Time Will Not Tell
Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Luigi Pirandello, no longer sustained by the literary tradition, inject an uncommon texture to perennial problems that have distinguished the human race in its evolutionary progress. Their works raise questions about the significance of reality and whether one’s life is a performance that is presented reel after reel to a certain audience. While Pirandello’s primary concerns are illusions and self-deceptions of mankind and the nature of identity, Beckett’s vision of the human condition and of the idea that the universe is purposeless, indifferent, and hostile is quite bleak. Both writers, however, Pirandello in his Six Characters in Search of an Author and Beckett in Waiting for Godot exhibit cryptic but logical situations—developing those seemingly illogically—and by continually tossing the coin until both sides are clearly revealed. They manage to convince their audience that the unconventional and not very credible treatment is in fact wholly cogent and convincing. The playwrights stress the ridiculous nature of the empty substance of language, the mere clichés and slogans that make-up one’s everyday performances that further the misunderstanding between individuals, contributing to the bleakness of the human condition. As a result, each individual formulates the strong desire to achieve his own form, in order to transcend the abasement of his condition.
Is there an original or authentic character, person, action or thought? What are people really like? In the business of everyday life, nothing is commoner than the emphatic judgment sweeping and assured in its affirmatives. But as we cut a little deep into the living matter of the spirit, the problem becomes more complicated. Do we ever understand the whole motivation of an action—not in others only but even in ourselves? The thought that follows then, which may or may not invite us to profound reflection, is that all the questions mold and become the bouquet of human drama which is as absurd, as it is painful. The inarticulate homeless woman, for instance, standing off ramp of the 405 freeway’s Nordhoff exit, hopes to communicate a message to humanity with the help of a phrase written on a rectangular cardboard tablet that reads: “HOMELESS PLEASE DONATE.” The woman’s mere performance seems to be summarized in those three words which vaguely insinuate her reality Her urge to convey the dreadful
condition in a slogan that became her creative piece should shock one into awareness of life’s relentless and inconsolable absurdity. The ordinary event of her standing there and looking at the drivers stopped at a red light has formed her character. Her laborious effort of this artistic creation [herself] is itself a dramatic theme, ever rising to “harass and defeat” anyone who tries to interpret it. The spectator tries to digest the phrase by reducing the already compressed statement in his mind, further deflating it into unintelligible scraps of sounds, systematically emptied of significance. The phrase that represented the woman’s reality now holds no gravity to her audience. Thus, forms the notion that understanding is hardly ever possible between individuals because of the meaninglessness of words, the complex multiplicity of human personality, and the tragic conflict between life, which is in constant flux.
Furthermore, Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author addresses the tragic conflict with greatest intensity, and as Pirandello states: “Every imaginary image, every creature of art must have his drama in order to exist . . . all that lives, by the fact of being alive has form” (qtd. in Sogliuzzo 128). The relevance of the playwright’s assertions to the homeless woman then is that the woman is desperate to create a role; her seeking to perform her drama manifests an urge to exist. In the same manner, the Characters in Pirandello’s play gravely seek out a stage where they can perform. Pirandello emphasizes the fluidity of all the elements of production, perpetually set in motion. Drama critic, Antonio Illiano’s comment on the fluxes of life and stage encapsulates Pirandello’s own notions on the topic: “Life has one kind of reality, a transient one—since man is mortal, but art has another kind, since it can outlast its creation, and achieve a permanence we call perennial” (5). In the play, Pirandello’s stage directions imply that everything is a process, even the stage: “From the corner at the back [the technician] takes several stage braces, then arranges them on the floor downstage, and kneels down to hammer some nails in” (492). The stage, much like the Characters, the Actors or the Director, has no permanency, which makes the search for the form even more resolute. The Director’s futile attempts to recreate the six Characters are as irrelevant, as the battle between the Actors and the Characters struggling against each other to establish the supremacy of their own reality. The Director’s illogical approach of recreating the Characters’ experiences and his rapid solutions of rejuvenating their dramas: “Set the stage for the parlor scene. Two wings and a backdrop with a door in it will do, quickly please” (Pirandello 509), proves that the Director tries to establish his own form. However, his attempt to formulate himself conflicts with everybody else’s desire for installation. The want for establishment present in Pirandello’s play and the homeless woman’s urge to communicate her performance to the spectator through art are commensurable as both instances emphasize the desire to declare ascendancy.
However, the question still remains—who is more supreme or in lesser terms “real”: In Pirandello’s play, are the Actors along with the Director more dominant than the Characters, and in the homeless woman’s case, is the woman more supreme than her spectator? The answering to the question will unfold who actually has established the form, and therefore, the ability to exist in a hopeless and meaningless universe. In Pirandello’s play the Characters represent art, as they are the creation of the playwright. The Father wittingly states this notion: “The man will die, the writer, the instrument of creation; the creature will never die!” (Pirandello 497-98). The Characters do not represent life; rather they epitomize art. Although, they seem esoteric, each of the six Characters has his or her own conflict and drama, which is more ordinary or “real” than the Actors who anticipate the Director’s staging and guidance in order to be. In the case of the homeless woman, things are a bit more complicated as it is unclear whether at the moment of the performance the woman lets go of her suffering and completely annihilates herself in her performance, at the same time transcending pain or whether her performance is not mere acting because she does not literally act. Her creation or her art—the piece of the cardboard tablet, exists outside of her, as the phrase only sits on the sign, never voiced by her; therefore, making her superiority vulnerable. As the passing spectator views the sign, he does not instantaneously link the phrase on the tablet to the condition of the homeless woman, but rather sees it outside of her, as another poster or sign which can simply be non-correlative to the person holding it. The short period of being stopped at the red light, does not allow some spectators to fully decipher the woman’s condition, making her not superior, therefore not in her form, and therefore, still in her bleak condition, waiting.
Thus, the world without soothing illusions about the human ability to ascend dreadful conditions, the importance of hard work and achievement, the inevitability of process and flux further contribute to the austere condition. When I interviewed the woman about her condition and asked for her reflections, she responded: “They [the drivers] never donate; when they approach me they roll up their windows and don’t look at me as if I am invisible. The only help I get is from the nearby 7 eleven store on Balboa. Yes . . . I never say it. I write it down.” It is clear that the woman is estranged from her universe because she no longer believes in any of the rational schemes that explain it. Much like Didi and Gogo from Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the homeless woman lives in a world where ferocity and savagery can appear at any moment, often victimizing her directly. Here, this ferocity appears to be the ignorance of the spectator; whereas in Beckett’s play, it is the hopeless uncertainty of waiting for the mysterious Godot. Gogo and Didi live in a world where almost nothing is indubitable, where taking one’s boots off is quite an achievement. However, for the homeless woman, the attainment lies upon her ability to get food. In the play, Pazzo’s assertion of “let us not speak of our generation again” (Beckett 865) emphasizes not only the ignorant nature of his character, but also encapsulates Beckett’s dismissal of language as an infallible source of security. The mere clichés and slogans cannot be counted on to carry meaning precisely, making linguistic purpose simply an approximation. Thus, Beckett shows Gogo and Didi spending most of their time dancing around words, which fail to wrestle their lives into consistently coherent patterns of meaning.
Moreover, Beckett’s description of the places his characters inhabit is graphic, and none of his details of scene are accidental; yet those details mark the absence rather than the presence of the signs of nature and culture. The indeterminate setting of the play “A country road. A tree. Evening” (Beckett 849) holds no detail that would give Didi and Gogo a personal connection to the location. The bare environment compels these two characters to focus upon their basic human processes: taking off boots (849), their inadequate food [carrots] (857), and most importantly their relationship with each other. In the same way, the homeless woman’s setting is also undifferentiated. Although the spectator is aware of her geographical location, still the woman’s constant maneuvers from one venue to the next, in search of food, blurs the concreteness of her coordinates. Besides, the impressionistic scene of the little flowers, where the woman stands, juxtaposes the urban concrete landscape of a freeway off-ramp, creating a space between her and the spectator. The same objectivity of the dramatic form exists in Beckett’s play, where the space, which the spectator sees and the characters who inhabit, are separate. According to Charles Lyons, “We see the scene and, as well, witness the ways in which the consciousness of each character uses the details of that space to establish a sense of his relationship to external reality” (23). The spectator sees every detail of the scene; whereas the two characters, especially Didi, view the land as a barren compass, where [Didi] dwelled “all [those] years” (Beckett 850). Beckett succeeds in creating a critical audience by defining the boundaries of its ignorance. The indeterminate “all these years” and barren land are foils to this oblivion. The character-spectator relationship in Waiting for Godot then is still correlative with the homeless woman’s situation, whose audience is inattentive and does not see every detail of the woman’s setting or in that matter, contemplate the bleakness of her condition.
In addition, from the above relationship, we discern how inevitably isolated man is, not only in the grand universe, but also within himself. In Waiting for Godot, even though the company of another human being is one of the few distractions from the dreadful condition and anxiety, moments of real companionship are transient. Didi’s ignorant address to Gogo “ . . . where would you be . . . [Decisively] You’d be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it” (Beckett 850) shows the characters’ separate streams of thought. The misunderstanding between the two men lies in their ineffective ways of communication. Their need to think merely only aggravates egocentrism which imprisons the characters within themselves. The same way, the spectator from the freeway off-ramp fails to keep ahead of the homeless woman’s reality or to not only communicate with her, but also try to understand her circumstances. As a result, she is left there to wait and transcend her condition through her performance, in search of a form.
Despite the fact that this waiting might imply some kind of hope for their irremediable state; nonetheless, the recurring and static comment of “nothing to be done” echoed throughout Waiting for Godot undermines the notion of hope, invoking helplessness and hopelessness. Beckett’s approach is not an arbitrary choice, but rather a necessary complement to the bleak vision of human condition. The spectator, as a result, experiences what it feels like to live in an absurd world. However random the characters’ assertions about waiting are, they still are not going to move on, and they are not going change their conditions. Under ordinary circumstances the workings of the mind—the anticipation of something, even if it reinforces man’s basic isolation, do provide some comfort. The trouble is, according to Beckett, that “circumstances never remain ordinary for very long” (qtd. in Webb 31). The illusions that seem to give some meaning to life subsequently disappear: Godot never comes, nor does the savior of the homeless woman who will unchain her from her bleak condition.
The homeless woman’s absurd condition can be viewed from the perspectives of the two playwrights who genuinely represent the Theatre of the Absurd. Pirandello’s and Beckett’s plays reflect the absurdity of existence and what it means to live in a universe that falls apart for their characters into a meaningless flux. There is a pondering on the question of the human condition: who are we as humans and what is our short life on this planet really like? In order to have the audience view the absurdity of their characters and their current state, Beckett, for instance, completely undermines the familiar qualities of conventional plays. This, in a way, reflects the juxtaposed locale of the homeless woman freeway off-ramp, who tries to communicate to her audience her bleak condition through the simple phrase of “HOMELESS PLEASE DONATE.” However, this fails, as the tablet is just a repetitive and sometimes cyclical slogan, which apparently does not help her transcend her situation. Her decay continues, despite her attempt to carry linguistic meaning across.
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. “Waiting for Godot.” The Norton Anthology of Drama: The Nineteenth
Century to the Present. Eds. Peter Simon, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 2009. 849-905. Print.
Illiano, Antonio. “Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Comedy in the
Making.” Italica 44.1 (1967): 1-12. Print.
Lyons, Charles. Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1983. Print.
Pirandello, Luigi. “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” The Norton Anthology of Drama:
The Nineteenth Century to the Present. Eds. Peter Simon, et al. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 491-530. Print.
Sogliuzzo, Richard A. Luigi Pirandello, Director: The Playwright in the Theatre. Metuchen,
N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1982. Print.
Webb, Eugene. The Plays of Samuel Beckett. Olympia, WA: The University of Washington
Press, 1974. Print.
