A Study in Absurdism: Wilde and Beckett

Absurdism in the works of Oscar Wilde takes place in his conceptions of human nature, his characters, and the events that unfold in the realm of his literature. The wit Wilde incorporates into his texts contributes specifically to his literary heritage—one aspect of which dwells in his absurdist dialogue and farcical satire of culture. Wilde’s dialogue, as well as his portrayal of events within the play, are composed with the value of truth in mind—specifically in terms of the character’s motives and actions. In what is perhaps Wilde’s best known play, The Importance of Being Earnest, he plays on the value of truth, certainty, and meaning in order to illustrate the motives of his characters. In doing so, Wilde is able to unravel the absurdity of Victorian culture—specifically through focusing on the human relationships of the characters.

In order to understand absurdism in the context of Wilde’s plays, it is important to understand absurdism itself as the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe which is enacted through intentionally ridiculous or bizarre behavior. Samuel Beckett, another Irish playwright, similarly to Wilde incorporates central themes of absurdism and nihilism into his plays. This essay aims to highlight the nonsensical nature of Wilde’s writing as absurdist by comparing The Importance of Being Earnest  to the absurdism of Beckett—specifically in Endgame and Waiting for Godot.

In Endgame and Waiting for Godot, there is a central conflict that the characters face through struggle and doubt: the tension between humans and human existence. Absurdity occurs in the bilateral relationship between the human being and the world he exists in—in the dichotomy between humanity and the chaotic and senseless universe in which he inhabits. In the work of Wilde, absurdism lies solely in the human experience, thus presenting itself in and through cultural values.

In bridging the gap between Beckett and Wilde, it is essential to reflect on Theodor Adorno’s texts as a lens through which absurdism can be understood in the context of the plays. In Trying to Understand Endgame, Adorno discusses Beckett’s work, writing

For the norm of existential philosophy—people should be themselves because they can no longer become anything else—, Endgame posits the antithesis, that precisely this self is not a self but rather the aping imitation of something nonexistent…What used to be the truth content of the subject—thinking—is preserved in its gestural shell. (143)

For Adorno, in terms of the absurd, reason becomes irrational—things are the way they are, with or without logic or logical reason. In high modernist works, these material contradictions are expressed at a formal level in the impossibility of synthetic identity in the work—the synthesis of the universal (things that exist) and the obverse (things that do not exist). If absurdism is the destruction of meaning, or the lack thereof, Wilde and Beckett use absurdism to fill the void of meaning with the symbol of meaning—thus the lack of meaning illustrates meaning, just as in Earnest the lack of seriousness illustrates seriousness itself: satire.

In Earnest, the characters seem to speak often without logic—humor shines through the moments in which Wilde criticizes Victorian-era cultural values: denoting his own views through the mouths and actions of his characters. The subtitle of the play is “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.” Through the subtitle alone, Wilde conveys the notion that everything in the play that is serious should not be taken as so, while the more comedic elements should be taken as a sober cultural critique. Similarly, the English subtitle of Waiting for Godot  is “A Tragicomedy in Two Acts.” In both Beckett and Wilde’s plays the absurdity can be found in the subtitle, which reveals the nature of the characters and events.

The play’s main paradox is the impossibility of really being earnest while trying to convince others that you are. We see this through the idea of Bunburying in the play. "Bunbury" refers to the imaginary friend of Algernon that he employs to enable him to remove himself from awkward social engagements in order to lead a double life. Bunbury is paralleled in “Ernest,” Jack's equally imaginary brother, whose mirrored exploits allow Jack to avoid domestic responsibility. For Wilde, the absurdism shines through with the use of Bunburyism: while the name Ernest does not mean earnest, the word Bunbury is used to displace the thing to which it refers—wherever his name is present, he is not.  Through the creation of Bunbury, Wilde emphasizes similar notions of absurdity in Earnest that near parallel Beckett’s Endgame. Bunbury’s life has no beginning or end because he is not real. Nothing possible can develop or reveal itself, not even death, rendering Bunbury similar to Endgame’s main characters— Clov and Hamm. Beckett's characters are stuck in eternally static routines. They go through the "farce" of routine actions, as they call it, because there is nothing else to do while they wait for death. The environment around them, too, is unchanging. Clov reports everything outside is "zero.” Hamm and Clov are stuck in the final moments of their lives—nothing has the ability to change, they can do nothing except wait for death. Bunbury, similarly, exists only for the use of Algernon—he figuratively waits for death.

Beckett does something similar in Waiting for Godot. According to Adorno, to understand Waiting for Godot is to understand its incomprehensibility—not to fill in a meaning through deciphering its symbols, but to interpret how the play destroys meaning and produces cognitive dissonance. In absurdist works, form negates or destroys meaning— nothing happens, there is no plot, none of the dialogue advances narrative or provides us with insight into the psychology of the characters, etc. What distinguishes Waiting for Godot as a work of art, according to Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, is that it is a quintessentially modernist work— a work that seeks to find a form of representation that is adequate to the human condition. Adorno and Horkheimer’s crucial claim is the failure to produce meaning or to produce enjoyment or pleasure for the spectator is in fact the promise of modern art—“that is the secret of aesthetic sublimation: to present fulfillment in its brokenness” (111).

Beckett employs multiple modes to emphasize the elements of absurdism in his writings—nothing develops or unfolds, which can be seen through the ways in which his characters interact; the character’s actions in themselves are purposeless and inefficacious.

In Endgame, Hamm says,

...One day you'll be blind, like me. You'll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me. One day you'll say to yourself, I'm tired, I'll sit down, and you'll go and sit down. Then you'll say, I'm hungry, I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up. You'll say, I shouldn't have sat down, but since I have I'll sit on a little longer, then I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up and you won't get anything to eat. You'll look at the wall a while, then you'll say, I'll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I'll feel better, and you'll close them. And when you'll open them again there will be no wall anymore. Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe… (109)

The metaphysical meaning of this speech is one that relays the idea that man exists in a world which is against him. Absurdity in this situation arises from the moment when Hamm realizes his mortality—signifying the divorce between man and the world, which is where absurdism is found: in a universe in which the world is against man, devoid of logic or reason for this divide.

For Adorno, the absurd refers to the rise of instrumental rationality. Reason (ratio), the rational principle is eclipsed by instrumental rationality. In Wilde, this exists in the rationality of bureaucratic functioning. “Ratio, having been fully instrumentalized, and therefore devoid of self-reflection and of reflection on what it has excluded, must seek that meaning it has itself extinguished” (148). As such, reason has become fundamentally irrational. This is the thesis of the Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Absurdism often employs the principle of sufficient reason—that for everything that exists there is reason for its existence, that of everything that is true there is a principle of its truth. Bunbury dichotomizes the principle of sufficient reason: there is a reason for his existence, yet he does not truly exist. For the existentialists, the absurd refers to freedom— if existence precedes essence, this means that there is at least one being, the human, whose existence is not determined by a rational principle as its cause. We see to understand the meaning our life that it fundamentally lacks. Once we give up hope that we can find this meaning externally, we find embrace the possibility of living without appeal—hence Wilde’s absurdity and satirization of cultural values in Earnest. Adorno’s thesis of the Dialectic of Enlightenment reflects on this notion of motivation in an absurd sphere: “The absurd does not take the place of the rational as one world view of another; in the absurd, the rational worldview comes into its own” (141). In analyzing both the works of Wilde and Beckett, this is significant in terms of identity and character motive. As Adorno puts it, “what used to be truth content of the subject—thinking—is only preserved in gestural shell. Both main figures act as if they were reflecting on something, but without thinking” (143). The destruction of the subject as the locus of thought and action is contextualized through Bunbury with Wilde, Hamm and Clov with Beckett.

Nagg and Nell in Endgame are willing to accept that they cannot rely on each other, and must exist in their separate ash-bins. Nell calls their futile kissing routine a "farce.” The two serve to attempt to preserve a relationship which no longer exists, as emulated by their forced separation. Similarly, marriage in Earnest discusses a similar “farce,” in which characters seek to move up in rank while preserving Victorian-era notions of marriage. This is seen in the relationship between Jack and Lady Bracknell, after he reveals his origin of birth:

Lady Bracknell: Me, sir!  What has it to do with me?  You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?  (1.2)

The absurdity of Lady Bracknell’s ideologies on marriage and response to Jack and Gwendolen’s engagement reinforce Wilde’s satire of Victorian cultural values, which he constantly develops through playing on notions of class via marriage. Just as Nagg and Nell attempt to sustain some part of their relationship (before losing their legs and having to live in separate trash cans), Wilde’s characters seek to maintain marital and cultural standards, though later the values are dissolved when Cecily and Gwendolyn discover that they are engaged to a fictitious man.

Wilde emphasizes and mocks perceived notions of marriage at the time through Jack and Algernon. Under the assumed name of Earnest, Jack pays a visit to Algernon and discusses his plan to propose to Gwendolen, the love of his life. Algernon, who is Gwendolen’s first cousin, mocks his companion’s intentions as he represents the conflicting view of Victorian-era marriage.  Algernon, states, “I thought you had come up for pleasure?—I call that business.” (1. 1.). Jack is stunned by his companion’s response of his good news and retorts, “How utterly unromantic you are!” (1. 1.). Jack represents marriage as love, while Algernon represents the idea of marriage as political (by extension, economical). Through both characters, Wilde satirizes the Victorian rejection of passion as crucial to marriage—this is comedically evident through the treatment of marriage, love, and relationships throughout the play.

In the article “Oscar Wilde and the Importance of Not Being Earnest,” Karl Beckson writes,

The Importance of Being Earnest, a play of multiple masks, employs the word absurd some eight times in its comic depiction of a bewildering world of seemingly irrational and incomprehensible impulses on the part of the two young female characters, who wish only to fall in love with someone named “Ernest”— “the only really safe name,” says one; a name that “seems to inspire absolute confidence,” says the other. (4)

Gwendolen and Cecily’s obsession with the name Ernest can be seen as a Wildean satirization of marrying for social mobility—this exists in the normative of marrying for the (family) name. In the tradition of marrying for the family name (either to move socially upwards or keep the name in tact), arranged marriages  trump marriage for love. Similarly, since the two women want to marry for name: Wilde uses them to highlight absurdity in Victorian culture through the situational absurdity in the play which exists through the idea of namesake. Through Gwendolen and Cecily, Wilde captures the absurdity of Victorian marriage ideals, though Lady Bracknell lies at the center of these absurdities. For example, in the dialogue when Gwendolen gets engaged to Jack:

Gwendolen:  I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma.

Lady Bracknell:  Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone.  When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact.  An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.  (1.2)

The humor of Lady Bracknell’s dialogue serves to reinforce the absurdity of the play—Gwendolen’s marriage, like most marriages of the time, was arranged with the expectations of society in the forefront of the mind which Wilde satirizes through Lady Bracknell. The idea of Gwendolen even having a choice is evaporated by hilarity, through which Wilde reveals absurdism.

According to Ronald Srigley in Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity,

As soon as the absurd man begins to explore the origins of the absurd concretely, his description of the experience changes in important ways. The first thing he realizes is that the sense of meaninglessness and disorder provoked by the absurd is not caused by the collapse of the world into nothingness… What collapses is not the world itself but what the absurd man calls variously the “stage-sets” (decors), “the images and designs” by which he commonly orders his life. (26)

Wilde’s characters in Earnest, similarly, are ordered by Victorian cultural values—a sort of decor—, which are exposed throughout the play. Wilde comically expresses his thoughts on the human condition through absurdity, similarly to Beckett in Waiting for Godot. The human condition in both Earnest and Waiting for Godot are emphasized by senselessness—the senselessness specifically of the dialogue acts as a reflection of the relationships between the characters, thus exposing the absurdity of life within the realm of the plays.

For example, one of the most comedic scenes ever engineered by Wilde exists in the second act of the play:

Algernon:  If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it.  [Begins to eat muffins.] It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business.  Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
Jack: How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out.  You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
Algernon:  Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner.  The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly.  It is the only way to eat them.
Jack:  I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.
Algernon.  When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me.  Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink.  At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. [Rising.]
Jack.  [Rising.]  Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way. [Takes muffins from Algernon.]
Algernon.  [Offering tea-cake.]  I wish you would have tea-cake instead.  I don’t like tea-cake.
Jack.  Good heavens!  I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden.
Algernon.  But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins.
Jack:  I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances.  That is a very different thing.
Algernon:  That may be.  But the muffins are the same.  [He seizes the muffin-dish from Jack.]

What is absurd about this scene is not the muffins themselves, but rather the subtext: One should always eat muffins quite calmly.  It is the only way to eat them, says Algernon. There is a standard for everything in the Victorian era, and by creating comedy for the upheaval of the character’s lives—Wilde creates an absurd situation in which the human condition unfolds—the truth—, as does the lie of Ernest which Jack and Algernon create. Through the muffins, Wilde mocks the manners of the elite class as well as satirizes the human condition by showcasing their foolishness. The repartee that Jack and Algernon engage in is senseless—they both become aware of their absurdness and so their world of morals-and-manners collapses into absurdity. We see this through Cecily and Gwendolen’s observance of the pair:

Gwendolen:  The fact that they did not follow us at once into the house, as anyone else would have done, seems to me to show that they have some sense of shame left.

Cecily:  They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance. (3.1)

Similarly, in Waiting for Godot, Beckett employs a similar type of dialogue in the sense of seeming purposelessness:

ESTRAGON: Let's hang ourselves immediately!
VLADIMIR: From a bough? (They go towards the tree.) I wouldn't trust it.
ESTRAGON: We can always try.
VLADIMIR: Go ahead.
ESTRAGON: After you.
VLADIMIR: No no, you first. (1.1)

The back-and-forth nature of the dialogue between Estragon and Vladimir is reminiscent of that between Jack and Algernon. Just as Jack and Algernon’s conversation about muffins lacks purpose, and ultimately can reach no conclusion due to the lack thereof, Vladimir and Estragon find themselves in a similar senseless struggle in the dichotomy between action and inaction.
VLADIMIR: Well? What do we do?
ESTRAGON: Don't do anything. It's safer.
VLADIMIR: Let's wait and see what he says.
ESTRAGON: Who?
VLADIMIR: Godot.
ESTRAGON: Good idea.
VLADIMIR: Let's wait till we know exactly how we stand. (1.1)

In Endgame, a similar dialogue is performed by Nell and Nagg. As the audience, assumedly we are repelled and near disgusted by their grotesque disorder but simultaneously we feel sympathy for their state of being.

NAGG: Can you see me?

NELL: Hardly. And you?

NAGG: What?

NELL: Can you see me?

NAGG: Hardly.

NELL: So much the better, so much the better.

NAGG: Don't say that.(Pause.) Our sight has failed.

NELL: Yes. (Pause. They turn away from each other.)

NAGG: Can you hear me?

NELL: Yes. And you?

NAGG: Yes. (Pause.) Our hearing hasn't failed.

NELL: Our what?

NAGG: Our hearing. (1.1)

Their dialogue has no purpose. Everything they say is simultaneously affirmed and negated—they say that they can hear each other, but then (through dialogue) show that they cannot. Their conversations are purposeless because their life is purposeless—stuck inside trash cans, unable to even touch each other—their dialogue is Beckett’s reflection of absurdity. This is similar to Earnest: while Jack and Algernon’s muffin scene is absurd because of their foolishness, their dialogue serves no purpose in the plot but rather is a mockery of Victorian social etiquette in the upper class.

Structurally, Earnest is absurd due to dramatic irony. We, as the audience, know that Jack and Algernon are not named Ernest. We know that Bunbury does not exist. However, we are also exposed to Wilde’s ingenious after learning that Jack’s name truly is “Ernest,” in the third act. Wilde creates absurdity through the idea that all along, it really was of the utmost importance that Gwendolen marry a man named Ernest. Her absurd notions—“the only really safe name;” a name that “seems to inspire absolute confidence”— of the name are confirmed.

Similarly, the structure of Waiting for Godot and Endgame posit a likened reality to Earnest. If Earnest begins with the engagement of Jack and Gwendolen and ends with the engagement of Jack/Ernest and Gwendolen, nothing truly unfolds besides the question of the name “Ernest” and all that it entails. Similarly, there is a central question in Waiting for Godot and Endgame: the characters ask questions of their reality. The plot is not propelled due to the character’s inaction, and no end is truly met as the characters wait for nothing (while Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot—who will never come—, the characters in Endgame wait for death).

Wilde and Beckett rely on absurdism in order to contextualize their purpose. In Earnest, Wilde seeks to satirize and mock cultural values in the Victorian era. In his use of absurdism, he is able to use Bunbury as an engineer for mockery. Similarly, Wilde’s dialogue becomes a critique of social mobility. We se this through the relationships between the characters: the women are in agreement that they want to wed a man named Ernest, if and only if his name is Ernest; the men engage in absurdism through their comedic repartee, i.e. the muffin-eating scene in the garden. Lady Bracknell, especially, represents a cultural pedestal on which Wilde plunders values of the time through her seemingly ridiculous notions of marriage (which we see through her dialogue on engagement and Jack’s upbringing and birth). Beckett’s works are absurdist due the nature of the repetitive dialogue (which is often akin to that of Jack and Algernon), as well as the central questions about existence in the dialogue, and by the overwhelming lack of action as the characters contemplate action itself. While Endgame represents a similar world to that which exists in Earnest in the sense that lack of meaning illustrates meaning, just as lack of seriousness illustrates seriousness—Waiting for Godot and Earnest posit a question of existence. The plot in Waiting for Godot is essentially nonexistent, however the dialogue is propelled by the idea of Godot: the question of whether or not he is coming. Earnest, arguably, also lacks plot: the dialogue is propelled by the relationships between the characters as they seek to establish cultural normatives (i.e. marriage). The question of their absurd existence is answered when their absurdity is confirmed: Jack’s real name is Ernest. Through this, Wilde affirms the ridiculous notions of the women which exist in the idea of namesake. Wilde and Beckett’s employment of absurdism enables them to fill the void of meaning with the symbol of meaning—ultimately providing cultural critique and social satire.

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