This document discusses the theme of absurdity in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot and Wole Soyinka's play Swamp Dwellers. It notes that both plays focus on characters who cannot find meaning or purpose in life. While the plays have similar themes of hopelessness and the search for meaning, they differ in their settings, cultures and techniques - with Beckett using a Western perspective and Soyinka an African one. The document analyzes similarities and differences between the two plays in exploring the universal human condition.
Absurdity as theme in waiting for Godot and Swamp Dwellers
1. Absurdity as theme in Waiting for
Godot and Swamp Dwellers
Architaba Gohil
M.A Sem 4
Paper. 14 African literature
Department of English MKBU
Batch 2016-18
2. • Absurdism in literature
(or Absurdist fiction)
usually focuses on
characters or situations who
can find no meaningful
purpose in life.
Contradictions regarding
the universe and human
actions are a primary
theme, creating a world in
which things become
"humanly impossible." The
search for the meaning of
life is regarded as an
impossibility, since no
meaning actually exists
6. • “Soyinka’s themes are echoes of those of Samuel
Beckett. His characters are gripped by the same
hopelessness in which Beckett’s character finds
themselves”
• -Catherine O. Acholonu
• The issue that possibly motivates the link of Soyinka with
Beckett is perhaps both Playwright’s projection, in their
different settings, of the casual link between human
suffering and the possibility of divine salvation which in
the twentieth century was an issue of crucial importance.
7. • Both the playwrights point to the fact that the
excruciating human condition is a universal reality
and that once created by his god no matter what he
takes, man is rendered desolate, abandoned to the
fate of pain, hopelessness and languor.
• Soyinka on his part succeed through the
incorporation of the African idiom, myth and ritual
from which perspective he explores the absurdity of
the human condition against the background of
African belief systems.
8. • Beckett employs the modernist avant-grade theatrical
technique and Christian concepts to project the absurdity
of human existence.
• Beckett in his own region and era saw the human
condition from purely western perspective and belief
pattern, whereas Wole Soyinka projects same from an
African Perspective.
9. • Beckett employs the modernist avant-grade theatrical
technique and Christian concepts to project the absurdity
of human existence.
• Beckett in his own region and era saw the human
condition from purely western perspective and belief
pattern, whereas Wole Soyinka projects same from an
African Perspective.
10. • Works Cited
• enotes. homework help,enotes. n.d.
<https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-absurdism-simple-
words-275728>.
• Nkengasong, John Nkemngong. "Samuel Beckett, wole soyinka, Theater of
Desolate Reality." Journal of African Literature and Culture (n.d.): 23.
•
