Samuel Becket 's Waiting On Godot

Realism, Naturalism, and Regionalism are just a few examples of the many styles of writing that exist. Each style of writing deals with a specific time period. Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”, Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”, and Mary E Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother” are just a few examples of the literary works that represent these time periods. These literary works are perfect examples of the specific time periods each writing style was popular among certain authors. These stories allow readers to compare the modern times that we live in currently to the period these authors were in. They also allow the reader to branch out and be different.

The present paper traces the origins of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland and Robert Coover’s dramatic monologue Rip Awake to Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” and attempts to analyze both adaptations. Though Irving’s short story dates back to an earlier time period in the American landscape, it nonetheless forms the foundation of both Pynchon’s and Coover’s work. Though Irving’s writing style has often been called exceedingly British sounding, his narratives are steeped in American history and the American way of life. Both Thomas Pynchon and Robert Coover on the other hand belong to the postmodern age and deal with experimental fiction in America. If Pynchon’s fiction is described as encyclopedic, labyrinthine and convoluted then Coover’s is termed otherworldly and surreal. Despite the fact that most critics see both Pynchon and Cooveras being as dissimilar as chalk and cheese, they nonetheless use experimental forms and techniques that are distinctly postmodern as the present study will depict.

Literary criticism is a metaphorical shadow that is always present, but only revealed when shining a light upon it. By applying a psychoanalytic lense, readers are able to depict the rational factor behind the evil of the utopian society and the destruction of the humans mind in the characters in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”.

During the twentieth century, many events took place. Some of these events include but are not limited to World War I (1914), the Great Depression (1929), World War II (1939), and the race to space. All of these happenings, as well as the ones not mentioned, affected everyone, especially the lives of story writers and poets. These are the people that took in all that was taking place around them and reworking it to be a fictional character’s life. Among these people are Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, and Sandra Cisneros. Each one wrote in their own distinctive style; however, as a whole, they developed an era of themes and writing techniques.

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett's existential masterpiece, for some odd reason has captured the minds of millions of readers, artists, and critics worldwide, joining them all in an attempt to interpret the play. Beckett has told them not to read anything into his work, yet he does not stop them. Perhaps he recognizes the human quality of bringing personal experiences and such to the piece of art, and interpreting it through such colored lenses. Hundreds of theories are expounded, all of them right and none of them wrong. A play is only what you bring to it, in a subconscious connection between you and the playwright.

When studying texts in comparison with one another, the audience is able to gain an understanding of context’s influence on the composers.Therefore, the composers reveal their perspectives of the world around them in reaction to their context. Both Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Bruce Dawe’s poems Homo-Suburbiensis and Enter Without So Much as Knocking (Enter), explore the ideas of the need for personal autonomy and the healing properties of nature, which were relevant to both composer’s respective contexts. Thus, the influence of context on Dawe & Atwood’s personal perspectives becomes apparent through the comparison of their texts.

Desert. Dazzling light (37). A bright barren wasteland of nothing in which there is a man, completely alone trying to decide what to do next, reflecting upon his situation is the beginning of Act Without Words I, the man is in a hopeless setting and all help or comfort he might have is stripped away from him. We see much the same in the tragicomedy Waiting for Godot but with two men who are waiting and trying to decide what to do while they look for the arrival of the mysterious Godot. “Nothing to be done,” says Estragon, to which Vladimir responds, “I’m beginning to come round to that opinion myself” (1). They wait

POZZO: Wait! (He doubles up in an attempt to apply his ear to his stomach, listens.

A single word inserted or removed can change the feeling of a story in an instant; creating tingles that trickle along the length of your spine or even a compulsive movement to put down the piece and never pick it up again. In many cases an author will write and rewrite their tales until they are perfect. Jack London was very much one of these authors, sending his first version of “To Build a Fire” to a magazine before rewriting it into the masterpiece of which many are more familiar with today. However, only one of the versions strongly exemplifies the hard truth and fight against uncontrollable and unpredictable nature which is realism and naturalism. In many ways are London’s two distinct pieces of work similar, but also

The history of humanity is an extraordinary span of countless years that consists of wonderful advancements, extremely significant developments, new constructions of ideas, and astounding movements. Humans have continuously driven to develop new ways of understanding the world and have tried reshaping the intricate perceptions of the world throughout the course of time. While the entire past of humanity is full of astonishing explorations and powerful events, only very few centuries could possibly challenge the importance of the twentieth century. The early portion of the twentieth century was a very crucial period of time that carried great momentum for multiple revolutions across the globe, multiple wars, and major developments in constructing the world. This influenced not only extravagant ways of thinking and understanding new concepts, but also drove new movements of art and literature into cultures everywhere. This gave ideas such as Surrealism, Naturalism, Futurism. Realism and Romanticism the ability to thrive and reform the perceptions of literature as a whole. However, one of the artistic key movements in the early twentieth century that shaped literature today and made these other movements in literature possible is the Modernist movement. Modernism was substantial in Europe throughout the early twentieth century, sweeping the minds of many marvelous writers and artists such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. These two authors are significant influences not just

Originally performed in 1953 in French, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot took the stage at the Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto. The play tells the story of Vladimir and Estragon, two men who wait for Godot, someone or something they have not met to seen. The Soulpepper Production illustrates the journey that plays with Vladimir and Estragon’s mind and emotion, in regard to the interactions with their surroundings and themselves. The main focus of the production directs the audience’s attention towards an enclosed setting that limit the actions originally sought in the play. The production however, focused more on Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship, the play does not capture the same effect. Thus, the production is a mere interpretation from what the play offers in portraying the stage. From the play to the stage, Waiting for Godot illustrates how an enclosed setting represents Vladimir and Estragon’s mind.

There is a vast literature on interpretations of Godot, encompassing Christian and anti-Christian religion, Freudian and Jungian psychology, and a kitchen sinkful of esoteric and obscure “isms.” The undeniable fact is that no one really knows what Godot is about, and the playwright himself clearly believed that the core of his art lay in the ambiguities resulting from the absence of information, saying that everything he knew about the characters was in the text and if he knew anything more about the characters then he would have put it in the text. That Godot is more hole than doughnut has made it an easy target of parody if not outright ridicule. Beckett evolved his unique literary voice by distinguishing his style from that of his mentor James Joyce, whom he assisted during the writing of Finnegans Wake. In almost exactly the opposite way, Joyce grounded his art in fanatically perfectionist control of his work, leaving no missing pieces or rough edges in stuffing his characters full to overflowing so that we the readers know more about them than they could possibly know about themselves.

October 14, 2017, I went to see Waiting for Godot, a production of Richland College Theatre Department. Throughout the whole essay, I will talk about my experience of what I saw in the play, that will include the positives and negatives, I also will discuss if I understood the plot and how did I portray it.

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a theater of absurd which pictures the world that has lost its meaning due to the absence of God and features two protagonists who are incapable of acting upon themselves and who are heavily dependent on a mystical figure named Godot. Given that Beckett is profoundly influenced by existentialism -- a philosophical study in which an individual is required to act upon oneself rather than passively relying on religion -- the audience may find a non-existential aspect of the play, for example, that two characters heavily dependent on a religious figure, rather incoherent and surprising. Yet, in its core, Waiting for Godot can be said to feature the existential ideal -- that one can define his identity only through his actions -- and Beckett effectively delivers this theme by capturing human nature that arises from the sense of desolation, such as defective memory, meaningless wait, sudden agony, blind dependence on others, and habit of choosing not to act. The audience contends that these human instinctive traits are mostly driven by a lack of truth in one’s life, or more specifically, lack of truth in one’s identity. Vladimir and Estragon, the two protagonists, have waited for Godot for years, and they may unconsciously know that Godot will never show up. Yet, they continue to wait day after day. Why? The uncertainty in life is what drives the two loners to passively wait for Godot, and they believe that when he appears, he will give an

In Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett asks what it is that we are really doing on Earth. He feels that God plays a key role in the solution to the human condition, however, since we do not truly know if God exists, life it would seem is simply a quest to search for an alternate explanation. Most of the time we attempt to distract ourselves from the issue and try desperately to bring some sort of meaning into our life while silently waiting for someone or something to come and give us an answer. According to Beckett, the definition of human existence is waiting to ascertain if the possibility of salvation with a possible God exists, or if all that lies ahead is darkness; he feels that all other aspects