1.

Existentialism is the blanket concept being analyzed in this paper, and alienation and
absurdity can be seen as elements of existentialism. It has been a part of literature for over three
centuries at this point, and various writers and philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Friedrich
Nietzsche, and Soren Kierkegaard can be attributed to the rise of numerous existential concepts.
The central query of existentialism is to find meaning within existence, and this concept has been
used brilliantly by various writers in the past, including Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett.
According to Webber:
“Since it gained currency at the end of the second world war, the term “existentialism”
has mostly been associated with a cultural movement that grew out of the wartime
intellectual atmosphere of the Left Bank in Paris and spread through fiction and art as
much as a philosophy. The theoretical and other writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de
Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Frantz Fanon in the 1940s and 1950s are usually taken as
central to this movement, as are the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, the paintings of
Jean Dubuffet, and the plays of Samuel Beckett from this time. (1)”
Thus, we see that the end of the Second World War allowed the rise of thinkers who were
unafraid of probing deeper into the human psyche to determine the meaning in existence.
Existentialist writers and thinkers managed to deviate from the trend of modern literature by
focusing on the self and directing attention towards the inner mind and its struggles. Some of the
deepest thinkers of the 19th - 20th centuries hailed from an existentialist school of thought.
According to Webber:
“The nineteenth-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are
usually taken to be the key early Existentialists. One a devout Christian, the other an
ardent atheist, these thinkers are united by their emphasis on the individual rather than
society as a center of concern and value. Since there are similar themes in the work of
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, and more controversially Martin
Heidegger, these thinkers are also often found in surveys of existentialism. (2)”
The above statement gives us an insight into the predominant themes central to the writings of
early major existentialists. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s works highlighted the socio-political problems
of his time and explored man’s susceptibility to manipulation which is evident in his work The
Eternal Husband, furthermore; Gabriel Mercel, an avid Christian existentialist, explored the
human condition mostly in respect to the human struggle in a modern and technologically driven
society while Karl Jaspers explored the subject of human freedom and the problematic borders
between empiricism and theology in which he was greatly influenced by the philosophies of both
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Despite their distinctive religious affiliations and
philosophical distinctiveness, it is evident that these existentialists explored the human subject as
the predominant focus in their works.
Jean-Paul Sartre is notably the philosopher that can be credited to truly proliferating and
popularizing the ideals of existentialism around the world. In order to understand the notion of
existentialism, it is important to examine the life and work of Jean-Paul Sartre as well.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015):
 “Sartre (1905-1980) is arguably the best-known philosopher of the twentieth century. His
indefatigable pursuit of philosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half
of his life, active political commitment gained him worldwide renown, if not admiration.
He is commonly considered the father of existential philosophy, whose writings set the
tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War.”
His ideas helped shape and structure the tenets of existential philosophy and he had numerous
ideas that were unique, mostly in the distinctiveness of his brand of existentialism which was
firmly tied to his atheistic beliefs and his polemical deviation from other existentialists like
Martin Heidegger and Gabriel Mercel in which the latter clearly distanced himself from Sartre’s
philosophical ideas (Esslin, 2004). Despite Sartre’s controversial philosophical standing amongst
fellow contemporary existentialists, he was still regarded as one of the best philosophers of his
time. Priest describes Sartre as:
“One of the greatest French thinkers. A polemical and witty essayist, a metaphysician of
subjectivity, a political activist, a revolutionary political theorist, a humanistic novelist, a
didactic playwright, his genius lies in his powers of philosophical synthesis and the
genre-breaching breadth of his imagination. (10)”
Sartre had carefully selected a handful of humanistic ideals to dissect and propound his own
brand of existential teachings. Freedom and responsibility are two ideas that were central to his
philosophy. According to O'Neill:
“It is a well-known fact that Sartre, in his many works regards responsibility as the
necessary consequence of inalienable human freedom. This is another reason why he also
favors a strict "either - or" between God's existence and human freedom: either God
exists or man is free and responsible. There is no third possibility, and all philosophical
efforts to find an intermediate way between divine omniscience and human freedom are
simply a waste of time. (par. 1)”
Thus, Sartre’s philosophy emphasized the notion of free will and thrusting greater responsibility
in the hands of man, and this makes sense considering the world had gone through such an
agonizing period in respect to the aftermath of both wars. The stance taken by Sartre was a far
cry from the current standing of Western philosophy on the idea of free will. “We are left alone,”
the philosopher wrote in his 1946 essay “Existentialism is humanism.” "This is what I mean
when I say that a person is condemned to freedom." According to Sartre, freedom is a burden;
without gods and devils guilty of our actions or any predetermined course of action. Each of us
alone is fully responsible for our lives and our choices. Having said goodbye to the consoling
delusion that humanity is the center of the universe, realizing that our life is short and devoid of a
predetermined goal, we come to existential horror. According to O'Neill
“This is a very bold stance, directly opposed to the mainstream of Western philosophy
which typically attempts to reconcile human responsibility with the existence of an all-
powerful and all knowledgeable being. In addition, moral responsibility has been
traditionally linked with God as the ultimate guarantor of values and sanctions. (par.2)”
As we can see, Sartre’s point of view takes a strict departure from the ideas circulating in
philosophy at the time, and he is responsible for the evolution of the field and according to
O'Neill:
Sartre repudiates both components of the traditional view: in his eyes, God is an impediment for
human freedom and responsibility. The tension between human freedom and God is, therefore,
insoluble. Sartre is convinced that human responsibility makes sense only if there is no God.
(par.3)
“Hence, the main idea behind the existential point of view of Sartre is to offer human
beings’ greater strength, control, and power over their own destinies instead of seeking
for their lives to be run by a divine hand.”
In order to understand the manner in which Sartre utilized the concept of existentialism in his
works and inspired future generations of writers, it is important to examine two of his plays that
rely heavily on existential themes. In this regard, I will examine the research conducted by Cagri
Tugrul Mart in which he reviews existentialism in two plays by Sartre. The two plays chosen by
Mart in his analysis of existential themes in the works of Sartre are The Flies and No Exit.
The Flies was a play written by Sartre in 1943, and it is a call to people in order to make them
focus on the freedom given to them naturally at birth. According to Mart:
“In the play, Sartre wants to show freedom through the protagonist of the play Orestos.
Human freedom is very important, according to existentialism. Sartre has got the idea
that people have the ability to create their own world through freedom. Sartre’s opinion is
that people are free to make a choice and to act according to that choice. (52)”
The main character in the play, Orestos, is portrayed as a character that understands and
recognizes his freedom and is, therefore, able to focus on his future and make decisions
regarding the same. His sister, Electra, however, is the polar opposite in nature and is only stuck
in her past through her own mental trappings. Sartre uses the dualistic characters in this play in
order to highlight not just the prevalence of freedom in everyone’s life, but also about the
importance of utilizing it well. In addition, the author is trying to create a contrast between
nihilism and dissipation. He wants to show that these concepts are not identical. Moreover, that
nihilism is not synonymous with the rejection of all values because of despair. This is the desire
to gain freedom.
2. Alienation is a concept that is associated as one of the perils of living in the modern world. It
is the sense of loneliness and isolation that is created in the personal experience of individuals as
they spend life in smaller families and larger cities. Although this is the conventional definition
associated with the concept, there are numerous interpretations of this as well. According to
Darankolaee and Hojjat:
“The term alienation has its simple meaning–a condition of being estranged from
someone or something, but it also has technical meanings. For instance, in law, alienation
refers to a conveyance of property; something is said to be ‘alienable’ if it can be sold.
Alternately Thomas Jefferson’s famous rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
 are so tied to the essence of mankind to be 'inalienable' right; in social psychology,
alienation refers to a person’s psychological withdrawal from society. (202)”
Thus, we see that the writer is able to provide a historical overview of the concept in this
definition. According to Darankolaee and Hojjat:
“In this sense, the alienated individual is isolated from other people; taken to an extreme,
such psychological isolation expresses itself in neurosis. In critical social theory,
alienation has an additional sense of separating the individual from his or herself, a
fragmentation of one’s self through work. (202)”
Hence, the concept of alienation has several acceptable forms and has been interpreted in
numerous ways in literature as well. There have been numerous authors who have been
associated with the idea of alienation in literature. Apart from Kafka and Beckett, the one name
that comes to mind in this particular sphere is Sam Shepard. His best works Buried Child, and
True West was explored through the lens of man’s alienation in the modern world.
3. Absurdity in literature has a plethora of definitions attached to the concept, and it is a term that
depicts a break from understanding and a lack of meaningful comprehension, which emphasizes
a lack of meaning. Eugene Ionesco iterates that Absurdity is simply a condition “devoid of
purpose, cut from all religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, Man is lost.” He further
elucidates that “all of Man’s actions become senseless, absurd and useless” (4). A more
expressive and functional definition is given by Albert Camus below:
“A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in
the universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. He is
an irremediable exile because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as
he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the
actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity (18).”
Camus above painted the picture of abject confusion and a complete feeling of disorientation,
disillusionment, and hopelessness, which signifies a profound disconnect between Man, his
existence, and his purpose.
The existential theme of absurdity was explored succinctly in an iconoclastic literary movement
called “The theatre of the Absurd” also known as the Avant-Garde writers. Eugene Ionesco,
Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and literary critic Albert Camus belonged to this elite class of
absurd dramatists which came to be known as “The theatre of the Absurd,” and the movement
flourished mostly in drama, in the periods between the 1950s and 1960s.
One of the most vocal writers in the space of absurdity Albert Camus stipulates in his work The
Myth of Sisyphus that human existence revolves closely around confronting its own basic
irrationalities which in itself is absurd. Camus expounds on one of the central plights of the
modern man- an absurdity. “The absurd,” he accentuates, “is born of this confrontation between
the human need for meaning and the unreasonable silence of the world.” (4). He goes further in
explaining that man is devoid of clarity of any kind and instead feels alienated. Camus further
stipulates, “At this point of his effort, a man stands face to face with the irrational.”(5). More so,
Camus depicts that man feels within himself a longing for happiness and for rationality and
therefore desires reason, but “this world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said…
what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call
echoes in the human heart.”(6). According to The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019),
we can view the term absurd from this sense:
“First, many existentialists argued that nature as a whole has no design, no reason for
existing. Although the natural world can apparently be understood by physical science or
metaphysics, this might be better thought of as 'description' than either understanding or
explanation. Thus, the achievements of the natural sciences also empty nature of value
and meaning.”
Thus, many existentialists believe that our traditional perception of the cosmos and our scientific
understanding of it cannot offer us the value or meaning we desire in our lives. For example,
Martin Heidegger also believed that offering a framework using our limited understanding of
nature will come at the cost of a profound falsification of nature. The absurd is in the fact that
knowledge based on science and empiricism does not guarantee humans the purpose and
meaning we seek, and this in itself problematizes the perceived achievements of natural sciences
by constantly questioning them. One of the principles of the absurd lies in the fact that in the
midst of numerous scientific knowledge exist a complete break in understanding the emptiness
and utter lack of meaning in the absurd world. The origin of the term Absurd has specific
reasoning, and it is important to observe the history of the genre in this section. According to
Wegener
“The Philosophy of the absurd derives its name and its way of formulating its critical
opposition to rationalistic views of reality from the Latin absurdus, meaning in a musical
context, “inharmonious, out of tune.” In contemporary usage it has come to mean “out of
harmony with reason or propriety; irrational, incongruous, senseless, stupid, silly,
ridiculous. (151)”
Hence, we see that the notion of absurdity is closely tied into events that stray from the ordinary
and deviate from the norm. Wegener above accentuates that absurdity encompasses a stray from
meaning, senseless, irrational, and devoid of any logical harmony in situations that begs for more
answers rather than contradictions. These types of situations can clearly be seen in the work of
Beckett particularly his Waiting for Godot.
4. Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ belongs to the tradition of the Theatre of Absurd. It is
unconventional in not depicting any dramatic conflicts. In the play, practically nothing happens,
no development is to be found, there is no beginning and no end. The entire action boils down in
an absurd setting of a countryside road with two tramps Vladimir and Estragon who simply idle
away their time waiting for Godot, about whom they have only vague ideas. The play consists of
two acts. They are almost identical. The two tramps meet Pozzo and Lucky — the master and the
slave, the boy, who informs them that Godot, will not come; two attempts to commit suicide,
which end in failure, at the end of each act they remain in a place. Only the sequence of events
and dialogues in each act is different. In constant verbal skirmishes between Vladimir and
Estragon show individual traits. Vladimir is more practical; Estragon claims to be a poet.
Estragon says that the more he eats carrots, the less he likes it. The reaction of Vladimir is the
opposite: he likes everything habitual. Estragon - a dreamer, Vladimir cannot hear about dreams.
Vladimir has bad breath, Estragon’s feet stink. Vladimir remembers the past. Estragon instantly
forgets everything. Estragon loves to tell funny stories; they degrade Vladimir. Vladimir hopes
that Godot will come, and their lives will change. Estragon is skeptical and sometimes forgets
the name Godot. With the boy, the messenger of Godot, Vladimir leads the conversation, and the
boy is addressed to him. Estragon is mentally unstable; every night, some unknown people beat
him. Sometimes Vladimir protects him, sings him a lullaby, and covers him with his coat. The
dissimilarity of temperaments leads to endless squabbles, and every now and then they decide to
disperse.
Beckett’s intention was to pass the message of the absurdity of the human condition and man’s
meaningless existence in the mundane world, which accounts for his constant alienation and
retreat from meaningful social contacts. Estragon and Vladimir made the existential choice of
waiting for Godot whom they neither knew nor had met before, hence:
“Estragon: Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.
Estragon: And If he doesn’t come?
Vladimir: We’ll come back tomorrow.
Estragon: And the day after tomorrow.
Vladimir: Possibly.
Estragon: And so on.
Vladimir: The point is.
Estragon: Until he comes. (10)”
The conversation above depicts the existential choice the two tramps had taken; they decided to
squander their already pathetic and meaningless lives waiting for an entity that will never come
in other words waiting for nothing. The excerpt above completely seals the lives of the tramps to
a fate of earthly damnation with far more eternal consequences of never doing anything in their
lives apart from the endless wait for Godot, in fact, their only hope for existing and living a life
of purpose is unless Godot arrives. Estragon and Vladimir are embroiled in waiting in an endless
circus of the second coming of God himself to redeem them from the empty and frustrating lives
they lead and offer them the salvation that only Godot could offer. This clearly depicts the
existential crisis of the absurd life Samuel Beckett expertly thrusts his two main protagonists
into. Hotaling explains these issues in her essay as follows:
 “The characters Vladimir and Estragon anxiously wait for Godot to come. Their lives are
spent waiting. They think that when Godot finally comes, they will be fulfilled or
something. By what? Godot will bring purpose and meaning to Estragon and Vladimir’s
life, and nothing else seems to have the ability to do this. (11-12)”
Martin Esslin further elucidates on this waiting game by Vladimir and Estragon and terms it the
purposelessness and nothingness of human existence, and all these allude to the alienation and
absurdity inherent in the play. Thus, Essin asserts that:
“Waiting is to experience the action of time, which is constant change. And yet, as
nothing real ever happens, that change is in itself an illusion. The ceaseless activity of
time is self-defeating, purposeless and therefore null and voids. (52)”
The futile exercise of waiting for Godot eventually leads Vladimir and Estragon to a life of
alienation, idleness, frustration, despair and eventually contemplated suicide (Death), which are
all causal elements of existential absurdity and alienation.
Another instance of alienation portrayed in Waiting for Godot is evident in the horrors of anxiety
the constant alienation it brings with it. The lives of the two tramps will be about waiting and
waiting a whole lifetime with no end and consequently, will lead to a boring life stuffed with
nothing but pain, anxiety and failure and an everlasting search for meaning. This is the exact
direction which the lives of the Vladimir and Estragon were heading, and the vagrants waiting
for Godot was such a tortuous exercise that they resorted to idle jokes and time-wasting tactics
which denotes frustration and alienation:
“Vladimir (turning his head). What?
Estragon (louder). Do you see anything coming?
Estragon. No no, you first.
Vladimir. Moron!
Estragon. That’s the idea, let’s abuse each other. They turn, move apart, turn again, and face each
other.
Vladimir. Moron!
Estragon. Vermin!
Vladimir. Abortion!
Estragon. Curate!
Vladimir. Cretin!
Estragon (with finality). Crritic!
Vladimir.Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
Estragon. Now let’s make it up.
Vladimir. Gogo!
Estragon. Didi!
They embrace. They separate. Silence.
Vladimir. How time flies when one has fun! (58).”

The difficult ways in which meaning is thematised in Waiting for Godot is significant simply
because it is difficult to isolate and situate it. However, instances such as when Vladimir and
Estragon have conversations that are confusing and on the verge of incomprehensible help to
associate those instances to the problem of meaning. The meaningless conversations and its
incomprehensible tendencies link the play to the theatre of the absurd (Esslin 3). Meaningless
conversations held by these two characters can partially be happening because they feel like they
are leading meaningless lives. Nevertheless, there are moments in the play where utterances
indicate otherwise.
“Vladimir: We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don´t protest,
we are bored to death, there´s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and
what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let´s get to work! (He advances
towards the heap, stops in his stride) In an instant all will vanish and we´ll be
alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! (He broods)
(Beckett 797)”
This utterance, unpredictably made by Vladimir, takes place during a scenario where Estragon
and Vladimir are debating on whether they should help Pozzo (slave owner) rise up from a little
fall. Vladimir´s declaration in these statements opens doors for interpretation of the perspective
he has on life. The sense of not being in “control” of the events around him gives a hint that a
mundane or even a significant life is a desire of his. The characters in the play seem to be aware
of their meaningless lives. However, the quest for meaning is still there for some of the
characters. For Sartre, the concept of meaning is slightly different. In his book Being and
Nothingness (1969) the concept of meaning is presented as such: “existence precedes essence”
(Sartre 568). This means that one is able to give meaning to one´s life by simply existing and
acting a certain way. According to Sartre, “Freedom makes itself an act, and we ordinarily attain
it across the act which it organizes with the causes, motives, and ends which the act implies”
(Sartre 438). It is clear that Vladimir understands the meaninglessness of his life, however, he is
still installing meaning into it by being aware of that meaninglessness.
The theme of truth for the existentialist is fundamental. For instance, Kierkegaard wrote his first
book, Either/or (1843), under pseudonyms because he considered that by doing so he would
encourage the reader to make their own perceptions/interpretations of the works he published.
That is, to avoid being an indirect source of authority that would jeopardize the subjectivity he
advocated, Kierkegaard would rather not “communicate” the truth to them directly. Eventually,
one could say that, for Kierkegaard, truth is utterly subjective. This is also apparent in his belief
around faith being subjective. On the other hand, for Sartre, truth is something that is man-made
because humans are condemned to be free. To elaborate, through Sartre´s perspective truth is
linked to freedom. He argues that humans are not created by other humans. This leads to us
being born without consent. This then would mean that the fact that we were forcefully put on
earth leads us to be free and act freely. Because, truth is created by humans (human reality), and
therefore for Sartre this human reality is connected to freedom and truth. For Sartre, “… truth is
not encountered by chance; it does not belong to a domain where one must seek…”; this would
mean that truth is what one makes it to be (Sartre 569).

I collected this material randomly. I want you to seamlessly incorporate it into my edited
literature review to make it original and authentic Literature review section for my paper.
Make sure you don't change facts, figures, the text in the commas. keep it in apa style: