The theme of self and identity in the 'Theater of the Absurd'

Abstract

Adam's idea of emergence of life out of habit and order out of chaos implicates the idea of getting to identity from nonentity. Dramatic literature, and more specifically, theTheater of the Abusrd, has proved promising in revealing the existential obsessions of man imposed on him by the demanding characteristics of the postmodern era. In the realm of theater, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, are seen as two major proponents of this theater[AS1] , have illustrated the theme of self and identity, one of the greatest obsessions of modern man. This paper reflects Beckett's deployment of entropy technique as well as Pinter's concept of identity via the framework of chaos theory to show how they have tried to depict this existential problem of man in their major works from their own idiosyncratic view points: philosophical and psychological respectively to project upon the audience or the reader a better view of modern man's sense of his self and identity and enable the reader/viewer to get to a stabilized sense of self and identity amidst the maximum communicative entropy based on the butterfly effect principle that one's chaos can result in order in the other. Key words: Theatre of absurd, self, identity.