Power, Self, and Other: The Absurd in Boesman and Lena

Abstract

As the substantive body of criticism about Samuel Beckett's theatre attests, it is difficult not to impose a variety of contexts onto his work.(1) Athol Fugard's theatre, alternatively, restricts and focuses one's perceptions so that it is difficult to see more than a single context. More simply put, an audience reads its world into Waiting for Godot, while it reads another world out of and Lena. The authors' respective uses of absurdity have led to this state of affairs. and Lena is as explicit a title as Waiting for Godot. In the latter title, as numerous others have pointed out, unidentified individuals are for God. Control of the individual's fate is placed outside his/her hands into those of a deity; human responsibility is diminished. Others have offered less useful biographical interpretations: Godot is named after a French cyclist, or is the French slang word for boot (Bair 382). While offering an additional dimension to the punning that Beckett indulges in, these latter correlations are not particularly useful for those seeking to explicate the play. Beckett has insisted that the meaning of the title is unimportant (Bair 382). Flippancy, mischievousness, or authorial right may be invoked to explain or support Beckett's position, but the play is an act of communication, a dramatic utterance, which begins with a statement of import. The gerund waiting in Beckett's title alerts the reader/audience to the fact that if the communicative act is to mean anything, if grammar means anything, the state of is both subject and action of Beckett's play. What does it mean to wait; what is it like to wait? The prepositional phrase that completes the title specifies whom (or what) one is for. It clarifies the subject and the act. and Lena is simply the names of two characters in a play inhabited by three. Obviously the lack of identification of the third individual gives these two more importance than the unnamed African. More specifically, Lena's song illustrates that is not merely a name, it is also a label and an identification of one's culture: Boesman is 'n / Maar hy dra 'n Hotnot hoed [Boesman is a / But he wears a Hottentot's hat] (184).(2) Bushman is a political label, for the Afrikaners use it as a general term of abuse against the Africans and coloureds. That wears a Hottentot's hat should not go unnoticed because a is considered less civilized, and so lower on the social scale, than a Hottentot. Boesman, therefore, can be said to spurn his identity and falsely attempt to assume another to (re)gain a sense of dignity, albeit in the discourse and practices prevalent in the white scale of values, not his own. Lena, on the other hand, seeks a definition of her being: the questions she poses in this regard link her to him, and he to her, as inextricably as does the simple coordinating conjunction of the title. Where seeks validation of his assumed identity through Lena, Lena craves a witness to her existence through Boesman. An important final point on the titles is the remaining abstraction in Beckett's because neither spatial nor temporal concerns come into play. Fugard's title is more spatially specific, as the assessment of the name indicates. Lena's exclamation of Mud! Swartkops! (143) fixes the location further--they are in the barren Swartkops region of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Temporally, and Lena are at one stage in a long cycle of walks: Redhouse to Missionvale . . . Missionvale to Bethelsdorp. Back again to Redhouse . . . Then to Kleinskool. Kleinskool to Veeplaas. Veeplaas to here. First time. After that, Redhouse . . . Bethelsdorp, Korsten, Veeplaas, back here the second time. Then Missionvale again, Veeplaas, Korsten, and then here, now. (196) It is the walking, not the temporary stops in the towns, that is most important. The absurdity of their condition is found in this incessant, pointless, repetitive cycle of walks. …