Hearing , Seeing and Acting:  A Peircean- Semiotic Perspective, on Samuel Beckett's Acts Without Words I

Hussien Aziz, Fatima

	Hearing , Seeing and Acting: A Peircean- Semiotic Perspective, on Samuel Beckett's Acts Without Words I
مجلة آداب البصرة
Article 5, Volume 8, Issue 61, 2012, Pages 75-98 PDF (0 K)
Author
Fatima Hussien Aziz
Abstract
Samuel Beckett’s, Act Without Words ( henceforth, AWWI), is one of the few slighted works in the Beckett canon. Often ignored, the play generally did not fare well even with those critics who do treat it. Ruby Cohn(1962:247 ) dismisses the work as ‘almost too explicit,’ and Ihab Hassan(1967:192 ) notes that the play seems ‘a little too obvious and pat.’ John Fletcher and John Spurling (1972:118 ) concur: ''compared to Godot, ‘Act Without Words I is . . . over-explicit, over-emphasized and even, unless redeemed by its performer, so unparticularized as to verge on the banal.'' Then, AWWI's directness (signs , e.g. cubes, rope, scissors , carafe, man, hands, sun , desert, dazzling light, whistle etc. ) is almost a source of embarrassment for critics and has prompted some forced interpretation. Martin Esslin( 1964:38 ) argues that the protagonist is ‘drawn to the pursuit of illusory objectives . . .." Ruby Cohn ( 1962:247) echoes the view, suggesting that the ‘sustenance and tools are man’s own invention, and his frustration the result of the impossibility of ever being able to reach what may be a mirage." But the objects certainly seem substantial. The protagonist stands on the cubes and engages in a tug-of-war with a force outside himself, presumably the same force which threw him on stage . The scissors and rope may be man’s own inventions, but they are nonetheless real; if they were not, the exterior force would have little reason to confiscate them.
Keywords
Hearing; Seeing and Acting; Semiotic Perspective; on Samuel Beckett

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