VII. Conclusion
Samuel
Beckett's plays are marked by the artist's vision of the world into which
his characters are placed. He deals with the position and the situation
of Man in his surrounding world, which is a major and always recurring
theme in the four plays I have chosen as a background for my thesis, as
well as in his complete dramatic and prosaic work.
Beckett's hero is a sisyphusean
type of man waiting for the fulfilment of his fate, which seems to be eternal
through his suffering and hoping. He is alienated from the world, which
is unknown, remote, and indifferent, and from which he is isolated by the
walls of his self. The conflict between two different substances - the
world and the human subject, leads to the feelings of Absurdity and to
fundamental existential questions about the meaning of human life in a
world where he lives as a stranger.
Beckett's
characters are creatures grounded in Absurdity; there is no meaning in
their Being which is why their lives involve mere waiting for the end,
for death. The waiting is a pure experience of time itself, time which
disintegrates into smaller and shorter periods, so that their waiting is
a never-ending fate having no purpose, but the only aim - the end.
Beckett's characters' tragedy consists in their empty waiting which
becomes a long period of suffering; it consists in the power of life which
still keeps them breathing and going on, although they are very close to
their aim, the end.
I
see the whole greatness of Beckett's absurd man in his intractability with
which he continually fills up his precarious fate, and although his suffering
increases as time stops he does not live without hope and joy in life. |