Waiting For Godot Postmodernism Analysis

SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT IN THE LIGHT OF POSTMODERNISM

KAMTA PRASAD
LECTURER(ENGLISH)G.I.C,ALLAHABAD

In postmodern literary text, the idea of originality and authenticity is undermined and parodied. Postmodern literary work does not pretend to be new and original, but uses the old literary forms, genres, and kinds of literature and art, kitsch, quotation, allusion and other means to recontextualize their meaning in a different linguistic and cultural contexts to show a difference between the past and present as well as between the past and present. literary work often questions its own fictional status thus becoming metafictional. Metafictional means that a literary work refers to itself and the principles of its construction

It somehow shackles most of the obvious epistemological points in various scientific points. In postmodernism, unlike modernism, we are not dealing with any scientific rules, but it is the absolute incredulity toward Metanarrative, which became popular, mostly after the Second World War. It postulates working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done and this is something quite ordinary in Beckett’s works. Each one starts anew, inventing its own rules as it goes

More importantly Samuel Beckett made Waiting for Godot as the violation of the conventional drama and the direction of expressionism and surrealism experiment in drama and theater. Waiting for Godot was one of the most exceptional plays of the post-second world war era. Esslin calls it “one of the successes of the post-war theater” (1980, p. 3) More importantly the play does not formally end when the boy, who is somehow the harbinger of dejection, keeps Vladimir abreast of the fact that Godot is not coming this evening. The play indeed begins with waiting for Godot and ends with waiting for Godot as well. Although Waiting for Godot is said to be depressing, but as a matter of fact in different parts of the play the four characters fabricate different movements of humor in their mannerism and behavior. In other words, tragic and comic aspects of the play are amalgamated simultaneously. Most of the time, we can feel this helpless absurdity throughout the play. Estragon: why don’t we hang ourselves? Vladimir: with what? Estragon: you haven’t got a bit of rope? Vladimir: no Estragon: then we can’t Vladimir: let’s go Estragon: oh, wait, there is my belt Vladimir: it’s too short Estragon: you could hang on to my legs Vladimir: and who would hang onto mine? Estragon: true (Becket, p. 42) Or even when his pants are fallen off his feet,