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Theatre of the Absurd (see
Chp. 26-Read The Lesson?)
Lacks plot
Disconnected
Incoherent dialogue
Dimensionless characters
Bizarre sets
Disorienting the audience
• Surrealism and Existentialism
Existentialism
• Humans determine their future by
freely choosing- subjectivity
• “existence precedes essence”
• There is no objective rational basis
for decisions and science and
reason don’t help
• With our choices come risk and
responsibility
Existentialism-(see lyrics)
• Risk and responsibility cause
anxiety and dread
• Even to refuse to choose is a
choice-boat on ocean alone.
• Kierkegaard- this dread is God’s
way of calling us to make a choice
to commit to a personally valid
way of life-Leap of Faith
• Pascal- believing in God is pride
Existentialism
• Nietzsche- “God is dead.”
• Heideggar- Humans can never
understand why they are here so
each must find a goal and follow it
with passionate conviction, aware
of the certainty of death and the
ultimate meaninglessness of one’s
life
• Bumper stickers?
Existentialism
• Jean Paul Sartre- To attempt to
find a rational basis for life is a
“futile passion.”
• Dostoyevsky- Only Christian love
can save humanity from itself, but
such love cannot be understood
philosophically. Aloysha in The
Brothers Karamazov says “we
must love life more than the
meaning of it.”
Existentialism
• Kafka- Themes of anxiety, guilt, and
solitude reflect the influence of
Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and
Nietzsche.
• Camus- Themes of apparent absurdity
and futility of life, the indifference of
the universe, and the necessity of
engagement in a just cause.
Existentialism in a nutshell
• Existence is always particular and
individual- no soul, spirit, reason
• Existence is primarily the problem
of existence- negative struggles
• continually faced with diverse
possibilities from among which
man must make a choice
• Existence is always being in the
world
Existentialism-quotes
• “I’m sorry, your guide could not be
here, you will have to go through
on your own.”
• “When I survey the whole universe in
its dumbness and man left to himself
with no light,...without knowing what
put him there, what he has come to do,
what will become of him when he dies,
incapable of knowing anything…then I
marvel that so wretched a state does
not drive people to despair.” -Pascal
Existential Characters
• They have freedom with little
stimulus for choices
• moved by forces they cannot resist
and don’t understand
• suffering is a product of loneliness,
alienation and incomprehension
• dying is a disappearance; an
absorption into space; loss of
substance.
Existential Characters
• Heroism is acceptance of fate after
protesting, questioning, whining,
criticizing, philosophizing, etc.
• Hero says “So be it…”
• Reflects that all humans are clowns
and the world is an empty stage or
empty circus-no audience, no one
is watching which is sad/tragic
• What’s it all about?
• Life is meaningless and
disconnected and asks the audience
to feel this-FORM=CONTENT
• Alienation
• Divorced from any previous
history, religion or philosophy
• Lack of communication
• Post WW2-shattered beliefs,
senseless acts of violence
• Sartre, Beckett, Adamov
• Characters lack depth who seem to
be pure action
• Use of humor, often dark, farcical
or scatological
• Use of violence, often random or
illogical, frequently juxtaposed
with comedy-PULP FICTION
• Repetitious or meaningless activity
• Abrupt shifts in direction and tone
• “A world that can be explained by
reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar
world. But in a universe that is
suddenly deprived of illusions and of
light, man feels a stranger. His is a
irremediable exile, because he is
deprived of memories of a lost
homeland as much as he lacks the
hope of a promised land to come. This
divorce between man and his life, the
actor and his setting, truly constitutes
the feeling of Absurdity.” -Camus
“Cut off from his religious,
metaphysical, and transcendental
roots, man is lost; all his actions
become senseless, absurd,
useless.”-Ionesco
“An Absurdist Play does not
reflect despair or a return to dark,
irrational forces, but expresses
modern man’s endeavor to come
to terms with the world in which
he lives. The dignity of man lies
in his ability to face reality in all
its senselessness.” -Martin Esslin
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead
• Dark Comedy/Tragic Comedyabout death, grim, dark, tragic
side of life-Hamlet and
Gravedigger’s scene, Willy
Loman?
• Between parody and tragedy
• Search for meaning and purpose
The World of R and G
• Suspension of Probabilitymetaphor for their frustration
existing in a world with no prior
memory, where illusion and reality
are indiscernible, and where a
supernatural force of some kind
seems to be controlling their
destiny without regard to their
individual will.(no science or rules
to guide you-unreliability, anxiety)
The World of R and G
• Illusion vs. Reality
• Are we responsible for our actions?
• Are we merely manipulated stage
characters predestined by a script?
• Was Hamlet controlled as well?
• “There must have been a moment,
at the beginning, where we could
have said--no. But somehow we
missed it.”
The World of R and G
• No “single clear statement” represents
our own unenviable situation
• “Words, words. They’re all we have to
go on.”
• No reliable meaning because of an
absence of anything that might help us
to understand which makes us like
clowns in a featureless desert.
• Heroes without dignity, energy,
purpose and courage-can’t figure it out.
The World of R and G
• Must wait for something to happen
but it never arrives-Why? Anxiety?
• They play games because they
need to pass the time-Verbal Wit!
• Like The Diary of Anne Frank-shut
out from the world, forced to create
a new way to cope
• Like “ The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” by Eliot- READ IT=HW
• Truth- “a permanent blur in the
corner of your eye and something
nudges it into outline. It is like being
ambushed by the grotesque.”
• “the smallest action sets off another
somewhere else, as is set off by it.”
• “You don’t understand the
humiliation of it-to be tricked out of
the single assumption that makes our
existence viable-that somebody is
watching.”
• “We’ve traveled too far, momentum
has taken over. We move idly
toward eternity without possibility of
reprieve or hope or explanation.”
• “We are entitled to some
direction…I would have thought.”
• “Wheels have been set in motion,
and they have their own pace, to
which we are condemned. Each
move is dictated by the previous onethat is the meaning of order.”
• G remembers a time… “when there
were no questions.”
• R says “There were always questions.”
• “Death is the ultimate negative. Not
being. You can’t not-be on a boat.”
• SHARE YOUR QUOTES FOR EACH
CATEGORY ON THE SHEET!