Friday, June 12, 2020

The Final Solution: Waiting for Godot


Samuel Beckett (photo: Roger Pic)
To many the quarantining, social distancing, and confinement are equivalent to seeing a particularly untoward vision in a crystal ball. Close friends are no longer accessible and while some people have compensated by using teleconferencing services like Skype and Zoom, others have withdrawn into the cocoon of an almost comforting hermeticism. Living in a pandemic is a good preview of old age and end of life issues. Those who may have considered assisted living might have had their spirits permanently dampened by the outbreaks of coronavirus in many facilities. Still, one can’t help but wonder how one will deal with the isolation and loneliness of the later years, particular in a society where large extended families can no longer be depended on to provide a sense of belonging. The pandemic has made many people rethink the very nature of human interchange and has underscored what may have long been missing, though covered over with the anodyne of so-called normalcy. Taking the wrapping paper off, the result is in danger of becoming a Beckettian scenario, with the homeostasis of the organism engineered through a zero sum back and forth. Vladimir: Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let’s go. (they don’t move).

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