Happy Days is a play from the absurd current, written by Samuel Beckett, an Irish poet and playwright. This play is one of my favorite of the genre, certainly because it gives us a way of thinking when our human condition brings us down. Happy Days embodies the loneliness, the human despair, but also the way to fight against these struggles even if we are completely aware that there is no happy ending in life.
This play is a real lesson of life, so if you are reading this blog and you have not read or seen it yet, I truly hope that I will tempt you !
STORY AND COMPLEXITY OF THE PLAY
Happy Days takes place in a desert, on a hill. Winnie, a 50-years old woman, is half-buried on the top of this hill, with her husband who stays quiet almost all the time. Winnie is half-wedged in this hill and does not try to exit it. She just looks around her - her purse, an umbrella- and leaves some stuff- glasses, a gun, some tissues,… -. She is talking to herself, prays and tries to wake his husband up, in vain. She keeps praying and talking alone, and complains about the difficulty of keeping fighting for "ending her day" that is to say to staying alive in this life of nonsense. Then a ring marks the end of the day, and the suffer of Winnie. Her behavior is absurd, and it does not make any sense. Willie, her husband, appears some times with a few sentences: « Pray, Winnie, this is the only thing to do » or « pray your old pray Winnie ».
During the second act, Winnie is now is buried until her neck. Her gun is clearly seen by the audience. The ring rings but she does not pray this time. She keeps talking to her husband, who does not answer. She keeps asking questions about her identity, her environment, her self. She is in an introspective part, but then the ring rings again and she expresses her happiness for the noises which help her to end her day. Her dialog becomes more and more non-comprehensive and violent. At a time, she realizes that she is hurt, and Willie climbs the hill to join her. Winnie expresses her joy to this moment, and keeps talking to her husband, without answers. Then Willie falls down to the hill, and stays down. He achieves to say « Win… », which makes Winnie terribly happy. And she keeps singing her song.
I truly know that this play seems to be really awkward and tainted of nonsense, but the sense of this piece of theater is more complex that we could think at the first sight.
EXPLANATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY
Behind the awkwardness of this play, « Oh les beaux jours » embodies the notion of despair in life that we all feel one day or another. The play shows the absurd side of life and of our human condition through many metaphors.
Since the start of the piece of theater, we are plunged in the absurd. But everything has a meaning. The fact that Winnie is half buried on a hill is a metaphor of our life. And every day we are buried a little bit more buried than the previous day, and one day we will be completely buried, that is to say dead. Winnie is approximately 50 years old, that is why she is half buried: she is at the half of her life. This is a sad but true metaphor of our human condition: some people condemned to be dead one day who makes everything to ignore it. This is the example of Winnie’s behavior: even if she is half buried, she keeps singing and praying, waiting for her day to be ended. But we also realize, as a viewer of all these incoherences, that our human nature is fragile and that we are condemned to despair and pity.
This play often reminds me the work of Kierkegaard on the human despair, and the play of Samuel Beckett is a true representation of the points developed by Kierkegaard: besides the notion of despair in front of our human condition, the loneliness and the cruelty of life have an important place in both works. Because Winnie wants to live, she hangs on everything she can even if she is in a terrible situation without any hope. But we realize that the absurd behavior of Winnie is ours: in order to fight against this fatality of death, we hang on what can keeps us away from the idea of an eternal death, such as religion for Winnie and her prayers.
To sum up, this play embodies in a very pessimistic way our human condition. Even before our birth, we are already condemned to death and we try in our whole life to escape from this sad truth. Beckett describes this human condition through the absurd current by showing to the viewer some unexplainable behaviors and an awkward scene, but when we exceed this first degree of the play, we discover a real message for the way we are living today.
Certainly, the play I just exposed you sound really pessimistic and not funny at all, but I truly recommend you to see it if you have the occasion, there are some flashes of humor in the piece of theater ! But you will more appreciate the value of life after this play, so go for it!
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