Happy Days

Happy Days is a play be Samuel Beckett written in 1961. Here again is a weird one, though possibly even more weird. Well. Gosh. What in the world am I supposed to say? ... Well, maybe if I start off with a summary.

This has two character. Yes, Beckett has finally done it. Endgame had two mains but two others, and Godot had two mains, and three others. Here's two: Winnie and Willie. Really, it's one main and one other though. The play is in two acts, the first with Winnie buried to the waist in sand (we never find out why) and in the second, to the neck (ditto). Willie, her husband, is behind her mound of sand, and in the first act, you see the back of his bald head and his handkerchief covering it (echo Hamm) whilst in the end of the second act, he emerges to try and climb Winnie's mound. So first act: Winnie talks all the way through whilst Willie remains rather monosyllabic. Winnie is unreasonably optimistic and keeps talking to Willie hoping he answers, and when he does, she's very happy. She has a bag out of which she pulls out stuff, including a toothbrush, a mirror, lipstick, a music box, a gun and an umbrella. She keeps saying she'll sing but she doesn't. The act ends with her praying and the second with her waking up with the waking bell, possibly on the next day, but I doubt it (she's buried to the neck). She can't use the bag stuff since she's buried to the neck and thus has no arms. She keeps talking all the way through though,this time a bit more darkly. In the first act, it's mostly about whatever she's doing and reminding herself not to complain and that things are going okay because with 'No change...no pain' but in the second act, she can't actually say any of that, not being able to do anything, so she basically talks about the concept of being alone since she suspects Willie has died or has left but rather prefers the idea of not knowing so that she can imagine that someone is still listening to her. In the end, she gets the surprise that Willie is actually still there when he emerges. He tries to climb up the mound to her, it seems either to kiss her or to grab the 'conspicuous' revolver next to her (maybe to shoot her, maybe himself), but he can't climb all the way up, he stares at her from the bottom of the mound and says 'Win' (his nick-name for her), which makes Winnie very very happy despite her seemingly cold cynicism towards him until this word is spoken. Winnie sings her song about being loved. They stare at each other, Winnie stops smiling, and there's a pause, curtain.

That did help! I know what I'm talking about. So, weird, right? So I'm not even going to touch it being weird. And concerning characters, well, they are the most important aspect of a book, but I can't really do Winnie because that's just way to demanding for a fun blog, and..hmmmm....Willie. Actually, that would be very interesting to write about. Willie...nope. I would really like....ahhhhhh! Alright conflict. I don't want to write about more than one thing since that'll make this blog twice as enlarged, but hear me out.

You see how so many critics can start talking about feminism, or existentialism, or absurdity, or naturalism, or consumerism, or individualism, and stuff like that for this play, like all other Beckett things? Yeah...I'm not going to do that, because this stuff is just soooooo strange and wonderful that I can't even begin to think of what Beckett was trying to say, or whether he was trying to say something. In my mind, anyways, Beckett is on of those great, honest artists that make art without trying to actually say their own ambitions or opinions, but rather to say, 'Hey look everyone, look. Here's a woman...wait for it....in a mound........wait for it.......of SAND!!! SAND!! Huha!!!! So...Deal with it.' Yeah, in my mind, that's what Beckett would say. Probably not the 'wait for it'. Maybe more like 'Hello all. Here is my new play. It is about a woman named Winnie buried in sand. There is a man called Willie living in a hole behind her. That it all. Please, no questions. It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Excuse me, I have some people-watching to do and then I am going to catch flies with a jar in a dimly-lit room.' Yes! That is exactly what he'd say. Well! Anyways, what I'm trying to say is screw all the ism's I'm going to talk about props. BUT! darn WIllie.

Willie. Let's talk about Willie. I'll try to weave props into it. So stop! Let me move on with his blog. Let me close my eyes and look away from the other world where I wrote of props and enjoyed it marvellously. Oh, dear Willie, dear Willie.

Willie!!! Why do we have a Willie? Why not just Winnie? OF COURSE we can't just have Winnie. That'd be absurd! (haha) because I really doubt whether Winnie can survive without Willie. I'm not talking about food. God knows where she gets food. She's plump anyways. But surviving as in she is human, and so she needs someone to be with her or she'll go insane. I mean, the second she pulls out the revolver, I was sure she's going to shoot herself eventually. I thought maybe Willie would leave or die and she'd off herself. A whole Chekov's gun thing. The gun doesn't get shot though, I assume, because Willie exists. Here canbe brought in nice comparisons with Endgame and Godot, where in Godot the Didi and Gogo want to leave each other but can't, and in Endgame, Clov keeps trying to leave Hamm but he won't go. Now, I don't know what would have happened to Didi if Gogo left (they try to commit suicide together and refrain because one may succeed and the other fail, so the one left alone may very well hang himself from the tree [the tree here is sort of like the gun, I guess (double-Bracket inception [haha I totally just capitalised bracket because I was used to writing Beckett])])and if Clov left Hamm, well Hamm kept asking Clov how he'd know if Clov left, so I'm guessing Hamm would want then to off himself too, which I guess is more a will-power thing for him to finally let go of the smidgeon of life he has left. To let it all end! I'm jokey today. Well, interesting point about Hamm wanting to know whether Clov is leaving.

So! to expand, Hamm wants to know because if Clov doesn't tell him, Clov may be just too long in the kitchen or even dead in the kitchen. Hamm has to know that Clov is gone because otherwise, hope may impel him to hang onto life, or so I interpret. Same with Winnie. Well, same and opposite. Winnie wants not to know because she prefers to hope rather than be certainly in the black. Grey rather than black, if you please. Willie is then an important character because by his presence and even potential presence, he allows Winnie to continue to live, if I assume the presence of the gun to mean the present possibility of suicide. Life is empty, according to Beckett, and life is redundant, and life is often a pathetic farce, and life abandoned yet refuses to end, but life, if not alone, is bearable. The only intolerable thing is loneliness.

To be straight with you all, if I was a guy and I was going out for a role in a Beckett play, this would be the last one I'd go for. Really. I'd do any tranny trick to land a girl's part just to avoid this. It's very boring to play, I assume. It may be relaxing, but rather boring, really. However, as demonstrated, it is essential for Winnie's existence as well as her psychology. Beyond that though, I think Willie is very interesting in himself. Though perhaps boring to play, he, by many points, can be intriguing to third party viewers. So, let me just say all the things about him I know.

This is literally EVERYTHING.

He is Winnie's husband and he once loved her dearly...it seems.
His hand emerges to hand Winnie her parasol
His head is bald and bleeding. He spreads a handkerchief over it.
He wears a boater at a rakish angle with club ribbon.
He reads the newspaper, at times aloud.
His first words quote the obituary: 'His Grace and Most Reverand Father in God Dr Carolus Hunter dead in tub.'
He also says 'Opening for smart youth.' and 'Wanted bright boy.'
He has hairy forearms and looks at what I think is a dirty postcard.
He blows his nose loudly for a long while.
He answers Winnie's question about calling hair 'them' or 'it': 'It.'
He uses vaseline.
He answers Winnie's questioning of whether he could hear her as he goes into his hole.
He has blue eyes like saucers.
He sleeps in a hole. He has trouble crawling into it as he has to back into it.
He comments that the emmet Winnie finds must have eggs, and when Winnie says 'God', he laughs
He is suicidal, so Winnie keeps the gun from him.
He asks 'Sucked up?' when Winnie asks him whether he feels he is being sucked up into the air
He says a hog is 'Castrated male swine...reared for slaughter'
He says 'Opening wanted' at the end of Act I
He emerges from behind the mound at the end of Act II, crawling.
He wears a top hat, striped trousers, a tie, white gloves, a morning coat. 'Dressed to kill'
He has a Battle of Britain moustache.
He stares at Winnie in a bothering way, climbs the mound but slithers down, not reaching her.
He says 'Win' which makes Winnie happy and after she sings they stare at each other. She stops smiling. Long pause. Curtain.

That's all.

So what shall I talk of? The handkerchief...the hole...the newspaper. That'll do it, I suppose. There's always so much to talk of though, isn't there.

The handkerchief. That'll split into a bunch of things on its own. The significance of handkerchiefs in general. The idea of putting one on your bleeding head (a head that's actually bleeding, that is), connection to Hamm. That'll do.

So the significance of a handkerchief. Well, the uses are really various (to blow your nose, to wipe muck off things, to tie over a wound, to carry things in, to tie coins into, to tie like a bandanna on your head, diapering) so it is something that is useful. Beckett may then have given Willie this handkerchief of all things simply because of this reason. What does a man have that lives in a hole and doesn't seem to have an awful lot? useful things, I suppose, hence a handkerchief. Aside from useful in a practical sense though, handkerchiefs are helpful as symbols. A handkerchief can show your status, based perhaps simply on how nice it is (lace, checkered, silk) or on embroidery which then incorporates a whole other alphabet of coats of arms, famous initials, representative flowers and such. There are handkerchiefs used as remembrances or tokens, like when a dame would give her knight or soldier her handkerchief (remember Othello...Shrek...) So all this then. Well, this handkerchief seems to indicate low status since it's not so much an embroidered identity card but something to dull blood with, and this status thing may still be relevant as it shows more clearly that such an act as dulling your bleeding with a handkerchief can be extended as an act that could define Willie's whole character: he's not refined, he bleeds, but yet he still has a handkerchief to cover the bleeding, hence he is a man close to something bad but not quite at zero. As for remembrances, I suppose you could say Winnie gave him the handkerchief but that wouldn't say much, they're married. She has a handkerchief of her own anyways, which she keeps in her bodice and cleans her glasses with. The fact that she uses them for keeping up her appearance and doing such civilised things as keeping your spectacles clean bears contrast with Willie's dirty handkerchief and so the handkerchiefs can be another way of exemplifying the difference between the two's remaining civility. If you have the kerchiefs be marching, then they could be like those couples that dress similarly. Back to her giving him it though, I guess you could write a pretty interesting prequel to Happy Days in which you see the two in their earlier unburied years and she gives him the handkerchief, which would then make this interpretation massively interesting and deep, but that's a bit of a wander, no? Yes, yes it is. Conclusion: handkerchiefs, being very connotative, opens up for a bunch of speculations on his identity and character and relationship with Winnie, but doesn't say anything concrete, which is fine and sort of expected.

The bleeding head. Wow, I watched 'To Sir, With Love' yesterday and every time I say bleeding anything now, whilst before watching it I was a perfectly normal blogging American just thinking about something that's bleeding, now all I think of is a bunch of rude English brats cursing at each other. Phooey. Well, on with the bleeding head. So first of all, why is it bleeding? Again, speculations. Maybe, since Willie later tries to go into his hole headfirst and Winnie directs him, seeming like this isn't the first time this happened, Willie fell head-first into his hole and cracked his head at the bottom. That was my first idea. I can't really imagine very much else happening, as they are in such a contained area. Then again, it's Beckett, so he could probably have thought up a bunch of other ideas, like Willie going for the revolver, Winnie catching him, taking the revolver, and hitting him a little too hard on the head with it in a scolding. Or maybe Willie scratches his head a bunch (a lot of scratching goes on in everything else Beckett wrote, that I read), or maybe Willie has a fit and hits his own head, or maybe in some really strange accident he gets a paper cut o his head with the newspaper. The possibilities of this play are endless and I could see any of those playing out alright. The important thing is though that it goes unexplained, as most things do in this play, so it provides for some concept of time before, and also the fact that neither of them acknowledge that he's bleeding is interesting as it forces you to imagine they must have had some conversation about it earlier, and neither are very fussed about blood, which is typical. One more thing about him bleeding. Beckett says that his 'bald head is trickling blood'. Now trickling is a creepy word, considering how it's slow, quiet, eerie and not quite anything. It's on a bald head too, so presumably that'd provide for a nice visual effect. If a not-bald head is trickling blood, nobody would notice, maybe with blonds, but still, a bald head provides for a nice contrasted cracking, painful moon effect. As Willie doesn't talk very much, his appearance must contribute very much to how we perceive him. So it's important, and so it's useful to have the strong image of the trickling blood on a bald head to set up for a somewhat eerie character, as he turns out to be.

That went on a while. Well, we're still on bleeding. So at one point, Willie blows his nose loud and long and then spreads it back onto his head. Actually the first time he dons the kerchief Beckett say he 'spreads it on his skull'. So both these again are a it disturbing. The first has snot on his bleeding cut head now. Obviously, a tad gross. Then second, Beckett calling his head a skull is creepy as it is not the skull but the skin covering the skull, and referring to a living head as a skull brings up associations with death, sickliness and therefore makes Willie, possibly, zombie-esque, which really cannot be taken literally but pumps up the eeriness. Now, I think I've proven that this all is a bit disturbing, but then again, the act of covering his wound indicates a lasting idea of self-conservation and even refinement in hiding the blood from others (Others!) He dresses fancily and wears the jaunty boater with club ribbon so he can't be completely beyond style as you imagine the more raggedy Beckett characters to be. So there is a sense of irony I suppose; if you cover your stinking feet with holey socks, well, at least you still wear socks.

I think that's my cue to move on. Hamm. Yes, again with my connections. Honestly, I haven't read enough Beckett play. I suppose I'll read All That Fall next since I've read the three plays I've read so conventionally happened to be the first three he wrote; After would be the fourth. I'd like to take a crack at Murphy too, and the short stories I find very fun to read, i might even like them more than the........let's not go there. Hamm! So Hamm starts Endgame covered with a sheet, and when the sheet is removed, his face is still covered with a handkerchief. This handkerchief he refers to as a 'stauncher', presumably because it is covered in blood and so it staunches the blood he coughs up. By the end of the play the handkerchief seems almost a friend of his since he refers to it as though it i sit's own person. The stauncher is the last thing he keeps when the play ends, after he seems alone, and calls it 'Old stauncher' as though they have a history. Well, so there's the blood connection. They both involve some blood. So to both, the handkerchief is essential. However, Willie doesn't show evidently any connection with the kerchief as Hamm does. This suits both individually, I suppose, Hamm beig a man trying to be independent but actually clinging for things to remain, and Willie, having a clingy wife, ignoring her to look at dirty pictures and read the obituary. One last thing. Both the handkerchiefs hols a part of the owner in them and in that way, prove again that the characters are alive, which seems to be undesirable for both. Interesting, no!? Yes, yes it is, I demand it to be.

Onwards! My gosh. The hole. The hole, of course the hole. Is there anything more blatantly metaphorical than to live in a hole? So many meanings! So first meanings...then...staging...yes, yes that may be interesting. No promises.

A hole! Well, there are animals that live underground...but they tend mostly to be rodents or reptiles, like mice, gophers, lizards and snakes. Those that tend to like darkness, that are nocturnal and that are generally undesirable, like vermin. Then there are the lower living things like insects. We have worms, ants, most insects, really. There again, a bad image. Then you have the hibernators that dig underground to sleep, like bears. That's a bit more complex. Is Willie hibernating? Well, living in a hole can be connected to living in a well, as a phrase. Like telescoping (connect Endgame) since you don't see the big world, big picture or big life. You just opt to live a small simple life. Willie can leave. Sure he's tied to Winnie in marriage and you could say it's noble of him not to leave. It's very reasonable, I think , to argue his nobility. However, Willie seems to need Winnie even more than the other way, in some aspects, as in to keep from killing himself, to direct him like a child towards his hole, and he seems somehow unable to dig her out, or to stand. So Willie lives in a hole, like a toad, oblivious to the world. In contrast to Winnie's mound, again they seem compatible, she being his inverse, a hole for a mound. You'd notice his in the setting. Lets do setting. This is going to be a lot shorter than the hanky. Well. In setting, if the director decided to actually have a bunch of sand on stage and dig the hole himself, he'd find, obviously, that as he dug, a mound would form! Hooray for Winnie and the conventional set. Now, I suppose, if I allow myself to speculate again (I've speculated more in this blog than in any other) then maybe this is exactly what happened. Winnie got buried...by somebody... and Willie saw the hole and decided to live in it. He seeming unable to dig her out, I assume he's also unable to dig a hole himself. Anyways, enough with the hole.

Newspaper! Finally. Now the death of the guy read in the obituary is of course significant as it coincides with the theme, Beckett's endless theme, of life that refuses to end. Very Zeno. And of course Willie wants to die, so I assume he reads these obituaries in envy of some kind. The bright boy wanted, he probably reads because he may be looking for a job, or rather, I think it more plausible that he fancies the idea of leaving and leading a normal life but really can't get himself to, and in any case, it's a bright boy wanted, and he can't grasp the concept of moving backwards into a hole...so. Well, on he subject, I do not think either of the two characters are idiots, considering their vocabulary. I mean, Willie says Castrated male swine reared for slaughter is a pretty witty and catchy answer for what hog is, and the thing about calling hair it, though it may seem like common sense, gets a tiny bit complicated too when considering how, unlike Endgame and Godot, Happy Days was originally written in English, not French, and in English, hair is 'it' but in French hair is hairs and thus 'them' (*shiver* weird, isn't it. Truly a nonsensical language). So Willie isn't an idiot...how did we get here? Newspaper! right. Wow. I summon a fresh paragraph.

That's better. Another cool thing about newspapers, aside from in relation to what Willie reads out is that they represent the outside world. Aside from the frustration of why in the world Willie has a newspaper in the first place (does he read the same outdated news every day or does he manage actually to get the newspaper [I mean the paper boy can't exactly go to the address of whatever normal person and then go to the next address: the hole next to that mound with the woman in it (though it'd give Beckett the chance to put a boy in the play again)]) Aside from that, which we'll allow, I suppose, Willie seems interested in the outside world, which pushes at the question of whether Willie will ever leave Winnie alone and also provides some familiarity to the audience as here is something recognisable, a newspaper that tells about the world we live in, and that then can either make the play weirder, that this can happen in our world, or more normal, that at least it's not on mars... Moving on.

The fact that he bothers to read the newspaper is my final point. Why would people read the newspaper? Well, some get the news because they are genuinely interested, especially if you're involved in the news. If you've got a bet on a sports team, you want to check how they did. You might be concerned generally with your fellow humans or with the Earth, so you really want to know the second there's a tsunami or murder or miraculous dog. You could be scared of being that person that never knows what's going on so is left out of conversation. You could be bored. People have the news built into routine, you read whilst you eat cereal in the morning. Some people want to keep up to minute in order to seem intelligible aware and involved. Some people saw their grandparents reading, they're parents reading, so now they just do, because that's just what people do. Some people can't talk, so they read. Willie. Well, he isn't on the news, for sure, and he doesn't seem very involved, living in a hole. He may read because he's involved in he sense that it's a job he's looking for. Again though, ho realistic that is is ambiguous. Willie doesn't have to worry about company because there's only Winnie and she delights at him saying simply the day 'It.' The boater and fine clothing suggests that maybe, like Winnie, he wants to stay presentable, and that involves him knowing things, if only for himself to know he knows. Family tradition. Maybe. To avoid speaking. That seems more plausible. To stop Winnie's voice from entering his mind - for she would get very annoying before long - he reads the news. I'm tired of this blog. Aren't you? Dragged on far too long. This blog is a terribly written Beckett play between me and my invisible reader who never speaks. Plausible.

Well. Conclude Cecilia. Interesting, huh. That's just three things to do with the enormously minor character. Imagine if I had, perchance - the old style! - said I'd do Winnie. Whoosh. Wow. So, sufficed to say - in the old style! - I did well to - in the old style! - choose Willie as my muse. The old style is something Winnie always says, by the way. So! In the tiniest and vague of nutshells, I love this play because of how much it makes me speculate, I love the ideas of loneliness and company it provides, and I love and hate the importance of the visual in this play: love as it is very multi-layered, very deep and appealing, allowing for greater abstractedness and frustrating even more, which I enjoy; but hate because my limit on frustration is when all that is happening and I'm taking the reading course of drama rather than watching. If you haven't yet, as I haven't, heed this advice - the old style! - go see he play the second you get an opportunity. But still,

Read, folks. Read.

can't complain -[looks for spectacles]- no no - [takes up spectacles] - mustn't complain -- [holds up spectacles, looks through lens] - so much to be thankful for - [looks through other lens] - no pain - [puts on spectacles] - hardly any - [looks for toothbrush] - wonderful thing that.

No better, no worse, no worse, no change. [Pause. Do.] No pain.

Oh this is going to be another happy day!

And if for some strange reason no further pains are possible, why then just close the eye - [she does so] - and wait for the day to come - [opens eyes] - the happy night of the moon has so any hundred hours. [Pause.] That is what I find so comforting when I lose heart and envy the brute beast.

And yes, if only if I could bear to be alone, I mean prattle away wih not a soul to hear. [Pause.] Not that I flatter myself you hear much, no Willie, God forbid. [Pause.] Days perhaps when you hear nothing. [Pause.] But days too when you answer. [Pause.] So that I may say at all times, even when you do not answer and perhaps hear nothing, something of this is being heard, I am not merely talking to myself, that is in the wilderness, a thing I could never bear to do - for any length of time. [Pause.] That is what enables me to go on, go on talking, that is. [Pause.] Whereas if you were to die - [smile] - to speak in the old style - [smile off] or go away and leave me, then what would I do, what could I do, all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep? [Pause.] Simply gaze before me with compressed lips. [Long pause while she does so. No more plucking.] Not another word as long as I drew breath, nothing to break the silence of this place. [Pause.] Save possibly, now and then, every now and then, a sigh into my looking-glass. [Pause.] Or a brief...gale of laughter should I happen to see the old joke again.

just to know that in theory you can hear me even though in fact you don't is all I need, just to feel you there within earshot and conceivably on the qui vive is all I ask, not to say anything I would not wish you to hear or liable to cause you pain, not to be just babbling away on trust as it is were not knowing and something gnawing at me.

Oh I know it does not follow when two are gathered together - [faltering] - in this way - [normal] - that because one sees the other the other sees the one, life has taught me that...too.

laughing wild amid severest woe.

Paradise enow.

Ah earth you old extinguisher.

Oh no doubt you are dead, like the others, no doubt you have died, or gone away and left me, like the others, it doesn't matter, you are there.

Ah well, not to know, not to know for sure, great mercy, all I ask.

What are those exquisite line? [Pause.] Go forget me why should something o'er that something shadow fling...go forget me...why should sorrow...brightly smile...go forget me...never hear me...sweetly smile...brightly sing...[Pause. With a sigh.] One loses one's classics. [Pause.] Oh not all.