Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Samuel Beckett
- 1906: Born in Dublin (happy childhood)
- Modern Language @ Trinity College
- 1928: moves to Paris where he worked at a school
- There he met Joyce and wrote a book about Marcel Proust
- Abbandoned University and started to travel through Europe
- Durinh WW2 was forced to flee with his French wife
- Became french citizen
- After the end of the WW2 went back to Ireland to see her
mother but then returned to France
- 1953: "Waiting fot Godot" is performed in Paris = extraordinary success
- 1969: Nobel Prize for Literature awarded
- 1989: Died
- DRAMATIST OF THE ABSURD
- however differed from other representatives of the genre
- while Ionesco's plays are
dfined as laughable and
irrational, ridiculation od
the middle class and
absurd = surreal
- Bcekett's plays are more
philosophical, tragic at times.
Nothing incredible happens.
He focuses on the human
being (detaching any political
circumstances)
- new kind of drama
- human condition
after post-war
years
- THEMES
- man's attempt to give life a meaning
- monotony of
life given by the
repetition of the
same word
- purpose to existence
- isolation of the individual
- gulf between our inner self and
language (express our desires...)
- NO PLOT, CHARACTERISATION AND FINAL DENOUEMENT
- CHARACTERS = SYMBOLS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION
- marked by loneliness and lack
of communication
- NO HOPE
- even if they attempt to change their
condition
- LANGUAGE AND STYLE
- major works in French
- deliberately simple
- short sentences
- everyday speech
- basic and concrete
- hidden meanings, allusions and symbols
- illogical and absurd world
- PRCISE STAGE DIRECTION
- guide to every small gesture, expressions and body languag
- fills much of the script to his works
- HUMOUR AND COMIC
- Waiting for Godot
- protagonists:
Vladimir and
Estragon
- trapped: don't know how
to make time pass
- Godot
- enigmatic figure they
have never met before,
don't know if he will
come, don't know he
looks like but they are
waiting for him/it
- promising message from Godot
- "Can't come tonight, but definitly will come tomorrow"
- Who is? Nobody knows
- different interpretations
- God
- Charlie
Chaplin =
Charlot
- answer
to all our
questions
- symbol of death
- V. and
E.(desperate)
try to hang
themselves, but
don't have
enough energy
- childish games =
contribute to sense of
light-heartedness
- past and memories =
confused / future = doesn't
exist
- no real conclusion