Reading of Waiting, Time and Social Change in S. N. A. Agoro’s Something To Die For

Abstract

The study of waiting and time, hope and none fulfilment of hope, came into literary limelight in literature particularly in the dramas of Samuel Beckett, the absurdist playwright and others like Albert Camus, Martin Esslin and Eugene Ionesco. The subject is most prominent in Samuel Beckett’s seminal dramas - Waiting for Godot (1956) and End Game (1957). In these dramas waiting is presented as a static experience that generates the rise and fall of hope. It breeds frustration, alienation, faithlessness and depersonalization. The act of waiting as a critical feature of the human condition is the most significant and intense thematic engagement in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The study notes that aside the circle of the absurd art in drama, the subject of waiting and time has not been given adequate dramatic representation by dramatists outside the absurd background. It is against this backdrop that we attempt to explore the depiction and treatment of waiting, time and social change in the dramatic universe of existentialism created by some playwrights who have not been given scholarly attention. The study shall therefore undertake a dialectical consideration of the concept of waiting and time in Agoro’s Something to die Foran existential drama and raise new judgment in the appreciation of waiting and time from the perception of Christian reflection in literary limelight and scholarship.

Keywords: dialectics, waiting and time, social change, absurdism, existentialism