{"id":2425,"date":"2022-01-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wptest\/2022\/01\/12\/the-theatre-of-dasein-a-heideggerian-analysis-of-becketts-happy-days\/"},"modified":"2022-01-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T00:00:00","slug":"the-theatre-of-dasein-a-heideggerian-analysis-of-becketts-happy-days-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/2022\/01\/12\/the-theatre-of-dasein-a-heideggerian-analysis-of-becketts-happy-days-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Theatre of Dasein: A Heideggerian Analysis of Beckett\u2019s Happy Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Samuel Beckett\u2019s Nineteen-Sixty-One play Happy Days is best understood as a parody of the human condition. Beckett seeks to reflect the experience of what it means to be human in stage directions, set design, and language. His methods of confinement and parody also allow for a vivid portrayal of existence. A philosopher who also wrote on the human condition was Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger, this experience is regulated entirely by his concept of \u201cDasein\u201d. My essay centres around seeking to attribute an overlap between Heidegger\u2019s and Beckett\u2019s human condition through its possible representation on the stage of Happy Days. Although Beckett is notoriously difficult to analyse and attribute a specific philosophical framework, I have uncovered evidence of possible Heideggerian influence and inherent similarities. The themes of Heidegger analysed include: world disclosure, anxiety, death, and authenticity. I have also highlighted Beckett\u2019s use of optimism in the play as a potential counterpoint to the outwardly pessimistic philosophy of Heidegger. My aim is to show how the performance medium of theatre can be an effective tool in communicating philosophical ideas, as opposed to text on a page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Angus Munro, 2022, Stage 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,22,123],"tags":[91,34,28],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23","category-abstracts","category-stage-3-abstracts","tag-death","tag-heidegger","tag-identity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}