Samuel Beckett e Waiting for Godot: riassunto

SAMUEL BECKETT RIASSUNTO

Samuel Beckett.

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906 - Life pg 354. In 1953 Waiting for Godot was performed in Paris [ not only because he had a great commande of French culture but it was choice because he thought writing in a foreign language achieve a great economy of expression] for the fisrt time and was an exstraordinary seccess, rapidly bringing him internatianal fame - in 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and continued to write until his death in 1989.
An attempt to explore and describe human condition:
- Waiting for Godot - 1952
- Endgame - 1957
- Happy Days - 1961
Beckett has been defined as a dramatist of the absurd, or an absurdist - he differed gratly from other great representatives of the theatre of the absurd, from the Romanian playwright Ionesco, who wrote in the same years as Beckett and also lived in Paris.
Ionesco’s plays can been defined as irrational farces, in which he ridicules the middle class, its behaviour and values - the absurd becomes a synonym for the surreal.

Waiting for Godot di Samuel Beckett: analisi

WAITING FOR GODOT RIASSUNTO

Beckett’s plays are more philosophical and tragic at times - everything is real and ordinary, nothing incredible happens in Beckett’s world as he focuses on human being, detaching him from any political, social, historical circumstances, and in so doing he created a new kind of drama.
He brought to the theatre an awareness of the absurdity of human life.
The main theme is the isolation of the individual and the gulf that exists between our inner self and a language adequate enough to express our feelings and desired.
Beckett’s works do not includes the element of traditional drama: plot, characterization and final denouement.
His plays do not tell a story and he did not believe in any form of action or redemption.
His characters became symbols of the human condition.
They are trapped, incapable of facing up to life and remain destined to an existence marked by loneliness and a complete lack of communication and understanding.

There seems to be no hope of improving their destinies or situations.
He wrote in French because the foreign language forced him to respect rigour and detachment.
The language is simple; the expression of every-day speech.
Style is basic and concrete.
But we have to find hidden meanings, allusions and symbols and we have to go below the surface.

WAITING FOR GODOT ANALYSIS

The representation of an illogical and absurd world could not only be done by language, so he also used very precise stage directions. These directions were a specific guida to every small gesture, expressions, body language.
Beckett’s Works can be summed up in 3 keyword:
- Poverty
- Staticity
- Meaninglessness
Poverty - in Beckett’s world everything is reduced as a bared essential -from the characters’ clothes to material possessions, from their social status to the setting itself.