IV. Beckett's Absurd Characters

As I have already mentioned in the biography chapter, Beckett read various philosophical treatises; he was mostly interested in Descartes, Schopenhauer, and Geulincx. These thinkers are the main sources which influenced and formed Beckett's view of the world as well as his literary writings. 

Beckett's major and the only theme appearing and recurring in all his works, is exclusively the theme of man. Beckett is interested in man as an individual, in his subjective attitude to the world, in confrontation of individual subject with the objective reality. 

According to Descartes, human being is composed of two different substances: body (res extensa) and mind (res cogitas). The body is a part of a mechanical nature, a material substance independent from spirit; and the mind, a pure thinking substance. This distinction of the two qualitative different substances is called subject-object "Cartesian dualism", and it gave rise to number of philosophical problems, the essence of which is Their mutual connection. 
Beckett's characters are such subjective thinking substances surrounded by mechanical material nature; and as the subject-object connection was the most problematic part of Descartes' concept, it is one of the major motifs Beckett deals with. He uses dramatic symbols, to express the barriers and the walls between the worlds "in" and "out" as to demonstrate their incompatibility. His characters are physically isolated from what is happening "outside" and the space they are imprisoned in, is their inner subjective world. "A Beckett hero is always in conflict with objects around him... he is divided from the rest of the world, a stranger to its desires and needs. The dichotomy between his own mind and body finds an analogy in the outside world in the dichotomy between people and objects. ...tension is created between mind and body, on one hand, and people and objects, on the other. ..." 

Hamm and Clov are closed in a small room separated from the external reality by the walls.

The world, at which Clov and Hamm is looking through the windows is empty, dead, deprived of everything which could make it familiar, intimate, or intelligible. Beckett gives this voided world, an image of inanimate country with the horizon of the dead sea. Its alienation, strangeness, and remoteness is also exaggerated by Hamm's blindness and inability to move.

Substantial dualism corresponds with the concept and theory of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose philosophy later became one of the important foundations of Beckett's plays and novels. Schopenhauer's main thesis is that it is impossible to get to the essence of the thing from the outside; it is impossible to achieve knowledge, in the case it is postulated beyond all human being's disposition. He understood the human being as an object between objects, as something that appears to a perceiving mind (phenomena) in time and space. Time, space, and causality are the forms of knowledge, they are necessary conditions of knowledge of the world as it is perceived. However, on the other hand, a human being's experience assures himself, that he is something more than only an object among other objects. Man is also aware of himself as a self-moving, active being, and this inner consciousness is a consciousness of will. The awareness we have of ourselves as will is quite different from the awareness we have of ourselves as body; and it is, in fact, the awareness of philosophical truth itself; of the thing which is not mediated through our sense organs, through the forms of time, space, and causality, but it is the thing itself (noumena). The will is the ultimate and the simplest foundation of being all together, it is the source of all phenomenas, a breeder, which is present in every particularity and individuality. 

It seems that Beckett's characters are aware of nothing but the will they have inside, which impels them to live. It is an unsurpassable instinct, a blind, and groundless power, operating in them, out of time, space, and causality. They are propelled to life by unmotivated power - the will to live - which always wants to go on - to transform itself into the living or being objects. Human intellect and reason are the will's servants and that is why it cannot stop this strong inclination towards being. Consciousness is only a surface of our being, because the real essence lies in the depths of human personality. 

The will is, in its core something fundamentally woeful, it is a discomposure, never-ending struggle for something, need, desire, greediness, lust, it is suffering, and the world of will can be nothing but the world of pain. 

Clov and Hamm are suffering, persisting in their existence. They long for an end, a death, but cannot kill themselves, being driven by their nature - the will to life.

Winnie also does not die, although she is not given anything which would keep her living on. As the play passes, death is closer and closer, climbing from her waist up to her neck, but never close enough to kill her. The will keeps her breathing, even though physically she is already buried in the ground.

In contrast to Winnie's memories, Krapp's ones are vivid and explicitly present through his voice. His real existence is not in his past, but only in his presence. His past time is dead, and it is nothing but a witness about his past will, about what he was longing for and what he could never have.

According to Schopenhauer, this is the concept of the basic human situation in the world. All his life man is waiting for something which cannot bring any definite satisfaction to him, any definite peace. (Compare with the fate of Sisyphus.) He is waiting for happiness, not realising that the greatest suffering consists in it. His nature is rooted in lust and trying, which is an unquenchable thirst. 

Schopenhauer, as well as Camus, denies suicide as a solution to a distressful human world,and also non of Beckett’s characters dies or commit suicide. As Camus says, to commit suicide means to agree with the absurdity, and according to Schopenhauer suicide is nonsense. Suicide means to destroy the body but never the will itself. In this way - through suicide - the will finds another realisation in a stronger individual, which becomes its stronger "self-realisation". 
Thus, Beckett’s characters are persisting between life and death, driven by a Schopenhauerean will to life, though physically they are dying. Their existence is absurd, through the conflict of body and mind; body, which, as a part of mechanical nature, refuses to obey (the bodies of the characters are immobile), and mind, which undetainably keeps on working. Their suffering consists of permanent waiting, they used to "wait for happiness, fulfilment"; now they are waiting for death, occupying themselves with memories of a previous life, when they had, in Krapp’s words, "a chance of happiness"(Krapp 223). Now, they have only one wish - to die, and so to shed the ceaseless will to life.