The literary, dramatic genre of Absurdism (in particular, Theatre of the Absurd) is an assault on the mind of rational creatures who seek logic (Logos). However, the genre intrigues me and many more of its followers, especially the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco.

From a strange, artistic perceptive, I find such plays quite entertaining and unwittingly revealing in a theological way. At the core of these plays is the absurd condition that some fictional characters find themselves trapped, in a life without meaning, despite there being a meaning in such a condition (boredom), which makes it all the more bizarre and paradoxical. (To say ‘life is meaningless’ would have to include the meaning of that sentence.)

For readers unfamiliar with this strange genre, of which my own works of fiction touches on, the Theatre of the Absurd emerged in Paris during the 1950s, after the Second World War. For many anti-Christian Godless artistic intellectuals, the conflict had exposed the “fragility of the moral, political, and rational structures upon which European civilisation had claimed to rest”. In my opinion, this is a convenient way of turning one’s back on a God some people no longer believe to a secular State God that controls the masses.

It’s also convenient for an “anything goes” moral autonomy kulture (sic…and morally sick). But as the ‘best music is played in Hell’, ditto some surreal art endeavours and/or ‘poetic’ drama also qualify as strangely appealing, especially for artists.

According to senior drama writer, Justin Cash:

The term “Theatre of the Absurd” is one of the most frequently invoked and misunderstood labels in twentieth-century dramatic criticism. “Absurd” is often reduced in classrooms to a synonym for ‘ridiculous,’ ‘nonsensical,’ or ‘silly’ — an adjective applied to plays that appear illogical, fragmented, or comic without evident purpose. This view, while understandable given the surface features of the plays in question, misrepresents the philosophical foundation on which the term was built. To understand Theatre of the Absurd with any rigour, one must return to its origins in existentialist philosophy, and specifically to Albert Camus’s 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus, from which the critic Martin Esslin drew both his terminology and his critical framework: The Real Meaning Of “Absurd” In Theatre Of The Absurd | The Drama Teacher

The books and plays produced during that era, which rejected linear plots.There is something of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ about such works. That’s not to say an undressed body can’t be amusing, if not vaguely intriguing; especially one thrown naked onto a speck of solar dust called Planet Earth, orbiting a giant ball of fire lost in a Godless cosmos.

To the drama critics of yesteryear, the Theatre of the Absurd was always seen as very French. But now in the early decades of the 21st century, the denizens of the theatre world are invariably Godless: modern-day ‘French’, if you will. But there’s a difference: The most rebellious, authentic, anti-Establishment thing a 21st century playwright can do, is write a beautiful drama devoid of bleak, ugly, Godless content.

However, back in the day, when those hostile to Christians were anti-Establishment, one such revolutionary play with bleak, ugly, cruel, bizarre, depressing, hopeless, meaningless content was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, which was premiered many years ago at Theatre de Babylone, Paris, in 1953. 

In Dublin, Ireland, The Gate Theatre is renowned for producing the best performances of Beckett’s plays, especially ‘Godot’. When ‘Godot’ made its way to Dublin some years after its Paris premier, audiences where divided but it soon became popular. This success later resulted in 1991 when the Gate became the first theatre in the world to stage 19 Beckett plays.

In recent years, it has become hip to like Beckett, and I believe, in some ways, genuine admirers of ‘Godot’ believe it has suffered as a consequence of this due to its popularisation into the mainstream. There seems to be a certain kind of dilettantism, pretentiousness, amongst many of Beckett’s fans, due to his plays’ dark and perplexing content.

That aside, however, in the Gate Theatre’s versions of ‘Godot’ in recent times, the two hapless tramps were usually played by actors Barry McGovern (Vladimir) and Johnny Murphy (Estragon). The pair deliver Beckett’s pithy, rambling dialogue to perfection. Barry McGovern is a highly acclaimed versatile freelance actor. He is also the world’s leading Beckett actor. I asked him if he thought Beckett was inspired in any way by the Book of Ecclesiastes or if ‘Godot’ has become more relevant today than it was over 60 years ago. He said:

I think Waiting for Godot and the other plays have stood the test of time because they say more about the experience of what it is to be – especially at this time – than any other. I’m not sure that Ecclesiastes inspired Beckett. Or that it contains much hope. After all, the main thrust of the book is ‘Vanity of vanities… all is vanity’. Though perhaps the most Beckettian verses are ‘Two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up’.  All that Fall is based on the verse in psalm 145: ‘The Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down’. I do think Waiting for Godot has some hope.

Other characters in the play that the couple meet are Pozzo (a cruel master during first appearance), Lucky (his slave during first appearance) and a boy (a messenger). What is tedious about this tragicomedy is its repetition; what’s intriguing about it is its absurdness; and what’s tragic about it is the absence of God, meaning, and a seemingly hopeless situation. Beckett once said that Godot did not represent God. However, did he unconsciously mean ‘Godot’ to be God when he wrote the play, perhaps in a state of trance emanating from the Id?

Although he grew up in a Protestant background, the adult Beckett’s worldview was certainly atheistic. As for his inspiration for ‘Godot’, it could lie anywhere from Shakespeare’s King Lear, Caspar Friedrich’s painting ‘Two Men Contemplating the Moon’, to de Balzac’s play Mercadet, in which the protagonist waits in vain for an unseen person called Godeau; or Victor Frankl’s Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager; in English: Man’s Search For Meaning.

However, in Beckett’s ‘Godot’, there are lots of allusions to the Bible in the characters’ theological discussions, as well as their physical sufferings and uncomfortable, badly fitted clothes. Vladimir’s mention of only one Gospel referring to the thief on the cross being saved is delivered by one who seems to have some knowledge of the Bible but little understanding.

Vladimir: “How is it that of the four evangelists, only one speaks of a thief being saved? The four of them were there  – or thereabouts – and only one speaks of a thief being saved.”

The debunking-Christianity remarks of Vladimir (or Beckett) fails to acknowledge that unanimous corroboration in evidence, even in a court of law, can often point to conspiracy to achieve a consensus, favourable outcome, even propaganda. But rigid Gospel analyses, biblical inerrancy and interpretation are for another essay.

It doesn’t take away from the fact that this nightmarish situation also has echoes of Sartre’s play No Exit: an intellectual Hell of eternal suffering, and not that traditionally depicted metaphorically in Christianity or the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch.

‘Godot’ is certainly not a play about two scruffy men waiting for someone who doesn’t turn up. No, Beckett’s ‘Godot’ has such a profound effect in the world of theatre because it touches on one of the greatest scourges of Mankind: boredom and meaninglessness in a Godless universe.

To illustrate a brief antidote to the boredom aspect of the play, imagine the contrast of a pub instead of a barren tree as the centrepiece on the stage of ‘Godot’. In such an establishment, our two scruffy tramps would descend into a drunken stupor oblivious to the tedious waiting game for a person who never arrives. That would temporarily sort out the boredom.

But the hangover would be horrendous, as the boredom returns and the quest for salvation, meaning and the arrival of Godot would remain elusive if not non-existent.

However, if Beckett was an atheist, it seems, like many atheists, he might have suffered from ‘phantom God’ or intuitively believed in Him. For the atheist to fully accept (in Naturalism, could ‘acceptance’ exist?) that he or she is entirely determined, life would be intolerable and unlivable.

It’s also possible Beckett believed in a deistic God, one who doesn’t care for humanity and is distant from the cast of ‘Godot’ in such a decaying setting. And his characters Vladimir and Estragon mirror such a view. The symbolism in ‘Godot’ points to the pathos of Man and his wretchedness: both tramps are filthy and Pozzo is initially cruel to Lucky, whom he temporarily controls with a rope. Pozzo and Lucky’s first appearance might also point to the determinism a puppet master (Naturalism) has in controlling his (molecular) puppet.

According to Naturalism, we would be unaware molecular puppets going through our earthly motions, thus possibly ‘lucky’ in our state of cosmic, blissful ignorance. In such a world, Pozzo couldn’t be accused of cruelty: how could he ever improve his morality? And the complaining protagonists couldn’t complain about the problem of suffering, as any meaningful conversations would be paradoxically meaningless and without moral justification.

The wickedness of Beckett’s world is beyond righteous indignation because that world just is and not what it ought to be. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that we must build our lives upon the firm foundations of unyielding despair. And what is the despair in ‘Godot’, if there is any? Is it because the players’ lives are out of harmony in a Godless world?

The playwright Eugene Ionesco sums up the meaning of despair of the Theatre of the Absurd when he wrote that absurd is that which is devoid of purpose; ‘cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, Man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless’. (Dans les armes de la ville, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, No. 20, October 1957.)

I can’t get inside Beckett’s mind or know his motives; I can only speculate on what I think is more probable than improbable. If he was rejecting Logos and embracing avant-garde in turning his back on classical conventions for nihilistic reasons, then I believe he unwittingly gets caught in his own secular net. Why? Such a weird world proves that our existence points to the existence of God by showing us the absurdity of life on Naturalism.

As Secular Man is driven by endless, unachievable desires and with no higher destiny, we can also see Beckett’s bleak vision in philosophical literature, music, Surrealist art and cinema: from the Godless Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation), Wagner (Tristan und Isolde), Nietzsche (Parable of the Madman), to Ernst (At the First Clear Word), and Bunuel (Cet Obscur Objet du Desir, and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoise.)

No doubt, the expectations of those who saw/read/heard ‘Godot’ and the above for the first time were contradicted by the anomalies in the absurd narrative and denouement. This is what happens when the moral order is suppressed or turned upside-down.

Whatever the case, my criticism of Beckett’s atheistic absurd drama in no way proves Christianity to be true, in the same way one cannot prove with ultimate certainty the existence of the external world or other minds other than one’s own. But it does prove that existence in such an absurd world is not only irrational, but terrifyingly unliveable.

I believe the most profound sentence in the history of Mankind is the opening line in the Gospel of St John (1:1): ‘In the beginning was the word’. Written in Greek, The Word is Logos: Logic, Language, Truth, Reason, Beauty, Meaning, Moral Order. Ultimately, the Logos is God. And ultimately, ‘Godot’ is devoid of this. But even the concept of a meaningless universe in ruins is nakedly intriguing, as it paradoxically repels but is also fascinating in its unresolved bleakness. With God, there is no ultimate bleakness, as His creations of our minds and souls are true sparks of the Divine.