Exam 35: The Quest for Meaning

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Theater also sought to capture the alienation and anguish of modern society.The international movement known as theater of the absurdrejected traditional dramatic structure (in which action moves from conflict to resolution),along with traditional modes of character development,inherited from Classical playwrights.The absurdist play,which drew stylistic inspiration from Dada performance art and surrealist film,lacks dramatic progression,direction,and resolution.Its characters undergo little or no change,dialogue contradicts actions,and events follow no logical order.Dramatic action,leavened with gallows humor,may consist of irrational and grotesque situations that remain unresolved at the end of the performance-as is often the case in real life.
The principal figures of absurdist theater reflect the international character of the movement:Samuel Beckett (Irish),Eugène Ionesco (Romanian),Harold Pinter (British),Fernando Arrabal (Spanish),Jean Genet (French),and Edward Albee (American).Taking Beckett's Waiting for Godot (written in 1948 and first staged in 1952)as an example,we observe that the main "action" of the play consists of a running dialogue-terse,repetitious,and often comical-between two tramps as they await the mysterious "Godot" (who,despite their anxious expectations,never arrives).Some find in Godot a symbol of salvation,revelation,or,most commonly,God-an interpretation that Beckett himself rejected.Nevertheless,in some way Godot gives a modicum of meaning to the lives of the central characters.Their longings and delusions,their paralysis and ignorance,are anticipated in the play's opening line,"Nothing to be done."