In Act Without Words (1956), Samuel Beckett strips the human condition to its barest level of existence, "the last extremity of flesh - or bone" (Connor 181). The work is no longer than four pages, but, in those few pages, Beckett addresses humanity's incessant struggle with its disturbingly absurd and thrown condition. It mimics the thwarted attempts of a nameless character, an ordinary man, hurled across the stage, into the desert, to obtain a jug of water, suspended just out of reach. Tools and objects descend to aid his target, each confiscated once their most beneficial use is discovered: suicide. Ultimately, failed efforts result in his refusal to participate or respond to the world; the useless passion of all human endeavors. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Beckett's short piece may seem simplistic and perhaps a little understated, however, each line and corresponding action requires a considerable amount of "unpacking." " He creates a complex web of allusions, drawing on numerous sources, from the Greek myths of Tantalus and Sisyphus to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Beckett was a crucial member of the Theater of the Absurd, giving an artistic dimension to the attitudes of the French existentialists, in particular Albert Camus. The existentialist movement itself has its roots in Martin Heidegger's influential Being and Time (1927), then also finds its way into Beckett's work. With impeccable philosophical and empirical observation, Act Without Words poses a “light dazzling” about the human condition – its conditioning – bringing to light a contemporary and mythological piece about the futility and crushing anguish of human activity in an absurd wasteland, beyond our control The first lines of the play deliver the character nameless in the desert; he is "thrown backwards onto the stage from the right wing" (Beckett 87) man is the being thrown into the world as the null basis of a nothingness, «the being of Dasein [of 'man] means, as a thrown projection, the basic being of a nothingness (and this basic being is itself null) (331). Beckett's nameless character suffers the throw of existence, thrown into the unknown with nothing. After getting up and dusting himself off, a shrill whistle comes from the right flank and then the left. He follows the boos off stage and every time the result is the same, there is no escape: “Immediately thrown back on stage he falls, gets up immediately, dusts himself off, turns sideways, reflects” (87). The ambiguous whistle signals his ruin, his pain; he is nothing more than a dog. He resembles Descartes' evil genius (what was thought irrational becomes reality) deliberately deceptive and ruthless, mocking and confusing humanity; instead of angels as messengers, there are flies. The first object the flies deliver is a small tree, sitting “three meters from the ground and at the top of which a thin clump of palm trees casts a circle of shade at its feet” (87). The tree alludes to the Tree of Life from the Book of Genesis. God planted the tree, whose fruit when eaten gave immortality, in Eden, together with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The palm trees on the tree suddenly close like a parasol, freeing themselves of the shade, leaving the character nameless under the scorching desert sun. It mirrors Adam and Eve's exile from the garden, forced to toil for disobeying God's command. What is the character's great transgression against God? Through caricature, Beckett is saying that God punished humanity for the absurd crime of existing; comparable to the “ultimatum” of the final sermon of Either/Or (1843) byKierkegaard, whose main refrain is “Before God you are always wrong” (335). In addition to scissors, used to cut nails, the next item is flies bring a jug full of water. The character hears the whistle from above and sees the jug. He gets up “goes and gets under, tries in vain to reach him, gives up, walks away, reflects” (Beckett 88). Three whistles, a large cube, a small cube, and a smaller cube, all eventually get off the flies. His attempts to reach the jug using the large cube and the small cube, even by stacking them, end in failure; “he tries in vain to reach the jug, gives up, lowers himself... reflects. ...the cubes collapse, he falls...he reflects” (88). The third, smaller cube would give him enough height to reach the jug, but just as he puts his thoughts together “the cube is pulled up and disappears among the flies” (89). A knotted rope then comes down from the flies next to the jug. The whistle from above calls him. He climbs the rope and when he has almost reached the jug it comes out. He falls to the ground again. The danger of the nameless character is comparable to the absurd and repeatable tasks of some characters in Greek mythology. Two great allusions are Tantalus and Sisyphus, occupants of Erebus, the kingdom of the dead. The temptation and repetition without any satisfaction in Beckett's “myth” parallels Tantalus' punishment for committing a human sacrifice. It must be in a pool of water under the fruit-filled branches of a tree. Every time Tantalus took a drink, the waters receded. When he picked up a fruit, the branch barely moved from his grasp. In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), Satan and his fellow demons suffer an equivalent punishment for tempting Eve: By a forbidden tree, a multitude Now is risen, to bring them further trouble or shame; to deceive them sent, they could not abstain, ... they fondly thought of appeasing their appetite with gusts, instead of fruit, chewing bitter ashes (10. 554-57, 464-66). The punishment of Tantalus and that of Satan occur in the realm of the dead, although in different traditions. Is Beckett saying that humanity is in hell, condemned to a world of incessant temptation, of laborious repetition, without any satisfaction? Yes, Beckett seems to think so. Humanity finds itself in Erebos, in an ever-growing wasteland. The myth of Sisyphus completes the mythological imagery of the underworld reality of Beckett's existence. Fourteen years before Beckett's brief work, Camus wrote his existential essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942) commenting on, among many other things, humanity's "logic" for suicide. in the face of the Absurd. At the end of the essay, Camus proclaims Sisyphus as the absurd hero, the “futile worker of the Underworld” (119). The gods rebuked Sisyphus by forcing him to place a stone on a hill, but when he gets close to the top, he rolls back down and has to start all over again; “They had thought with some reason that there is no more terrible punishment than useless and hopeless labor” (119). Beckett seems strongly influenced by Camus, continuing the task of searching for the absurd in the past, while “the primitive hostility of the world rises to confront us across the millennia” (14). He would agree with Camus: in man's relationship both with the world and with the absurd, there is "a total absence of hope... a continuous refusal... and a conscious dissatisfaction" (31). Beckett's writings reflect the hopelessness, dissatisfaction and repetition of the aforementioned absurd heroes. In Endgame (1957), Nell and Clov ask rather directly: “Why this farce, day after day” (14, 32), the only answer Hamm gives is “Routine. You never know” (32). Camus writes : “We continue to make the gestures commanded by existence for, 1994.