Critique of Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot and...

Critique of Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot and Albert Camus The Stranger Modernist fiction is incredibly dense and abstract. Writers from the twentieth century also seem to carry with them the weight of the world, and thus their fiction has been filled with realistic misery and pain. Still, these writers often add to this element with existentialist thematic structures, which construct a very unique and experimental viewpoint on a modern existence. This is what is occurring in both Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot as well as Albert Camus The Stranger. The two a very different in format, yet both play upon the modernist idea of abandonment by God and the idea that there is an underlying sense of nothingness that guides modern life. Each focuses on the notion of free will and how it determines our lives in a world devoid of God. Together, these great works of contemporary fiction are a telling testament to the changing nature of sentiments regarding both religion and the meaning of life in a tumultuous twentieth century paradigm. The two works are written in very different styles, but each has its own unique quality that adds to the overall success of the works themselves. Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot is a play, and is thus written with stage directions and dialogue instructions, as it is meant to be both a piece of literary mastery and a wonderful stage experience. It is this traditional play structure that counterbalances the more modern thematic