My Reflection on Samuel Beckett's 'Breath' : The Shortest Play Amongst the Works Penned by Samuel Beckket.

Breath : Here in this blog I will be trying interpreting the absurd play 'Breath' which was written by Samuel Beckett in 16 June, 1969.

It would be paradoxical to interpret the meaningless; the whole setting of this shortest of Beckett's plays bases its routes upon the very recent modernist movements such as Existentialism, Absurdism, Individualism, and Impiricism as well. I will try to the best of my acumen to reflect upon the strangeness and weirdness observed while watching the play 'Breath.'

The Original Play :

Curtain.

1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold for 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 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 for 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.

Maximum light Not bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back.

My Reflection on Reading the Script of the Play :

I found that it is the play of a kind where one has to sweat in order to grasp the insight put in the underneath of the setting of the play. The play may or may not seem to be communicating any kind of meaning, it is upto the reader or the beholder whether to derive any meaning by the means of 'Reader-Response Theory' or leave it as the absurd play divested of meaning.

One thing I saw while perusing the play is that its 'slow increase of light' and 'faint brief cry' along with 'stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish' - all the three may be symbolising The Big Bang theory as well as Indian interpretation of how creation took place. We can see the aforementioned three aspects in Indian Concept of Creation as follow  :

(1) Stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish -› The still and inactive atoms and sub-atoms which in Indian concept of creation is referred to as 'Devi.'

(2) Faint brief cry -› The cry of Rudra - the ultimate driving force of the non-living atoms - roared upon being disturbed in sleep by the :

(3) Slow increase of light : which can be seen as Devi's deliberate disturbance to Rudra in order to thrive the creation and existence.

So, as per Indian concept of creation and existence is concerned, we can draw a parallel to the meaninglessness and purposelessness idea of Existentialism.

Thus if we go by the discussed point of view, then we can safely state that Beckett may have expressed the absurd nature of the existence as well as its creation's one, and the empirical notion of meaninglessness and aimlessness of life lived by living ones; but amongst all the things - the will of living life remains irresistible fact in the bases of all the theories which have come and shall come in the world.

Picturization of the Play :