The Plight of Godlessness in Eastern and Western Literature: A Comparative Reading of Absurdity in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Al-Hakim’s The Tree Climber

This paper discusses the concept of absurdity in literature as a feature of modern human bereft of God. It compares and contrasts two cannons of the Theater of the Absurd in the West and the East, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1956) with Tawfiq Al-Hakim’s Ya taliʿ al-shajarah (1962) [The Tree Climber (1966)]. These plays have dramatized the absurdity of the human condition after World War II. Consequently, this paper offers an understanding of absurdity in Christian and Muslim cultures through the tenets of comparative literature. As the idea of absurdity is presented differently in various works, this article chiefly focuses on the selected plays to reveal their writers’ depiction of the absence of God. It is concluded that although The Tree Climber benefited from many characteristics of absurd literature, Al-Hakim’s views toward human existence, hope, and God convey different messages from those of Beckett’s. For Al-Hakim, hope is still found in the fertilization of a garden tree and spirituality is seen in the image of Dervish, who concludes the play with verses from the Quran. However, for Beckett, hope is impossible, characters are suicidal, and God is the never-coming God(ot).