PLACES AND CHARACTERS

The plays that I am going to compare are “Look back in Anger” written by John Osborne, in three acts. The second play called “The kitchen” by Arnold Westker is a play in two parts with an interlude. The third play is “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett.

These plays let their characters living under pressure which runs them to be desesperated or kill oneself.

Saying that the biggest similarity is the historical period they were written, the second war. About this time we can say that the authors use present tense telling their play, they tell the story in some weeks. These plays happen in different places, the first play “Look back in Anger” happens in Alison and Jimmy’s attic, the second “The kitchen” happens, obviously, in the kitchen and the last one, “Waiting for Godot” happens in an open space. Therefore I can say that the plays happen in a town because there are a lot of buildings and open spaces.

Now I am talking about the characters from these plays.

The most important of them is their lifes. Firstly, Jimmy is an inconformist but he doesn’t try to change his surrounding, secondly Alison prefers forgetting her problems. Cliff changes his life because he was unhappy. Finally Estragon and Vladimir don’t live as they like, because they are waiting for Godot.

Estragon – I am tired! Let’s go

Vladimir- we can’t

Estragon- why not?

Vladimir- we’re waiting for Godot

Lucky hasn’t got his own personality and he obeys people. At the end Dimitry, Paul and Hans dream about their future but they don’t fight for them.

These plays are in common that want to tell us there are no limits on human being’s dreaming which could be alive and keep them in our mind if we fight for them.

The character fight for survival and their miserable lives are based on this principle of surviving. The authors have played with the language; even leaving only the essential, they have produced a new creation, there is used a method in language with an acid humor using for this “the street language” or “the common language”.

These plays have the same colloquial registers used by the authors in common, sometimes even vulgar, in which they use insulted words moderately to catch the public attention.

These authors are disappointed with the values coming from old England; they protest in their plays, showing their anger. In these plays is written the pessimism and the depression which were caused to the society by the war. They show people in a destructive world.

The characters have the same items because they are cruel and they are prisoners of this time which made them be pessimists; telling that their society gets worse.

These authors draw up the topic of the anguish, although they begin the history with an absurd situation to demonstrate the irrationality in human beings life this “the theatre of the absurd”

The authors want to show in their plays the reality of their living period.