THE BREAK DOWN OF LANGUAGE AS A THEME IN WAITING FOR GODOT

By Saprovo goswami, Student

One of the most important aspects of Absurd drama is its distrust of language as an effective means of communication. Here we can feel a radical devaluation of language. Now this Breakdown of language is an important theme in "Waiting for Godot".

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THE BREAK DOWN OF LANGUAGE AS A THEME IN WAITING FOR GODOT

One of the most important aspects of Absurd drama is it's distrust of language as a means of communication. Here we find a radical devaluation of language. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not been able to penetrate beyond its surface. The theatre of the absurd made a tremendous onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication.
Beckett's plays are concerned with expressing the difficulty of finding meaning in a world subject to change. His use of language probes the limitations of language both as a means of communication and as a vehicle for the expression of valid statements, an instrument of thought. His use of the dramatic medium shows that he has tried to find means of expression beyond language. On the stage one can dispense with words altogether (for instance, in his mime plays), or at least one can reveal the reality behind the words, as when the actions of the characters contradict their verbal expression. "Let's go",say the two tramps at the end of each act of 'Waiting for Godot', but the stage direction inform us that they do not move at all. On the stage language can be put into such a relationship with action that facts behind the language can be revealed. Hence the importance of mime, knock about comedy, and silence in Beckett's plays--- Krapp's eating of bananas, the pratfalls of Vladimir and Estragon, the variety turn with Lucky's hat, Clov's immobility at the close of ENDGAME, which puts his verbally expressed desire to leave in question. Beckett's use of the stage is an attempt to reduce the gap between the limitations of language and the sense of the human situation he seeks to express in spite of his strong feeling that words are inadequate to formulate it. The concreteness and three dimensional nature of the stage can be used to add new resources to language as an instrument of thought and exploration of being. Language in Beckett's plays serves to express the break-down of language. Where there is no certainty, there can be no definite meanings-and the impossibility of ever attaining certainty is one of the main themes of Beckett's plays. Godot's promises are vague and uncertain. In ENDGAME, Hamm asks, "We're not beginning to mean something?" Clov merely laughs and says: "Mean something! You and I mean something"

Ten different modes of the breakdown (or disintegration) of language have been noted in 'Waiting For Godot'. They range from simple misunderstandings and ambitious expressions to monologues (as signs of inability to communicate), clichés, repetitions of synonyms, inability o find the right words, and the telegraphic style(loss of grammatical structure, communication by shouted commands) to Lucky's farrago of chaotic nonsense and the dropping of punctuation marks, such as question marks, as an indication that language has lost it's function as a means of communication, that questions have turned into statements barely requiring an answer. In a meaningless universe it is always foolhardy to make a positive statement. The attitude of most of Beckett's characters has been summed up by Molloy in Beckett's novel of the same name. Molloy puts it: "Not to, want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind."

But more important than any merely formal signs of the disintegration of language is the nature of the dialogue itself, which again and again breaks down because no truly logical discussion or exchange of thoughts occurs in it either through loss of meaning of single words or through the inability of characters to remember what has just been said. Estragon says "Either I forget immediately or I never forget" In a purposeless world that has lost its ultimate objectives, dialogue, like all action, becomes a mere game to pass the time. It is time itself that drains language of meaning. In Krapp's Last Tape, the well turned idealistic professions of faith Krapp made in his best years have become empty sounds to Krapp grown old. In All That Fall Mrs Rooney's attempts to communicate with the people she meets on road, instead of establishing a bridge of friendliness, merely serve to make her more estranged from them. And in Embers the old man's musings are equated with the beatings of the waves upon the shore.

Beckett's use of language is thus designed to devalue language as a vehicle of conceptual thought or as an instrument for the communication of ready-made answers to the problems of human condition. And yet his continued use of language must, paradoxically, be regarded as an attempt to communicate the incommunicable. Such an undertaking attacks the cheap, and facile complacency of the view that to name a problem is to solve it or that the world can be mastered by neat classifications and formulations.

Beckett's entire work can be seen as a search for the reality that lies behind mere reasoning in conceptual terms. He may have devalued language as an instrument for the communication of ultimate truths, but he has shown himself a greater master of language as an artistic medium. He has moulded words into a superb instrument for his purpose. In the theatre he has been able to add a new dimension to language--- the counterpoint of action, concrete, many faced, not to be explained away, but making a direct impact on an audience. In Beckett's theatre it is possible to bypass the stage of conceptual thinking altogether, as an abstract painting bypasses the stage of the recognition of natural objects. In Waiting For Godot and Endgame, plays drained of character, plot, and meaningful dialogue, Beckett has shown that such a seemingly impossible fact be accomplished.

By,
Saprovo Goswami



Bibliography:
1. The theater of the absurd------------- Martin Esslin
2. The long sonata of the dead ----------- Micheal robinson
3. A readers guide to Samuel Beckett--------- Hugh Kenner
4. Waiting for Godot----- Modern Critical Interpretation series