Samuel Beckett

Beckett's Absurd Characters

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.

As I have already mentioned in the biography chapter, Beckett read various philosophical treatises; he was mostly interested in Descartes, Schopenhauer, and Geulincx. These thinkers are the main sources which influenced and formed Beckett's view of the world as well as his literary writings.

Beckett's major and the only theme appearing and recurring in all his works, is exclusively the theme of man. Beckett is interested in man as an individual, in his subjective attitude to the world, in confrontation of individual subject with the objective reality.

According to Descartes, human being is composed of two different substances: body (res extensa) and mind (res cogitas).21 The body is a part of a mechanical nature, a material substance independent from spirit; and the mind, a pure thinking substance. This distinction of the two qualitative different substances is called subject-object "Cartesian dualism", 22 and it gave rise to number of philosophical problems, the essence of which is Their mutual connection.

Beckett's characters are such subjective thinking substances surrounded by mechanical material nature; and as the subject-object connection was the most problematic part of Descartes' concept, it is one of the major motifs Beckett deals with. He uses dramatic symbols, to express the barriers and the walls between the worlds "in" and "out" as to demonstrate their incompatibility. His characters are physically isolated from what is happening "outside" and the space they are imprisoned in, is their inner subjective world. "A Beckett hero is always in conflict with objects around him... he is divided from the rest of the world, a stranger to its desires and needs. The dichotomy between his own mind and body finds an analogy in the outside world in the dichotomy between people and objects. ...tension is created between mind and body, on one hand, and people and objects, on the ot...

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...tion, 1992.

10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Tak pravil Zarathustra, trans. Otokar Fischer, (Olomouc: Votobia, 1992) 9. /translation mine/

11. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (London: Penguin Books, 1986) 23.

12. see Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien, (New York: Vintage Books, 1961) 21-24.

13. Camus 38.

14. see Diane Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide (London: Routledge, 1997) 57-60.

15. Camus 10.

16. Camus 90.

17. Camus 4.

18. see Camus 3-8.

19. Camus 88.

20. Camus 89.

21. see Collinson 58.

22. Collinson 57.

23. Carolyn Riley and Barbara Harte, eds., Contemporary Literary Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Today's Novelists, Poets, Playwrights and Other Creative Writers, vol. 1 (Detroit: Book Tower, 1973- ) 20.

24. Camus 11.

25. see Collins 100-103.

26. see Collins 100-103.

27. see Arthur Schopenhauer, Svet jako vule a predstava. trans. Jan Dvorak, ed. Thomas Mann (Olomouc: Votobia, 1993).

28. Collins 103.

29. see Camus 33.

30. see Schopenhauer 19.

31. see Friedrich Nietzsche, Filosofie v tragickem obdobi Reku, trans. Jan Brezina and Jiri Horak, (Olomouc: Rektorat UP, 1992) 46-52.