Roaring Reticence: Listening the Unsaid in the Plays of Samuel Beckett

Abstract

Theatre of Absurd has always been known for its non linear approach
towards everything that constitutes in making a play meaningful. As a pioneer of
theatre of Absurd, Beckett’s distrust towards language is known to all. Words were
always in a line of fire from him. He believed in expressing without expressing at all i.e.,
through the use of silence. He is well known for his non sequitur, repetitive dialogues
and the use of silence in between the lines. This paper examines Beckett’s use of silence
in some of his plays. His silence was not without a purpose. It always brought out the
most sublime emotions of the characters to surface and made the spectators to face
the glaring realities of his times, i.e., emptiness, meaninglessness and failures. To
Beckett words always fail man as such silence is the best way to discern the forlorn
arenas of human heart and psyche.