Absurdity in Beckett, Pinter and Shakespeare - 4998 Words

An-Najah National University Faculty of Arts Department of English Absurdity in Beckett, Pinter and Shakespeare Written by: Anas Kamal Khanfar 10507510 Supervised by: Dr.Odeh Odeh In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the B.A. Degree in English 2nd Semester – 2008/2009 Literature review Life is absurd as a game of chess which is played by a blind man and a sighted man from the point of view of the observer to the patient. In this paper, absurdity is observed and detected in a critical point of view that covers Shakespeares Hamlet, Becketts Endgame and Pinters The Birthday Party. Absurdity in these works is at two levels which are characters absurdity and languages absurdity. Bradbrook†¦show more content†¦The role of Hamlet is absurd in the play in the sense that he keeps his life purposeless. Psychologically speaking, Hamlet suffers from a psychological illness that prevents him to find his way. Throughout all the play, he is a floating man who can not make one good or reasonable conclusion. He restricts his mind in the words of the ghost of his dead father. This psychological state of Hamlet makes him trace nothing by the means of nothing that he keeps sailing in his ideas in the whole play. Hamlet can not trust any one except himself because he expec ts that some of them participate in the conspiracy against his father. Kott (1967) considers the absurdity in Hamlet’s character by examining his character as a player in revenge drama. He says that a game of murder is totally absurd especially when the character is involved in game without having any piece of information about the killer except for the apparition of his father. When Hamlet discovers that his mother marries his uncle, he starts to theorize and throw statements that empty the anger and depression inside him: Fie on’t, ah, fie! tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature Posses it merely. That it should come (to this)! But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two So excellent a king that was to this Hyperion to a satyr so loving to my mother (I, ii, 135-140)Show MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Samuel Beckett s Waiting For Godot 1950 Words   |  8 PagesThis paper is a comparative study of the absurdity of time and place in Samuel Beckett’s (1906–1989) Waiting for Godot (1948) and Salah Abdel Sabour’s (1931–1981) The Princess Waits (Al-Amira Tantazer) (1969). It is an attempt to compare the two plays with regard to the absurd features of time and place with reference to the aspects of the absurd theatre. The reasons for selecting these two plays in particular are: firstly, both plays share the process of waiting which is directly connected withRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Harold Pinter s The Room 9709 Words   |  39 Pageshappens in my plays could happen anywhere, at any time, in any place, although the events may seem unfamiliar at first glance. If you press me for a definition, I’d say that what goes in my plays is realistic, but what Iâ€℠¢m doing is not realism† (Pinter, Harold Pinter: Plays, 2 ix) Widely acknowledged as one of the great post-war generation dramatists, Harold Pinter’s fame rests on not only his popular dramas but also on his political activism which is rooted in his concern for people and their conditionRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Heidi 1999 Words   |  8 Pagestheories or critiques. Hebbel and the German writers continued the tradition in the nineteenth century. Playwrights in other countries reached a similar point by the end of the 18oo s, and according to Hirst, twentieth century innovators Pirandello and Pinter are considered successors of the eighteenth century pioneers (44). Many theorists agree that Pirandello s contributions to tragicomedies are great. L Umorismo (On Humor), written in 1908 and revised in 1920, was translated into English inRead Morewisdom,humor and faith19596 Words   |  79 PagesTable of Contents (with links) Walter G. Moss 1 Table of Contents (with links) 1 Wisdom, Perspective, and Values 2 Humor’s Contribution to Wisdom 4 Humor and Wisdom in Europe: Some Highlights 5 Renaissance Humor: Erasmus, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare 5 Two European Russians: Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Soloviev 9 Reflections on Humor from Nietzsche to the Theatre of the Absurd 12 Humor and Wisdom in the United States: Lincoln, Beecher, Twain, Sandburg, and Buchwald 17 From The Times (of London)