“Act Without Words I” by Samuel Beckett is an example of the Theater of the Absurd, a designation of the particular type of plays written by different playwrights in the mid-twentieth century. The central idea, characteristic for the genre of the absurdist drama, is a concept of the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of any human activity. While the philosophical message of the absurdist play is deeply pessimistic, the manifestation of it of the stage often does not carry any sign of the tragedy. It is usually neutral or even has some signs of the comedy, which in given context becomes a tragi-comedy. This contrast of the content and the outer expression creates the feeling of the absurd of the situation. In Beckett’s play, there is no distinct comedy element. However, the actions of the protagonist, often incoherent with the circumstances, and his overall behavior appears as bitter laughter at the futility of human existence.
In Beckett’s play, the protagonist is placed in the desert; at the beginning, the space around him is completely empty. Further on, a very few objects would appear, and, as usual in the absurdist drama, “the paucity of material reality converts objects and figures into symbols” (Muse 100). The protagonist hears the whistles from different sides, every time going towards the sound and immediately, being flung backward, falls. He then gets up and reflects on the next sound stimulus. After some time, different objects begin to descend from above. The man sees the palm tree and tries to find his comfort in its shadow; however, the leaves fold, and his suffering from heat continues. He sees the jar of water, hung in the air, too high for him to reach. Then a couple of boxes descend in the same manner; he tries to stand on them, illogically placing the bigger one on top of the smaller, and falls. He climbs the rope, suddenly appearing near the jar, but again fails to reach the water. In the end, exhausted and desperate, he lands on the sand and stops to give a response to anything. He sees the water jar, this time next to his face, but does not react to it. He does not notice that the palm tree’s leaves have opened again, producing the shadow. He “does not move.” the remark that initially appears in Beckett’s play throughout the text.
“Act Without Words” carries a message about the meaninglessness of any action of humans and the inability to escape the suffering that accompanies the individual throughout life. As Muse discusses, it depicts “poor little trembling, elementary creatures,” which “shiver for an instant and weep on the brink of a gulf” (99). A human may have a hope to get help, which remains for some time the reason for the reaction to the outer stimuli. However, after several unsuccessful attempts, the confidence and belief for the escape disappear; the only thing left is “not to move.”
Beckett’s play represents the significant features of the Theater of the Absurd. First of the genre’s characteristics is the absence of a developed plot. Instead of being a story leading to a particular result of a specific action, it is a fragment with no beginning and no end. The play is a random fragment extracted from human life, equal in its futility to any other moment of existence. Second, the words in the absurdist drama lose their importance, considered unable to express reality. Here, this idea is brought to its extreme, as the words do not appear throughout the play. Third, the structure of “Act Without Words I” may be described as circular; it ends with no result, at the same point of despair and misery, as it was in the beginning. Besides this, the lack of material objects and emptiness is also symbolic; the desert may be understood as a reflection of the inner human emptiness and inaccessibility of comfort and happiness. Therefore, all these characteristics describe “Act without Words I” as an example of the Theater of the Absurd with all its conceptual and structural specialties.
Work Cited
Muse, John H. Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time. University of Michigan Press, 2017.