The Waste Land successfully expresses the artist’s disillusionment with the modern world and is profoundly affected by the shocking experience of World War I. The poet sees only ruins and desolation around him as a result of the decay and spiritual loss that followed WWI. The central metaphor of the Waste Land refers to sterility, emptiness, aridity and impotence. The spiritual dryness of modern life is reflected through a lack of belief – whether religious or political – that can give meaning to everyday life. The positivistic faith in progress that sustained the early 20th century was shattered by the first WW, that left the country in a disillusioned and cynical mood., leading to a feeling of frustration.
The images of modern decadence depicted by Eliot in The Waste Land, reflecting the ghastly situation in Europe in the post-war years are paralleled by the setting in WFG. In both The Waste Land and WFG the present world is peopled by lost, alienated characters.
The general tone is one of anxiety. In the general sense of decadence, man waits for redemption or a saviour. It reflects the sense of collapse in the values of western civilization and spiritual desolation. The possibility of regeneration and salvation is only hoped but never reached.
WFG has no development in time, to hint at the absence of past and future. The setting is a country road and a bare tree. A traditional plot is lacking as well as characters supplied with a clear personality. It has no action, for it is completely static, and also language is stylized, deprived of all communicative richness. Therefore the economy and simplicity of both style and staging directions refer to the author’s pessimistic vision of human life.
The general outlook of the Theatre of the absurd is pessimistic. For the universe is seen as inexplicable and meaningless. Existence is determined purely by the choices and decisions made by the individual, but freedom of choice leaves man in a permanent state of anxiety, as the only thing we can know about the future is that we will die and return to nothingness. The life of Beckett’s characters is purposeless and their contact with other people is almost non-existent. The characters wait for Godot to arrive, but he never does and nothing is learnt about who he is or if he really exists. Much of the dialogue is repetitive and meaningless. The characters’ behaviour can’t be understood. There is no plot with a beginning, a middle and an end. The style is surreal. It is pervaded with grotesque humour, mixed with a tragic and desperate tone. Beckett’s pessimism refers to the dreariness and meaninglessness of human life. This is evident in Lucky’s monologue, which refers to the absence of God and certainty, the growing impotence of man in modern world which is ruled by chaos, as war has deprived man of faith in science, progress and justice. Lucky’s monologue contains a mass of incoherent words, repeated concepts, fragments of sentences and the final meaningless words, in a powerful mix of humour and pathos, but in its confusion it shows that life is confusion, there are no more values and there is complete lack of communication. Beckett wants to point out that life has lost its sense after the horrific experience of the war.
As a matter of fact, the second world war transformed the thought of many artists and intellectuals. Before the war they believed in the perfectibility of social man and in the good produced by a correct structure of society. The war made them aware that the average man was deeply sick, so they developed a pessimistic view of the human race and human behaviour. Nothing much happens in the play. Therefore Beckett’s play is revolutionary because it rejected the traditional conventions of realistic drama, such as a well-constructed plot and a rational, articulate language.
The theme of waiting is a metaphor for human existence and the play basically deals with the problem of getting through life after World War II. The answer is simple and discouraging: life goes on by force of habit, in spite of boredom, pain and hopelessness. The two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, don’t have clear personalities nor are based on social types. They are connected by a relationship of interdependence, wanting to leave each other and yet dependent on each other. They spend their time talking purposelessly, waiting for someone who could solve their problems but never comes. Their repetitive ritual of gestures and actions is a symbol of the meaninglessness of human existence in the void of values left in modern society after WWII. Language is no longer a means of communication and underlines lack of communication instead. The play reflects the nightmares created by a spiritual wasteland. It gave voice to the anguish of the audience who had lived through the tragedy of WWII and the nightmarish dropping of atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. The sterility of the modern world described in the Waste Land is recalled in the bare setting of WFG, adorned of a single tree which seems to be alive, because it has four or five leaves, but doesn’t give the solace of nature, only misery and a metaphor of impending suicide, which reveals all its uselessness.
Therefore, “The waste land” is a comment on the futility of civilization after WWI and the emptiness and confusion of contemporary life. Similarly, Beckett’s WFG, with its broken dialogues, full of pauses and silence, expresses the void which is slowly swallowing the modern world.
