. To this end, he is extravagant with punctuation. Even in his more naturalistic plays, his punctuation tends to be absurdist: he is fond of exclamation Al Sayed Ali 84

points, and even more fond of multiple exclamation points followed by multiple question marks. His preoccupation with precision and control seems to have grown over the years.

Zoo Story involves an encounter around a park bench between Jerry, an eccentric who lives in an insalubrious boarding house, and Peter, a perfectly nice, dull middle-class man.

Jerry needles Peter, goading him out of his sense that his life is perfectly fine. At the play’s climax, Jerry, having picked a fight, impales himself on a knife that Peter is holding, leaving

Peter shocked and, presumably, changed forever. This ending is not nearly so startling, though, as the lurid, pungent images that Jerry hurls at Peter throughout the play:

JERRY: [My] landlady is a fat, ugly, mean, stupid, unwashed,

misanthropic, cheap, drunken bag of garbage. And you may have

noticed that I very seldom use profanity, so I can’t describe her as well

as I might.

PETER: You describe her . . . vividly.

JERRY: Well, thanks. Anyway . . . somewhere, somewhere in the back

of that pea-sized brain of hers, an organ developed just enough to let

her eat, drink, and emit, she has some foul parody of sexual desire.

And I, Peter, I am the object of her sweaty lust.

PETER: That’s disgusting. That’s . . . horrible. Al Sayed Ali 85

JERRY: But I have found a way to keep her off. . . . I merely say: but,

Love; wasn’t yesterday enough for you, and the day before? Then she

puzzles, she makes slits of her tiny eyes, she sways a little, and then,

Peter . . . a simple-minded smile begins to form on her unthinkable

face, and she giggles and groans as she. . . relives what never

happened. (74)

If there is a single notion that runs through Albee’s work, it is the importance of being open to a full consciousness of life, with all the social and emotional risk which that entails.

“Dangerous” is one of his highest terms of praise, and “restful” is one of his worst insults.

Albee defines himself against the O’Neill of The Iceman Cometh, who suggests that people cannot survive without the comfort of their delusions. In The Iceman Cometh, the truth- teller who, with the best intentions, strips a group of failures and drunkards of their fantasies turns out to be the most destructively deluded character of them all. In Albee’s plays, though, truth-tellers are brave and wise, and the damage they do is all to the good.

It was characteristic of Albee to identify the trouble with a play as a matter of process rather than of plot. Most people from time to time become aware that an idea has popped into their heads, seemingly from nowhere. For Albee, though, this is the central experience of his imaginative life. He never tries consciously to invent a plot or characters, nor does he find himself thinking, as a result of some inspiring encounter, “Now, that would be a good idea for a play.” Rather, one day he will discover that, without quite knowing it, he has been Al Sayed Ali 86

thinking about a new idea for some time—the idea has been germinating somewhere inside him and has developed without his help. When the idea presents itself to him, he will turn it over in his mind once or twice, and think, “Isn’t that interesting;” and then he will push it back down whence it came, to let it grow and ripen. He will not make a note of it. This process can go on for years. Often, it is two or three years before he will write anything down.

Harold Pinter is known for his magnificent use of language. His style of writing was named after him "Pinteresque". His use of colloquial language, numerous clichés, unpolished grammar, and illogical syntax creates dialogues that reflect day-to-day speech.

Pinteresque atmosphere of horror ignites the feeling of anxiety, but also arouses interest—a spectator can sense that something is wrong, even though the dialogues do not directly state it. It is through the combination of long pauses, repetitive structures and the use of illogical vocabulary that Pinter exhibits his great mastery in writing realistic plays, with ambiguous meaning. Language is a means of communication that lost its meaning and purpose.

Characters talk, but the words are often devoid of any content. The action does not proceed smoothly in chronological order. Sometimes, even though some events take place, the audience is confused about the proceedings. Pinter’s innovativeness evinces in the special use of language, which is used as a tool for presenting the absurdity of human existence. A small talk or a lengthy monologue gains new meaning and has frequently different purpose. Al Sayed Ali 87

They work as examples of human relationships, telegraph characters intentions, and even negate the action.

Pinter’s plays usually take place on a one-room stage, onto which a handful of characters enter and interact with each other. A constant feeling of threat can be sensed from the first words they utter, which emphasises the deliberate effect of conveying uneasiness, confusion, and indifference. Power relations, problems of identity, and people’s inability to communicate remain among the most important themes in his plays.

Pinter used this exaggeration and explicitness of human psychological processes in his plays to present a realistic vision of the world deprived of faith in purposefulness of human existence. Following the M.H. Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, a play written in the

Theatre of the Absurd mode is grotesquely comic and also irrational and nonconsequential; it is a parody not only of the traditional assumptions of Western culture, but of the conventions and generic forms of traditional drama, and even of its own unescapable participation in the dramatic medium. The lucid but eddying and pointless dialogue is often funny, and pratfalls and other modes of slapstick are used to project the alienation and tragic anguish of human existence.

The Birthday Party is an allegory of a man engaging and conforming into social life that is forced to go outside and get involved. There are six characters on stage who for two days keep walking in and out of a kitchen, a typical scenography for Pinter’s one-room plays. The play is divided into three acts. The first and the third have an analogous structure Al Sayed Ali 88

in which the couple, Petey and Meg, talk and eat cornflakes by the kitchen table. In Act

Two, the titular scene takes place.

Pinter includes numerous comic elements through the use of language that employs satire and irony. It is the first time the audience are acquainted with the characters, and from the first utterances, the audience can observe the relationship between them. Meg, a woman in her sixties and wife of Petey, takes floor immediately and leads the conversation with her husband for the first half of the Act One. She badgers her husband with never ending questions that are repetitive and pointless, which show not only her dominance in the marriage but also her ignorance and tendency to gabbling. She is the dominant speaker, but her utterances are void of any content and do not introduce any new ideas.

MEG: I’ve got your cornflakes ready. (She disappears and

reappears.) Here’s your cornflakes.

He rises and takes the plate from her, sits at the table, props up the

paper and begins to eat. MEG enters by the kitchen door.

Are they nice?

PETEY: Very nice.

MEG: I thought they’d be nice. (She sits at the table.)

This short dialogue between a husband and a wife is not only a verbal exchange; it helps to establish a relationship between characters. The way the characters speak is vital for Al Sayed Ali 89

the understanding not only of the plot but also of the whole meaning of the play. Thus, it is significant to analyse the role of language and word-constructions. Just by looking at the words, it can be seen that Meg's speech is significantly longer than Petey's. The length of their utterances differs. Usually, the longer someone's speech is, the more significant or important he or she is. But not in this case. (Gray)

The development of Pinter lies in his manipulation of dramatic focus. His stage is thinly populated; much of the conversation is in monologue style with pauses and in an incoherent slovenly manner, as if the men in the room are apprehensive of some imminent disaster from outside invaders, waiting for something. Pinter himself considers the situations in his plays to be authentic. As a Jewish boy in London during Hitler's time, he experienced fear, isolation and insecurity—the basic emotional structure of his plays.

Instead of the strength of intellectual comprehension, we witness in his plays the strength of intuitive imagination. Situations develop, as in a dream or nightmare, devoid of apparent logic but with an inner convincing intuitive relevance of their own; sudden, apparently inexplicable eruption of violence crystallizes the atmosphere of suspense and provides a justification of the prevailing nervousness.

These mark the peculiar quality of the world bringing into sharp focus the fluid nature of reality. This philosophical attitude has been most convincingly embodied in his plays, and the characters living in the islands of their own existence, finding no objective correlative with the outer world, conversing with no apparent logical sense, strengthen its Al Sayed Ali 90

reference and substance. His people are always "I" or "they", the “we-ness” of social organisation, as a living reality, is never there. Incidents and characters revolve in concentric multi-coloured circles, their centre remaining invisible, until at the close the audience discover the all-important centre and the relatedness and significance of the whole fabric.

The term 'Comedy of Menace' was not originally coined for Pinter by critics. This term first appeared as the subtitle of a play, The Lunatic View (1957) by David Campton. In

Pinter's plays, the power of menace emanates from an inability of the audiences to pinpoint and to ascertain its source and origin. Fear envelops the plays of Pinter as mist does the air.

If it can be described at all, it is simply the constant threat to the individual personality by the forces of the system. In 'comedy of menace', characters are humorously but horrifically menaced by mysterious outsiders. Pinter grew up during the war, when menace was a familiar pattern of society. Undoubtedly, Pinter's plays produce a gruesome sense of awe and fear, but it is present in a particular English way. That is, Pinter excellently adapts the

European Absurd to the English native wit. The awe is conveyed through the most ordinary concrete objects and ordinary people. The menace emanates from a collision of man's basic needs for security recognition and acceptance on the one hand and the pressures of society for deadening conformity on the other. At that time, his plays more than those of any other playwrights were responsible for the newly coined term 'Comedy of Menace'. This phase Al Sayed Ali 91

certainly makes sense, when applied to The Birthday Party, in which a pair of mysterious hoods arrives at a desolate seaside guesthouse and kidnap its one resident.

Pinter's characters operate as if they were all stalking around a jungle, trying to kill each other, but trying to disguise from one another the fact that they are bent on murder.

One of the worrying things in Pinter’s plays is that the audience can never trust what is said to be literally true. It is much safer, in fact, to assume that it is a play, rather than the truth unless the audience can actually discover that it is the truth. Pinter’s characters hide their emotions, because to show emotion in Pinter's world is a fatal weakness, which is mercilessly punished by the other characters. The Pinteresque characters have to construct the mask, and this mask almost never slips. Pinter denied that his characters are allegorical symbols to be seen as messengers of death or representative of any other abstract force. He has expressed considerable interest in the nature of reality, the impossibility of any person ever knowing exactly what is true and what is false and the manner in which people communicate or fail to communicate with each other. He seems fabricated by the ambiguity of language, and the way in which people form relationship Pinter's remark are not the final answer to his plays; they are like the test itself—something to be explored and followed up, a starting point rather than a conclusion.

The stage craftsmanship of Pinter is marked with an utmost precision. The very fact that he distinguishes among three dots, pauses and silence to suggest varying durations of non-speech or taciturnity is a piece of evidence of his scientific precision. In his plays, he Al Sayed Ali 92

sometime uses a long monologue, in which one character—the more intelligent and articulate of the two—lays bare the sorrow and humiliation of the social subordinates.

Pinter’s masterly handling of the dialogue, the gaps that speak so eloquently, and the provocative imaginative pause brilliantly suggest the introspective intrinsic character of his dramatic vision. Esslin’s comment on his play The Dumb Waiter is worth noting:

For Pinter repetition is a dramatic technique but infrequently a playwright’s habit. The affinities of The Birthday Party and The Caretaker to The Homecoming and Old Times, or of all plays to Betrayal testify to a distinctive artistic signature, but each play differs substantially from the others in focus and form within the parameters of his art, Pinter's writing demonstrates remarkable variety as well as remarkable quality.

Shepard never wastes words. His characters talk to each other like they are simply having a conversation, and he manages to get his points across in a very short time. When poetic language enters into the equation, it stands out, and it's often commented on. For the most part, these characters keep it simple. A conversation about the changing landscape and the decay of the Old West could, in the hands of some playwrights, turn into a lengthy monologue or a series of poetic images and symbols. Here is how Shepard handles it in

True West:

LEE: Up here it's different. This country's real different.

AUSTIN: Well, it's been built up. Al Sayed Ali 93

LEE: Built up? Wiped out is more like it. I don't even hardly recognize it.

(True West 16)

In those few short lines, Shepard gives an idea of what happened to the region. More importantly, he gives a sense that Lee is not comfortable with the way things have changed.

He also shows the difference between how Austin views progress ("built up") and how Lee views the same progress ("wiped out"), which gives a strong sense of the differences between the two brothers. Shepard manages to do all of that in just a few simple lines. This is the mark of a brilliant economical writing style.

Shepard's presentation of dreams and fantasies indicates his conviction of life's boredom. The life of the 60s engendered boredom, to which was added outrage when the

USA got into the Vietnam War. This involvement caused a series of protests from university students. Violence broke out in many parts of the country.

Writers began to see the end of the world, and this vision took its manifestation in the fantasies and dreams of the literature of those days. The modern writer, through the presentation of fantasy, "pours forth a passionate protest and invites us to join in his fervor...

[his] literature of vision aims to disturb us by dislodging us from our settled sense of reality, and tries to engage our emotions on behalf of this new version of the real" (Hume 56).

The idea of menace in Sam Shepard’s world has not attracted any of his major critics.

The term 'menace' in dramatic criticism reminds one of the popular term 'Comedy of Al Sayed Ali 94

Menace.' This label certainly does not suit the plays of Shepard in general. Nevertheless, the early plays of Shepard do contain the element of menace at a deeper level, though perhaps not as was felt by Irving Wardle in the plays of David Campton and Harold Pinter. Shepard creates the atmosphere of menace by making his characters appear anxious and tense about some unknown causes. Thus, the feeling of menace in his plays is linked with neurosis. His treatment of menace is such that at times even the audience themselves feel a sense of menace as they watch the play.

Almost all the characters in his early plays are under pressure as their sense of security is threatened by a sense of menace. Sometimes, they feel that they are harassed; at other times, they feel that they are totally under the control of an invincible force. However,

Shepard does not attempt to convince the audience whether the menace is real or unreal or to specify its real nature.

All in all, the setting of most, if not all, absurdist plays is so simple to the extent that hardly do the audience see anything on stage. This is aimed at keeping them focused on the highly philosophical content of the play and giving full rein to their imagination. Moreover, this is part and parcel of the meaninglessness of life that all the dramatists of the Theatre of the Absurd believe strongly in. It is evident that Beckett's impact on the other dramatists in question in terms of the artistic design of the stage is so prominent, as is the case with all the other elements of this particular type of drama.

Al Sayed Ali 95

Conclusion On analyzing the four dramatists in question, it is evident the Theatre of the Absurd can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude representative of modern time.

The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, and that they have been discredited as cheap and childish illusions.

One of the main themes tackled in the Theatre of the Absurd is related to the individual’s search for identity in an unfriendly outside world and the fear and difficulty of communicating with others. As a result, absurdist plays assume a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle the viewer, shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday concerns. Absurdist plays attract our attention to phenomena whose causes and retaliations are taken for granted.

Pinter presents real situations in which characters reveal their feelings of isolation and alienation from their society unconsciously. In The Room, for example, Bert estranges himself from his wife, Rose, and seeks superficial defensiveness in his newspaper. In The

Dumb Waiter, Gus and Ben are isolated in a basement waiting for instructions from an organization they seem to know nothing about. However, Shepard's situations are more daring; incest is tackled in Buried Child as an indication to the collapse of the American family whose members are completely severed from each other to the extent that one of them cannot recognize his own house upon returning with his girlfriend. Al Sayed Ali 96

The plays in question shed light on murder and relate it to the alienation characters suffer from. Killing the black man in The Room uncovers the defenselessness Rose and Bert are haunted by. In The Dumb Waiter, Gus and Ben are left with no choice but killing one another.

However, Cody is rescued from death by his fellow Americans because Shepard suggests that true cultural heritage can serve as a defensive technique against estrangement.

To Pinter, alienation is inevitable and predestined by a mysterious power. This might be attributed to Beckett's impact upon Pinter; however, to Shepard, alienation is closely related to social and cultural disillusionment. This estrangement can be played down by true cultural and social roots.

Samuel Beckett ushered the way for other dramatists to contemplate on the vagueness of existence and the uncertainty of man's identity in a world that seems to be controlled by an irrational power and whose only logic evolves from "nothing to be done". In the Theatre of the Absurd, characters are looking for meaning for their existence fruitlessly. Man is left with two choices; killing himself or taking life as it is without trying to interpret its intriguing predicaments since such efforts are in vain.

Through their anxious characters, Beckett’s plays do not only reflect the 20th century spirit, but also they touch on universal and stable conditions of human beings; thus, they provide a realistic aspect of the life itself. Al Sayed Ali 97

Through their use of unconventional techniques, awkward characters, untraditional plots, surprising dialogues, and simple language, the pioneers of the Theatre of the Absurd expressed their frustration with human language, daily-life routines, and the illogicality of life matters. These techniques are intended to de-familiarize readers and audience's perceptions to make them see the unseen and feel the unfelt. As an experimental form of theatre, Theatre of the Absurd employs techniques borrowed from earlier innovators.

To present the devaluation of language, on the one hand, Beckett's characters generally talk in monologues even if they appear to talk to another character. On the other hand,

Albee follows Beckett's strategies to dramatize the lack of communication in the society which he portrays. His characters are unwilling to converse with another character, and their speeches tend to be in the form of monologue.

The study concludes that Becket was more daring than the other dramatists in question simply because his characters tend to tell the untold truth of life more directly than indirectly. However, Pinter excels Beckett in his treatment of serious topics that poses social and cultural controversy.

Although Albee derives his themes from European writers, mainly Beckett, he adapts the Theatre of the Absurd to the conditions and peculiarities of the American society.

Shepard sought space free from convention and patriarchal demands. While Shepard’s early plays channeled the personal angst of the young writer, they also spoke to the mood of the Al Sayed Ali 98

times, finding favor with the counterculture and making Shepard a celebrity of the avant- garde. Shepard frequently used Western motifs in his works.

Al Sayed Ali 99

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