comparison between Swamp Dweller and Waiting For Godot
1. Topic: Comparison between The
Swamp Dwellers and Waiting for
Godot.
Name: Makwana Ankita
Paper No: 14
Roll No: 01
Sem-4
Enrolment No: PG13101020
Email id :
makwana.ankita1993@gmail.com
Guidance : Department of English.
2. Urban and rural life in Swamp Dwellers
The play open and end in this hut.
Unity of Time and Action is also Followed
Waiting for Godot evening time, counrty
raod, a tree.
Unity of Time, Place action is not followed.
Setting
4. What is Absurd
Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his
1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd.“
Albert Camus uses the in his 1960 essay
"Theatre of the Absurd."
Absurd Theatre believes that humanity’s
plight is purposeless in an existence, which
is out of harmony the its surroundings.
5. Beckett and Soyinka also uses
the technique of creating very
important characters that never
appear on stage, like the Serpent
and Awuchike.
6. Theme of absurdity
Waiting for Godot The Swamp Dwellers
Godot Awuchike
Never comes on the stage Never appears on the stage
No any information about him. Son of Makuri
7. Hopelessness
The play revolves around Vladimir and Estragon and their
pitiful wait for hope to arrive.
They are waiting without hope for a
deliverance from a being in whom they do not really believe.
For Acheson, Waiting for
Godot is an invective against Christian hope since the modern
man,
like Didi and Gogo wait endlessly for Godot who does not
come.
8. Acholonu observes that “…. Soyinka’s
themes are echoes of Samuel Beckett.
His characters are gripped by the
same hopelessness in which Beckett’s
characters find themselves”
9. John
Leeland Kundert-Gibbs, “hope or expectation springs
from a sense
of lack, emptiness or insecurity” . He consequently
identifies
Godot with the void at the centre of being in his Zen
Buddhism and
Chaos theory. Following his theory therefore, it is
neither the Zen
Buddhism, nor Godot, nor the Serpent of the
Swamps, nor
Muhammad that imposes its essence on humanity but
humanity's
yearning to fill a void by imposing a spiritual pattern
on itself.
10. The similarity in terms of
setting, characterisation, and themes among all
others are quite
evident in the two plays.
The central issue in both plays is on the
question of salvation.
11. The play end in sadness as the lure of the city
and the betrayal of traditional virtues rob the
aged Alu and Makuri of their two sons.
There is not physical death of any character
but there are several death metaphorical
deaths.
The Swamp Dwellers articulates a sense of the
disorder of human life.
12. In the nature of absurdist ideals, Soyinka tries
to create a drama that depicts..The struggle of
human imagination against religious
complacency, moral apathy, and social
conformity”.
13. Theme of Waiting
Waiting for
Godot
The Swamp
Dwellers
Vladimir and
Estragon waiting for
godot
Alu and Makuri
waiting for Awuchike
Godot never appears
in the play
Not appears in the
play
14. • Beckett and Soyinka
Total despair
waiting for god.
Their god is not
dead They have to
make choice.
The negative attributes of the Kadiye give the
impression that although Soyinka is trying to depicts a
“ people for whom God is dead” . The Beggar’s
continual reference to Allah suggests that God is not
dead.
