Absurdism In Waiting For Godot
Hosung Kim
Mr. Neil Tweedie
AP English Literature
11 December 2014
Camus’s Absurdism in Waiting for Godot Voted “the most significant English language play of the 20th century,” Waiting for Godot implies a strange meaning to all of us. Originally written in French, the two-part play is centered on two characters, Vladimir and Estragon. These two characters are mainly viewed as “absurd” and “without meaning” by most readers but seem to indicate a message which is hard to grasp at first glance. This essay focuses on how Absurdism, the commonly used word to define this play, manifest throughout Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The search for Absurdism will be made in line with Martin Esslin’s definition of “a well-made play” by analyzing two of the three integral parts of a play which is character and dialogue. It should be also noted that the definition of Absurdism used in this essay will be limited to that of Albert Camus’s.
“Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.” This simple yet depressing quote from Albert Camus questioned the core of philosophy that existed for hundreds of years. For some, philosophy is the search to find the meaning of life. Diverse methodologies such as Platonism and Kantianism were devised to explain the unanswerable question for us and renowned thinkers seemed to give us the answer, more or less a guidance of understanding this world. However, Camus implies that we are living in a world of contradiction. He believed that life became “meaningful” when humans began to imply useless meanings to meaningless things. He suggests that we are part of a universe, but a universe as a whole that has no meaning. In this sense, he argues that in order to live well, we must embrace the meaninglessness of life and therefore become conscious of the fact that “It is the result of a contradiction between our own sense of life’s meaning, and our knowledge that nevertheless the universe as a whole is meaningless.” So Camus’s eventual goal
Mr. Neil Tweedie
AP English Literature
11 December 2014
Camus’s Absurdism in Waiting for Godot Voted “the most significant English language play of the 20th century,” Waiting for Godot implies a strange meaning to all of us. Originally written in French, the two-part play is centered on two characters, Vladimir and Estragon. These two characters are mainly viewed as “absurd” and “without meaning” by most readers but seem to indicate a message which is hard to grasp at first glance. This essay focuses on how Absurdism, the commonly used word to define this play, manifest throughout Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The search for Absurdism will be made in line with Martin Esslin’s definition of “a well-made play” by analyzing two of the three integral parts of a play which is character and dialogue. It should be also noted that the definition of Absurdism used in this essay will be limited to that of Albert Camus’s.
“Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.” This simple yet depressing quote from Albert Camus questioned the core of philosophy that existed for hundreds of years. For some, philosophy is the search to find the meaning of life. Diverse methodologies such as Platonism and Kantianism were devised to explain the unanswerable question for us and renowned thinkers seemed to give us the answer, more or less a guidance of understanding this world. However, Camus implies that we are living in a world of contradiction. He believed that life became “meaningful” when humans began to imply useless meanings to meaningless things. He suggests that we are part of a universe, but a universe as a whole that has no meaning. In this sense, he argues that in order to live well, we must embrace the meaninglessness of life and therefore become conscious of the fact that “It is the result of a contradiction between our own sense of life’s meaning, and our knowledge that nevertheless the universe as a whole is meaningless.” So Camus’s eventual goal
Cited: 〮 Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1954.