Giving a Voice to the Oppressed in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Abstract

The current study intends to show the link between Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The study tries to explore the way Lucky, who is introduced as a slave in Beckett’s play, represents Morrison’s Sethe. The study also intends to show how both Becket and Morrison are advocates for the oppressed and give them voices to speak up for themselves. To reach the aims of the study, both literary works are approached from the lens of postmodernism, especially focusing on postwar issues and how postmodern writers began looking back to colonial literature and started giving voices to the oppressed, where the approach of postcolonialism occurs. Most of the conducted studies tackle each literary work alone from the postmodern lens. What makes the current study different is how it links the two literary works together, yet also highlights how each author gives a voice to the oppressed.