Act Without Words II contemplates the forces that drive man and are beyond his control. From the presentation, which is performed in mime, we see man determined by a compulsive force to live that rarely allows him to withdraw from action. The goad, rousing A and Bâ€

Throughout Beckett’s later work the characters conform to the idea of being narrow individuals of uncertain existence. The characters are often ‘falling to bits’ because they are made up of fragments that have no value or importance to hold them together. Beckett’s plays also follow a life path analogous to the characters within them. They pass time for the character and the audience but also seem to ‘fall to bits’ as time passes in the playwright’s life. Beckett’s plays evolve from lengthy acts to tiny fragments of his characters lives, to the finality of the fundamental activity of human existence: the inhalation and expiration of breath. Like this, the characters are incomplete in Beckett’s plays, and although death sometimes completes them, the finality usually acquired in a play is missing and a sense of emptiness and desolation is left behind. A sense of nothingness that Beckett perceives to represent life: a relentless circle without meaning, purpose, beginning or end.

Following Play, Beckett consistently used repetition to convey the meaningless he saw in living. In Come and Go the characters deliver almost identical dialogue and the repetition is shown in the coats that the women wear. Again Beckett mocks the triviality of his characters lives. The naming of Beckett’s characters are fragments: Flo, Vi, Ru, and are seen as insignificant and unimportant in the scale of the world.

The underlying theme of the human’s futile existence is echoed in most of Beckett’s late work. The characters’ helplessness is often represented by a tedious task of movement, often repeated. This occurred with the constant referral to the watch, compass or map in Act Without Words II. In Footfalls, the central character, May, paces up and down rhythmically as she speaks with her bedridden mother. Beckett shows how the futile existence crosses generations and the precise movements slowly pass the time between birth and death.

Time is a central element of Beckett’s later work although not in the traditional way of day and night or ticking clocks. Throughout his plays there is a sense of time passing, shown by repetition or rhythms such as the walking in Footfalls and the rapid tempo of Not I. Yet in plays such as Play and Not I, the repetition (or repetitions) of performance gives the audience a sense of stasis.

™s sacks represents this compulsion. A and B appear to represent a complete picture of man, A being slow and awkward whilst B being brisk and businesslike. A’s reluctance of activity is suggested by the need for the goad to poke twice to awaken him. A’s day outside the sack

Some topics in this essay:
Words II, II Footfalls, Vi Ru, Throughout Beckett’s, W1 W2, Waiting Godot, Play Beckett, Beckett’s Play, , Theatre Absurd, words ii, act words, beckett’s late, characters lives, act words ii, beckett’s characters, towards death, ‘falling bits’, beckett’s plays, characters ‘falling bits’, accept mundane, beckett’s late plays, meaning life, watch compass map,