Reflection Of a Cold War Existentialist Context

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Texts concerned with the philosophy of Existentialism reflect the period in which they are composed. The Existential themes of absurdity and angst portrayed within Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot are a reflection of the post-war environment in which the text was written. Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known and significant philosophical and cultural movement. Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair following the war. The sense of threatened individuality, of angst, of solitude, and of tragedy sprung from the conditions of life in this age. Hence, Existentialism became a prominent literary concept in the post-World War years. Beckett's Waiting for Godot is considered to be part of the movement of the Theatre of the Absurd, a form of theatre commonly associated with Existentialism and which stemmed from the Absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. Absurdism as a belief system was born of the European existentialist movement that ensued, specifically when Camus rejected certain aspects from that philosophical line of thought and published his manuscript, The Myth of Sisyphus. The aftermath of World War II provided the social environment that stimulated absurdist views and allowed for their popular development. Absurdism is a branch off of the traditional assertions of existentialism and claims that while inherent meaning might exist in the universe, human beings are incapable of finding it. Thus, they are doomed to be faced with the absolute absurdity of existence in lack of intrinsic purpose. Waiting for Godot was first written in this period in which these ideas emerged and thus, the text of the play stresses the complexity of the historical era from the end of the Second World War. It reflects a period in which the atomic bomb and the Cold War were part of an intense reaction to
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