The very nature of drama is conflict and to face this conflict laughingly is a heroic attribute of the modern man. Drama helps common people learn to face the dark realities of existence and threats to life. So far, the very form of drama from the Aristotelian theatre to the modern stage of dramaturgy has changed subsequently. In this era of postmodernism traditional trends have been challenged to the extreme, conformity to traditional values has lost its importance and hence universalization of the idea of salvation has become illegitimate in this absurdist world. All the grand narratives have proved to be the sole propaganda of hegemonic powers towards humanity and a chaotic world lays bare in front of a man gazing back with its horrific emptiness. The pessimistic voices of the modern era are now transformed into humorous obnoxious laughter which pierces into the senses of man as nightmares.

The incongruity between the idealistic expectations of man and the harsh realities of the external world creates a situation that arouses ironic laughter on the incessant endeavour which man made to carve out the meaning of life but failed. This imbalance is funny at the level of mockery but serious at the same time and so out of this incongruity arises dark comedy. According to Hamer, incongruity is to project the contradiction of our expectations or mental patterns, which makes our actions put up with meaningless while causing them to be funny. Also, “incongruity is a necessary condition for any instance of humour” (Hamer). Incongruity is one of the most relevant perspectives to look at dark humour prevalent in absurdist plays. The relief theory according to Hamer also projects the essence of humour, and especially its physiological substrate laughter, as a form of relief, releasing pent-up tension from the human psyche. Thus, “laughter is included in the same category as screaming, as a result of fear, and punching someone in the face, as a result of anger; such behaviour is supposed to provide a degree of relief ” (Hamer). This imbalance in the situation of man and the difficult life which we inevitably have to live according to Martin Esslin, generates disharmony and creates absurdity. According to Esslin, the idea that  Ionesco has given to define the meaning of absurdity is as, “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose … cut off from its religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots” (Esslin).

The unique characteristic of the theatre of the absurd is its comic element generated out of an existentialist perspective of life. This comedy arises from the absurd human circumstances “the irreconcilable conflict between the innate desire for ultimate meaning and the absence of ultimate meaning in a universe that is indifferent to our existence” (Hamer). Man mocks his condition and the sufferings of his existence due to existentialist constraints of human rationality. Humanity has long been delving into a Cartesian model of rationality “Cogito Ergo Sum”, I think therefore I am on Plato’s metaphysical idea of reality in which essence precedes existence; rationality and essence now seem a trap to the lurking brutality of existence. The man who considered himself as the crown of creation has now felt his existence as ugly, futile and senseless. He cannot do anything but mock his helplessness in the situation of despair. The term black humour was first coined by Andre Benton in his book The Anthology of Black Humour.  He described black comedy as “The opposite of joviality, wit or sarcasm, (Breton, and Polizzotti)”. Serious events such as death, pain, war, anguish, fear, racism, failure, discomforts and many more troubles of humanity are mocked with a sense of remorsefulness. The incongruity of human existence arises out of all the failed promises made by enlightenment, science and technology, religion and other grand narratives. Man is deluded by himself and by his rationality. Reason and logic become unreliable sources of knowledge. Man is disillusioned and his infinite freedom has made him immobile and terrified. Benton connects black humour with the comedy of menace as the threat of existence arises from Freudian id, ego and superego which is the inherent program of evil in man which he has to face till death. 

Absurdity generates the essence of nihilism as the frame of absurdity “It is the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints” (Camus, and O’Brien). The serious issues that are troubling humanity in the era of postmodernism are not only individual but also universal. Stories of individuals might be different but the essence of those stories is the same. The central threatening issue to humanity, which has shattered all centres is the loss of the belief system. Humanity has lost its belief in human reason, in free will, in the language as the ground of being, the purposefulness of time and the importance of their existence. All the issues which have led humanity to nihilism are threatening are real and are mocked not as if they are funny but as an expression of despair and helplessness. The self is stultified, hurt and disturbed and man is remorseful at the futility of his existence. The idea of humans as the pride of all creation along with the high ideals of progress it seems was used to disillusion man. According to Lyotard, “the narratives we tell to justify a single set of laws and stakes are inherently unjust.”

Humanity has become sceptical of the belief in humanism with its slogans of human rights and rationality as instruments of finding truth and solution for human sufferings, science and technology as freedom bearers, and religion with its promises of salvation, all this happened as humanity went into deep sufferings due to these institutions which promised them security and success had driven them to the abyss of loss, lacking and pain. Absurdity then lies in finding solutions to the answers in the grand narratives or having trust in any meta-narrative, and man ultimately has to live a very mundane life, lonely at its very core. In The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco, there is an old couple. They have a deep understanding of history yet we could not find their belief in the grandeur of great warriors or history. Their references to history are only to fill in the gaps of loneliness of their mundane lives. The old woman is referencing Francois I, and the old man calls her wife Semiramis, though both the husband and wife have been living a very ordinary life. From this arises the dark comic humour of their life, which they are mocking. The old man ordering his wife to drink her tea while there is no tea also causes a deep sense of absurdity. They have been devoid of their identities by not giving them names by the dramatist, this might be because they are projecting the modernist condition of humanity. The old women asked about the guests, and the guests were people with great posts, with low posts, ordinary human beings, inanimate objects and biological constituents such as “chromosomes” (Ionesco). These guests certainly hint at the idea of an invitation to the whole of humanity.

The language which was considered as the ground of being in the era of modernism lost its authenticity due to suffering and pain in wars, confronting deceit, lies, false moralities acquisition and all the inequalities, humans soon learned that language is not the authentic medium to understand reality. People mostly tend to say one thing and mean another thing. Nietzsche broke down the authenticity of language by asking “Is language the adequate expression of all realities?” and he further poses “What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymy and anthropomorphisms. (Nietzsche)” and by using language to create truth is an “illusion” for him. This idea of language as an inauthentic means to understand and convey experiences and feelings is at the very heart of an absurdist dramatist. In absurdist dramas language is at constant breakage, silence is more important than words because silence becomes more profound in conveying what cannot be said and probably it might refer to Lacanian real. Through language, the characters are pitying themselves for their intense emotional breakage and vocalizing the emptiness of existence. Silence seems to be pronounced more loudly and its effect is more powerful in absurdist drams especially Pinteresque as he uses silence to create the dramatic effect of the hollowness of the human condition. Hence, language in absurdist plays seems to lose its meaning to convey existential truth and other larger realities of life which had a magnanimous effect on our lives but language fails to encompass their effect. 

Language has lost its profoundness; however, the tone is not tragic but comic. We do not see the characters crying, weening or pitying themselves, it seems as if their tears have dried and they have learned the art to reconcile with the tragedy of their existence and life.  In the play of Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party we can observe that language has been deflated or emptied and the whole attempt of engaging in a conversation is wasted yet the dialogues are still going on creating comic effect. There is, as Per Wastberg has said, “The abyss under chat, the unwillingness to communicate other than superficially” (“Characteristics of Harold Pinter’s Work – Wikipedia”). Petty does not register the presence of Meg, she is dire trying to engage Petty to keep talking, but his disinterestedness and brief conversation all hint that he no longer is interested in keeping up with the conversation rolling. Conversation then becomes ritualistic, an activity which is to be performed daily to engage with life and to pass on the time. We are also amused with their conversation by considering it a husband taking too easy on his wife and wife constantly talking and talking pumping him to reply to every question she is putting towards him. To start a conversation and to keep engaging in a conversation becomes a tiresome job. Within their conversation, there is no source of making an event. There is only phaticity which is the use of a language only to maintain a conversation. She is trying to grab the attention of her husband who has lost interest in her.
 Meg. Is that you Petey?
Pause.
Petey, is that you?
Pause.
Petey?
Petey. What?
Meg. Is that you?
Petey. Yes, it’s me.
Meg. What? (Her face appears at the hatch). Are you back?
Petey. Yes. (17)
 
Silence becomes more significant in Pinter. Our modern mode of existence is not meant to be heard and the desire to be noticed and heard becomes futile.  There are abrupt breakages and lots of pauses which deliver a more powerful impact a kind of pressure of being and existence is strongly felt which is inexplicable. Communication is almost impossible in Pinter, as he says, 
we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that is what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else’s life is too
frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. (Pinter)
 
Pinter’s idea that communication is alarming as one enters and re-enters into the domain of others as there is always a kind of power struggle to dominate in a conversation or entrapped by a feeling of guilt and having an acceptance of submission is way too fearsome. This is one of the reasons that the plays of Pinter are called “Comedy of Menace” and to win the power struggle silences and pauses become far more vocal and affirmative than the hollow use of language. The threat to humanity is then mocked by the repetitive, colloquial, broken sentences along with pauses and silences; this is the scheme of the absurd drama by making language enigmatic and mocking and challenging language as the ground of being and existence.

Human ambitions are mocked to the hilt, there seems to be nothing profound in the ambitions of humanity, progress, and enlightenment as they do not change the dilemma of existence. In Ionesco’s The Chairs The old woman’s insistence to the old man that if he ever tried in his life of a better career, he would be in a much better position, “You are very gifted, my darling. You could have been head president, … or head general if you had wanted to if only you’d had a little ambition in life (114).” The old man is disinterested in the rant of progress and of living a highly ambitious life. As the actual challenge is in the living and passing of the day-to-day life, which is routinized in which there is death, disease, suffering and old age these are the only progress which one has to pass after one is born. No high ideals or ambitions will let you escape from the harsh realities of life. The old man’s reply is the existential crisis of his life, he claims in the futility of existence and the absurdity in creating any meaning, “What good would that have done us? We’d not have lived any better” (114).

Time, moments and events are insignificant, and reasoning them as defining elements of our life generates anger and awe which is expressed in the breakage of memory or doing activities in a repetitive ritualistic mode to keep numbing the sense of time. There is little conception of the linearity of time it is either cyclic or incomprehensible. When there is no clear sense of the past the present is more autonomous and the freedom to utilize the present becomes ubiquitous in all other dimensions of time. The choice to decide and to create essence out of everyday existence becomes, however, a way more burdening, and the inevitability of moving endlessly becomes itself a great source of suffering. We do not see the characters lamenting their daily cyclic life, we see them performing activities of daily life in a ritualistic manner as they have become disinterested in the notions of daily progress and the slogans of rationality and enlightenment.

We encounter characters in absurdist plays whose memory of the characters is defective as they are not able to remember time. As their days and nights are usually with the same lot with only some insignificant changes. The old man with his disinterest in history and lack of memory persists in asserting his present. Science and technology have helped man to conquer space and time through advancement in the materialistic world and our life has become very easy it has also generated flexibility in our time has failed to satisfy our consciousness of being born and life itself. Cavemen were extremely busy because they had to struggle a lot for food, protection and procreation then after millions of years, the biggest problem with man was what to do with the time. Then to keep ourselves busy we created fun times such as parties, ceremonies, events, and much more as seen in Pinter’s The Birthday Party an event is created regardless of its authenticity, Stanley himself does not know that he had his birthday on the same day it is being celebrated by Meg and others.

Likewise, In Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs, the event is created to deliver a message to humanity and every person from the lowest strata to the highest is invited who according to the stage direction are invisible persons. This whole idea of indulging in fun and eventful activities is to have a sense of killing boredom and trying to create meaning out of absurdity. We enjoy, laugh, and dress in the most expensive attires to show to others. Our attitude and behaviour create a sense of pride, and also insecurities in the struggle of showing up a better social status. Becket mocked the use of time in Waiting for Godot, the two tramps are waiting endlessly for an unknown person or being named Godot. The waiting becomes infinite and to pass the time they are tricking themselves to pretend they are happy by indulging in activities. But as soon they are happy, they again have to face the existential threat, of what to do next.
 “VLADIMIR: Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON: I am happy.
VLADIMIR: So am I.
ESTRAGON: So am I.
VLADIMIR:  We are happy.
ESTRAGON: We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy? (121)
 
To pass the time they are indulging in activities which appear comic but to bear the burden of their existence and wait endlessly is a serious issue. They started to amuse themselves to bear up the time, narrating the story of two thieves, singing a song, taking off their boots daily, and trying to remember the name of Pozzo after they had forgotten his name.

Violence, menace, brutality and vehemence are essential parts of human tragic existence. These are the Others who inflict pain and misery upon us. These others are the external forces which are pitiless and overpower the circumstances of humans making them feel lonely, alone and unfitting in a world alien to them. These others challenge the existence of miserable human beings. They try to dominate through their sadist instinct and acts of violence. However, the apparent absurdity it all together creates is humoured and a sense of dark comedy erupts from the display of the misery of human beings. Others here are the powerful forces of society and civilization, they are the blessed ones and they certainly are not in the process of waiting endlessly. Their actions are illogical and irresistible. Estragon in Waiting for Godot usually falls into the trap of others and experiences violence but he cannot identify people beating him and is unable to understand what he is beaten for. The way he presents his misery in a lighter tone and forgets afterwards creates dark comedy which arouses ironic laughter out of the miseries of modern man:
 VLADIMIR: And they didn’t beat you?
ESTRAGON: Beat me? Certainly, they beat me.
VLADIMIR: The same lot as usual? (4)
 
At a later part of the play, the messenger boy in Waiting for Godot discloses the facticity of life, which according to Heidegger is our being thrown into this world and the random merits and demerits we have in the name of life (Heidegger et al.). We can no longer believe in the law of attraction as whatever is coming to us whether good or bad, beneficial or detrimental is beyond our control. The boy who was sent by the messenger proclaims his ignorance of the behaviour of Godot with him and also with his brother:
VLADIMIR: Whom does he beat?
BOY: He beats my brother, Sir.
… VLADIMIR: And why doesn’t he beat you?
BOY: I don’t know, Sir. (105)
 
At another moment in The Waiting for Godot dark humour arises out of unreasonable beating from others. One is unable to stop others from beating because one does not know what is making others aggressive about one’s actions. Estragon was beaten when he was not doing anything and it thus becomes a way more brutal of the absurdity of human existence and the irony of human existence creates dismal laughter:
 VLADIMIR: No, I mean before they beat you. I would have stopped you from doing whatever it was you were doing.
ESTRAGON: I wasn’t doing anything.
VLADIMIR: Then why did they beat you?
ESTRAGON: I don’t know. (120)
 
These others are intruders in Pinter’s Play The Birthday Party, they bragged and verbally abuse Stanley in every sense. They are powerful enough to take Stanley away. There is ambivalence in the speeches of characters in the play, whether the characters speak true or false might not be comprehensible other than Stanley. The concept of the intruders has some analogy with Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs as the stage is filled with so many chairs with imaginative or fictitious characters and the old man and the old women try to escape from these people and from the burden of communicating with them of their message by attempting suicide and leaving the dumb and deaf orator to deliver their message which infant is an empty message. The activity of maintaining or passing time becomes more and more aggravated and communicating with others and as Pinter says, “to disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. (Pinter)” altogether becomes an act of intrusion which threatens human existence.

The very question of human emancipation and slogans of humanism become a deeply painful theme which raises itself in a comic disposition. Humanism is the idea of free will. Man is free to choose and create meaning for his existence. His fee will have created more despair than ever. Man has broken the chains of Religion but now the question of what to do next still stands as a huge challenge to find the meaning in his existence. What to do with the existence is a constant question which nags man endlessly.
 The purpose of life and the choices to be made by humans are endless. Since man is free to choose and act it is here that man struggles and perplexes the most.  In The Chairs the old man has a mission to deliver a message to humanity, which he is trying to deliver throughout his life. His wife consoles him that he has to deliver the message, however, the reality is he will never be able to deliver his message. Humour arises at his proclamation “I’ve always been in command of the situation. (119)” and the very next moment when he is extremely helpless as his wife wipes off his running nose and dries his tears. The infirmity of humanity and the high ideals which are unattainable joins together creating a bizarre situation which causes dark comedy. The existence of humans does not matter and the choices they are making are not leading them anywhere and this is where a sense of nauseated feeling arises.

 Religion also becomes controversial in the absurdist plays and also raises dark comedy. There are two broader categories of existentialists, theistic and atheistic and their ideas of death and belief in god delve into their notion of freedom differently. Since absurdity lies in having an essentialist outlook on life. Theistic such as Kierkegaard considered that escape from the piercing questions of being and freedom of creating an essence becomes by “Leap of Faith”. On the other hand, Sartre is more of a humanist, he proclaims that “ Existentialism is humanism” and our choice of present actions affects the whole of humanity. One should try to find salvage not in religion but in humanism. However, existentialist mock their idea of creating an essence as bad faith as an anaesthetic of finding an essence could not give permanent relief to the grave and inescapable fact of existence which precedes essence. There is a persistent theme on the actions of God. That religion is also a salvation for few and that the actions of God are unknown.

The speech of Lucky in the text Waiting for Godot gives a deep philosophical message and portrays the life of man. Although the scene is very comic, by putting a hat on the head of Lucky he is transformed into thinking mode. In which he questioned the actions of god. As God blesses anyone and damn anyone. There is no certain criterion of justification of salvation and damnation and the same is the case that some people are extremely privileged in their lives while others are destitute for no reasons of their own. The torments of life increase the suffering of humanity. Few are extremely blessed and are given salvation by god while others are not. The story of the two thieves in which one was saved and the other damned is where efforts of humanity become futile and the reasons for having faith in morality, religion or rationality become difficult.

Death is a way to escape from one’s existence and to end the pressures of this non-nonsensical world. Tolystoyian Existentialists believe that our actions whether good or bad and the consequences they bring do not matter at all. Whether we have lived a great life or are a total loser, the ultimate destiny of all human beings is death, a total annihilation of life and so all the activities of life are useless. These existentialists are atheistic as they do not believe in an afterlife. Albert Camus had a similar belief in life and death as he thinks “If existence is ultimately meaningless, why bother existing? Perhaps suicide is the only logical consequence of this bare fact of existence” (Hamer). In the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, the protagonist is entangled in the inevitable circumstances of a legal proceeding leading to his persecution on the account that he was guilty of murder. His proceedings ultimately leading him towards his death sentence was the only thing that had given him surety in life. For him, death is the best answer to the crisis of life. The persistent chant of the priest to pray for his salvation refers to his futile effort as the protagonist does not believe in God and the afterlife. The priest asked:
Do you live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains? “Yes,” I said … He wanted to talk to me about God again, but I went up to him and made one last attempt to explain to him that I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God. (117)
 
According to Albert Camus in his The Myth of Sisyphus, the only way to end the cycle of mundane life and suffering is to make suicide. Death is a comic relief for existentialist absurdist and to make a free choice on death or to make a choice to end suffering existentialists find the solution in suicide. However, everyone is not privileged to convert the eternal circumstances in one’s favour even to attempt suicide. In Waiting for Godot, the two tramps make into futile effort of suicide and the comedy lies in the incongruity of their desire to attain absolute escape and the limited favourable circumstances in fulfilling their desire to reach a finitude. The choices to make are always there but to avail the choices even for one’s death becomes unfulfilled. In Waiting for Godot for Instant, the two tramps tried a failed attempt to make suicide as both, the bow of the tree was weak and the rope of their pyjamas was thin and broke easily. Their waiting is then not only for Godot but also for death, a place of eternal abode from this futile life. The tramps are seen not doing anything to improve their life and so they are only waiting “because we are going to die, all chains of justification must leave off in mid-air” (Nagel). Human sufferings are epitomized in despair. Though man can act in any way the consequences are uncontrollable. This creates despair which in itself is a feeling and experience of nada or nothingness.

Irony is an essential element of humor. Deleuze considered irony and humour as an escape from mundane life and societal complexity and rigidity. In his idea of “Repetition” the purpose that irony and humour serve is one of distance from the stringent realities of social life along with connecting with them at the same time (Deleuze, and Sacher-Masoch). Deleuze further states the link of difference with being while proposing that there are other who attempts to explicate the concern of being such as instead of taking a dialectical stance of ontological status Hegel took it as a pure rational proposition, 
 there has only ever been one ontological proposition: being is univocal . . . A single voice raises the clamour of being”  however,  Deleuze looks towards being as the difference of voices, such as an individual’s voice and other at the same time is the voice or cry of humanity rather than giving it a theological and metaphysical Hegelian slant  (Deleuze, and Sacher-Masoch).
 
 The ontological debate of existence has laid the foundation of the theatre of the absurd which helps is out showing human miseries in dark comic tones. The facticity of existence and the powerlessness of humans to have control of their lives seems a nightmarish haunt. Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream is enjoyed as an artwork which also explicates the pleasure that humans take in their miserable condition. Dark comedy thus is to punch an authenticity of misery and the inconvenience that life throws at us which is inescapable despite the essentialist ideas of rationality and enlightenment. Lyotard has aptly remarked that “there is no longer a horizon of universalization of general emancipation before the eyes of postmodern man” (Lyotard et al.). The postmodern man laughs at the condition of its failed notions of universalization finding no way escape to from the miseries of life. Comedy in the theatre of the absurd arises out of the phatic use of language in which the characters while dealing with the dark realities of life such as disease, death, old age, the monotony of mundane life and similar threats, the character then becomes an active performer in keeping up with all the harsh realities and keep rolling life itself with absurd activities which depict the abasement of the human life.