Kadhim Dahawi Abbas Al Quraishi, Iraqi Ministry of Education, Dr. Azra Ghandeharion (Corresponding author), Dr. Ahmad Reza Heydarian Shahri, & Dr. Zohreh Taebi, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the notion of absurdity as one of the features of the human condition in the twentieth century. On the basis of close reading of two modern plays known as the theatre of the absurd, the current study intends to compare and contrast Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1956) and Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Ya tali’ al-shajarah (1962) [The Tree Climber (1966)]. Both plays have dramatized the absurdity of the human condition after the Second World War. Therefore, benefitting from the tenets of the French and the American schools of comparative literature, the paper attempts to offer understanding of absurdity in different cultures. As the idea of absurdity is presented differently in various works, this paper focuses on the selected plays to reveal the absurd implications of their playwrights’ views in both western and eastern cultures. The findings show that Samuel Beckett’s definition of absurdity is more universal and institutional while Al-Hakim focuses on personal issues. The paper demonstrates that absurdity has different aspects according to the culture of the writer. The paper is going to explore the different versions of absurdity in these cultures.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 2-3 February 2017, Ahwaz.
