Humanity in Ruins: Vision of War and Auschwitz in Beckett’s Post-war plays

Abstract

To talk of war in Samuel Beckett’s plays is to dispel the restrictive criticism that his art is
completely apolitical and ahistorical and concerns only with the philosophical question of
modern man’s grappling for meaning of life. Behind the garb of such existential exposition in
Beckett’s art, there is an exploration of his own experience during the war. Waitng For Godot
for instance is a product of Beckett’s accumulative experience of the war. During the war,
because of his involvement in the French Resistance group, he and his girlfriend had to escape
and find a refuge in a small village at Rousillon.