TESTO LETTERARIO LINGUA INGLESE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

Transcription

1 TESTO LETTERARIO LINGUA INGLESE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS 1. The stage directions give instructions to the actors about the mood they should inject into their words (anguish, suddenly furious etc), some of the actions they should make physically (he snaps his fingers, he sighs deeply) and also about pauses and silences they should observe. Waiting for Godot is a play to be performed on stage in front of an audience. There are certain things the author of the play wants to be included in the actions, tone or mood of the play which are not actually in the words themselves. That is when he uses stage directions and shows they are not to be confused with the actor s lines by putting them in italics. 2. Vladimir seems to have a greater grip on reality and to be more rational. His memories of events are stronger. He is dismayed by his friend s lack of certainty and the apparent lack of importance he attaches to knowing things. Vladimir is apparently more logical bit deeply irritated by his friend when Estragon does not meet his expectations. Estragon who is apparently unconcerned with fact and accepts his human nature without question becomes suddenly furious when Vladimir pushes him about recognition. He provides an insight into the quality of his life which will not allow him he says to recognise a place because he has spent his entire life in the mud. Vladimir, whose superior knowledge has made him condescending towards Estragon, immediately begins to calm him. The two men especially complement each other in the second part of the extract when they begin a contrapuntal conversation, questioning and answering, responding and providing ideas and images for each other. Beckett uses his ability to create nuances of conversation in order to present the differences in his characters with Vladimir the logical asking the audience for understanding when he says he s forgotten everything and using expressions like of course and all the same to underline his assumption of logic. 3. The two men are completely dependent on each other. The interplay of conversation shows their interdependence on the other man s answer any answer. They re-signify their reality and reassure themselves that things have actually happened by asking each other to confirm facts. They taunt each other to

2 the point of exasperation and then try to calm the other down. In his frustration Estragon suggests it might be better if they parted but Vladimir reminds him that he has already done this many times and has always come crawling back. There is also a point in the conversation where they stop using I and begin to refer to themselves as we, a sure sign of inter-dependence and identifying oneself with the couple. 4. The first part of the extractt has longer sentences containing examples of repetition both of words and patterns: The tree..., the tree, Do you not remember?... Do you not remember,...forgotten already?,... forgotten them too? Repetition runs continuously through the dialogue with words and names remember, Macon etc. sometimes repeated immediately and other times after an interval. The second part of the excerpt pares down the conversation with short, tightly interwoven phrases and here the repetition, both of words and structures, becomes even more obvious. In many of the exchanges the two men pick up on the first word from the sentence before and use it to begin their idea; like leaves, like ashes, like leaves or they rustle, they murmur and again to have lived is not enough for them, to be dead is not enough for them. The effect of the repetition is to induce a dream-like state, the sensation of a lack of reality or of ritual repeated endlessly by the two men over a period of time we can only guess at. 5. The men are involved in a very personal reinterpretaion of their own memories and often the sensation is that they are not completely in contact with each other. The dialogue does not have linear structure, it goes back and forth between memories and suggestions and re-evocations almost like a stream of consciousness but with the two men attempting to hold on to a common theme with varying degrees of success. At some points the impossibility of communication between two people is highlighted by a more obvious non-coherence. For example the introduction of the idea of Macon becomes less and less coherent with Vladimir assuming common memories and Estragon protesting he has never been there. Even Vladimir throws the spectator into doubt by saying I could swear we were there together as if he were no longer sure. Estragon supplies an extemely ambiguous I didn t notice anything but says it is possible they were there and then Vladimir completely confuses us with his allusive down there everything is red. With this noncoherence Beckett drives the spectator deeper and deeper into the unshareable parts of human experience where red could be wine from the grapes they were

3 picking or the blood of the billions of killed people who are evoked later. He underlines the illusion we create when we converse together and immagine we are understanding each other when this is in fact not possible. 6. The dead voices could refer to people who have been killed during the war and whose spirits continue to whisper and rustle. The dead voices could also be all the voices of humanity who, like the two men themselves are incapable of keeping silent and who all speak at once, each one to itself. Beckett is telling us again, in a more explicit way, of the impossibility of real communication. We all speak at once and we hear only ourselves. However we are forced to speak in order not to hear or think and because it is not enough for us to live we have to talk about our life. 7. Time and space become ambiguous in Beckett s hands. He refuses to allow comforting linear or chronological development and constantly creates a lack of certainty about where the men are, where they have been and how long they have been there. In the first part of the extract there is a great deal of uncertainty between the two men about the fact of the tree; Was it not there yesterday?, You dreamt it, Estragon accuses Vladmir. Estragon throws doubt on Vladimir s version of the facts; All that was yesterday you say? and asks, What is there to recognise? Obviously this doubt is transferred onto the spectators of the play. 8. Beckett explores the themes of memory and our attempts to construct common ground with others by sharing these memories (or reflections). By exploring the way converstaion is built up he demonstrates how difficult it is to establish some common identity or memory which we can use as a basis for further communication. Into our conversation we bring entirely personal associations and thoughts which to others are non coherent. We block out memories that for other people are of great importance in determining a sense of reality and frustrate them with our preoccupation for other aspects of life which are not so important to them. He also explores the idea that despite these difficulties we must talk, we must find people to listen to us. There seem to be two reasons for this in Becketts view. One of these is the vital importance of blocking out silence which induces us to think and reflect and look into ourselves. Human beings use different strategies for conversation; let s contradict each other, let s ask each other questions in order not to hear the silence; this is terrible, help me. Another slightly more optimistic reason for talking is to feel we exist, that through other people hearing our voices,

4 our words, our story, we have a greater sense of our existence; they talk about their lives, to have lived is not enough for them. 9. In 1953 it is easy to understand that the expectations of an audience may have been very different from Beckett s exploration in this play. Many people may have expected a beginning, a middle and an end and a more traditional narrative form whereas Beckett forces us to contemplate the ambiguity of time and memory and its backward and forward nature. The backdrop and scenery, from what we can understand in the extract, offer very little help to the audience in locating or placing the action. We have a tree and two men little else. The dialogue does not offer the relief which Becketts two characters are seeking; words to stop us thinking. On the contrary the dialogue forces us to confront our own fears and our inability to govern those fears on a deeply unconscious level. This play was certainly not written in order to entertain. In this extract there is a sense that the play will not come to a satisfying end, with the resolution of some deep moral issue as in Greek tragedy or with that return to normality which Jerome Bruner cites as one of the essential elements in what is universally recognised as a good story 10. The extract contains many examples of how the pathetic and futile attempts of its characters to make sense of reality or of their situation; This is awful, Sing something, can be interpreted from diffrent points of view. There is some deep sense in which we recognise ourselves in the entrenched, ritualised interplay between the two characters. It speaks to us of those human relationships - family or work or friends - where communication has become difficult but where we seek to hold on to the comfort of the other person s presence. At the very beginning Vladimir expresses disbelief that his friend cannot rememeber the tree because only yesterday the two men tried to hang themselves from it. The bone and the reason it was given to Estragon by Lucky s keeper elude the audience. Beckett underlines these absurdities with a hyper-real conversation taken from everyday life; You and your landscapes. Obviously these elements of the human condition are both deeply tragic and deeply comic. All great playwrights have recognised this and used it to effect in providing relief from the unresolvable tragedies implicit in the human condition.

5 SUMMARISE the content of the extract Two men find themselves by a tree and discuss whether this tree has suddenly appeared or was also there yesterday. One of the men, Vladimir, is angry that his companion, Estragon, does not have a better memory but then Estragon also becomes angry and loses his calm. Vladimir attempts to calm him down. They discuss whether it might not be better to part for good when Vladimir tells Estragon what a difficult person he is to get on with. They decide instead to try and converse calmly since they find it impossible to stay silent. They reflect on this fact and why it might be, the reasons why they feel the need to talk. After some time they run out of words and there is a silence which fills them with deep anxiety. Maybe they should sing. They decide that the difficult part is to get started, but it is difficult to decide how. After some tentative trial and error a conversation seems to get underway. We are left with the impression of the men s desperate resolve not to let the conversation stop. For the silence not to start again.