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It is a difficult task to classify the plays of Samuel Beckett. In many ways, his work escapes the binary distinction of Modernism and Postmodernism. The subtleties of Waiting for Godot and Krapps Last Tape ensure that neither can be fully labelled modernist or postmodernist. Becketts work occupies a liminal space between Modernism and Postmodernism. Like many works of Modernism, Becketts plays are haunted by the absence of meanin in the world and make allusion to the literary past to hi hli ht its absence, but like many postmodern writers Beckett does not offer any way to chan e this situation. Instead, Becketts writin s hi hli ht the absurdity of the situation and offer no reconciliation. !hile Beckett de"elops many dramatic strate ies for e#plorin this liminal space, some of the key elements at work in Waiting for Godot and Krapps Last Tape are conflicts of time and consciousness, ideas about the redundancy of $od, interte#tuality and memory to name but a few. In considerin how to define Becketts plays it is important to clarify his philosophical basis for his writin , and to e#plore how these ideas manifest themsel"es in his plays.

% key aspect of readin Becketts plays is that $od does not e#ist in the worlds of his plays. The absence of such a di"ine spirit, which can create telos in a narrati"e, is "ital to the distillation of Becketts style, and for the acute melancholia of his work. In Damned to Fame &ames 'nowlson writes of Beckett that it was on (the key issue of pain, sufferin and death that Beckett reli ious faith faltered and )uickly foundered.* +'nowlson, ,-. This idea of perpetual sufferin is central to Waiting for Godot. The crushin cyclical pattern of the days in the play emphasise that nothin e"er chan es, or will e"er chan e, for /stra on and 0ladimir, summed up in the final lines of both

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/ST2%$341 !ell, shall we o5 0L%6IMI21 7es, lets o. 8They do not move] +Complete Dramatic Works pp.9:,;;.

Becketts take on thwarted faith seems to ha"e de"eloped primarily from his e#posure to the writin s of %rnold $eulinc# +<,:9=<,:>., a Bel ian philosopher. $eulinc#, himself a follower of 6escartes, placed much emphasis on the powerlessness of humanity and the i norance of our situation in life, alon with his further de"elopment of 6escartes ?artesian model. &ohn ?alder, Becketts publisher, notes that Beckett de"eloped an idea from $eulinc#, usin his own brand of ?artesian lo ic, that if $od did e#ist @e must be e#tremely far remo"ed from humanity, if @e e"en realises that it e#ists at all. +?alder, A. This abandonment essentially renders faith in a hi her bein redundant. Becketts o"ert references to the Bible throu hout Godot encoura e the comparison of the play and the passion and resurrection of &esus ?hrist. This blatant interte#tuality places 0ladimir and /stra on in a perpetual stuck between $ood Briday and @oly Saturday, with only a "a ue sense that /aster Sunday is comin . The crucifi#ion of ?hrist bears no meanin at all if it is not cast in the redeemin relief of the resurrection, and it is this resurrection, which 0ladimir and /stra on ne"er achie"e. &oseph S. 3Leary notes that (Waiting for Godot re"i"es e"en as it mocks 8theC old ?hristian myths turnin on an#iety about sal"ation and damnation, drawin especially on the $ospel of Luke in its allusions to the thie"es crucified with &esus +Luke :D1 <D=<9. and to the disciples reco nition of the risen

3 ?hrist at /mmaus in the breakin of bread +Luke :A1 :9=:,.. +3Leary, ><. &ust as PoEEo de"ours the F/aster ?hicken, the emblem of new life, lea"in nothin but the bones, so too does the play constantly thwart any form of redempti"e communion. /"en when /stra on looks for a simple carrot to ease his hun er he ets a turnip instead. This continuous denial of reconciliation lea"es Waiting for Godot in a form of limbo, in which there can be no unifyin messa e or didactic purpose, beyond the idea that humanity is always waitin for the ne#t Fthin to happen. The play ultimately hi hli hts that what we are all essentially waitin for is death. Interte#tuality is central to many of the reat works of Modernism, such as !lysses where by takin an old te#t and conte#tualisin it in terms of the modern world a new story can be told, and meanin can be leaned from it. % story constructed in this way is rooted in the past as it simultaneously reaches towards the future. Beckett uses interte#tuality not to create new meanin out of the conte#t of old literature, but instead to hi hli ht the pointlessness of searchin for meanin in literature at all. In particular, i"en the position of the Bible as the chief source of moral meanin for ?hristians, Beckett is "oidin the ultimate authority, which is $od. Beckett is usin what is ostensibly a techni)ue of Modernism to achie"e an end, which is Postmodern. In spite of the pre=eminence of a te#t like the Bible, which is itself desi ned to function as a source of meanin , Beckett is successfully usin it to help his play deconstruct meanin .

Krapps Last Tape is a biEarre, deconstructed duolo ue in which the chain of communication is not e)ual. /"en thou h the audience only e"er sees one character appear on sta e, there are two characters in the play, the corporeal 'rapp who has Gust turned si#ty=nine and the recorded thirty=nine year old 'rapp who essentially Fli"es

4 on spool three in bo# fi"e. The "oice of the youn er 'rapp is )uite literally manipulated by the older 'rapp throu h his manual control of the tape machine. !hile the tape can only play what has been recorded, there is now a lapse in understandin with the older 'rapp, who "iews his youn er self with disdain. Indeed, the recordin is fi urati"e shadow of his past, which the tape allows 'rapp to reli"e o"er and o"er a ain. In fact, 'rapps editorial process does nothin more than to cement his inability to mo"e beyond his past. Much like /stra on and 0ladimir, 'rapp is stuck in a perpetual cycle of meanin lessness. %s the critic Miki Iwata notesH (The tape interrupts 'rapp as much as he interrupts the tape and, conse)uently, the play re"eals the interaction between subGecti"e recollections and the obGecti"e media which recorded them.* +Iwata, DA. The e#perience of time that the tape allows is selecti"e and fra mentary. 'rapp does not play all of the tape and chooses to a itatedly skip o"er bits that he simply does not want to listen to. ?rucially, when the recorded "oice arri"es at the point of re"elation, older 'rapp simply fast=forwards throu h it all. The point at which any meanin could be e#tracted from the play is thwarted by Beckett, resultin in a return to the wallowin in memory, which is characterised by 'rapps obsession with the portion of the tape dealin with his old lo"er. (The "ision at last. This I fancy is what I ha"e ?hiefly to record this e"enin , and a ainst the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in my memory, warm or cold, for the miracle thatI 8hesitatesC" +Complete Dramatic Works ::J. Beckett has created a comple# e#perience of the past for 'rapp, out of which he cannot escape. The recorded 'rapp is e#perienced as an echo from the past, albeit one that can be rewound and edited to please the listener. 6espite 'rapps control o"er the

5 speed of the narrati"e on the tape, he cannot alter the e"ents of the past. This recorded past ensures that 'rapp will be fore"er affected by the memories that he cannot alter, resultin in the characteristic Beckett melancholia. The tape represents the "oice of the dead past, which is unalterable. &ohn ?alder writes that (it is that the "oices of the dead are all around us, that they are as unaware of us as we are of them, and that they talk Feach to himself endlessly.* +?alder, D9. The tape cannot interact with 'rapp beyond playin what is recorded on the spool, but the tape e"okes memories for 'rapp which are like the "oices of a dead past. So, the dramatic construction of the tape functions beyond a simple bendin of sta e temporality. The conflict of memory and consciousness e#perienced throu h time is what Beckett is contestin here. ?alder summarises the conflict rather succinctly1

Becketts ima e of future time decantin itself into past time is one of time runnin backwardH the future is in constant flow into the past, the opposite of our normal perception. !hat is it that flows forward then5 It can only be our consciousness, which we tend to confuse with time because it percei"es it. %s time and consciousness mo"e in different directions they can be seen as a series of collisions, and that surely is the best way to describe the immediate present, the present moment1 as the confrontation of time mo"in backward and time mo"in forward. +?alder, -<.

The idea of hostly "oices from the past is e"ident too in Godot too in the way that 0ladimir and /stra on are only e"er able to communicate with each other imperfectly, as if they were hostly fi ures in their own company. Bor e#ample, /stra on seems not to rasp the meanin of 0ladimirs story about the sinners crucified beside ?hrist towards the be innin of the play, choosin instead to focus on the colours of the maps he had seen of the hold land instead. @owe"er, later in the

6 first act /stra on holds himself up to the template of ?hrist sayin 1 (%ll my life I"e compared myself to him.* +9<. Memory and communication are ultimately failin here as time and consciousness work in opposition to one another. &ust as 'rapps interaction with the tape is incomplete and destructi"e, so too these interactions between 0ladimir and /stra on are potentially nothin more an incomplete attempt at communication, where memory wa#es and wanes dependin on the moment. This rupture of narrati"e inte rity is spurred on by an acute sense of the loss of meanin in the world, and the hauntin )uality that it lea"es in its wake. This reminiscence of meanin is, of course, a feature of modernist literature, but the way in which Beckett shows the absolute breakdown of meanin ful communication in these plays, and the absurdity of e"en tryin to communicate is "ery postmodern. Beckett is mo"in away from the modernist tendency to try and reconstitute the present throu h the past and towards the idea of the absurdity of e"en attemptin such a reconstitution.

The character of the boy in Waiting for Godot functions in a similar way to the tape in Krapps Last Tape. &ust as the tape holds 'rapp in an endless cycle of re"ision, so too does the boy hold 0ladimir and /stra on in their cycle of waitin with his promised approach of $odot. &ust as 'rapp both re"iles and needs his recorded youn er self, so too do the men need the boy, and more specifically, they need the boy to remember them. %s ?alder notes, 0ladimirs particularly "iolent beha"iour towards the youth is only to achie"e one purpose, to be remembered, howe"er faintly, by one who will lon outli"e him. +?alder, D9. Knlike 'rapps tape, which is unchan in , the boy in Godot offers the only chance at mo"in beyond the cyclical pattern of the play. 2ather than simply functionin as an a"atar for the reconstruction of meanin in the te#t, howe"er, the boy simply ser"es to, a ain, display how time and consciousness

7 are workin anta onistically to dismantle meanin . The only thin that the presence of the boy achie"es is to make certain that 0ladimir and /stra on continue their endless cycle of waitin . Beckett has taken the symbol of the future, a child, and made it into a postmodern e#pression of hopelessness.

Kltimately, the distinction between whether or not Beckett is a modernist or a postmodernist writer comes down to perspecti"e. Modernist literature tends to pine after the loss of meanin in the world, whereas postmodernist literature celebrates this loss of meanin . The definin principle of Waiting for Godot and Krapps Last Tape is that the absence of meanin has created a perpetual cycle of e#istence. Becketts plays present a haunted e#perience of a world that is without meanin . @is work is not necessarily a celebration of this world, but it ser"es as an effecti"e way of describin the pointlessness of e#istence as Beckett sees it. Possibly the reatest achie"ement of Becketts work is that it continues to e#ist outside of a binary literary distinction, somehow reconciles elements of Modernism and Postmodernism to achie"e his dramatic ends.

Bibliography

?alder, &ohn, The #hilosophy of $am%el &eckett. +London, 2i"errun Press. :JJ<..

'nowlson, &ames, Damned to Fame' The Life of $am%el &eckett. +London, Bloomsbury Publishin . <>>,..

Beckett, Samuel, The Complete Dramatic Works. +London, Baber and Baber Ltd.. <>;,.. :JJ,.

3Leary, &oseph S., FBecketts Interte#tual Power, (o%rnal of )rish $t%dies 0ol. <; +:JJD..

Iwata, Miki, F2ecords and 2ecollections in Krapps Last Tape, (o%rnal of )rish $t%dies 0ol. :D +:JJ;..