This
column will not explain Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" . It is a
mystery wrapped in an enigma, but the next comments will help you to understand
it, maybe you find the clue in part a, or b, or c
But
you can expect witness to the strange power this drama has to convey the
impression of some melancholy truths about the hopeless destiny of the
human race. Mr. Beckett is an Irish writer who has lived in Paris for years,
and once served as secretary to James Joyce.
Since
"Waiting for Godot" has no simple meaning, one seizes on Mr. Beckett's
experience of two worlds to account for his style and point of view. The
point of view suggests Sartre--bleak, dark, disgusted. The style suggests
Joyce--pungent and fabulous. Put the two together and you have some notion
of Mr. Beckett's acrid cartoon of the story of mankind.
Literally,
the play consists of four raffish characters, an innocent boy who twice
arrives with a message from Godot, a naked tree, a mound or two of earth
and a sky. Two of the characters are waiting for Godot, who never arrives.
Two of them consist of a flamboyant lord of the earth and a broken slave
whimpering and staggering at the end of a rope.
Since
"Waiting for Godot" is an allegory written in a heartless modern tone,
a theatre-goer naturally rummages through the performance in search of
a meaning. It seems fairly certain that Godot stands for God. Those who
are loitering by the withered tree are waiting for salvation, which never
comes.
The
rest of the symbolism is more elusive. But it is not a pose. For Mr. Beckett's
drama adumbrates--rather than expresses--an attitude toward man's experience
on earth; the pathos, cruelty, comradeship, hope, corruption, filthiness
and wonder of human existence. Faith in God has almost vanished. But there
is still an illusion of faith flickering around the edges of the drama.
It is as though Mr. Beckett sees very little reason for clutching at faith,
but is unable to relinquish it entirely.
Although
the drama is puzzling, the director and the actors play it as though they
understand every line of it. The performance Herbert Berghof has staged
against Louis Kennel's spare setting is triumphant in every respect. And
Bert Lahr has never given a performance as glorious as his tatterdemalión
Gogo, who seems to stand for all the stumbling, bewildered people of the
earth who go on living without knowing why.
Although
"Waiting for Godot" is an uneventful, maundering, loquacious drama, Mr.
Lahr is an actor in the pantomime tradition who has a thousand ways to
move and a hundred ways to grimace in order to make the story interesting
and theatrical, and touching, too. His long experience as a bawling mountebank
has equipped Mr. Lahr to represent eloquently the tragic comedy of one
of the lost souls of the earth.
The
other actors are excellent, also. E. G. Marshall as a fellow vagrant with
a mind that is a bit more coherent; Kurt Kasznar as a masterful egotist
reeking of power and success; Alvin Epstein as the battered slave who has
one bitterly satirical polemic to deliver by rote; Luchino Solito De Solis
as a disarming shepherd boy--complete the cast that gives this diffuse
drama a glowing performance.
Although
"Waiting for Godot" is a "puzzlement," as the King of Siam would express
it, Mr. Beckett is no charlatan. He has strong feelings about the degradation
of mankind, and he has given vent to them copiously. "Waiting for Godot"
is all feeling. Perhaps that is why it is puzzling and convincing at the
same time. Theatregoers can rail at it, but they cannot ignore it. For
Mr. Beckett is a valid writer.
A)
Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down:
Ropes, Belts, and Cords in Waiting for Godot
Interpersonal
relationships in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot are extremely important,
because the interaction of the dynamic characters, as they try to satiate
one another's boredom, is the basis for the play. Vladimir's and Estragon's
interactions with Godot, which should also be seen as an interpersonal
relationship among dynamic characters, forms the basis for the tale's major
themes. Interpersonal relationships, including those involving Godot, are
generally couched in rope images, specifically as nooses and leashes. These
metaphors at times are visible and invisible, involve people as well as
inanimate objects, and connect the dead with the living. Only an appreciation
of these complicated rope images will provide a truly complete reading
of Beckett's Godot and his God, because they punctuate Beckett's voice
in this play better than do any of the individual characters.
The
only rope that appears literally is the leash around Lucky's neck that
Pozzo holds. This pair of characters appears separated by a rope that is
half the width of the stage. In terms of the rope, the relationship between
these characters is one of consistent domination. The stage directions
say that "Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope passed round his neck."
[p15] Lucky is whipped often. He is essentially the horse pulling Pozzo's
carriage in a relationship that seems cruel, domineering, and undesirable,
and yet Lucky is strangely sycophantic. In explaining Lucky's behavior,
Pozzo says,
Why
he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has
he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want
to...He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to
keep him on in that capacity...As though I were short of slaves. [p21]
Despite
his miserable condition, Lucky does not seem to desire change. Perhaps
he is happy. Or perhaps he is not miserable enough. Or perhaps he has no
sense of the world beyond his present situation; perhaps, as Vladimir and
Estragon, he cannot envision himself any differently.
The
relationship between Pozzo and Lucky does not, however, stagnate at this
juncture. The very next day, when the two next appear, the rope between
them is significantly shorter so that the now-blind Pozzo may find his
way. In this new situation, it is less clear which character leads the
other, or if either one is truly in control. As the stage directions read,
Pozzo
is blind...Rope as before, but much shorter, so that Pozzo may follow more
easily. [p49.5]
For
the first time in the text, Pozzo is dependent on Lucky for direction;
Lucky is dependent on Pozzo for the same reason, though this relationship
is one of emotional, rather than physical, dependence. The shortness of
the rope, necessary because of Pozzo's blindness, affects their relationship;
their new-found closeness makes it difficult for Pozzo to dominate and
for Lucky to be truly servile and completely pathetic. As the stage directions
indicate, after bumping into Estragon, Lucky falls, drops everything and
brings down Pozzo with him. They lie helpless among the scattered baggage.
[p49.5]
The
two men, one disabled with blindness and the other on the verge of death,
are unable to rise off the ground, from which Pozzo hopes to ascend but
cannot without assistance. He calls pathetically for help rising from the
ground, which apparently represents despair in a manner similar to that
of the forest floor in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter's forest sequence
of chapters.
Pozzo
tries to end the despair by telling Estragon to jolt the rope that is still
around Lucky's neck. But Pozzo forgets that Lucky will react differently
because, ignoring the vast differences between his own roped-in sadomasochistic
relationship with Lucky and Estragon's blunt hatred of Lucky. So Estragon
kicks Lucky in revenge, and the anger endemic in this action fails to achieve
an upward result. Estragon's and Lucky's collective pathetic impotence
soon ends, however, as Pozzo decides to once again dominate Lucky in the
familiar manner. The loving belligerence resumes as Pozzo screams "Enough!
Up pig!" Lucky soon gets up, since his normal condition (of being dominated
by Pozzo) has been restored and he no longer must feel somehow equal to
his master. Although the length of the rope is not literally changed, there
is clearly an equilibrium length which must separate Pozzo from Lucky figuratively
in order for their relationship to proceed naturally; any longer or shorter
and there would not be the proper amount of domination and submission.
But
is the despair found on the ground any different from the surrounding misery
that is omnipresent in the lives of Vladimir and Estragon? In a way, it
is, for there is a terminus to the despair of the ground: Pozzo and Lucky
eventually get back on their feet. But, back on their feet, they reenter
the surrounding, omnipresent misery. In being upright once again, there
thus is a concurrent pleasure (in being away from the despair of the ground)
and misery (in their omnipresent surroundings), further underscoring Pozzo's
and Lucky's sadomasochistic desires.
Vladimir
and Estragon have a similar relationship in many ways, for there is a certain
amount of submission and domination in their interactions with one another.
The submission and domination, however, is less consistent and less rigidly
defined than it is for Pozzo and Lucky. But when the two principal characters
seek to play a game, Vladimir suggests they "play at Pozzo and Lucky" [p47],
a game that requires them to abuse one another for amusement. But Vladimir
asks Estragon to play Pozzo and dominate him, a situation that diverges
from Vladimir's seemingly normal assertiveness in their relationship. Overall,
their relationship is one of misplaced dominance, where Vladimir is generally
the stronger of the two, but he clearly wishes he were not.
As
yet another way to pass the time, Vladimir and Estragon also consider suicide,
by hanging with a rope. The rope that they would hang themselves with,
however, is not the rope that ties their relationship together; their binding
rope is figuratively present throughout the entire play and yet they cannot
find a rope suitable for hanging themselves. The topic of suicide first
arises in a fit of boredom, as the two friends search for ways to speed
up the passage of time while they wait for Godot:
ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
ESTRAGON: (highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's
why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
ESTRAGON: Let's hang ourselves immediately! [p12]
The
erection, the ejaculation, and even the death itself would be something
at variance from the monotony of their everyday waiting and would therefore
help speed up the passage of time. But never do Vladimir and Estragon contemplate
suicide in a realistic context, where they can see it as an act that would
inevitably prevent them from meeting Godot (at least in the literal interpretation
that he is human). Suicide for them, therefore, is just another diversion,
perhaps a titillating autoerotic fantasy, but a diversion nonetheless,
whose consequences they do not bother to or cannot fathom.
It
impossible, however, for the two to kill themselves. They first realize
that the only tree in their world, a weeping willow, will not support Vladimir's
weight on the noose and therefore will not break his neck. The second day,
Vladimir and Estragon cannot hang themselves because they do not have the
requisite piece of rope. By the second day, however, they have forgotten
that they cannot hang themselves from the only available tree, and therefore
their complaints about the lack of a suitable piece of rope (and their
attempts to substitute it with a belt of cord) are unnecessary. Thus, it
seems that Vladimir and Estragon are merely using suicide as a topic for
conversation, using the mere thought of an autoerotic death - one in which
there is pleasure in sadness or pain, again, in a masochistic outlook -
as an inherently pleasing ponder. Estragon says explicitly on the subject,
"Don't let's do anything. It's safer." [p12.5]
How
would suicide for Vladimir and Estragon be at all unsafe? If they are living
a virtual death, then dying will be nothing but more of the same. But,
if they are merely living an extraordinarily mundane and pathetic life,
then death, particularly pleasant death, will be the exclamation point
that relieves them of their boredom with life. And are these two possibilities
all that different? It seems that Estragon gives credence to the former
when he says "everything's dead but the tree" [p59.5], but, regardless,
it makes no difference; for, since neither possibility can be any more
unpleasant than life and one is far preferable to life's incessant boredom,
it follows that the rope should be used; suicide should be attempted as
the logical conclusion. Perhaps this is why the willow grows five new leaves
and starts to weep - because its weak boughs prevent it from fulfilling
the cries of the audience to allow the characters to kill themselves. And
so, from one perspective, Vladimir and Estragon are roped to the willow
and its potential for suicide while they are also being kept at rope's
length from the potential for this achievement.
Vladimir and Estragon's sad situation of waiting endlessly for the mysterious Godot is another form of inescapable frustration. Vladimir, typically certain of his words while questioning their veracity upon the slightest prodding, denies Estragon's suggestion that they are tied to Godot. "To Godot? Tied to Godot! What an idea! No question of it. (Pause.) For the moment." [p14.5] There is, of course, a figurative rope that ties them to Godot, though Vladimir refuses to admit this. Even Pozzo recognizes that Godot "has your future in his handsI(pause)Iat least your immediate future." [p19.5] Interestingly, both Pozzo and Vladimir seems to believe that their view on Godot is only temporal; from characters who have no memory and at least an uncertain understanding of time, a vague foresight of changes to come illustrates their confusion with the character of Godot. Because the nature of Godot is at best unclear, it is impossible to determine the exact arrangement of Vladimir's and Estragon's relationship to him. Nonetheless, it is clear that this interaction in many ways follows the model already established: By waiting interminably for this most mysterious character without trying to escape the situation, there is a degree of masochism present in Vladimir and Estragon. Though it is not clear that Godot specifically enjoys their boredom and pain, their conversations with the boy make this most likely.
While
Vladimir and Estragon are tied to Godot in the typical manner, Godot's
rope to them is tied uniquely. Estragon questions what would happen if
they left Godot, asking, "And if we dropped him? (Pause.) If we dropped
him?" [p59.5] Godot, who the reader has assumed to be in control of his
own actions, is apparently hanging, most likely from a noose. And Vladimir
and Estragon, the inexorably bored and miserable sadomasochists who are
virtually dead, somehow know that they have the power to drop Godot from
his noose. It follows from the text that Godot - is he nothing more than
Beckett's characterization of God? The similarities become harder and harder
to ignore - is dead; as Vladimir says virtually immediately after Estragon's
questions, "Everything's dead but the tree." [p59.5] But even though Godot
is dead, "he'd punish us" if Vladimir and Estragon cut him free from his
noose. Death for Godot, then, is perhaps less literal and more a figurative
state in which he cannot or will not attend to Vladimir and Estragon though
they wait for him. But if Godot is literally dead, as hanging from a noose
should indicate, then he cannot directly cause the punishment. Rather,
the punishment will come indirectly as a result of Vladimir and Estragon
dropping him. With everything dead but the willow, what other punishment
could there be but the death or defacement of the one glimmer of life and
hope in an otherwise bleak existence - the tree. Here the tree perhaps
represents Godot, Vladimir's and Estragon's only hope. Since Vladimir and
Estragon are fundamentally hopeful individuals who would not want to see
this last glimmer of hope destroyed, Vladimir's message is that they should
not drop Godot. Instead, they should allow him to hang, and they should
ignore his death; as humans should ignore Nietzsche's decision that the
belief in "God is dead." And this, it seems Beckett hopes, must be the
strongest rope of all in Waiting for Godot - the noose surrounding Godot's
neck that is held aloft, and out of sight, by hope.
The
purpose of human life is an unanswerable question.It
seems
impossible
to find an answer because we don't know where to begin looking
or
whom to ask. Existence, to us, seems to be something imposed upon us by
an
unknown force.There is no apparent
meaning to it, and yet we suffer
as
a result of it.The world seems
utterly chaotic.We therefore try
to
impose
meaning on it through pattern and fabricated purposes to distract
ourselves
from the fact that our situation is hopelessly unfathomable.
"Waiting
for Godot" is a play that captures this feeling and view of the
world,
and characterizes it with archetypes that symbolize humanity and its
behaviour
when faced with this knowledge.According
to the play, a human
being's
life is totally dependant on chance, and, by extension, time is
meaningless;
therefore, a human+s life is also meaningless, and the
realization
of this drives humans to rely on nebulous, outside forces,
which
may be real or not, for order and direction.
The
basic premise of the play is that chance is the underlying factor
behind
existence.Therefore human life
is determined by chance.This is
established
very early on, when Vladimir mentions the parable of the two
thieves
from the Bible."One of the thieves
was saved.It's a reasonable
percentage"
(Beckett, 8).The idea of "percentage"
is important because
this
represents how the fate of humanity is determined; it is random, and
there
is a percentage chance that a person will be saved or damned.
Vladimir
continues by citing the disconcordance of the Gospels on the story
of
the two thieves."And yet...how
is it - this is not boring you I hope
-
how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being
saved.The
four of them were there - or thereabouts - and only one speaks
of
a thief being saved" (Beckett, 9).Beckett
makes an important point
with
this example of how chance is woven into even the most sacred of texts
that
is supposed to hold ultimate truth for humanity.All
four disciples
of
Chirst are supposed to have been present during his crucifixion and
witnessed
the two thieves, crucified with Jesus, being saved or damned
depending
on their treatment of him in these final hours.Of
the four,
only
two report anything peculiar happening with the thieves.Of
the two
that
report it, only one says that a thief was saved while the other says
that
both were damned.Thus, the percentages
go from 100%, to 50%, to a
25%
chance for salvation.This whole
matter of percentages symbolizes how
chance
is the determining factor of existence, and Beckett used the Bible
to
prove this because that is the text that humanity has looked to for
meaning
for millenia.Even the Bible reduces
human life to a matter of
chance.On
any given day there is a certain percent chance that one will
be
saved as opposed to damned, and that person is powerless to affect the
decision."The
fate of the thieves, one of whom was saved and the other
damned
according to the one of the four accounts that everybody believes,
becomes
as the play progresses a symbol of the condition of man in an
unpredictable
and arbitrary universe" (Webb, 32).
God,
if he exists, contributes to the chaos by his silence.The
very
fact
that God allows such an arbitrary system to continue makes him an
accomplice.The
French philosopher Pascal noted the arbitrariness of life
and
that the universe worked on the basis of percentages.He
advocated
using
such arbitrariness to one's advantage, including believing in God
because,
if he doesn't exist, nobody would care in the end, but if he does,
one
was on the safe side all along, so one can't lose.It
is the same
reasoning
that Vladimir uses in his remark quoted above, "It's a reasonable
percentage."But
it is God's silence throughout all this that causes the
real
hopelessness, and this is what makes "Waiting for Godot" a tragedy
amidst
all the comical actions of its characters: the silent plea to God
for
meaning, for answers, which symbolizes the plea of all humanity, and
God's
silence in response."The recourse
to bookkeeping by the philosopher
[Pascal]
no less than the clownish tramp shows how helpless we are with
respect
to God+s silence" (Astro, 121).Either
God does not exist, or he
does
not care.Whichever is the case,
chance and arbitrariness determine
human
life in the absence of divine involvement.
The
world of "Waiting for Godot" is one without any meaningful
pattern,
which symbolizes chaos as the dominating force in the world.
There
is no orderly sequence of events.A
tree which was barren one day
is
covered with leaves the next.The
two tramps return to the same place
every
day to wait for Godot.No one can
remember exactly what happened the
day
before. Night falls instantly, and Godot never comes.The
entire
setting
of the play is meant to demonstrate that time is based on chance,
and
therefore human life is based on chance.
Time
is meaningless as a direct result of chance being the underlying
factor
of existence.Hence there is a cyclic,
albeit indefinite, pattern
to
events in "Waiting for Godot."Vladimir
and Estragon return to the same
place
each day to wait for Godot and experience the same general events
with
variations each time.It is not
known for how long in the past they
have
been doing this, or for how long they will continue to do it, but
since
time is meaningless in this play, it is assumed that past, present,
and
future mean nothing.Time, essentially
is a mess."One of the
seemingly
most stable of the patterns that give shape to experience, and
one
of the most disturbing to see crumble, is that of time" (Webb, 34-35).
The
ramifications of this on human existence are symbolized by the
difference
between Pozzo and Lucky in Act I and in Act II.Because
time
is
based on chance and is therefore meaningless, human life is treated
arbitrarily
and in an almost ruthless manner, and is also meaningless.In
Act
I Pozzo is travelling to the market to sell Lucky, his slave.Pozzo
is
healthy as can be, and there seems to be nothing wrong.Lucky
used to
be
such a pleasant slave to have around, but he has become quite annoying,
and
so Pozzo is going to get rid of him.This
is their situation the first
time
they meet Vladimir and Estragon.The
next day, everything has
changed.Pozzo
is now blind, and Lucky is mute.Pozzo
has absolutely no
recollection
of the previous meeting, and even claims that Lucky has always
been
mute even though just the day before he gave a long philosophical
discourse
when commanded to "think."When asked
by Vladimir when he became
blind,
Pozzo responds "I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune"
(Beckett,
55).Vladimir, incredulous, continues
asking him for details.
Pozzo
responds to this (violently), "Don't question me!The
blind have no
notion
of time.The things of time are
hidden from them too" (Beckett,
55).Pozzo's
situation symbolizes the effects of time on humans.The
inherent
meaninglessness of a world based on chance degenerates human life
into
something that is worthless and can be toyed with by Fortune.Beckett
uses
this change in the situation of Pozzo and Lucky to show that human
life
is meaningless because time is meaningless."Although
a 'stream of
time'
doesn't exist any longer, the 'time material' is not petrified
yet,...instead
of a moving stream, time here has become something like a
stagnant
mush" (Andres, 143).
Humans
try to remain oblivious of their condition.Throughout
the
play,
Vladimir and Estragon remain stupidly cheerful, and seek distraction
in
pointless activities.In doing so,
they act rather comical, which gives
the
play its humorous element."The
positive attitude of the two tramps
thus
amounts to a double negation: their inability to recognize the
senselessness
of their position" (Andres, 143-144).Vladimir
and Estragon
try
to distract themselves from the endless wait by arguing over mundane
topics,
sleeping, chatting with Pozzo and Lucky (again over mundane
topics),
and even contemplating suicide.All
of this is an attempt to
remain
oblivious of the fact that they are waiting for a vague figure,
partly
of their own invention, that will never come.They
do not want to
realize
that their lives are meaningless.This
behavior symbolizes
humanity's
petty distractions.Humans have
nothing else to do but try to
distract
themselves from their situation."...while,
in the case of
Vladimir
and Estragon, it is just the incessant attempt to make time pass
which
is so characteristic, and which reflects the specific misery and
absurdity
of their life" (Andres, 147-148).Vladimir
and Estragon+s
attempts
at distraction are attempts to make time pass, to draw them closer
to
the time when Godot will arrive and solve all their problems.This
is
pure
wishful thinking, but this is all that they have to look forward to,
even
if the action is meaningless.The
only alternative to this is death,
which
the two contemplate but lack the courage and initiative to carry
through.In
the end, the only recourse left to humans is to persist in
meaningless
action or perish."Pozzo, after
his vision of the emptiness
and
futility of human life, revives his Lucky and cries, 'On!' though they
have
nowhere to go and nothing to carry but sand" (Webb, 41).
To
impose pattern and meaning on their world, humans will rely on
nebulous
outside forces for relief and distraction from their predicament.
This
is the only thing that can keep them going.Thus,
in the play, Godot
is
symbolic of such an outside force, which seems to be silent and
uncaring.Even
so, he is still a pattern, and he infuses the two desperate
tramps
with a purpose to their absurd lives.By
imposing pattern on chaos,
Vladimir
and Estragon achieve some degree of meaning.In
this case, the
pattern
is waiting.Vladimir, in his philosophical
soliloquy while
contemplating
whether or not to help Pozzo in Act II, declares, "What are
we
doing here, that is the question.And
we are blessed in this, that we
happen
to know the answer.Yes, in this
immense confusion one thing alone
is
clear.We are waiting for Godot to
come-" (Beckett, 51).An illusion
of
salvation is needed to cope with a meaningless life.Godot
is that
illusion.Therefore
we see that because of all the aforementioned factors,
that
life is based on chance, that time is meaningless, that human life is
meaningless,
humans are driven to invent or rely on such "Godots,"
otherwise
they would perish.In essence, "'Waiting
for Godot' is the story
of
two vagabonds who impose on their slovenly wilderness an illusory, but
desperately
defended, pattern: waiting" (Webb, 26).
It
is never clear whether Godot is real or not, which is why he is
referred
to as an example of a "nebulous force".In
both acts, Vladimir
and
Estragon mistake or suspect Pozzo of being Godot.They
have never
actually
seen Godot, and would not be able to tell him apart from a street
passerby.Their
only contact with him is his messenger boy that comes at
the
end of each day to inform them that Godot will again not be coming, but
will
surely come tomorrow.The boy never
remembers one day from the next,
another
indication of the absence of a meaningful time sequence.At
the
end
of the second act, Vladimir, the more philosophical of the two, gets
a
glimpse of the truth: that they will forever be waiting for Godot, that
he
is merely a distraction from their useless lives, and that he can even
predict,
ironically, when the boy comes again, everything that the boy will
say.It
is at this point that a great depression overcomes Vladimir at the
realisation
of the truth.It is the climax of
the play and its most tragic
part.But
Vladimir realizes that he is trapped, that he must persist in
the
illusion, that he has no choice.This
is the definition of "going on"
for
humanity.There is no point.But
it is the only option."All of
these
characters go on, but in the old ruts, and only by retreating into
patterns
of thought that have already been thoroughly discredited.In
the
universe
of this play, 'on' leads nowhere" (Webb, 41).
"Waiting
for Godot" is all about how the world is based on chance.
A
world based on chance can have no orderly time sequence, and thus time
has
no meaning.The extension, then,
is that human life has no meaning.
Realizing
this, humans will create distractions and diversions, in the form
of
patterns and reliance on nebulous forces, to provide the purpose and
meaning
that is inherently lacking in their lives."Waiting
for Godot" is
the
classical, archetypical presentation of this facet of human existence.
C)
The Concept of Time and Space in Beckett's Dramas
Happy Days and Waiting for Godot
Dong-Ho Sohn, Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
Happy
Days opens on a barren outdoor setting in which a woman around fifty, Winnie,
is found embedded up to above her waist in a mound of earth. There is another
character around sixty, Willie, who is lying asleep on the ground, hidden
by Winnie's mound, to her right and rear. Willie is hardly visible to the
audience throughout the play except for a few times, although constantly
addressed by Winnie in her monologue. The dramatist calls for a "maximum
of simplicity and symmetry" in the set, and a "very pompier trompe-l'oeil
backcloth to represent unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance"
to indicate the absence of any trace of human society in the protagonist's
world. For the spectators who are used to the realistic stage, or to the
stage on which events occur in the physical world , the stage of Happy
Days is something of a shock, for they fail to find in the set any resemblance
to the drama they have known.
Above
all, Beckett does not put his action in a historical setting. Traditionally,
drama creates a world with reference to objective reality. An important
part of dramatic performance is to present the spectators with some event
they can recognize and identify in connection with the practical aspects
of life. Each time they see a performance, they find themselves thrown
into a new world which is a mixture of the familiar and the strange and
unknown. The familiar is the threshold through which they venture into
the strange and unknown. The ratio of the familiar is the highest in the
drama of mimetic objective realism, whereas it is low in the drama portraying
the phenomena occurring in the unconscious. Beckett depicts life as strange,
mysterious, and beyond rational explanation.
In
the performance of Beckett's work, the spectators find it hard to enjoy
themselves due to the strangeness of the world presented on the stage.
Beckett has reduced the familiar in his work to the extent that the strange
dominates the action, seriously modifying the function of the familiar
in the process of signification. Drama is concerned with life and death
to be represented in such artistic genres as tragedy and comedy. In other
words, drama is the ritualization of 'life' and 'death' with a view to
familiarizing the fearful reality of existence. The spectators enjoy the
spirit of 'game' or 'play' from the stage performance which imitates the
action of man. In Beckett's drama it is hard for us to experience the spirit
of 'play' or 'game'. Beckett rips off the veil of familiarized ritual from
dramatic art when he reduces the familiar to a minimum in his work. The
stylized action in traditional drama does not help the spectators confront
bare existence. It induces them to ignore it. In order to deal with the
question of bare existence as such, Beckett depicts man in the state of
being nothing and doing nothing without superimposing conventional narrative
structure on the action.
The
simple but horrifying set of Happy Days is designed to awaken the spectators
and urge them to face the human condition without any inessential decoration.
Winnie can be seen as Everyman helplessly thrown into life like the protagonist
in Act Without Words I (Kern 51). Only when placed against such a background
is one compelled to tackle the questions of existence without compromise,
the mystery and transitoriness and nothingness of being. Beckett's intention
of exhibiting bare existence can be read in the compositional process of
his work. From his earliest years Beckett chose to keep distance from objective
mimesis for the reason that it relies on empiricism which is the art of
the surface (Gontarski 1985, 5). Absence rather than presence characterizes
Beckett's world. The world of crowded images in Shakespeare is hard to
find in the linguistic sparseness of Beckett's empty space (States 1978,
5). An investigation of the manuscripts of Happy Days reveals that Beckett's
composition of the work is not something that proceeds from an abstract
idea and skeletal structure at the outset to a concrete situation with
fuller elaboration of characters in the later stage. To the contrary, his
creative process is a transition from the realistic and concrete to the
abstract, condensed and vague. Apparently his text is first full of social
and historical facts, which are later removed or purposely 'vaguened' to
reveal a universal pattern.
The
dramatist condenses or decomposes the original manuscript in which the
action is more traditionally motivated and the world more familiar and
recognizable until the original identifiable world has completely evaporated
(Gontarski 75). The elimination of the omniscient author himself takes
place in this process. By the time he finishes writing, Beckett has gone
through numerous intentional undoings of the text's origins (Gontarski
3). Beckett's method of representation can be compared to photography.
The cover picture in black and white of Bert O. States' book on Waiting
for Godot, The Shape of Paradox, shows two men, one sitting on the ground
and the other standing. What characterizes the picture most is the indistinct
contour of the objects, apparently intending to remind the reader of Vladimir
and Estragon. What is interesting in the picture is that it is almost impossible
to discern the features of their faces, the fingers of their hands, and
the shoes on their feet. They are all blurry. The cameraman might have
taken them, coming in and out of focus, or oscillating between the objects
(States 29).
If
Happy Days is to be compared to a picture, it could be a picture which
fails to show the characters' contour clearly because they were taken at
too close a range. Or, it is as if the cameraman had magnified the object
so many times that it lost its natural shape to look like something else.
Jonathan Swift makes Gulliver travel the country of giants to reveal the
ugliness of humans seen in magnified versions. In Happy Days, the spectators
seem seated so close to the protagonist that they can almost see her body
hair, her pimples and the wrinkles in her face, and even smell her breath.
Unable to see the overall shape of the protagonist's body, they are not
sure whether they are watching a human or an animal. This phenomenon occurs
as the result of the intentional undoings in which Beckett removes all
the decorations from the protagonist which can be used to make her look
like a social being. The spectators come to see an old lady buried in a
mound of earth, which is a poetic image symbolizing the existential condition
of man.
In
Happy Days, the temporal background of the action is vague and uncertain
with all the evidence withheld which can be used to assess the action in
realistic or historical terms. In an early draft of the play the dramatist
employs an alarm clock and the sunlight to control and measure Winnie's
day and night, but later changes them to a bell and a simple light that
never changes in order to diminish the importance of mechanical time. The
associations with quotidian activities in the alarm clock and the sunlight
do not help examine the fate of man as such. Winnie never uses a date.
When she broaches an episode from her memory, its history is never mentioned.
Neither she nor the spectators can measure when and where the episode had
taken place in her life. Furthermore, her memory is all fragments which
do not make up a coherent story. It seems that she happens to run into
broken pieces of past events randomly surfacing in her mind.
Winnie
herself is not sure of her own memory:
"The
sunshade you gave me...that day...(pause)...that day...the lake...the
reeds. (Eyes front. Pause.) What day? (Pause.) What reeds?"
[53]
Sometimes
it is not clear whether her story had actually happened or she simply invents
it to pass the time. The fundamental nature of the narrative is the linear
progression of action in the continuum of time and space. In each scene,
dialogues and movements weave the web of signification in conjunction with
other theatrical elements on the stage. The concatenation of dramatic moments
in the action and interaction of the characters is traditionally based
on the principle of logic and causality. The causal links which are in
charge of the progression of action are frequently missing in Beckett's
world. His scene is built with sentences with no apparent causal (logical)
connectivity, all seemingly discrete threads of string:
ESTRAGON:
A
kind of prayer.
VLADIMIR:
Precisely.
ESTRAGON:
A
vague supplication.
VLADIMIR:
Exactly.
ESTRAGON:
And
what did he reply?
VLADIMIR:
That
he'd see.
ESTRAGON:
That
he couldn't promise anything.
VLADIMIR:
That
he'd have to think it over.
ESTRAGON:
In
the quiet of his home.
VLADIMIR:
Consult his fam