Plastic People of the Absurd Drama
author: MD, R8.A, 12/2008
Drama is one of the oldest literary types. It’s
no wonder that we can find many types of drama today and that apart from dramas
written in the “classical” style we see new forms, some of which are comparably
appreciated. It’s clear these peaces have evolved literally dramatically—not only the language,
style, but also the intentions of the author (as far as we can tell from what
we see or read). As well as the way the storyline is presented, the role of
drama and thus the expectations of the spectator are different. While antique
tragedy simply demonstrates the supposed principals of the world, using characters
as mere tools, comedy turns to the people themselves and comes to the problems
of individuality. In later pieces we can sometimes see these two elements
coexisting, or trying to coexist. Character’s individuality may be in a
conflict with the whole Order (Shakespeare is a beautiful example) or it may be
subordinate to it. Absurd drama is different from that point of view. Why and how—that’s
what I am interested in and I will show it in this essay on the example of
Harold Pinter’s Dumb Waiter.
Empty words
The blankness of the thoughts of our characters
is very well expressed by their language. Generally, the sentences are short and
the topics are always related to what is actually happening. Ben reads
newspaper and tells Gus news—although the news make the men disgusted, they are
not a subject to any contemplations. Topics freely changes and the
reader/spectator soon finds out that they are not really topics. We could say
they’re rather loose associations, which don’t really interest any of the
characters and which quickly disappear when another hollow impression comes.
They are not only conversing haphazardly,
without deeper interest. Each of them seems to follow his own succession of
thoughts and more or less logical consequences. This going by one another is
also apparent in somewhat different languages in which they speak. Pinter gives
another clue here, when he makes the two men argue about the right terminology used
to express the act of “putting on the kettle” (according to Gus) or “lighting
the kettle” (according to Ben).
Gus is the one who is usually asking,
encouraged by strange circumstances. His questions are stupid, childish but as
many childish questions, they often hit the mark. As if he was waking up by
articulating his thoughts, he let them lead him to another conclusion and he
pursues the line as if he was expecting something grave, something that will
make him understand, at the end of it. Ben seems to feel it, too, but he’s not
looking forward to it; he may even subconsciously dread it. Similarly to real people, he prefers the
bliss of ignorance. In the end, this conflict escalates. Behind the words which
describe the routine, are part of a routine and are repeated without stopping
to think, Gus finally feels the real sense. Ben’s arguments or rather his retorts lose the residues of logic. He
sticks with his blindness and I don’t doubt he’d be willing to “execute” Gus for
his heretical thoughts as if he was some Galileo.
Written down like this, the narrow-mindedness
of the characters (or at least one of the characters) is clear and looks like
one of those examples, which we find only in literature or other art. But
initially, the conversation seems normal, casual. It’s a conversation you could
really hear or you could really take part in. Emptiness of their words become
apparent because of the context to which the words are put. Put into contrast
with Ben’s and Gus’ job are the topics ridiculously irrelevant. But the
characters don’t perceive that for it’s just a routine for them. To increase
the reader’s/spectator’s suspense, Pinter reveals it gradually. The reader
starts to be suspicious about the men’s job, than he’s assured and forced to
accept the fact without judging the characters. In the end, the reader/spectator
may easily forget that the characters seemed normal at first, that they were
so, so alike him. Our words are often
meaningless and we make empty charts of ourselves by unconscious use of clichés. Pinter shows us, apart
from other things, that it may lead to forgetting the real meaning and that the
way how we think reflects in the way how we talk and in reverse.
Simply waiting for Godot
Let’s have a look at the site, at the story
warp and the characters. Ben and Gus, Pinter’s only visible characters, spend
time moving from flat to flat. The exact room where we see them in is also insignificant.
It stresses the fact that the environment isn’t important—how peculiar to an
absurd drama—it’s anonymous, it’s there just because everything has to happen somewhere and it’s
absolutely inferior to the needs of the plot, not to the “needs” of reality.
The purpose of the plot is neither to amuse us,
nor to show great characters, nor to make idols, nor to indoctrinate us with
author’s opinions. That’s why absurd drama may seem simple and invaluable or
incomprehensible for an inexperienced reader/spectator. The plot is, as if in
ancient drama “after two thousand year”, subordinate to a higher principle. But
this principle is not fought (as if in Oeidipus, for example) or questioned. We
don’t see its dialectics, as if in Oresteia. It doesn’t worry our characters,
because it dominates them in the same way it dominates the plot. Logically, the
only possible unravelling is confirming the status of ignorance (that’s for
Ben) and of helplessness (for Gus).
The two men wait for orders and, as we can tell
from the way they talk, they are not used to questioning them; they live what
is given to them to live, no matter it’s killing people. We can’t even state
they are evil though it may seem natural with murderers. We see killing itself
didn’t get them rid of compassion, didn’t make them evil, isn’t done because of
their wickedness; it’s simply the fate. They are like children or machines in the way they
talk and argue-yet we can’t state they have the mentality of children. The
lack of will deprives them of any qualities and they act as though randomly,
implementing ideas which came merely by chance, not thinking about
consequences, reasons, past, future. Even the emotional excitements come
freely, grip both men and leave as if unnoticed by them. They are sleeping.
Then the two men are confronted with a situation,
which is unusual for them; they are given orders which they are unable to carry
out. When the “dumb waiter” requests food they are not able to obtain, it
confuses them, especially the younger one, who tries to start to think, than,
as it seems. He is, at first, like a machine, which is trying to solve a
paradox. And that makes him human. He feels Godot,
some sense, denouement, maybe next level of consciousness, is coming. He wants him to come, he wants to understand why isn’t
everything as expected, because it may mean for him that the way he has
understand the world until now is wrong:
Gus: What’s he doing it for? We’ve been through
our tests, years ago, didn’t we? We’ve proved ourselves before now, haven’t we?
We’ve always done our job. What’s he doing all this for? …WE’VE GOT NOTHING
LEFT! NOTHING! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
Ben: Stop it! You maniac!
But
Godot must never come—Gus must never wake up—and so the character has to die.
We can say that the plot is made to show thinking patterns of the characters
and that the drama is a critic of some ways of thinking (or not-thinking, more
precisely).
The final scene also seemingly leaves some
space for hope; Ben wouldn’t kill Gus,
his own companion! He has to realize now how stupid he has been all the time!
If that’s true, I only ask: And so what? So they’ll escape now and live a new
life in a new world? There’s indicated clearly how it works in the play and finding a happy end at all costs may often be misinterpreting.
Individuality is in no conflict with the
external orders for there’s no individuality in absurd drama. When it starts to
concoct in Gus, Gus is sentenced to death. A yearning for independent thinking
is sometimes present though it can never be fulfilled, as Gus’ implicated death
indicates. The characters become an integral
part of the environment they’re living in. As in Kafka’s Trial (where the
principle was probably used for the first time), the main problem is that you
can change nothing in the principal that rules you; likewise you can never be
illuminated just because you want to.
We’re not supposed to be/slaves on your
machinery
We can also look at it from the other side: as
at a critic of a political system that makes people unaware and actively prevents them from becoming individuals. The Dumb Waiter isn’t as explicitly
political as for example some Havel’s plays, where the parallels often
straightforwardly urge to be interpreted politically, partially due to time and
place where they were written, partially due to common habits in interpreting
an absurd drama (Vyrozumění atd.). Yet the favorite cliché about
anything which is absurd—you know, Joseph
K. is a victim of a bureaucratic system rather
than his own incapability—is often true. Nonetheless,
from others, this time overtly political pieces of Pinter, we can also judge that
this point of view on The Dumb Waiter doesn't have to be wrong. The system introduced in The
Dumb Waiter is, as already stated,
omnipresent and embracive.
That
brings up a logical problem, though: If
the system really is so powerful, why does it let the dumb waiter
confuse Gus?
There are some possible answers—either everything was well-pondered
even before
moving Ben and Gus to the flat with the dumb waiter. The system may
have its
own reasons and maybe it wants to find a pretext to get rid of Gus, who
has
been becoming an individual anyway. Or it simply may not be important
what
happens with Gus for the system. Anyway, we see a system here in witch
one
person has no value. And Harold Pinter knew systems like this,
undoubtedly,
when he wrote the play in 1957. The first that probably occurs to us is
probably communism, with its hate to individuality, but it would be a
shame to
narrow the play like that.
Doubts
about the system, this time
represented by one and only person, who gives orders to Ben and Gus, aren’t
directly implemented in the play, they’re not a part of the plot, nor are they
manifested in a dialogue as it would probably be in a classical play. Anyway,
there’re many hints. And in the end, when is Ben in fact ordered to kill his
own companion, it must catch on to even the stupidest reader/spectator, no
matter the act itself is not present.
Or was it a coincidence? If it wasn’t, we can
successfully understand the drama as a critic of politics, political and
ideological systems which want to gain the power over the masses by suppressing
individuality and omits education and leading people to individuality, which is
very close to it.
Since Antiquity, the values of human society have changed a lot. But the theatre isn’t there to judge, only to show what we people are like. An insight comes on its own—and absurd drama states sad but true piece of knowledge, that for some may never come. Sometimes it’s a choice, sometimes it isn’t, but the purpose of theatre of absurd is to show it to us and thus make us more able to face it and fight it. It is impossible for Ben and Gus to start a new life, where they would live on their own, not just waiting or obeying. But it is possible for us.