Existential absurdity and alienation in Samuel Becketts’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s The metamorphosis : an existential analysis

Abstract

This thesis carries out an existential analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis through the complex lenses of existential absurdity and alienation and analyses how the use of these existential notions reflects relevant existential attitudes essential to the existential discourse. Furthermore, this thesis employs a comparative analysis of Waiting for Godot and The Metamorphosis as two distinct genres of literature yet, unified by the existential resources used extensively in them. This project problematizes the comparative distinctiveness in Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka’s use of existential absurdity and alienation in their works.

Waiting for Godot and The Metamorphosis created and advanced absurd characters and alienated protagonists as constructs of the existential spirit and ideal. This study is an essential confrontation into the complex corpus of an absurd and alienated existence portrayed in the existential crisis of Vladimir, Estragon, and Gregor Samsa. Ultimately, through Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, we can better understand how existential absurdity and alienation were explored and used in both works on review in this thesis. The research revealed that both authors utilized significantly distinct methods and styles in order to bring out notions of absurdity, nihilism, and alienation in their work.