En el trabajo I los autores a comparar
serán:
Samuel Beckett, John Osborne,
La temática
In this essay I intend to compare the differences in the thematic and stylistic conventions of the three above authors, notorious for their provocative and inspiring prose. Each author has had a dramatic effect on todays’ theatre as we know it and I would like to explore the writers’ similarities and also their differing effect on their audience.
Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ has a ‘strange power… to convey the impression of some melancholy truths about the hopeless destiny of the human race’. Although Beckett’s existentialist play superficially appears to lack plot and therefore perhaps purpose, it is in fact challenging and thought provoking, encouraging the audience to question the purpose of struggle and perhaps existence. Various political and religious interpretations of this seemingly bleak and desolate play indicate the importance of the individual in interpreting this complex play. In my opinion the play’s main theme is the juxtaposition between the acceptance of the seemingly hopeless struggle of existence, ‘Nothing can be done…One is what one is…No use wriggling…the essential doesn’t change’[1]; and the quest for hope represented in the quest to wait for Godot, ‘What do we do now that we're happy . . . go on waiting’.
In comparison
Osbournes main theme in ‘Look back in Anger’ seems to be disillusionment at the
state of society, seemingly more overtly political than Beckett’s subtler play. The press release for the play called the
twenty-six-year-old Osborne "an angry young man"; when the play became
a hit, the phrase stuck as a label for an under-thirty, post-war generation
which felt cynical and disenfranchised. In contrast, Wesker’s ‘The
Kitchen’ although it similarly features the frustrations of life, is also about
dreams for a better life. In this quality of hope it has more similarities with
‘Waiting for Godot’ and it too questions the meaning of life; as after Peter’s
violent display of anger, at finally being turned down by Monica, the proprietor, bewildered
by Peter’s violence, asks his workers what more is there to life than work,
money and food. This question could be viewed as more of a question for the
audience to ponder.
A factor that brings all artists together is a revolutionary spark in their writing, the art of protest against their society and this shows the strength of the written word in a rigid society. Osbourne brought the spirit of radicalism to a stilted and impotent society and through his writing brought back a feeling of pre war masculine idealology and with it new political sentiment. Beckett similarly was a revolutionary in his style of writing; ‘Beckett was motivated to protest against the prescriptive and limiting nature of “realist” conventions both in art and in human behaviour, relationships and political life. He called the entirety of these factors “the hypnosis of positivism”, and his life-work could be said to have run its course in pursuit of dispelling this hypnosis.’[2]
As Beckett found success
by breaking theatrical conventions, Wesker also refused catergorisation in his
work; he purposefully goes against what the audience or society expect of him.
However, whilst Beckett did not fit into either the Existentialism, Modernism,
or the Absurdist movements; Wesker despite refusing to be pigeonholed as a
advocate of the genre, was a
respected artist of kitchen-sink drama. This theatrical movement was also
championed by Osbourne. The expression “kitchen-sink drama” was coined to
describe those new plays which shared with Look Back in Anger qualities
of vivid, raw authenticity presented in a more or less working-class setting.
In this theatrical setting people lived lives on stage which were recognisble
to the way that many members of their audience lived their lives at home,
therefore making the theatre more accessible and not, as in the past, mainly
for the elite of society.
I believe that in spite
of differences that separate the three esteemed artists, they share a bond that
all three artists and their literature refuses to be swallowed by their
limitations. To conclude each piece of art in itself provokes the audience to
challenge their perceptions and boundaries of theatre just as the artists do in
their compositions.
Bibliography
http://samuel-beckett.net/Waiting_for_Godot.html
http://www.ishakespeare.net/godot/analysis.htm
Anne Etienne,
Andrew Wyllie, University of the West of
[2]