Wendy Beckett

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” This quote extracted from Waiting for Godot, an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett that premiered on 5 January 1953, holds the essence of absurdist theatre and what its playwrights seek to express- the inescapable meaningless and futility of life. The origins of absurdist theatre are commonly linked to the avant-garde experimentations of the 19th century, but there has been speculation that there were traces of absurdist theatre in works…

ASSIGNMENT 7: ESSAY After analysing the character of Yossarian from Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 in comparison to Gilgamesh from The Epic of Gilgamesh, we can conclude by saying that post-modern writers often went back to classical literature for inspiration. This statement can be proven by referring to the similarities and differences between the protagonist as well as the archetypal plots and themes. In literature we find two types of heroes: heroes and antiheroes. The difference between the two…

A simple analysis on Oscar Wilde’s Salome Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. Scintillating with wit, he has left many talented works, and he was famous for his poems, fairy tales, novel and plays. First written in French, Salome was a single-act tragedy, which became his representative work of aestheticism. Originally, the story of Salome was come from the Bible (the New Testament: Mark 6:17-29 and Matthew 14:3-11), in which the name Salome wasn’t even mentioned.…

CHAPTER 1: CONCEPT OF FREEDOM George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a critic. His work as a London newspaper critic of music and drama emerged in The Quintessence of Ibsenism. His celebrated plays include Arms and the Man, You Never Can Tell and The Devil’s Disciple. His works present a bold intellectual criticism sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone. He rebelled against disordered thinking, and sought to puncture pierce pretensions. In the essay Freedom, G.B.Shaw reveals his…

An open definition of the 'suspension of disbelief' is the act of disbelieving the already-known knowledge to permit new information to be taken into consideration for a brief period of time. The suspension of disbelief in theatre is the act of suspending disbelief, to immerse oneself in the fictional nature of performance. It’s in human nature to use ways of knowing such as imagination and sense perception to entertain ourselves. Therefore, it is one the ways of knowing we usually rely on to…

Vladimir 's Song as a Representation of the Play in Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 's two act tragicomedy Waiting for Godot depicts the endless wait for something better as told through the eyes of two homeless men named Vladimir and Estragon who have nowhere to go. As both men wait for a person by the name of Godot, they find ways to pass time in the form of friendly banter, contemplating suicide, philosophical conversations and reminiscing about the past. Both acts end…

“You mustn’t look ... for the old stable ego of character. There is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognizable.” (D. H. Lawrence) How did modernism re‐conceive character? With the rise of modernism there came a huge change in the way characters were presented in works of literature. Up to this point the realist writers painted their characters in broad strokes, often using clichés and making people act in a different way to how a real person would behave…

cannot be controlled by any sort of plan or design. Thus, life may seem to be comic or dreadful but it never acquires the quality of tragedy since tragedy, with its artificial pomp and grandeur, “belongs to the cunning of the stage” (Murdoch 39). Theatre is thus marked, and ironically so by a former stage director, as facetious. And although Charles plans to spend his time swimming, eating, and, last but not least, reading his books, and Shakespeare in particular, his stay by the sea involves…

"Character Studies for Les Miserables." Stuartfernie. Stuart Fernie, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. Stuart Fernie is one of the most famous writers, that's why I choose his article from his own website. In this article Fernie talks about the main characters, he focuses on the way of how they act, think and gives background about each one of them. He mentions many examples, and I'm interested in Valjean character because he is the most famous character in this novel. Fernie focuses on…

Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter are two powerful dramatist of post modern times. They talk about existential crisis in their dramas. In fact, both Beckett and Pinter are associated with absurd movement. The absurd movement describes the meaninglessness and uncertainty of human life. This movement was influenced by existential philosophy of Sartre, Camus and Heidegger. Martin Asslin’s book The Theatre of Absurd is an authentic discussion on the theme of absurdism as presented by post modern…