llen from grace, and humans have lived in suffering, guilt, and anxiety. This dark and depressing view of human life leads existentialists to reject ideas such as happiness, enlightenment optimism, a sense of well-being, since these can only reflect a superficial understanding of life, or a naive and foolish way of denying the despairing, tragic aspect of human existence. 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger felt that anxiety leads to the individual's confrontation with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for his or her choices. A third existentialist theme is that of absurdity. An existentialist would say "I am my own existence, but this existence is absurd. To exist as a human being is inexplicable, and absurd. Each of us is simply here, thrown into this time and place---but why now? Why here?" Kierkegaard asked. For no reason, without necessary connection, my life is an absurd fact. A whole school of theatre, known as the theatre of the absurd derives from the philosophical use of the word absurd by such existentialists thinkers as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sarte. A fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach and the world must be seen as absurd. Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett with Waiting for Godot and Tom Stoppard with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead gear their works towards the existential school of thought. For example, the strange atmosphere of Godot, in which two tramps wait on what appears to be a desolate road for a man who never arrives. Waiting for Godot captures the feeling the world has no apparent meaning. In this misunderstood masterpiece Beckett asserts numerous existentialist themes. Beckett believed that existence is determined by chance. This is the first basic existentialist theme asserted. Two of the characters are waiting for Godot who never arrives. Two of them consist of a flamboyant lord of the earth and a broken slave whimpering and stagg...
