The Image that Strengthens the Assault on Reason: Ohio Improptu by Samuelel Beckett

Abstract

The article entitled The Image that Strengthens the Assault on Reason: ‘Ohio Improptu’ by Samuel Beckett is an attempt to interpret the minimalist, experimental play by Samuel Beckett whose complexity reaches far beyond the cryptic simplicity of the text. As a drama specimen Ohio Improptu makes use of drama conventions(spoken word, stage visualization) yet, it incorporates them into an overall concept of iterability. As a result, the play does not yield to the interpretative tools of the methodology of drama interpretation. Moreover, it does not yield to any interpretation methods based on the categories of binary thinking that have their roots in the opposition reason-emotion used by a man equipped with the conceptual categories worked out by reason.There is a multifarious image at the centre of Ohio Improptu embracing various spaciotemporal dimensions, theatrical codes, conventions, based on iterability and transferring the sphere of experience beyond reason onto the recipient. The very mode of evoking the experience is strikingly similar to koan, a Buddhist prayer, which obliterates the meaning of the communicated words to give the full expression to experience.