In Act Without Words (1956), Samuel Beckett reduces the human condition to its simplest level of existence, the "last extremity of meat - or bone” (Connor 181). The play is no more than four pages long, but, in these few pages, Beckett confronts humanity's ceaseless struggle with its disturbing, absurd and abandoned condition. He mimes the failed attempts of an anonymous character, an ordinary man, rushed onto the stage, the desert, to obtain a jug of water, floating just out of reach. Tools and objects descend to help him achieve his goal, each confiscated once he discovers their most beneficial use: suicide. Ultimately, the unsuccessful efforts result in his refusal to participate or respond to the world; the useless passion of all human efforts. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayBeckett's short article may seem simplistic, and perhaps a little understated, however, each line and the corresponding action requires a significant amount of “unpacking”. » He creates a complex weave of allusions, drawing from numerous sources, from the Greek myths of Tantalus and Sisyphus to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Beckett was a key member of the Theater of the Absurd, giving an artistic dimension to the attitudes of French existentialists, in particular Albert Camus. The existentialist movement itself has its roots in Martin Heidegger's highly influential Being and Time (1927), and is therefore also found in the work of Beckett. With impeccable philosophical and empirical observation, Act Without Words sheds a “dazzling light” on the human condition – its conditioning – producing a contemporary mythological play about the futility and crushing anguish of human activity in an absurd wasteland, beyond our control. The first lines of the play deliver the nameless character into the desert; he is “thrown back onto the stage from the right wing” (Beckett 87). For Heidegger, man is the being thrown into the world as the null foundation of a nullity, "the being of Dasein [of man] means, as a thrown projection, being-founder of a nullity (and this being -founder is himself void) (331). Beckett's nameless character suffers from the disarray of existence, plunged into the unknown with nothing. After getting up and dusting himself off, a sharp whistle sounded from the right and then the left wing. He follows the whistles off stage and each time the result is the same, there is no escape: “As soon as he is thrown on stage, he falls, gets up immediately, dusts himself off, turns away, thinks” (87 ). The ambiguous whistle signals his misfortune, his pain; it's nothing more than a dog. This resembles the evil genius of Descartes (what was considered irrational becomes reality) deliberately deceptive and ruthless, teasing and confusing humanity; instead of angels as messengers, there are flies. The first object that the flies deliver is a small tree, sitting “three meters from the ground and at its top a thin tuft of palm trees casting a circle of shadow at its foot” (87). The tree alludes to the Tree of Life from the Book of Genesis. God planted the tree whose fruit, when eaten, gave immortality, in Eden, with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The palms of the small tree suddenly close like a parasol throwing off the shadow, leaving the figure nameless under the scorching desert sun. This reflects the exile of Adam and Eve from the garden, forced to work hard for disobeying God's command. What is the character's great transgression against God? Through the caricature, Beckett says that God punishedhumanity for the absurd crime of existing; comparable to the “ultimatum” of the final sermon of Kierkegaard's Either/Or (1843), the major refrain of which is “Before God, you are always wrong” (335). Besides the scissors, used to cut his nails, the next object the flies bring is a jug filled with water. The character hears the whistle from above and sees the carafe. He gets up “goes and stands under it, tries in vain to reach it, gives up, turns away, thinks” (Beckett 88). Three whistles, a large cube, a small cube and a smaller cube, all end up lowering flies. His attempts to reach the carafe using the large cube and the small cube, even by stacking them, end in failure; “try in vain to reach the carafe, give up, go down... think. ... the cubes collapse, he falls... thinks” (88). The third, smaller cube would give him enough height to reach the jug, but just as he collects his thoughts, the "cube is lifted and disappears into the flies" (89). A knotted rope then descends from the flies next to the jug. The whistle from above calls him. He climbs the rope, and when he reaches the jug, it lets out. He falls to the ground again. The peril of the nameless character compares to the absurd, repeatable tasks of certain characters in Greek mythology. Two big allusions are Tantalus and Sisyphus, occupants of Erebos, the realm of the dead. The temptation and repetition without any satisfaction in Beckett's "myth" parallels Tantalus' punishment for committing human sacrifice. He must be standing in a pool of water under the fruiting branches of a tree. Every time Tantalus took a drink, the waters receded. When he grabbed a fruit, the branch narrowly escaped him. In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), Satan and his fellow demons suffer an equivalent punishment for tempting Eve: For a multitude of forbidden trees they now rise to cause them further woe or shame; to deceive them, they could not refrain,... they affectionately thought of appeasing their appetite with a burst, instead of fruits, chewing bitter ashes (10. 554-57, 464-66). The punishment of Tantalus and that of Satan occurs in the realm of the dead. , although in different traditions. Is Beckett saying that humanity is in hell, condemned to a world of incessant temptations, of laborious repetitions, without any satisfaction? Yes, Beckett seems to think exactly that. Humanity is in Erebos, in a desert that continues to expand. The myth of Sisyphus complements the mythological imagery of the subterranean reality of Beckett's existence. Fourteen years before Beckett's short play, Camus wrote his existential essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942) commenting on, among other things, humanity's "logic" regarding suicide. facing the absurd. At the end of the essay, Camus proclaims Sisyphus as the absurd hero, the “useless worker of the Underworld” (119). The gods reprimanded Sisyphus by forcing him to place a stone on a hill, but when it nears the top it rolls back down and he has to start all over again; “They thought, with some reason, that there was no punishment more terrible than futile and hopeless labor” (119). Beckett seems strongly influenced by Camus, continuing his task of searching for the absurd in the past, while "the primitive hostility of the world rises against us across millennia" (14). He would agree with Camus: in man's relationship to the world and to the absurd, there is "a total absence of hope... a continual rejection... and a conscious dissatisfaction" (31) . Beckett's writings reflect the absence of hope. , dissatisfaction and repetition of the absurd heroes above. In Endgame (1957), Nell and Clov ask quite directly: “, 1994.