A comparative study Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros

Rimasree Das

Vol-8,Issue-3,May - June 2023

Author: Rimasree Das

Keywords: Absurd, Ionesco, resistance, anthropomorphism, transcendental, philosophical.

Abstract: The definition of ludicrous according to Eugene Ionesco is "that which is devoid of purpose. Man is lost when he is cut off from his transcendental, philosophical, and theological origins; all of his activities become ludicrous, meaningless, and pointless. Every time Ionesco defines the term ridiculous by referring to the same concept of the absurd, his representation of the absurd infers a paradox. The term "absurd" doesn't have a clear definition. Therefore, despite all attempts to provide meaning, the absurdity of the ludicrous exists in the situation of meaninglessness. The word "absurd" defies easy interpretation in Camus and Ionesco's statements. Ultimately, it is impossible to definitively define the word "absurd". How therefore may the concept of the Theatre of the Absurd be defined? The term's creator and leading theorist, Martin Esslin, claims that "the Theatre of the Absurd is a part of the "anti-literary" movement, which has found expression in abstract painting with its rejection of "literary" elements in pictures or in France's "new novel" with its reliance on the description of the objects and rejection of empathy and anthropomorphism." Esslin, like Camus and Ionesco, doesn't give the concept of the ridiculous a specific meaning. Instead, he is able to draw attention to the connection between European literature and abstract art from the 1940s and 1950s. A literary text either imparts or asks for the process of concretization anytime it interacts with the reader, therefore there may be an "abstract" painting but not a "abstract" piece of literature, one could say. "Absurdity" of the literary text appears to be the equivalent of "abstractness" in art in Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" due to the ways in which both concepts contest the established structures by undervaluing ideas or disobeying the rules of artistic and literary production in art and literature. However, these two works touch on the subject of resistance in the process of enacting it. As a result, a counter-performance occurs in Beckett's text, inviting the reader to interpret it in a different way. Or, the text of Ionesco shows a character against the enigmatically alluring, jouissance-like harmony of the rhinoceroses. Resistance ends up being the only defining trait of "Literature of the Absurd". Additionally, the absurdity of these poems is a result of resistance. Resistances represent both the idea of absurdity and the texts of the Theatre of the Absurd. As a conclusion, we might state that the concepts "absurd" and "absurdity" defy accurate definition and clear interpretation. Certain referents and signifieds cannot under any circumstances be associated with these words. Second, the absurdity of the texts is created by resistances that either the narration or the literary text's structure exhibits in the works that Martin Esslin refers to as texts of the Theatre of the Absurd. Exploration of the word "resistance" is necessary here.

Article Info: Received: 02 May 2023; Received in revised form: 04 Jun 2023; Accepted: 12 Jun 2023; Available online: 21 Jun 2023

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.83.57