Theatre of the absurd and Three Tall Women

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Theatre of the absurd and how it related to Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. Play theory for paper 2 English A Literature (International Baccalaureate)
ComfortDiane
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ComfortDiane
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the main characteristics of the Absurd Theatre are — 1.Life is essentially meaningless, hence miserable.2.There is no hope because of the inevitable futility of man’s efforts.3.Reality is unbearable unless relieved by dreams and illusions.4.Man is fascinated by death which permanently replaces dreams and illusions.5.There is no action or plot. Very little happens because nothing meaningful can happen.6.The final situation is absurd or comic.7.Absurd drama is not purposeful and specific as it solves no problem. It is like an abstract painting which is supposed not to convey a definite meaning

The Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt torestore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimaterealities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of anexistence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mysticalexperience in confronting the limits of human condition.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.

It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. One of the most important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of communication. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalized, stereotyped,meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not beingable to penetrate beyond its surface. Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible.According to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able toabandon the straitjacket of logic. In trying to burst the bounds of logic and language theabsurd theatre is trying to shatter the enclosing walls of the human condition itself. Our individual identity is defined by language, having a name is the source of our separateness -the loss of logical language brings us towards a unity with living things. In being illogical, theabsurd theatre is anti-rationalist: it negates rationalism because it feels that rationalistthought, like language, only deals with the superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on theother hand, opens up a glimpse of the infinite. It offers intoxicating freedom, brings one intocontact with the essence of life and is a source of marvelous comedy

This is why the story is the way it is. It is a typical theory of the absurd piece. A is the way she is because of 1. B is the way she is because of 2. C is the way she is because of 3. B later thinks about 4. 5 is why it flats the Aristotelian unity of action. 6 is why the denouement flats the Well made play. 7 is basically the whole play.

This is why their speech is very sort of like incoherent. They cut each other off all the time, they don't have names. The whole point of the play is to confuse the audience. I guess its supposed to be deep.

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