Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Waiting For Godot Theatre Of The Absurd - 1,177 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

... eloped. Many theater historians and critics label Alfred Jarry's French play, Ubu Roi as the earliest example of Theatre of the Absurd. The current movement of absurdism, however, emerged in France after World War II, as a rebellion against the traditional values and beliefs of Western culture and literature. It began with writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and eventually included other writers such as Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Edward Albee, and Harold Pinter, to name a few.

Absurdist drama creates an environment where people are isolated, clown-like characters blundering their way through life because they don't know what else to do. Oftentimes, characters stay together simply because they are afraid to be alone in such an incomprehensible world. Despite this negativity, however, absurdism is not completely nihilistic. Therefore, the goal of absurdist drama is not solely to depress audiences with negativity, but an attempt to bring them closer to reality and help them understand their own "meaning" in life, whatever that may be. Samuel Beckett's understanding of this philosophy best characterizes how we should perceive our existence as he says, "Nothing is more real than Nothing. " The dramatist who best reveals this process of evolution is Samuel Beckett.

Beckett's most popular absurdist play, Waiting For Godot, is one of the first examples critics point to when talking about the Theatre of the Absurd. Written and first performed in French in 1954, Godot had an enormous impact on theatergoers due to its strange and new conventions. Consisting of an essentially barren set, with the exception of a virtually leafless tree in the background, clown-like tramps, and highly symbolic language, Godot challenges its audience to question all of the old rules and to try to make sense of a world that is incomprehensible. At the heart of the play is the theme of "coping" and "getting through the day" so that when tomorrow comes we can have the strength to continue. As much as Beckett sought to minimize theatre it was not downsized so much as to be incoherent. The presence of the barren trees and a bench neither denotes time nor place.

Without a specific setting the audience is forced to put the play into there own context. When people have to choose meaning, calling upon memory, past experience, attitude, and social situation then theatre takes shape differently for each person and makes each performance unique to each person while realism offers little room for outside interpretation. One of Samuel Beckett's other main absurdist plays, Endgame, carries on this same kind of thinking but is much more tragic and serious in its metaphor for death than Godot. Like Godot, there is no apparent action in the play.

Hamm and Clov, the two main figures, are even more isolated than Vladimir and Estragon. Confined to a small, bare room, the blind and disabled Hamm postulates on the subjects of life and death, while interacting with and depending on his servant / son Clov to fill in meaning where there appears to be a void. Resembling Estragon and Vladimir are Hamm's parents Name and Nell, who are confined to trash bins at the front left of the stage. They, like the two tramps, exchange memories of a once coherent world and spend their time eating pap and biscuits. However, unlike Godot, Endgame is not absolutely cyclical. Instead, it emphasizes only one cycle and works its way toward some kind of ending, or in other words, has the vague feeling of a finale.

Even though death does not come at the end of Endgame, there is a strong sense that it is nearby and the waiting will not be as long, as suggested by the chess-like title. The Bare set that contains the action of Endgame could be, once again, anywhere and nowhere. However, it is strongly suggested within the text that this set could be the inside of the human mind. The parents, confined to trash bins, invokes the image of the mind even further by making the bins symbolic of memory and challenging the audience to change there view of where people belong because most people do not hang out in trash cans. The almost bare set that is characteristic of Beckett's work, thus allowing him to postulate a question while offering no answer or attempt at resolution, confounds and disarms the theatre going community.

Following Endgame and Waiting for Godot, Beckett continued his minimalism of set and language with plays like Krapps last tape, Happy Days, and That Time. That Time is a short play (about eight pages) by Samuel Beckett in which the only thing seen on stage is a face and the only things heard are three voices. The face represents the listener while the voices are not apparent on stage. The voices, A, B, and C, alternate throughout the play with only two pauses.

The distinctions between voices are not always clear because some of the text is the same and some images are common among them, such as a stone or slab which the speaker sits upon or remembers sitting upon. The voices could represent the same person at different points in his / her life. The text of the play is difficult to read and understand due to the style in which it was written and the organization, and similarly, the end does not seem to really conclude the play: the eyes open after the voices stop, and 5 seconds later, the face smiles. The listener's face in That Time is 10 feet above the stage level off center... [with] long flaring white hair as if seen from above outspread (Beckett 228).

Only the face of this person is seen, and with the hair spread out as it is, it sounds as if the audience is looking down upon the man covered up in bed. The rest of the stage is left a dark void, which causes the audience's attention to be drawn to the face, but the face is off center, showing that it, although the only tangible character, should not be the focus of attention. The conventions of realism and absurdist modern theatre were very different and quite opposite. The two movements had different theories and different outlooks on life making the choices on stage drastically opposed and thusly giving the audience a whole new experience. Without the sense of catharsis, resolution, linear time, or plot, all of which are inherent mechanisms within realism, absurd theatre challenges and puts the audience into a new frame of mind. The audience is not given an illusion to observe and forget but an experience that challenges every single person differently based on background and frame of reference to life.

While the set is only the physical space that the play actually occurs in, the images in realism were meant to make theatre more like real life while the minimalism of absurdity placed the audience everywhere and nowhere and allowed for less of a story and more of a question about our lives and relationship to the world. Bibliography:


Free research essays on topics related to: samuel beckett, theatre of the absurd, godot, waiting for godot, theatre

Research essay sample on Waiting For Godot Theatre Of The Absurd

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com