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| Eugene Ngezem |
Eugene Ngezem, Ph.D.
Samuel Beckett, Harold
Pinter, and Athol Fugard, who are among the world’s leading modern dramatists
and hail from different countries and continents, are attracted, if not
repelled, by the culture of violence that has encircled the world. They, in
unambiguous terms and with compelling finality, show that our world is a
violent place where the weak run the risk of extinction. In Beckett’s Waiting
for Godot and Endgame, in Pinter’s The
Caretaker and The
Homecoming, and in
Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, violence and the pain it inflicts echo, as it were, modern man’s
collective experience. The growing doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes and
the propensity for the acquisition of nuclear arsenal as deterrence in our
world seem to coincide with the perception of violence in these plays. Samuel
Beckett (Irish), Harold Pinter (English), and Athol Fugard (South African),
perceived by many as icons of modern dramatists, present a grim picture of
barbarism in their plays. Their plays, of course, represent Europe and Africa,
and by extension the entire world immersed in rampant and random brutality. At
the backdrop of this brutality lies the waste of modern civilization, the
emptiness of man’s existence, the spiritual barrenness and moral collapse of
the world and its weary people. In these plays, humanity drifts through
despair, lamentations, and brutality in a world of lawlessness, where the weak
have no protection. In consonance with
the belligerent nature of modern man, as seen in the continuing militant legacy
of the First and Second World Wars, Beckett, Pinter and Fugard present
characters who indulge in both physical and verbal violence.
Like Beckett, who joined the Second
World War on grounds that “I couldn’t stand with my arms folded,” his
characters are targets and sources of violence (qtd. in Cohn ix). Besides, “Beckett
was himself subject to … nightmares, panic attacks, isolation, and numbness”
(Tankanka et al 24). In Waiting for Godot, unidentified people
frequently beat Estragon. As if to resign himself to his fate, he tells
ESTRAGON.
I don’t know.
yourself. Wouldn’t have let them beat you.
ESTRAGON. You
couldn’t have stopped them.
ESTRAGON. There
was ten of them.
from doing whatever it was you were
doing.
ESTRAGON.
I wasn’t doing anything. (38)
Estragon’s experience shows insecurity and aggression in the
world, a world where one needs to know how to defend oneself, especially as
violence is random and unexplained.
Given the growing doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes
and the propensity for the acquisition of nuclear arsenal as deterrence in our
world, Vladimir may be right to say that one’s survival in the world depends on
the ability to defend oneself. The fact that Estragon always crawls back
suggests the extremity and persistency of the beatings he experiences in a
world that resembles a jungle. Apart from experiencing violence from the
unfamiliar people he meets, Estragon is also a target of brutality for those
with whom he is acquainted.
He gets a severe kick for his
kindness as he tries to wipe Lucky’s tears; he staggers and howls as he bleeds.
His ordeal reminds us of Beckett, who, as Lawrence Grave points out, was, for
no fault of his, stabbed by a pimp on a Paris Street in 1937 (53). Beckett’s
assailant later on confessed that he did not know why he had stabbed him. The
world, indeed, is a brutal place, punctuated with daily acts of random violence.
Estragon, however, shows the vindictiveness that characterizes our present-day
world by seeking revenge on Lucky. He kicks Lucky furiously when
Vladimir professes to defend
Estragon; but ironically, he resorts to exerting violence on him: “He shoulders
Estragon out of his way, kicks over the tool” (24). He, as is often the case in the modern world, does not reconcile the
conflicting parties; he joins the fight thus encouraging conflict and violence.
One, of course, understands why Frederick Busi insists: “Waiting for Godot
is above all a play that aspires universality, but was not created in a vacuum;
to a certain extent it is a reflection of the civilization that produced it”
(69).
Lucky, apart from suffering from
Estragon’s kicks, also experiences a new wave of violence from Pozzo, who jerks
him consistently and violently with the rope fastened to his neck. He also
whips Lucky when he is asleep and urges Estragon to pull Lucky with the rope as
violently as possible, provided he is not strangled. Without showing any
restraint, Pozzo urges Estragon to “give him [Lucky] a taste of his boots to
the face and the privates as far as possible” (56). In addition, Lucky shouts and struggles as
Pozzo, Estragon, and
Modern man’s brutality is again
discerned in Vladimir’s song. He sings a song about a dog that had stolen a crust
of bread from a kitchen and the cook beat it to death, after which other dogs
dug a tomb and buried it. His song portrays violence and its consequences. Killing
a dog is evidently too severe to be a response to the theft of a crust of
bread. Nevertheless, the incompatibility between the act of stealing a crust of
bread and its attendant punishment is a reflection of the extreme force modern
man uses in response to insignificant issues.
The dogs’ solidarity manifests itself
when they dig a tomb for the dead dog. Such solidarity is rare among human
beings in the play. The fraternity of these dogs contrasts with the abrasive
relationships between Pozzo and Lucky, Godot and one of his Boys, and
Endgame opens with Clov
violently hitting the head of the crippled Hamm in a wheelchair: “He [Clov] gets
down precipitatively, looks for the dog, sees it, picks it up, hastens towards
Hamm and strikes him violently on the head with the dog” (76). Similarly,
Hamm’s parents lost their legs because of a violent accident. In this state,
CLOV. There is a
rat in the kitchen!
CLOV.
In the kitchen there’s one.
Like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter,
who has been involved in violence himself, considers the world as a brutal
place:
The world is a pretty violent
place; it is as simple as that, so any in the plays comes out quite naturally.
It seems to me an essential and inevitable factor. Everyone encounters violence
in some way or the other. It so happens I did encounter it in quite an extreme
form after the [Second World War], in the East End, when the fascists were
coming back to life in England, I got into quite a few fights down there. (qtd.
in Ganz 15)
Before the age of fifteen, Pinter
faced two tribunals and two trials for refusing to fight in the Second World
War. He saw brutality as counterproductive in any meaningful life: “I was aware
of the suffering and the horror of war, and by no means was I going to
subscribe to keeping it going” (qtd. in Tynan 33). He risked going to prison for his commitment,
and it is evident that his plays depict the absurdity of violence.
In The Caretaker, Davies, who fought in
the Second World War and might have been “chucked out by the Salvation Army,”
is both a source and target of violence (40). He says a Scotsman pounded on him
at a caf├й, and Aston’s arrival and timely intervention saved him: “I was lucky
you [came] into that caf├й. I might have been dead more than once” (21) or “I’d
be inside the hospital now” (19). Davies says his tobacco tin was knocked off “on
the Great West road” (17). Davies seems to experience violence at every turn. The
Monk, who would seem to embody non-violence and charity, threatens to “kick [
Pinter, described in Harold
Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism, as one of the most important and
perplexing of modern playwrights, chooses the setting for The Caretaker prudently
and the attitude of his characters show that they fear the streets, strenuously
look for security in a room, and cling tenaciously to what shreds of any room
they could handle. These characters are thoroughly terrified at the intrusion
of others into the personal universe they have built for themselves. To protect
their space and comfort, they use violence to respond to any unexpected
visitor. Mick, astonished to find Davies in his room, “seizes his [Davies’] arm
and forces it up his back. Davies screams…Mick swiftly forces him to the floor,
with Davies struggling, grimacing, whimpering, and staring” (37).
Frequent violence in the world of
Pinter explains why Davies is armed with a knife, always on the alert and ready
to defend himself: “The figure [Mick] takes out the electrolux plug from the
light socket and fits the bulb. The light goes on. Davies flattens himself
against the wall, knife in hand” (54). He also threatens to knife Aston: “I’LL
STINK YOU! He [Davies] thrust his
arm out, the arm trembling, the knife pointed at Aston’s stomach… Davies draws
the knife into his chest, breathing heavily” (78). The violence Davies
experiences seems a corresponding response to his furious and brutal nature.
Pinter, maybe to show his hatred of violence, makes violence a boomerang for
Davies. In many instances, the threatener (Davies) becomes the threatened.
After all, according to Frederick Peason and Martin Rochester in their study of
20th Century international relations, “regardless of whether one
wins or loses, [violence] can involve enormous human…costs for the participants”
(274). To John Arden, in Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, violence,
whatever the rationale behind it, is a futile and cruel exercise.
Cataclysmic effects of violence
explain man’s perpetual fear of insecurity, even in the hospital where the injured
are expected to be cured. Aston tells us
that medical practitioners were rough with him in the hospital, and he fought
them: “I was much stronger than I am now, I was quite strong then, I just laid
one of them out and I had another one round the throat” (65). The ease at which
violence is practiced in the plays of Pinter manifests in the The Homecoming
where Lenny boasts of having killed a woman:
Well, this Lady was very insistent
and started taking liberties with me down under this arch, liberties which by
any criterion I couldn’t be expected to tolerate… So I clamped her one. It was
on my mind at the time to do away with her, you know, to kill her… Well just
sliding down the wall following the blow I’d given her. Well, to sum up,
everything was in my favour, for a killing. (3)
Lenny is a bitterly angry man who brags of his savagery and
brutality toward women. Like the two hired killers (Gus and Ben) in Pinter’s The
Dumb Waiter, Lenny takes delight in killing. His attitude affirms S.H. Wood’s
view that the world is “a very savage and brutal place” (17). Like the dog in Waiting
for Godot that is killed for merely stealing a crust of bread, death is too
draconian to be a response to a woman who proposes love to a man. The bitter
experiences of this lady are akin to that of our contemporary women, whose male
counterparts beat them to death both at home and in the streets. Similarly, in The
Homecoming, Max is extremely violent as he brutalizes his children and
everyone around him. Max wields the sad
male hegemony in his world. “While Pinter sought to stage the individual’s
plight against the demands of tradition and orthodoxy, he does not construct
villains who are immune from the dysfunction that such systems pervade” (30).
Lenny says Max used to
tuck Joey and him in bed every night and that he takes delight in “tucking up
his sons” (17). In fact, Max tells Lenny (an adult in his early thirties):
“I’ll give you a proper tuck up any of these nights, son you mark my words”
(17). The use of the word “tuck” suggests severe brutality. Max’s violent
nature is also seen when he hits Sam and Joey: “Max turns back, hits Joey in
the stomach with all his might. Joey contorts, staggers across the stage. Max,
with the exertion of the blow begins to collapse. His knees buckle. He clutches
his stick. Sam sits, head in hands. Joey, hands pressed to his stomach, sinks
down at the feet of Ruth” (43).
Max’s brutal actions to his sons resemble those of abusive parents in our
present-day world. Again, like Estragon in Waiting for Godot, whom
Lucky almost cripples when he attempts to wipe his tears, Sam gets a blow
across his head as he tries to help Max, who is collapsing. Ironically, Max
calls his sons “bloody animals” (16) but ends up behaving like a wild
unprovoked animal as he hits Sam and Joey violently without cause. He blames
Joey for not knowing how to attack and insists “boxing’s a gentleman’s game”
(17). Like his father, who, according to Max, was a butcher, Max may be a
butcher of men, especially as he threatens to chop his son’s spine.
Like Pinter’s, Fugard’s plays
depict violence. As a premonition to the violence in his world, Fugard’s
character, Styles states in the opening of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead: “…storm
buffets natal. Damage in many areas” (3). Styles’ studio is infested with cockroaches that resist
insecticide and he resorts to brutality by using a cat, Blackie, to eliminate
“All the bloody Survivors” (11). The cockroaches’ determination in resisting
insecticide symbolizes that of Black South Africans during apartheid and that
of the oppressed in general. Using a cat to eliminate the surviving cockroaches
also symbolizes the Whites’ use of Totsis to kill the Blacks in the apartheid
era in
Thus, it is understandable when
Buntu and Sizwe Bansi see the corpse of Robert Zwelinzima and immediately
conclude that he has, as usual, been murdered. The corpse of Robert Zwelinzima,
like the wings of cockroaches Styles finds on the floor of his studio,
irrefutably indicates the lethal nature of the violence. Cockroaches that have
lain in peace in an abandoned studio, like the Black South Africans on their
land, suddenly face a wave of violence during which every resistance invites
more crude methods to deal with them. The strongest, such as Styles and
Blackie, survive, whereas the weak, represented by cockroaches and Robert
Zwelinzima, perish. Brutality here relates to the one in The Island,
where Hodoshe, a prison administrator, wears out the political prisoners under
his care.
The Island, as the name
implies, is isolated from society but surrounded by crude torturing machinery. Hodoshe,
knowing he cannot be held accountable for his actions, beats prisoners and
forces them to empty the sea into a hole and to break stones with a hammer. But
the violence in this
Brutality is too rampant and random
so that characters tend to joke with it. In Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, Buntu
mimics the police by grabbing Man “roughly by the shoulder” (42). Buntu’s
action demonstrates that security agents are brutal when dealing with the
people they are supposed to protect. The Police’s “loud knocking” on Zola’s
door and the fact that the police headman drags Man on the floor suggest,
ironically, the brutality of those in charge of maintaining peace and order.
The headman, an embodiment of authority and discipline in the police force, is
even more violent than those under him (23). Man is discovered sleeping in
Zola’s house, and he only manages to grab his shirt as the police push him
violently into a van while he staggers in half-sleep. Such reflects the excruciating
pain during apartheid. In fact, “Fugard’s anti-apartheid missiles, even though
often theatrically decorated, were no less potent” (Rao Sujatha 100-103).
One of the fundamental problems the
characters of Fugard, Pinter and Beckett experience is that they hardly sleep
without being victims of some sort of violence or perturbation. In Waiting
for Godot,
The trouble is I’m not all that
convinced that it was the clock. I mean there are lots of things which tick in
the night, don’t you find that? All sorts of objects, which, in the day, you
wouldn’t call anything else but commonplace. They give you no trouble. But in
the night, any given one of a number of them is liable to start letting out a
bit of a tick […]. (28)
Modern man, by implication, is the target of violent
problems triggered even by negligible things. But apart from the foregoing
forms of violence, verbal injury is another form of violence in the plays of
these playwrights.
Their characters inflict
psychological pain on each other through insolence. In The Homecoming,
Max and his children consistently bandy bitter words. The play opens with Lenny
asking his father, Max: “Why don’t you shut up, you daft prat?” (7) He also
styles him a dog cook and tells him to “pop off” (35). Lenny’s insolent
attitude depicts both verbal violence and filial ingratitude. Lenny’s insults
to his father are similar to those of
Similarly, Waiting for Godot
starts with an antagonism between
Considering
life to be a joke, Beckett’s tramps torture themselves and each other as they
seek the meaning of life through injurious language and action toward one
another.
These characters hurt each other
through insults. Similarly, in The
Caretaker, Davies is physically frail but verbally violent. He tells Mick
he will insult Aston: “I tell you I’ve half a mind to give him a mouthful one
of these days” (71). He puts his threats to action as he tells Aston to go back
to the mental hospital for proper treatment. He also calls Aston’s room a
“lousy, filthy hole” (76). Davies refers to most of the people he comes across
as bastards or “gits.” He calls Mick a “thieving bastard…thieving skate” (48).
However, Davies is not the only
character in The Caretaker who exhibits verbal injuries. His insolent
attitude haunts him as Mick assaults him verbally. Mick refers to him, in
various parts of the play, as a “bloody impostor,” “wild animal,” “old rogue,”
“old scoundrel,” “old robber,” “old skate,” and an “old barbarian.” These
insults point to modern man’s calumny; he injures through slanders or malicious
false statements. On the basis of this outrageous behavior, Robert Brustein
suggests that modern man’s attitude causes his image to become that of “a
dungeon-gray, filthy, squalid, forbidding-where man labors interminably, in the
poisoned air, at humiliating tasks” (7-8).
As violence becomes too rampant, characters tend to target very delicate
parts of the human body. In The Caretaker Aston says that he had hit the throat of a medic; in Waiting
for Godot, Pozzo urges Estragon to kick Lucky severely in the privates; in Endgame Clov hits Hamm’s head violently;
in The Island Hodoshe wounds Winston’s
eye and John’s ear and in The Homecoming
Lenny gives an old lady a jab to the belly, while Max threatens to chop Lenny’s
spine off. References to the throat, male sexual organs, head, belly, spine and
the eye as targets of violence suggest modern man’s brutality, as well as his
willingness and capacity to kill.
Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and
Athol Fugard yoke their plays to violence in manifold forms and demonstrate the
kind of brutality that holds our world hostage. The recurrence of words such as
“knock,” “tuck,” “hit,” “jab,” “box,” “chucked,” “thrust,” “attack,” “storm,”
“buffets,” “kick,” “beat,” “strikes,” “exterminated,” “barbarian,” “hammer,”
“wild,” and “abortion” in their plays, points to violence. Armed characters,
surprised, and random attacks in the plays of these dramatists suggest
insecurity, chaos and characters’ fears of being victims instead of victors in
a world where arbitrary assault seems everywhere evident. These attitudes
reflect patterns during the Cold War and resemble the doctrine of pre-emptive
attacks and yearnings for secret development of nuclear arsenals as deterrence
in our world. Beckett’s
Works Cited
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