A World of Defamiliar Realities: The Chairs, Endgame and No Exit

Abstract

This paper suggests that the three playwrights, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre in their plays The Chairs, Endgame and No Exit, respectively, create a defamiliar reality that gives authenticity and new meaning to life. It puts forward the view that these playwrights use different modern techniques to achieve their purpose; they experiment with stage techniques by using the technique of defamiliarization and surrealism. The paper presents a summary of the views of different critics about the content and form of these plays and contests their views by suggesting that the plays are not meaningless or absurd but only different. It proposes that the audience or readers do not see that which they often see in traditional theatre. The plays, rather, lay bare the possibilities of a more meaningful and authentic life by detaching the readers’ minds from the automated, habitual, and monotonous world they live in.