As you can see, I'm taking a brief break from dealing with Bard-'verse and from reading Camus' The Fall to do this.  (I have realized, with the set-up I have, that a wiki would be the best format for the information here, but LJ's so much easier. Besides, now all I have to do is copy-paste for making a wiki. And I like the idea of updating articles.)  This is a (very rough) paper I wrote for English. Just turned it in, without editing or anything. (Thank Eru I'm a Grammar Nazi.)

EDIT: This, btw, is an easy ninety-four paper.

Hope Springs Internal(ly)

            Writing about lives which end in various ways—suicide, self-inflicted torture, unfulfilled and subjugated old age, self-starvation, or death by ostracization—or the occasional continuation of life under a corrupt system, trying to find an uplifting or satisfying ending in a Kafka story can be singularly difficult. At first glance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is similarly depressing, with the main characters trapped in a kind of purgatory and awaiting judgment or aid from a higher power—and with nothing happening once in the first act and again in the second, in a kind of temporal loop. However, there is nonetheless a hint of hopefulness contained in the play and its ending, one which is noticeably absent from Kafka’s works. The difference between the two marks the beginning of a shift from the modernist to the existentialist, and with it a renewed idea of hope based in the concept of individual strength.

            Much of Kafka’s work centers on the individual’s inability to fight the system which suppresses it—and often the individual’s lack inclination to fight it. In “The Refusal,” the townspeople are not seriously looking to have their requests granted, and in “Before the Law” the man never once thinks to try to force his way through. Even when he is warned off by the doorkeeper, he was only peering inside, not actively trying to get in. In the rather macabre story “In the Penal Colony,” there are many forces which are not fought: for the torturing officer, it is the perceived suppression of the new regime; for the condemned man, the judgment he neither knew about nor was ever tried for; for the explorer, the traditions which he cannot openly confront. He refuses to say anything publicly about the torturous method of execution, and he could have taken the soldier and the condemned man with him on the ship to a freer place, but he “[lifts] a heavy knotted rope from the floor boards, [threatens] them with it, and so [keeps] them from attempting the leap” (Kafka 167). Even the supposedly free-thinking and powerful explorer does not really fight the authority of the country—which was already phasing out the execution method. For those trapped under that authority, there is no escape.

            Beckett is a less cut-and-dried case, as he straddles the transition from modernism to existentialism. On the one hand, Waiting for Godot has much of the same bleak outlook as Kafka’s work. The set itself is intended to be incredibly barren, and there are many long pauses in the conversation which create an uncomfortable void. The two main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, are waiting for a man they’ve never seen to aid them, with no idea of exactly when he’ll come or even what judgment he might make. Estragon even loses all sense of time, forgetting that they’d been in the same place two days in a row. Even Godot’s messenger, who is in a sense from the “outside” and perhaps ought to be cognizant of time passing, but if anything he’s worse. Not only does he not remember that they had met, but he almost appears to be projecting the image that he is a different boy when the script indicates that visually he is the same one. In neither act do the two men meet Godot, nor do they receive any indication of what his intentions might be. It is a bleak concept of life.

            There is, however, a hidden hopefulness to the situation. Despite the reduced circumstances shown in the second act—with Pozzo’s blindness particularly—the tree that was dead in the first act is shown to be in bloom in the second. It is a visual sign of new life, which necessarily adds hope in the mind of the reader (or audience member), because if the dead tree can come back to life, perhaps the men’s lives will take a turn for the better as well. Also, Vladimir’s perception of the passage of time and memory of the previous day’s events leads him to tell the boy specifically to tell Godot, “Tell him[…] that you saw me. You’re sure you saw me, you won’t come and tell me to-morrow that you never saw me.” (Beckett 106) He actively tries to do something about his condition, and neither he nor Estragon simply gives up on the possibility of one day meeting Godot and getting aid. The idea that perhaps if they keep waiting or, in Vladimir’s case, that if they stay determined they may be able to accomplish something and leaving the issue unresolved is something distinctly un-modernist.

            Kafka took the modernist approach in one of his introductory parables, in which a man at a gate is trying to get into the Law. He waits at the gate his whole life, trying bribery and begging and simply outlasting the doorkeeper. However, because the story is a modernist one, there is no uncertainty about the outcome—and therefore also less hope. He dies unfulfilled, and knowing there was no judgment to be found, only that kind of endless waiting. “Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law,” that radiance being, in a way, hope—but he can never pass through the gate, and so can never reach it (Kafka 4). On the other hand, simply the implication of uncertainty in Waiting for Godot allows for the possibility of hope. With the gate closed, no one is judged, everything remains in stasis, and no one can ever be saved. Uncertainty in the sense of possibly providing a way out is an idea distinctly later in origin, partly stemming from advances in science which proved that the most one could know was the probability of events occurring. In fact, the men already have hope of salvation, and are waiting for the next step. In a sense, they have passed the gateway the man of “Before the Law” could not, and are waiting to speak to the second doorkeeper—but he will not appear. They have the judgment waiting already, they do not have to search for it, although the judge is absent.

            The other thing which makes Waiting for Godot less modernist is the more individually-centric approach to life and to the problems they face. In many of Kafka’s stories, there is a sense of other people besides the ones dealt with directly, or of people absent from the action. For instance, in “The Judgment” the friend is absent, and yet plays a significant role, and there is nothing that the individual Georg can do against it. Everything is controlled entirely by an outside force. He does not even know prior to the final confrontation that he is being judged, whereas in the more existential Beckett play, they are at least aware of the impending verdict. In “The Refusal,” the colonel holds all the power in the town, including over life and death, and the people submit to it without question and as if they have no choice. In fact, it is vital to their survival. They have become so accustomed to it that they “simply cannot get along” without it, and they are “if not exactly strengthened or happy, not disappointed or tired” at the end of every refusal (Kafka 267). In Godot, however, there is more indication of the individual’s power. Estragon and Vladimir always have a choice: to stay or go, to live or die, to help Pozzo or not to help him, and they are choices they actively discuss. They have some influence over the course their lives take, and Vladimir hopes to influence Godot by telling the boy what to tell him. The idea of the individual’s power over his own life through choice is one that is distinctly existentialist.

            As bleak as Beckett’s play can appear, there is nonetheless a fundamental hopefulness contained within its principles which does not exist in Kafka’s work. Kafka’s work always stresses the futility of fighting verdicts handed down from above, verdicts one may not even know existed prior to their communication, and usually ones which carry a death sentence. Beckett, however underhandedly, does allow for some influence of the individual and, by allowing for change the second time around and not showing the third time, leaves a little room for hope. This allowance signals a shift, in Beckett’s writing at least, and beginning to lean from the modernist to the more existential thought process.

Rough, but I like it.