A Comparative Analysis of Violence in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party: An Awareness Towards Peace

Abstract

Literature is a powerful medium to comprehend the factors affecting the Sustainable Developmental Goals framed by the United Nations. This Paper examines violence in modern literature especially in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. The violence in the plays demonstrates the effect of the World Wars during which there has been a drastic change in people’s psyche. The two consecutive World Wars had contributed to the extreme form of violence. Through the modernist approach to the plays, the forms of violence are traced out. Verbal, physical, and psychological violence are explored in the plays. Violence is undetachable from these plays to an extent that the playwrights have incorporated humor as a powerful tool to hide its impact. The atmosphere, language, tone, tools, and attitude are loaded with violence. The violence addressed in the plays illustrates how peace is destroyed. The paper elaborates on the reason behind a comparative analysis of these literary works, the violence portrayed in the plays reflecting the psyche of a modern human being in a Post-World War II scenario, and it helps in creating awareness on violence prevailing in the society and the necessity for peace.