1. How can you apply the Latin phrase Esse est percipi to a specific and concrete analysis of Beckett’s material?
Esse est percipi, or To be is to be seen, is a very profound statement which Beckett seems to use as one of the major themes of his playwriting. Beckett’s Collection of Shorter Plays often have no beginning or end and build good examples of to be is to be seen. Beckett’s utilizes the senses in his writing. With the use of the sense of seeing, and the sense of hearing, Beckett builds his characters very being and thus brings forth the idea of to be is to be seen..
In Happy Days, Beckett created the character of Winnie who is trapped and buried in a mound of dirt. Beckett has written Winnie as being a great deal focused on seeing. During the play, Winnie is constantly doing things that emphasize the act of seeing. She is putting on and removing her glasses, reading the tube of toothpaste, reading the handle of the brush and other such acts. By seeing each item, and reading the writing on it, she justifies its existence and in reading and seeing each item she exists. Her eyes are used as props, opened and shut, demonstrating “that one sees the other the other sees the one” (28). This declaration is very powerful example of each person justifies the other by seeing the other. Without one seeing the other, there is no one to see the one. In this simple statement, Winnie proclaims the very act of existence. Winnie makes many other statements about the act of seeing, during the play, when talking with her husband Willie, as in “Could you see me, Willie do you think, from where you are, if you were to raise your eyes to me […] Lift your eyes to me” (28). Winnie needs Willie to look at her to verify that she is still there by seeing him, and him seeing her.
Being stuck in the same routine of her day-to-day living can be a prison. By sharing that day with someone, even if it is just hearing or being seen, it gives Winnie a reason to go on and “to be”. Winnie articulates the feeling of disappearing in a blink of an eye by stating “Strange feeling that someone is looking at me.
In the story, The Watcher by James Howe, a girl named Margaret feels invisible and isolated because nobody thinks she is important. Margaret is a poor and outcast skinny girl.She writes in her journal about how she wishes her family life could be better. She was also being abused by her father and never attempted to call the Police.She also had a rough and bad Childhood.The first time Chris Spoke to Margaret(The Watcher) all he discovered at was a pain, sadness, and Loneliness.
people's lives. What Winnie didn't know was that her wish of being left alone was going to come true sooner than she thought. The firs...
In the written text, Shakespeare emphasis's the hidden reality through the use of dramatic techniques of imagery and symbolism. There is a constant use of light and dark imagery which is used by the protagonist , MAC...
Jones, Eldred. "Othello- An Interpretation" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 39-55)
In Hamlet’s speech, Shakespeare’s efforts to target his Elizabethan audience develop the theme of the frailty of man. Shakespeare conveys this underlying theme of the play by subt...
From the moment that the curtain rises, Waiting for Godot assumes an unmistakably absurdist identity. On the surface, little about the plot of the play seems to suggest that the actions seen on stage could or would ever happen. At the very least, the process of waiting hardly seems like an ideal focus of an engaging and entertaining production. Yet it is precisely for this reason that Beckett’s tale of two men, whose only discernable goal in life is to wait for a man known simply as Godot, is able to connect with the audience’s emotions so effectivel...
In William Faulkner’s Light In August, most characters seem isolated from each other and from society. It is often argued that Lena Grove is an exception to this, but I have found that I cannot agree with this view. Consequently, this essay will show that Lena is lonely too, and that the message in Faulkner’s work on the issue of human contact is that everyone is essentially alone, either by voluntary recession from company or by involuntary exclusion, and the only escape from this loneliness is to have a proper family to comfort you.
Written in 1962-3, Play depicts three characters, a man (M), and two women (W1 and W2) trapped in urns with only their heads showing. These characters each present their own version of a love triangle, which once occurred between them. It becomes clear during the play that the characters, once tortured by each other, are now tortured by their situation. A spotlight acts as a "unique inquisitor," compelling each to speak when it shines on them, and to stop when it goes out. As this assault continues, the characters become increasingly maddened by the light, and increasingly desperate to make it stop. The play repeats itself, providing the audience with a sense that these characters have been saying the same words for an eternity, and will continue to do so until the light decides they can stop. Beckett demonstrates how "A style of living, theatrically communicable, is used to express a state of mind."
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Miss Brill’s loneliness causes her to listen in on conversations. This is her only means of achieving a sense of companionship. She feels that for a moment she is “sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute” (98). Aside from that, she is part of no one’s life.
Beckett did not view and express the problem of Absurdity in any form of philosophical theory (he never wrote any philosophical essays, as Camus or Sartre did), his expression is exclusively the artistic language of theatre. In this chapter, I analyse the life situation of Beckett's characters finding and pointing at the parallels between the philosophical background of the Absurdity and Beckett's artistic view.
I think that the narrator feels much alone in life, even though she has a family who cares for her. She is clinically depressed so naturally she is going to feel isolated from the world. Speaking about a house that the narrator grew up in, she writes, 'and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
In our own time more genteel, but also more intellectualized versions of Rymer’s disfavour have been voiced by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis, who both consider and reject the personality that Othello presents to the outside world, pointing out that he is not so much deceived as a self-deceiver, a man presented by Shakespeare as constitutionally incapable of seeing the truth about himself. So the detached, ironic view of the creator contrasts with the tragical and romantic view taken of himself by the created being. (201)
The short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield gives a good look into how secluded people can begin to distort the way they perceive what happens around them, unwittingly deny their loneliness, making their warped perception of the what they believe to be true to be destroyed. Mansfield uses the characterization of the protagonist along with their actions to make the story enjoyable for the audience.
Samuel Beckett's stage plays are gray both in color and in subject matter. Likewise, the answer to the question of whether or not Beckett's work is Absurdist also belongs to that realm of gray in which Beckett often works. The Absurdist label becomes problematic when applied to Beckett because his dramatic works tend to overflow the boundaries which scholars attempt to assign. When discussing Beckett, the critic inevitably becomes entangled in contradiction. The playwright's own denial "that there is a philosophical system behind the plays" and his explicit refusal "to reduce them to codified interpretations" suggests, one could argue, that to search for such systems or interpretations in Beckett's work is, at best, a fruitless endeavor (Beckett quoted. in McMillan 13). Let me suggest, however, that Beckett's own statements and criticisms not be taken as a deterrent to the study of his work. His objections threaten only those interpretations which "reduce" his work. The challenge for the critic, then, is to evaluate and analyze Beckett in such a way that his works are not reduced but enhanced.