| IRISH STUDIES | CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE CULTURAL STUDIES |
|
VII. ConclusionSamuel Beckett's plays are marked by the artist's vision of the world into which his characters are placed. He deals with the position and the situation of Man in his surrounding world, which is a major and always recurring theme in the four plays I have chosen as a background for my thesis, as well as in his complete dramatic and prosaic work.Beckett's hero is a sisyphusean type of man waiting for the fulfilment of his fate, which seems to be eternal through his suffering and hoping. He is alienated from the world, which is unknown, remote, and indifferent, and from which he is isolated by the walls of his self. The conflict between two different substances - the world and the human subject, leads to the feelings of Absurdity and to fundamental existential questions about the meaning of human life in a world where he lives as a stranger. Beckett's characters are creatures grounded in Absurdity; there is no meaning in their Being which is why their lives involve mere waiting for the end, for death. The waiting is a pure experience of time itself, time which disintegrates into smaller and shorter periods, so that their waiting is a never-ending fate having no purpose, but the only aim - the end. Beckett's characters' tragedy consists in their empty waiting which becomes a long period of suffering; it consists in the power of life which still keeps them breathing and going on, although they are very close to their aim, the end. I see the whole greatness of Beckett's absurd man in his intractability with which he continually fills up his precarious fate, and although his suffering increases as time stops he does not live without hope and joy in life. |