Kat Bowman

Theatre History Contemp to mod

Kellee Van Aken

10 May 2019

Absurdism

The word Absurd means “ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous” or

“having no rational or orderly relationship to human life” (“Absurd”). In recent years, “The

Theatre of the Absurd has received a great deal of attention… and the plays of Samuel Beckett,

in particular have received much of that scrutiny” (Cronkhite 1). To understand the Absurdist

movement in theatre, first we must examine where it came from. According to Britannia.com,

Absurdism or Theatre of the absurd is “dramatic works of certain European and American

dramatists of the 1950s and early ’60s who agreed with the Existentialist philosopher Albert

Camus’s assessment, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), that the human situation is

essentially absurd, devoid of purpose,” (Britannica).

The term Theatre of the Absurd was coined in 1962 by Martin Esslin. Esslin says that

Theatre of the absurd, “refers to the work of a loosely associated group of dramatists who first

emerged during and after World War II.” (The Theatre of the Absurd). The movement was

shaped by the realization that the human condition is absurd.

The common man’s definition of Absurd can be summed up in a metaphor. If I accuse

“an innocent man of a monstrous crime, if I tell a virtuous man that he has coveted his own

sister, he will reply that this is absurd. His indignation … has its fundamental reason,”(Camus

21). Nowadays that would be similar to telling a Lesbian woman that she is straight when she is

out with her girlfriend or flirting with a woman. Going back to the original metaphor, the
“virtuous man illustrates by that reply the definitive antinomy existing between the deed I am

attributing to him and his lifelong principles. ‘It’s absurd’ means ‘It’s impossible’ but also ‘It’s

contradictory.’” (Camus 21). An example which transcends social climate is if “I see a man

armed only with a sword attack a group of machine guns, I shall consider his act to be absurd.

But it is so solely by virtue of the disproportion between his intention and the reality he will

encounter, of the contradiction I notice between his true strength and the aim he has in view.”

(Camus 21). These lends to the idea of something being absurd dealing with a comparison

between the act and the world around us;

A demonstration by the absurd is achieved by comparing the consequences of such a

reasoning with the logical reality one wants to set up. In all these cases, from the simplest

to the most complex, the magnitude of the absurdity will be in direct ratio to the distance

between the two terms of my comparison.” (Camus 21).

Now saying that also hints that there can be “absurd marriages, challenges, rancors, silences,

wars, and even peace treaties. For each of them the absurdity springs from a comparison.”

(Camus 21). The common man’s absurd deals not only with the thing being called absurd but the

world around it so that “the feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact

or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality,

between an action and the world that transcends it,” (Camus 21).

Continuing with the comparison, the absurd can be seen as a divorce and “lies in neither

of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation” (Camus 21). It’s the action and

situation against the norms of the world rather than the norms of the people involved. In that

manner isn’t absurdism a divorce from Realism and Slice of life plays. Absurdism deals with a

world different from ordinary society and when you put the circumstances of the World of
Endgame, for example, against society today or even the society of when it was written it is a

poor mimic, barely similar and definitely not realistic. At least on the surface it seems that way.

A human’s true nature is often reflected in their writings or their works of art. Oscar Wilde said

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the

truth.” (BrainQuote.com). It’s easier to be more honest about your nature when you are not

yourself or if you are just writing.

Most Absurdist playwrights agree with Camus’s essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus”. The title

of the essay refers to the Greek myth of Sisyphus and the punishment he received in the

Underworld.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain,

whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason

that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. (Camus 74).

There are many different tales as to why Sisyphus was sentenced to this fate. Some believe that

Sisyphus stole secrets from the gods and sold them off.

Aegina, the daughter of Aesopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by

that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered

to tell about it on condition that Aesopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To

the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this

in the underworld. (Camus 74).

He was well-meaning but the gods were infamous for being vengeful to the mortals who angered

them. The most famous of the legends involving a reason involves Death herself and the God of

the Underworld, who Sisyphus angered. Sisyphus “put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure

the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from
the hands of her conqueror,” (Camus 74-75). Yet another version claims that his punishment was

justified after his death.

It is said that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He

ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke

up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he

obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when

he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea,

he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. (Camus 75).

Despite being warned, he would not return to the Underworld and “[m]any years more he

lived… A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the

collar …lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. (Camus

75).

“The Myth of Sisyphus” gives examples as to why the human condition is absurd. One

such example involves Galileo;

Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease

as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did right. That truth was not worth

the stake. Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound

indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. (Camus 4).

Basically, the example is asking whether or not the question of truth is more important than the

question of living. Most people would say the truth is more important until their life is the one

questioned. Most of the essay talks about how aspects of the human condition and the Absurd are

linked. Another example talks about the meaning of life and suicide. Camus comments on

suicide in a blunt, slightly cold manner by writing;

 Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are

concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and

suicide. An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of

art. The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps. (5).

Camus talks about suicide through an analytical lens that seems blunt and unemphatic to the

casual reader. I put the previous little snippet in to give a bit of background to the example. He

talks about “an apartment-building manager who had killed himself … he had lost his daughter

five years before, that [he had] changed greatly since, and that experience had ‘undermined’

him… Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart.

(Camus 5). The fact that suicide is like a worm or a rot in the heart greatly helps me to

understand absurdism by seeing that human sorrow and the human condition of the Sisyphus

Myth to see how life truly is absurd. Life is also hard to understand, Camus claims, and that

“killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you

do not understand it.” (5). This may seem unimaginable or absurd thinking. The person who

decides to commit the act often is lost and adrift in life and doesn’t understand a purpose for

living. Suicide is often the result of deep negative feelings and “deep feelings always mean more

than they are conscious of saying. The regularity of an impulse or a repulsion in a soul is

encountered again in habits of doing or thinking, is reproduced in consequences of which the

soul itself knows nothing.” (Camus 8). The soul doesn’t exist on this plane after death and

cannot fathom the consequences on their family and friends.

The absurd is an existing human condition because “[t]here can be no absurd outside the

human mind. Thus, like everything else, the absurd ends with death. But there can be no absurd

outside this world either.” (Camus 21-22). The idea of the Absurd relies not only on human
thought but the current world of the living. Despite the human condition being absurd most

humans don’t realize it;

Before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims, a concern for the

future or for justification (with regard to whom or what is not the question). He weighs

his chances, he counts on ‘someday,’ his retirement or the labor of his sons. He still

thinks that something in his life can be directed. (Camus 38).

Unfortunately before encountering the absurd a man only acts “as if he were free, even if all the

facts make a point of contradicting that liberty”(Camus 38). If a man encounters the absurd he is

changed and “everything is upset. That idea that ‘I am,’ my way of acting as if everything has a

meaning …all that is given the lie in vertiginous fashion by the absurdity of a possible death”

(Camus 38). The only certainties that exist are paying taxes and death, everything else is an

illusion of freedom. This definitely applies to people who see the world through “rose colored

glasses”, meaning that they see only the good and none of the bad in the world. They live a lie of

the world being fine and fair and there is no wrong in the world, but unlike most people, the

general populace tries to shake them out of it.

Keeping this in mind the argument can be made for the Absurd and Theatre of the Absurd

being a philosophical idea as well as a theater movement. I say this because philosophy deals

with the human condition and existence and how we live as Humans. Now dealing with

Endgame and Six Characters, Endgame has been the one that I see as Absurdist. Six Characters

doesn’t seem to be as Absurdist to me as Endgame.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is absurdist for many reasons. One, it is post-apocalyptic and

while that is not a requirement to be considered Absurdist, Absurdism loves post-apocalyptic

worlds because it is a world outside of the ordinary world theatregoers live in. Two, the dialogue
is not natural. It has choppy bits of dialogue that repeat at different points. The universe outside

of the room “is deteriorating” (Cronkhite 2). One of the characters, Hamm, (the de-facto leader

of the group) knows the universe is dying and is surprised to hear that “there is still one flea, one

rat, and one boy” (Cronkhite 2). Time does not seem to exist outside of an alarm clock ringing

for Hamm to take his medicine. There’s no closure at the end. Clov decides to leave but then just

stands in the door way. There’s no “departure, no resolution, no closure. Endgame ends where it

begins” (Haney II 48). The circular plot is an absurdist requirement as well as the lack of a

satisfying ending. To lean into the common man’s idea of Absurd two of the show’s characters

are legless and live in trashcans in the bunker. Interesting enough even though it doesn’t seem

like it on the surface, Hamm and the others have goals. I say this because “As Nietzsche reminds

us in The Genealogy of Morals, the human will ‘must have a goal,’ even if that goal is

‘nothingness’ … and what this entails, in Hamm’s case, is endlessly acting out the ‘old endgame’

… everyday the same ‘routine’… the same ‘dialogue’” (Ware 4). Is that not the same for real

life? People talk to each other, sometimes have the same or similar conversations. Sometimes

people even strive toward their original goals or endgame even when they know it is impossible

to reach, such as a disgraced corrupt lawyer trying to become a District Attorney after their

corruption has been revealed. They will not be allowed to practice law in some if not in most

cases. This may be an “unhappy thought, perhaps, but then again, "Nothing is funnier than

unhappiness," said by Nell in Endgame and considered by Beckett himself to be the most

significant line in the play” (Berlin 1). Humans believe in the lie of freedom and un-absurdity

because the lie gives people a false sense of hope, which keeps them happy.

Six Characters in Search of an Author by: Luigi Pirandello fits into the Absurdism niche

well. Six characters interrupt a play rehearsal while searching for an author to finish their story.
The story “is woven around the ironical contradictions of persons who are the "characters," those

who try to be different from the average man. Six such individuals are placed in mocking

situations created by themselves and by life, and are led through tragic situations.” (Vittorini 1).

The idea of characters literally coming to life off of a page or computer screen is a thought that

falls into the absurd. Now if you are an author, characters can sometimes come to life but I’ve

personally never had a character jump out of my computer to tell me how to write them. Besides

the concept, the characters never reach a satisfying end to their story. They are left alone on the

stage with no one to tell their story. The dialogue throughout the show becomes circular as well.

That is until the director or one of the characters decide to move on to the next part of the story

and come back to it to fix it later. The story the titular six characters tells is one of heartbreak,

prostitution, adultery and murder. However, their story gets hidden in the fuss that surrounds

their telling to the acting company that the characters found to finish writing their story.

Absurd can mean impossible to the common man or the human condition to one more

enlightened. Absurdism or Theatre of the Absurd is the same way. On the surface Absurdism

may seem dark, zany and/or bizarre but it has a deeper meaning into the human condition. This

can be viewed through the lens of truth or freedom of the meaning of life. Often times when

looking through these lenses they are seen differently than it was before the Absurd is

encountered.
 Works Cited

The Theatre of the Absurd, www.theatrehistory.com/misc/theatre_of_the_absurd.html. 

“Absurd.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absurd.

Berlin, Normand. “Traffic of Our Stage: Beckett’s ‘Endgame.’” Massachusetts Review, vol. 50, no.

3, Sept. 2009, pp. 402–411. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=afh&AN=45027036&site=ehost-live.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Theatre of the Absurd.” Encyclopædia Britannica,

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 23 Jan. 2017, www.britannica.com/art/Theatre-of-the-Absurd. 

By. “Theatre of the Absurd Conventions.” The Drama Teacher, thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-

the-absurd-conventions/. 

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Vintage Books, 1991.

Cronkhite, Gary. “Samuel Beckett: En Attendant Fin De L’Univers.” Quarterly Journal of Speech,

vol. 55, no. 1, Feb. 1969, p. 45. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00335636909382927.

Haney II, William S. “Beckett Out of His Mind: The Theatre of the Absurd.” Studies in the Literary

Imagination, vol. 34, no. 2, Fall 2001, p. 39. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=afh&AN=6012048&site=ehost-live.

"Oscar Wilde Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2019. 10 May 2019.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/oscar_wilde_104298

Vittorini, Domenico. “Pirandello’s Sei Person Aggi in Cerca D’Autore.” Modern Language Journal,

vol. 7, no. 6, Mar. 1923, p. 347. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1923.tb06349.x.

WARE, BEN. “Tragic-Dialectical-Perfectionism: On the Ethics of Beckett’s Endgame.” College

Literature, vol. 42, no. 1, Winter 2015, pp. 3–22. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/lit.2015.0007.