1.

Discuss the main features of the Theater of Absurd

using appropriate examples from Beckett’s plays ?

Absurdism appeared in the 20th century as a reaction against

the new Realism movement of Ibsen and Chekhov. Absurdists
began writing plays that challenged reality and truth. To the
absurdists the ultimate truth was chaos and lack of order.
Existentialism, which began in the 19th century, also helped
shape the absurdists. The difference between the absurdist
and the existentialist playwright is seen in the structure of
the plays. Existentialist plays, like Sartre's "No Exit", is a
traditional form. The absurdist plays like Samuel Beckett’s
"Endgame", or "Waiting for Godot", consist of structured
chaos which is embodied in the structure of the play. In order
to better understand the structure of an absurdist play, we
should explore the main features of the Theater of Absurd:

The first element is the structural organization of the play's

action. The absurdist playwright tended to use situational or
cyclical structure, with the ending coming full circle to the
beginning. The absurdists' belief in the meaninglessness of
life is illustrated by the idea of a cycle. In "Endgame" Beckett
explores the idea of cyclical, repetitive nature of life. The play
systematically repeats minute movements. In "Waiting for
Godot" the repetitiveness is best illustrated by Estragon's
repeated request to leave, which are followed each time by
Vladimir saying that they cannot leave because they are
waiting for Godot. Generally the climax is deferred or takes
place offstage, as in the play "Waiting for Godot", in which
the character waited for never appears. The endings run
contrary to expectations or logic and tend to raise more
questions than answers.

The second element, character, brings the play to life. In

Theatre of the Absurd the characters do not act rationally.
The difficulty for Beckett of keeping a dialogue running for so
long is overcome by making his characters forget everything.
Estragon cannot remember anything past what was said
immediately prior to his lines. Vladimir, although possessing
a better memory, distrusts what he remembers. And since
Vladimir cannot rely on Estragon to remind him of things, he
too exists in a state of forgetfulness.The playwright uses
them to demonstrate that we cannot really know another
human being. We may know the external mind of the
character but we can never know the internal workings of
their mind.

Diction, as the third element, is a key factor in the Theatre of

the Absurd. Language, for the absurdist writer, is an
ineffective means of communication and is therefore
devalued. The dialogue becomes fragmented, nonsensical. At
times the characters speak to each other in a flow that does
not follow in a natural order. Words are used for their sound
value or feel. Usage of silence and pauses for effect or
meaning are predominate.

Fourth element is spectacle, everything you see on the stage.

Most of the productions begin and end with some type of
image, to solidify the theme and the play. In the play "Waiting
for Godot" the whole setting is on a country road with a
single tree.

The physical humor is used to overlay the serious nature of

the material and provide contrast. The humor heightens the
ridiculous circumstances. For example, in Act I of the play
Waiting for Godot, Estragon gets bored of waiting and
suggests that they pass the time by hanging themselves from
the tree. They both like the idea but cannot decide who
should go first. They are afraid that if one of them dies the
other might be left alone. In the end, they decide it is safer to
wait until Godot arrives.

2. Similarities and dissimilarities in V.W. and J.J.

attitude towards the stream of consciousness method
using appropriate examples from their works ?

Mrs. Dalloway describes the events of one single day in

central London through the mind of one character, Clarissa
Dalloway, who is to be hostess of a party for high-society
friends later that evening. The novel contains many
flashbacks to Clarissa Dalloway's past experience as she
seeks to bring together past memory and present action and
as she endeavors to balance a need for privacy with a need
for communication with other people. In To the Lighthouse,
two days in the life of a family are recorded: one before the
Great War, one after it, when some of the characters have
died. The narrative and emotional focus are on Mrs Ramsy,
but the inner worlds of many of the characters are
communicated. Lily Briscoe is one of the characters who
return to the Ramsays' holiday home. We can note how Woolf
represents Lily's "stream of consciousness": particularly how
her memories of the past mingle with perceptions of the
present and how the constant switches in tense capture the
simultaneous nature of her experiences.
The term "stream of consciousness" is widely used, indeed.
But the techniques are employed differently by different
writers. A major, some think the major, Modernist writer who
shares Virgina's concern to render the inner life of characters
is James Joyce. Joyce's techniques of stream of consciousness
are different from Woolf's. His novel Ulysses provides an
interesting comparison. There is some overlap between the
narrator's voice and the character's voice and the same
concentration on Bloom's interior monologue. In linguistic
terms, the fragmentation of narration is often represented by
unusual cohesion, or changes in the normal ways of linking
sentences, paragraphs, and narration. Stream of
consciousness takes these effects to extremes, often
abandoning cohesion, syntax, and punctation and lexical
correctness which previously brought order and clarity to
narration. The world recorded here reflects the presence of
the everyday in Bloom's consciousness. Bloom himself is
portrayed as an ordinary, average man, most of whose
thoughts tend to be about the immediate world around him.
Bloom's stream of consciousness is made up of strange,
inconsequential associations. memories are prompted,
unusual ideas connected, playful links created between words
of similar sound or meaning. The rules are broken in order to
represent the working's of Bloom's mind. In other parts of
Ulysses, Joyce's experiments with language are even more
innovative and experimental. The obvious example of this
type of experiment is the chapter "Penelope" with the famous
interior monologue of Molly Bloom, which occurs at the end of
the novel. It is an end of the day, and Molly Bloom is lying in
bed, half-awake and half-asleep. Molly's monologue pasts for
almost fifty pages and is totally without punctation. The
stream of consciousness here is in a freer, looser style and
captures sth. of Molly's excited reverie. The lack of punctation
reflects the way in which thoughts and ideas merge into one
another. This is in many ways the epitome of the stream of
consciousness technique.

3. Political issues in James Joyce’s short stories and

novels and the main characters attitude towards them
?

The historical background of Ireland at the turn of the

twentieth century plays a huge role in the subtext of many of
the stories. Dublin is violently subject to the forces of
nationalism. In Ireland this involves not only patriotism but
also dedication to the Catholic Church, as misrule by London,
particularly in terms of religious intolerance, was the
historical basis of the Irish National movement. Joyce sees
both Nationalism and Catholicism as empty shells for his
characters; "-isms" which give meaning to their lives, but
which their ignorance and hypocrisy undermine and render
ultimately meaningless. Ivy Day in the Committee Room is
the most overtly political of the stories. Parnell, the
"uncrowned king" of Ireland who was disgraced and split the
nationalist movement when he was found to have been
involved in an extra-marital affair, is presented as a symbol of
the nationalist movement. Joyce looks back to the Parnellite
era as a time when the National Movement was full of its
proper integrity. Old Jack, the Caretaker says, "God be with
them times! There was some life in it then!" Tricky Dicky
Tierney, by comparison with Parnell, is materialistic, shallow,
greedy and unprincipled. Joyce deliberately dated the story
on the 6th October so that it coincided with the anniversary
of Parnell's death. The irony of the fact that the so-called
Nationalists are deciding to welcome King Edward VII on a
royal visit to Dublin on this day is clear. A further irony is that
Parnell was disgraced for one monogamous love affair whilst
the King is notorious for his sexual promiscuity. The readiness
of the characters in the story to condemn Parnell at the same
time as they pretend to revere him, is indicative of the
hypocrisy which Joyce attempts to uncover, and illustrative of
the degeneration which he aims to portray. The degeneration
is symbolised by the fact that Old Jack's son is reputed to be
a drunken layabout. Equally poignant is the fact that Hynes'
father is described as "a decent, respectable man", whilst
Hynes himself "is not nineteen carat". Most of the characters
are denied any authorial sympathy as they fail to see their
hypocrisy and remain ignorant fools in the eyes of the reader.
Only Mr Crofton is saved through his uncomfortable irony as
he remarks on Joe Hynes' poem as a "very fine piece of
writing". Joyce is making a comment on his own work. But
Parnell, as Mr Henchy says, "is dead", and so is the purity of
his struggle for national liberation. "It's capital we want", and
we watch this meeting of nationalists fall into the sin of
simony.

Centuries of turbulent, often bloody, history have left their

mark on the Ireland of "Portrait of the Artist", and on Stephen
Dedalus. The most troubling issue of that history was
Ireland's difficult relations with England. Irish resentment of
the conquerors was strong, especially when under King Henry
VIII the English monarchy became Protestant, while Ireland
clung to Roman Catholicism. Irish Catholics became victims of
religious persecution in their own country. Unjust agricultural
policies also contributed to the difficulties. The Land League,
led by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell, had
campaigned successfully for agricultural reforms. Other
groups campaigned for Irish cultural independence by
promoting the use of Gaelic, Ireland's native tongue, rather
than the English brought by Ireland's conquerors. Perhaps
most important was the campaign for Irish Home Rule, self-
government through an independent Irish parliament. The
Home Rule campaign was led by Charles Stewart Parnell. If
your family has ever been divided over a key political issue,
you'll understand the vehemence of the argument over the
Parnell question when you read the Christmas dinner scene in
Chapter One. Parnell's leadership in the British Parliament
had succeeded in winning over his colleagues to Home Rule.
Before the bill was passed, however, Parnell's enemies
exposed his personal relationship with the married Katherine
(Kitty) O'Shea, with whom he had been living secretly for
many years. The Parnell affair divided Ireland. Parnell's own
party deposed him, the Catholic Church denounced him, and
his British backers withdrew their support. Parnell died of
pneumonia shortly afterwards, in 1891, when Joyce was nine.
(In the infirmary scene in Chapter One, the feverish Stephen
dreams of his hero's funeral procession.) Irish politics
remained hopelessly tangled after Parnell's downfall. Some
groups still wanted to work for independence by peaceful
means. Others believed that violence was necessary. For
Stephen, Ireland's history was so unhappy, so bitter, that he
wanted nothing to do with it. Let naive idealists like Davin
campaign for political and cultural independence. He will
have no part of the campaigns. He has seen Ireland destroy
too many of her heroes. She is, he says, an old sow that eats
her farrow (a pig that eats her young). He can deal with the
weight of Irish history not by attempting reform or by
revolution- but only by attempting escape.

The first theme of the novel "Ulysses" stems from the political
climate of Joyce's time. Written in 1922, "Ulysses" evaluates
the political struggle for Irish independence. Set in 1904, the
Dublin of Ulysses is a city in which the heated discussions of
political independence, violence in response to British military
occupation and the veneration of fallen heroes, run parallel to
the academic "parlor-talk" of the Irish literary renaissance,
the rebirth of the Irish language and the rejection of
Anglophilic culture. The concept of "Home Rule," for Joyce,
encompasses both the political and cultural questions and
while he examines the British critically, the author is equally
critical of the Irish patriots, many of whom opt for isolation or
nativism. Particularly, Joyce takes offense at the
sentimentalists who continually assert that Ireland needs her
young people to save her; rather, Joyce argues that the
conservative conventions of Ireland are stifling Irish youth. In
Stephen's memorable remark to Haines makes this evident: "I
am a servant of two masters, an English and an Italian...And
a third there is who wants me for odd jobs." Here, Stephen
uses a Biblical allusion, arguing that Ireland suffers equally
under British and Catholic oppression, all the while trying to
enlist young people for a few "odd jobs" of her own. In his
depiction of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Joyce
continues a theme that he embarked upon in Portrait. Again,
Joyce develops the theme of faith opposed to dissent, and
again, Joyce is mostly critical of the organized church.
Stephen Dedalus seeks to sever the ties that bind him to his
Roman Catholic upbringing but Joyce develops the argument
that Roman Catholicism is an integral part of Ireland. The sea,
for example, bears reference to the Eucharist. The
sacrilegious Mulligan cannot eat bread without making
reference to Christian symbols. Stephen, who is a dissenter,
suffers more religious occupations than any other Joycean
character. Even as Stephen is able to politically divorce
himself from Ireland, he is unable to completely divorce
himself from the Church. A final treatment of the religious
theme is seen in the concept of the Virgin Mary whose
Joycean depiction resembles both Mary Dedalus and Mother
Ireland. Joyce's argument is simply that in Ireland, Irish and
Catholic are indistinguishable. We will find that despite
Bloom's desire to be included, his non-Catholic heritage
prevents him from being accepted. Ironically, Stephen cannot
escape from Ireland because of Catholicism's fetters.

4. Political issues in W.B.Yeats poetry?

Yeats's poem "Easter 1916", from the collection "Michael

Robartes and the Dancer" is important for the complete
understanding of Yeats's poems dealing with the Irish history
and politics, and his attitude towards these issues. The poem
was written as Yeats's response to:

- the Proclamation of the Republic of Ireland in Dublin on 24

April 1916,
- to the subsequent fighting of seven hundred Irish volunteers
from the Catholic middle class and the British forces,
- to the execution of the fifteen leaders of insurrection.

"Easter 1916" involves combatants who had lost contact with

soul of Ireland and descended into the arid sloganising and
abstraction of political controversy. Details of Yeats's
arguments are clear: they encompass a beginning which
shows Yeats remembering his very ordinary encounters with
the future martyrs in Dublin. On such occasions he had talked
of a "mocking tale or a gibe", and though he includes himself
in this mundane comedy that he imagines they live in, he
goes on to be very explicit about the reasons for mockery, in
a list about some of the chief insurgents and their
characteristics. The first on the list is the Countess
Markiewitz, whom Yeats had known as a young unmarried
woman, and of whom he offers an unsparing sketch. She had
a beautiful voice when, "young and beautiful", she went
hunting in the West of Ireland. She has succeeded in
destroying her own beauty along with her good sense and
this is a good example of Yeats's growing tendency to define
woman's role and capacity to exclude complex ratiocination.
The list in the poem continues with Patrick Pearce, a
schoolmaster and writer. Next comes another poet, Thomas
MacDonagh, whom Yeats admired and liked but by saying
that "He might have won fame in the end", he toys with the
thought that this is an example of wasted promise. Finally,
John MacBride, Maud Gonne's separated husband, is unlikely
to elicit praise, nor does he receive any.
In the third part of the poem Yeats uses natural imaginary as
a constant flux and says "Hearts with one purpose alone /
Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To
trouble the living stream." The lines clearly show a singleness
of purpose that is the antithesis of the Yeatsian wisdom of
being open to various points of view. The clue to the meaning
of the stony heart is to be found in the remarks about
Countess Markiewitz that he had made which say that the
pursuit of opinion and propaganda alienates and petrifies the
heart. Ireland and its nature stand for that delicate beauty
that the insurgents neither possessed nor understood and
then in one movement they have acquired "terrible beauty".
This reference to the sublime is a measure of how far they
have transcended Yeats's original definition, in one bound
they have progressed from being less than fully human, to
being almost superhuman. Indeed, they have become
images: sublime images for an emerging nation. Just as in
morality, one consults images of right conduct rather that
abstract precepts, so nations ponder the images of heroes
who have founded and built their traditions. Indeed by
moving from being tediously narrow politicians to
bloodstained martyrs, the insurgents have made the most
effective political move of their lives Furthermore, the poem
reveals that the damage they inflicted on their own lives was
part of a sacrifice, the end of which was martyrdom. In
retrospect, the narrowness of their political existence was a
necessary preparation. For Yeats, everyone ambitious of any
achievement must sacrifice some potential and therefore the
insurgents have had to make a tragic bargain with destiny in
the attempt to achieve their aim. The phrase "terrible
beauty" that is repeated several times as a motif reveals to
whom they have been sacrificed. Its immediate source is a
long poem called "Duan Na Glave" written by an Irish writer
of Gothic fiction, Sheridan Le Fanu. The poem is about a
Minster goddess Fionuala who demands the ultimate sacrifice
from her devotees: "Fionuala the Cruel, the brightest, the
worst / With a terrible beauty the vision accurst..." In other
words, Yeats was thinking of Ireland as a terrible
goddess accepting sacrifice in her cause. When the
insurgents exceeded Yeats's belittling definitions of them,
they introduced an element of power and unpredictability,
instinct with the possibility of heroism and violence. Whether
or not England would "keep faith" and as promised
reintroduce the Home Rule Bill at the end of the First World
War, Yeats salutes this power, and, though he does not say so
in this poem, it is fair inference that he suspects that the
insurgents have tipped the balance decisively, so in the end it
will not matter what England thinks. Yeats not only respected
blood and heroism in ideological grounds, but simply
recognised them as potent forces. In all this, he does not
forget his role as a national poet and says: "I write it out in
verse" because nations need their images and national bards
are there to provide them.

7. Discuss the various aspects of the "international

theme" with examples from Conrad and Forster?