Existentialism and Samuel Beckett’s two plays: endgame and happy days

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2007

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Tan, Tijen

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This thesis carries out an analysis of the plays by Samuel Beckett, Endgame and Happy Days. It achieves this by exploring how the playwright’s characterization, setting and use of language in these plays display his tendency to employ some existentialist concepts such as despair, anxiety and thrownness on the way to authenticity. This study argues that there are some similarities between Beckett’s two plays and Existentialism, and some characters in both plays display the existentialist man who is looking for becoming an authentic man. In other words, although there are some differences, these plays show that Samuel Beckett’s view of Existentialism is quite similar to the Sartrean view.

Subject Keywords

English Literature

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608995/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17298

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

T. Tan, “ Existentialism and Samuel Beckett’s two plays: endgame and happy days,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2007.