Samuel Beckett

The Hell of No Exit Existentialism has always been a new way to view life. To live – to exist – without context, without labels, without definitions given by everyone else is a notion that is relieving for some and distressing for others. Written by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944, the French play No Exit, paints a vivid and imaginative picture of an existentialist’s hell. By trapping one’s greatest fears in a room for eternity, Sartre’s intricately woven depiction of modern Hell introduces a new…

2. The Crying of Lot 49: modernism or postmodernism? In my arguing that The Crying of Lot 49 can also be construed as a late-modernist text, I will turn to Harvey’s essay ‘The Cry from Within or Without? Pynchon and the Modern – Postmodern Divide’ where he fervently argues against McHale’s ‘claim’ that The Crying of Lot 49 is fundamentally a modernist text by presenting two core arguments relating to a) intertextuality and b) Oedipa’s search for truth. Before I will dispute any arguments of…

Throughout Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work, Notes from Underground, the protagonist, the underground man, portrays himself as a spiteful, self-contradictory, and overly conscious melancholy man. He continuously over analyzes and questions everything, and this prevents him from taking any real action. The underground man is lonely and constantly vacillates between wanting society’s acknowledgment or to be socially desired and wanting to be completely isolated from society. He gives off the impression…

• The Absurd: What then is meant by the notion of the Absurd? Contrary to the view conveyed by popular culture, the Absurd, at least not what Camus had stated, that it does not simply refer to some vague perception that modern life is fraught with paradoxes, incongruities, and intellectual confusion. Instead, as he emphasizes and tries to make clear, the Absurd expresses a fundamental disharmony, a tragic incompatibility, in our existence. In effect, he argues that the Absurd is the…

“Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different,” King should know having written many novels that are adapted to films. Both the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian and screen play of the film Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie, attempts to demolish the idea of an archetypal aboriginal person from a Native “Rez,” but the film addresses this in a more effective way. The film has a naïve Thomas and an indifferent Victor…

There is a major contrast between the way in which the settings of Translations and Stuff Happens are described in addition to the number of places that feature. For example, in Stuff Happens David Hare frequently changes the setting with generally brief descriptions of Hotel Pierre, Camp David and many other locations, cohering with the play’s chaotic style and numerous characters. The stage directions in Stuff Happens are shorter than in Translations and usually fixate on the characters and…

As the age of postmodernism dawned, the stigma and nature of literature changed and the idea of the ‘death of the author’ was born. Instead of reaching obvious conclusions in their stories, authors began to leave gaps and ironies in their work, allowing readers to form their own opinions. But, while some people are not satisfied with the idea of these ‘open systems,’ perhaps the most significant pieces of work were born during this era of postmodernism. For example, Thomas Pynchon’s short story…

your best friend, with lines like how many of us have them and the ones we can depend on? Our friends can sometimes represent who we are and what we stand for, so it’s very important to choose them wisely. I will be examine Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, to determine if Didi or Gogo shared a friendship. Waiting for Godot, Didi and Gogo had sort of a confusing friendship, at times made me scratch my head a couple of times and ask; are they friends or are they not friends? What is the…

In fact, the way in which Elizabeth Bowen delineates her disoriented national identity becomes the most alluring aspect in the novel. The two family homes, Holme Dene and Mount Morris serve as key representers for London and Ireland respectively. Stella’s visit to Mrs. Kelways house provides her the motivation to shift her thoughts from ignorance to knowledge about Robert. Mount Morris, on the other hand, restores Stella’s vision of her heritage but she quickly realizes that she could never live…

onto when reading The Fall, readers are, in a sense, forced to accept the idea of a subjective reality. No Man’s Land, a play written by Harold Pinter, further explores the theme of reality and it’s relationship to existentialism. Two men in their sixties, Hirst and Spooner, are talking in Hirst’s living room. They have just met at a bar. They are both drinking, which is evident from the somewhat choppy dialogue. The encounter seems choppy as well. At first the two men seem like strangers but…