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Theater of the Absurd • is a term used to identify a body of plays written primarily in France from the mid-1940 s through the 1950 s.

Main characteristics • These works usually employ illogical situations unconventional dialogue, and minimal plots to express the apparent absurdity of human existence. Review: The viewpoints of Existentialism • – the world is absurd. • – Life is anguish. • – “Hell is other people!”

Characteristics of Absurd plays • Anti-plays • Strongly influenced by Philosophy of Existentialism • Also a reflection of various ideas of Postmodernism • The condition or state in which human beings exist in a meaningless, irrational universe wherein people's lives have no purpose or meaning.

Theater of the Absurd • Theater of the Absurd was also a reflection of the consciousness of postmodernism Which is in general a rejection to the modern idea of rationalism “anti-plays” – they are totally different from traditional plays。 • The plays that usually employ illogical situations, unconventional dialogue, and minimal plots to express the apparent absurdity of human existence.

The Theatre of the Absurd 荒诞派戏剧 • A group of dramatists in 1940’s Paris believed life is without apparent meaning or purpose; it is, in short, absurd. Paradoxically, the only certainty in life is uncertainty, the absurdists believed. • An absurdist drama is a play that depicts life as meaningless, senseless, uncertain. • For example, an absurdist’s story generally ends up where it started; nothing has been accomplished and nothing gained. The characters may be uncertain of time and place, and they are virtually the same at the end of the play as they were at the beginning.

Main features of absurdist play • • Absence of a real story or plot. No action since all actions are insignificant. Vagueness about time, place and the characters. The value of language is reduced; in fact, what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters. • Extensive use of pauses, silences, miming and farcical situations which reflect a sense of anguish. • Incoherent babbling makes up the dialogue.

Main themes of absurdist play • • The sense of man’s alienation(异化，疏远). The cruelty of human life. The absence or the futility of objectives. The meaninglessness of man’s struggle.

Myth of Sisyphus《西西弗斯的神话》 : life is but an effort without significance

• The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than this futile and hopeless labor. • 神决定对他予以严厉惩罚：把一块巨石推上山顶， 石头因自身的重量又从山顶滚落下来，屡推屡落， 反复而至于无穷。神认为这种既无用又无望的劳 动是最可怕的惩罚。

Sartre’s play: No exit • “Hell is other people!”

Samuel Beckett Born in Dublin in 1906 Met James Joyce in Paris in 1907 and became a close friend of him Activity involved in the French Resistance Movement fighting against the Nazi Germany in World War II

Beckett, Samuel (1906 -1989) • Began to write in his early twenties • His writing included poetry, stories, novels, plays, and critical essays • His Waiting for Godot came out 1953 • Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. • the representative of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Waiting for Godot 《等待戈多 》

En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot )

Waiting for Godot • A two act play without much of plot • The heroes of the play are two tramps, Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi), who wait for somebody called Godot every evening • When they are waiting, the two men occupy themselves with all kinds of trivial things or empty talks. • Pozzo abuses and ill-treats Lucky • A boy comes to tell Gogo and Didi, “Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow”.

Estragon and Vladimir, or Didi and Gogo Two tramps waiting near a tree on an isolated country road for someone named Godot to arrive

“We must stay waiting for Godot. ” • They can’t leave, neither die, but wait

“Godot said he wouldn’t come today!”

Godot never appears • A symbol of the dilema of modern human beings: no aim, no reason, no leave but stay, waiting for nothing

Their minds are slaves to Godot in the same way Lucky's body is a slave to Pozzo

Waiting for Godot is of multilayer • The circumstance of Sartre: the world is bleak, dark, disgusted. • The style suggests Joyce—pungent(痛苦尖刻的) satire and fabulous. • It is Mr. Beckett‘s acrid（刻薄的） cartoon of the mankind story. • Significance: to highlight the lack of purpose and meaning in an universe without God.

Language • The most obvious feature is that of words repeating : • For example: VLADIMIR: Consult his family. ESTRAGON: His friends. VLADIMIR: His agents. ESTRAGON: His correspondents. VLADIMIR: His books. ESTRAGON: His bank account. (P 18) Their conversation is just as the tool of passing time. In order to get rid of solitude, they catch every chance to talk to each other. They constantly add words to defer their conversation.

meaningless dialogue • For example: (P 12) • VLADIMIR: Did you ever read the Bible? ESTRAGON: The Bible. . . (He reflects. ) I must have taken a look at it. VLADIMIR: Do you remember the Gospels? ESTRAGON: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Colored they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy. VLADIMIR: You should have been a poet. • Gogo did not reply didi’s question. He just thought about other things, which leads the communication cannot continue.

illogical plot • In act Ⅱ: (P 57) • It was a story about the dog. It was a story with a circular structure just like the play itself (act Ⅰand act Ⅱ ). • The action of characters in the play did not promote the development of the plot. • The time and the place in the play were stagnating. • 与其表现的荒诞内容相适应，传统的戏剧表现手 法在他们的作品里被肢解、扭曲，甚至变形；传 统的戏剧评论方法和准则在他们的作品面前也失 去了效用。

The influence of Existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre （1905 -1980）

Existentialism • man can only know himself, but he has to face a world that he is unable to understand. • A world which is intelligible is absurd, and in this world, man is in everlasting fear, worry and pain • “The world is absurd, and life is painful” • Beckett believed that human existence is very brief and unimportant, and there is no hope to humanity in an alien and decaying world.

Post-modern Literature • The term Post-modern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post-World War II literature which relies heavily on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, collage(拼贴画), and pastiche(混杂) etc. • the post-modern novel is often a parody(拙劣的模仿) of the quest for meaning in a chaotic world.

• Postmodernism rejects boundaries between high and low forms of art, emphasizing parody, bricolage, irony and playfulness. In the literary works of postmodern, we can see the failure of language, schizophrenia, and humanity's inability to overcome its condition. • Absurdness is the core issue for most of them. • The post-modern literature is anti- rationalism.

Absurdism • Absurdism, and its more specific companion term theatre of the absurd, refers to the works of a group of Western European and American dramatists writing and producing plays in the 1950 s and early 1960 s. • The term “theatre of the Absurd” was coined by critic Martin Esslin, who identified common features of a new style of drama that seemed to ignore theatrical conversations and thwart audience expectations.