Abstract
My essay focuses on one of Tennessee Williams's least critically analyzed play and probably his less staged one, Camino Real (1953.) The play has often been interpreted as an expressionist and/or an existentialist play. Moreover, it was mostly rejected by critics and audiences alike when he was first performed in the 1950s, mostly due to its unrealistic quality. Remarkably, some of the attributes that the critics used to describe the play are the same used to describe absurdist dramas: "anti-drama", "anti-theatre.” The reason for the failed success of Camino Real lies precisely, in my opinion, in the lack of recognition of the absurdist element in it: the "organized meaninglessness" (Adorno, 120) that allowed Williams to represent the irrational quality of the modern human condition. Using as critical tool Theodor Adorno’s essay “Trying to Understand Endgame ”, my aim will be to show that the play is successful in taking on the themes and techniques of absurdist theatre in the manner of Samuel Beckett. In "Trying to Understand Endgame " Adorno mentions Camino Real and identifies the motif of rubbish as central in both Beckett's Endgame and Camino Real underlying in this way a sort of continuity between the two plays. In my contribution I am going to analyze Camino Real using some of the tools Adorno applies to his study of Endgame and I will try to show the characteristics that in my opinion make Camino Real an absurdist play.
Highlights
"The misery of the participants in Endgame is the misery of philosophy" states Theodor Adorno in his seminal essay written on Samuel Beckett's 1957 acclaimed play (ADORNO, 1982, p. 130)
Despite the fundamental differences between the two playwrights – first and foremost the fact that Williams wrote in 1950s America whilst the theater of the absurd is a European movement – both plays seem to present the condition of humanity in the face of "permanent catastrophe" (Adorno, 1982, p. 123)
The "camino real" is, a police state, ruled by a ruthless totalitarian leader and the only way out is represented by death, but death itself is not even an option as resurrection is forced upon various characters in the play and it does nothing but lengthen "the escape route of the subject's liquidation to the point where it constricts into a 'this-here'" (ADORNO, 1982, p. 124): the inescapable "camino real"
Summary
"The misery of the participants in Endgame is the misery of philosophy" states Theodor Adorno in his seminal essay written on Samuel Beckett's 1957 acclaimed play (ADORNO, 1982, p. 130). I will argue here that the same argument can be used to analyze Tennessee Williams's play Camino Real.
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