Author’s name:
Sofi Hama Ali Hussen Hama Ameen – Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Abstract:
The paper examines key functions of visual symbolism in Samuel Beckett’s influential plays of the 1940s–1960s: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days. The study explores the intentional decisions regarding stage directions, costumes, props, and locations in order to reveal their interconnections, as well as their relations with aesthetic and ideological peculiarities of Beckett’s works. The research demonstrates how Beckett’s usage of visual signals expresses existential concerns and how visual means become a way of symbolizing signs in the “empty” reality of self-consciousness on the edge of silence and death. Our objective is to clarify functions of visual symbolism in Beckett’s plays by conducting a hermeneutical analysis of the texts in the context of their various critical interpretations. By identifying recurring visual signs and determining their symbolic meaning in the system of Beckett’s artistic world, the study demonstrates how clothing, movement, scenery, and stage props express fundamental existential themes such as loneliness, suffering, irrationality of life, and passage of time.
| Section | ARTISTIC TEXT AT THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURES |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2024-67-3-135-143 |
| Downloads | 90 |
| Key words | the absurd; existentialism; desolation; isolation; estrangement; visual symbolism |