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Reexamining Positivity of Thinking in Waiting for Godot Through Camus’s Absurdism
ZHANG Si-jie
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2024.08.002
School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Absurdity originated from French existentialism, and Martin Esslin, in categorizing Waiting for Godot as a theater of the absurd, ignores the positive aspects of Camus’s absurdism and regards that as an existential tragedy of mankind. However, the author Samuel Beckett himself did not approve of such a definition, believing that Esslin’s definition of theater of the absurd was too judgmental and pessimistic. Through the imagery of boots, ropes, hats and baggage in Waiting for Godot, Beckett reveals the rootlessness, constraint and agony of the minds of people born into absurdity in the early 20th century. The luck of Lucky is Beckett’s use of irony: people who have lost the ability to think for themselves escape the absurdity and dystopia of life and descend to slaves. Gogo and Didi, who are waiting and expecting, and thinking in the midst of absurdity, represent “Godot”, the symbol of hope. Their endurance in waiting, akin to Camus’s Sisyphus, underscores a form of existential defiance that challenges the notion of absolute pessimism in absurdist literature.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Camus, absurdism, think
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, August 2024, Vol. 14, No. 8, 660-668
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