Samuel Beckett and The Theatre of the Absurd

In the book the Theatre of the Absurd, written by Martin Esslin, first beings by giving us background of Samuel Beckett. Esslin wrote the Beckett often wonderd, "Who Am I?" Which Esslin infers that Beckett's anguish of identity often come across in his work. "Murphy and Eleuthria (Beckett's first play, which at the time was still unplublished and unperformed) mirror Beckett's search for freedom and the right to live his own life" (Esslin, 17). However, I think that Esslin should have gone it to greater deatil as to why he thinks that especially since according to him, Beckett's work refers to his life. It isn't until later in the chapter that he elaborates on this idea. Esslin writes, "The experience expressed in Beckett's plays is of far more profound and fundamental nature than mere autobiography. They reveal his experience of temporality and evanescense; his sense of the tragic difficulty of becoming aware of one's own self in the merciless process of renovation and destruction that occurs with change in time; of the difficulty of communication between human being; of the unending quest for reality in a world in which everything is uncertain and the borderline between dream and waking is ever shifting; of the tragic nature of all love relationships and the selfdeception of friendship, and so on" (47-48).

That realates very well to Beckett's Play, because it involves all of those apsects or iedas through the three characters. Especially because not only are the characters of Play dead, but there is the husband, his wife, and his mistress who are creepily aware of each others presence (Esslin, 59).

Sources:
Esslin, Martin. Theatre of the Absurd: Revised Updated Version. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1973.