Symbols And Absurdity In Samuel Becket’s Waiting f

Criteria of Absurd Theatre
Martin Esslin in his book, entitilled Absurd Drama, describes the movement “striving to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought” (6). He introduces different criteria of absurd drama as:
1. There is no real story line; instead there is a series of “free floating images” which influence the way in which an audience interprets a play.
2. There is a focus on the incomprehensibility of the world, or an attempt to rationalize an irrational, disorderly world and reflects the chaos of modern life existence that is lacking order, symmetry and purpose.
3. Language acts as a barrier to communication, which in turn isolates the individual even more, thus making speech almost futile .In other words; absurdist drama creates an environment where people are isolated. Communication in this absurd world is ineffective. It focuses on the critique of language, an attack above all on fossilized forms of language which have become devoid of meaning.
4. Setting for the theater of the absurd often suggests a world of chaos and isolation. Word is strange, unrecognizable locale or an ostensibly realistic world that suddenly becomes warped.
5. Every day life is ambiguous: it is less meaning full than it ought to be. Life does not process rationally from point to point.
6. Characters in this world lack the ability to act from any position of power and therefore, do not behave with any semblance of independence independence. They possess no self-knowledge, purpose, or reliable memory on which to base choices. Relationships in this world are almost devoid of depth, with the forces of isolation and the unknown. Cahn in his book entitled VictorI, notes that Human contact and true love is unattainable, there is no divine god to