Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

 Hello Beautiful People,

    I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ? This blog is about giving interpretation of a thirty-second play, 'Breath'. This shortest play written by Samuel Beckett.Martin Esslin first gave the term 'Theatre of the Absurd.' He was awarded with Nobel Prize in 1969.As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Twentieth Century Literature : From World War 2 to the End of the Century(paper-107),So while studying ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ our professor Prof. Dr.Dilip Barad sir discussed the film version of Beckett’s shortest play ‘Breath’ - thirty-seconds play and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret this shortest play and shoot a small video.

"Absurdist drama asks its viewer to 

draw his own conclusions, 

make his own errors"

-Martin Esslin 

 Theatre of the Absurd or absurdism is a movement where theatre was less concerned with a plot that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, but dealt with the human condition. A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development. In philosophy, "the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find these with any certainty.Absurdism shares some concepts, and a common theoretical template, with existentialism and nihilism.

Ok so we take some brief intro about Theatre of Absurd and also Absurdity. Now we see Samuel becket’s shortest play ‘BREATH’. If we look at the script of the play, it is as follows.

CURTAIN Up 1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.                                                           2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds. 3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.  Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying. Cry. Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath. Breath. Amplified recording. CURTAIN Down

There are many adaptations of the play and all seem very creative and worthy to watch on different parallels. You can watch some of the videos which are attached in our teacher's blog.

Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Picturization of the play :

Samuel Beckett's ‘Breath’ by Riddhi Bhatt

Interpretation of the play :

    As we know that Samuel Beckett is associated with Theatre of Absurd, his another play, "Waiting for Godot" is also an absurd play.If one tries to interpret such a short play, it can be said that it covers much absurdity and is meaningless.

    To begin with the above picturization revolves around the journey of Human beings from Birth to Death and in between these two polls the activities which are done, And raise the question Whether these activities are significant or meaningless?. To answer this question we can take help of different philosophies about life. If we apply Nihilism then it seems that all the things which we do life has no purpose, goal or meaning, life is totally  absurd.

    But if we answer the same question from existentialist think about life Existentialism is the philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other authorities. Existentialists believe that society should not restrict an individual's life or actions and that these restrictions inhibit free will and the development of that person's potential.

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles

spring from our failure to use plain,

clear-cut language.”

-Jean-Paul Sartre

    The video begins with some toys like teddy bear and doll and  dark and scary music while crying shows the birth of a person. Toys symbolize our childhood where we used to play, there is another phase of learning life lessons and getting knowledge which is reflected through the shattered pens in video.Generally, A birth of a person is seen as an arrival of happiness in other people's life while here it sounds like that Birth is so cheerful. Because now we are alone in this purposeless universe. According to Existentialism "We are thrown into the Meaningless Universe."

    In between beginning and end the collection of rubbish connotes the different phases of development of life. And continuous slow effects of breath in and breathe out music denote the Inspiration and Expiration process which breathes life to the body.This suggests boredom and anxiety. The brief cry also signifies life but it also suggests disgust, anguished, stressed, haphazard, pessimist and gloomy thinking. The play is very short so, this also significantly suggests that life is very short. After that we see many types of tablets, Ayurvedic Kadha and also a lot of pouches of medicine right .. They represent our present lifestyle and how we are dependent on medicine. Nowadays we are facing this covid 19 pandemic. It seems like we can not survive without medicine.There are many cosmetic things. They symbolised our daily routine and like the luxury of our life.First one is medicine than cosmetics.There are many rubbish things of food. These all types of food represented our need that without food and water we can not survive on earth.

“The problem with wearing a facade

is that sooner or later life shows up with a big pair of scissors.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

    Another significant symbol used in the rubbish stuff is scissors, In my opinion scissors represent social criticism. Yes we all are facing this problem in our hall life.Social criticism is also a theme of Existentialism.One line of criticism holds that the emphasis on individual freedom and the rejection of absolutes in existentialism tends to undermine ethics; by suggesting that everyday life is 'absurd' and by denying the existence of fixed, binding principles for evaluating our actions, existentialists promote an 'anything-goes' If we talk about Existentialist Aesthetics that As the existentialist motto goes, “man is condemned to be free.” Here, freedom is not just independence in the sense of independence from, but in the sense of being able to decide who and what one should be.

    At the end of the video we see Cans of tobacco and Rosary. Can we say that they have any similarity ? When we go to purchase tobacco , On cans of tobacco writed one thing that “तम्बाकू से दर्दनाक मौत होती है।” or “ Tobacco causes painful death.” also give one or two very dangerous images of mouth cancer caused by tobacco use. But many people see these things and also purchase tobbaco.

    According to the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar “I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality & frater.” But when people become blind behind religion and man's freedomity, liberty , individual life strips that is problematic and religion being cancer for people. And despite knowing all this to a great extent, man becomes obsessed with religion. Also I remember one amazing personality Sadat Hassan Manto.Manto says that “मजहब जब दिलो से निकलकर दिमाग पर चढ़ जाए तो जहर बन जाता है।”

    Also do japmala and other kind of things our lives remain tangled like the tangles of earphones, at the end in video I putting one white cloth and key. They symbolized truth of life that cloths is called like Kafan and key is like truth of our life. The viability of religion is a contested matter among existentialists. 

    Sartre argued that the existence of a God who was free, and so religiously interesting, would entail the cancellation of human freedom; but humans are free, therefore God does not exist. Others saw God as the ultimate Thou who, by engaging in relationship with us, could give authentic meaning to our otherwise absurd existence. Tillich was sympathetic to such a position. In “Existentialism,” death allows the person selfawareness and makes him alone responsible for his acts. Prior to Existential thought death did not have essentially individual significance; its significance was cosmic. Death had a function for which history or the cosmos had final responsibility.

    Now, The central question is What is the meaning of Life? Why are we here? Why are we doing all these things? And perhaps the answer is nothing. If one day we are going to die then what is the point of doing these useless things. This is the core idea which came out from the video that "Life is Absurd."But another opposite Conclusion can also be made through the above video is that We need to accept the things as they are because Life is Absurd. But as human beings we need to live our life in fullest capacities within these absurdities and meaningless universes.

    At the end I want to say that all, this entire process took 4 hours in recording the video and audio (13 retakes were taken) , editing and mixing many files for final video, and uploading the finalized version to YouTube. And after completed to this blog and my interpretation on video took totally 6 hours.😄 But I have learnt a lot many things from this project and I am so happy to see my work. I hope you all are enjoying this blog.

THANK YOU........