GUILDENSTERN: All your life, you live so close to the truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something pushes it into its contours, it's like you're being ambushed. by a grotesque. ~ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard, (p. 39) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get original essay Asides by Paul Valéry is a poem about the loss of faith, desire, knowledge, communication and the ability to understand the world and its place in it. inside. The narrator displays a haunting acceptance of his uncertain fate as he freely falls into unknown places. Thematically, Asides bears a striking resemblance to the Theater of the Absurd, a theatrical movement that emerged primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. The futility of contemporary life, death, the collapse of language and the inability of the protagonists to understand their place in the universe are the main themes of the absurd drama. Perhaps Paul Valéry's poetry was a prelude to the absurdist movement. The idea that man perceives life as an incomprehensible game and is struck by the realization of his inability to carve out a meaningful existence for himself is the dominant theme of both the Asides and the absurd drama. Throughout Asides, the narrator expresses a sense of bleak despair. He abandoned faith in himself, in the universe and in God. The narrator is suspended in a state of uncertainty, underlined by incessant questions. The third stanza underlines the narrator's desolation: “What must you do? (p. 1487) The narrator expresses his frustration with the futility of life by saying that knowledge and mastery will ultimately be of no use to him. Even if he acquires the tools, he still won't be able to use them. The narrator is a prisoner of his own limits. The following exchange between the two protagonists of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the most famous absurdist play, demonstrates a similar abandonment of hope. " VLADIMIR: I'm getting used to the mud little by little. ESTRAGON: (after a long thought). Is it the opposite? VLADIMIR: A question of temperament. ESTRAGON: Of character. VLADIMIR: You can't do anything about it . ESTRAGON: No, use the fight. VLADIMIR: We are what we are. ESTRAGON: No need to squirm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, a later absurdist play partly inspired by Waiting for Godot, one of the central characters laments their bleak existence and the uncertainty of the universe “GUILDENSTERN (broken): We have traveled too far. , and our momentum took over; we advance idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation." (p. 121) It should be noted that another prevalent theme in absurdist drama is distrust of the language as a means of effective communication. The seemingly pointless exchanges and puns commonly found in absurdist plays are not at all arbitrary. The meaning is buried in the language and it is up to the reader to discover. the message intended by the writer Valéry adopts a similar approach in Asides The poem is, in a way, a linguistic puzzle Valéry distributes questions and answers, all vague and ambiguous The answers are in the text but the reader. must seek them Another theme shared by the absurdist drama and Asides is the relentless presence of mortality and the idea of ​​death as escape. Towards the end of Waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir are overcome by despair and contemplate. suicide in a surprising way. 66)