Dialogue
From our earliest forays into English class, we are understanding of the difference between words and pictures. It seems counter-intuitive, then, to suggest that, in many of Beckett's plays, dialogue is actually a form of imagery, as it portrays Beckett;s contention that dialogue without meaning is just a series of sounds. An example of this is in Play, where the three characters on the stage are all speaking their own truths at the same time. We cannot understand what they are each saying and are consequently met with a babble of noise that does not mean anything. It is also clear that the characters do not see the meaning in language as a communication tool; although they can clearly see each other they are oblivious to the fact that the other characters are speaking at the same time, suggesting that dialogue involves listening as much as speaking and also suggesting that language has meaning only when both listening and speaking are involved.
Funeral Urns
Also in Play, we find some of the starkest staging that features in any of Beckett's plays. The only staging consists of three funeral urns, with a human head visible at the top. The urns are spiritual images, whereas the faces of the people in them are images of a lack of emotion and understanding of each other. The urns are also images of the death of emotion, as the characters all seem to lack emotion in their relationships with each other, and the death of a marriage, in that what they are each describing is a seedy affair that created the love triangle they all became involved in.
Godlike Forces
There are many symbolic references to the existence of a God-like force in Beckett's plays, and most frequently this is in the form of a symbolic sound offstage that awakens in a character an action that that would not otherwise have performed unprompted. This suggestion becomes far more visual in Act Without Words as the man is hurled backwards across the stage by an unknown, invisible force that seems to be able to control him and his physical movements.
There is a scene in the hit television comedy series Friends where Phoebe Bouffay insists that she believes that gravity is not a force that pulls her down but that there is instead a force above her that is pushing her to the ground. The man in Act Without Words is a visual representation of Phoebe's thinking, in that both suggest a force that is directing them in a less than kindly manner, and in the case of the man, is actually causing him a great deal of pain and discomfort.
Futility
Given that one of the main themes of Beckett's writing is futility, and chiefly, the futility of existence, it makes perfect sense that much of the imagery in his plays would also paint a visual image of this too. One of the main examples of this imagery is in Act Without Words The man is trying very hard to move in different directions across the stage but he is constantly hurled backwards by an invisible force that prevents him from doing so. His effort in making this movement is clear but the visual imagery shows us that this effort is futile because he is never going to be able to over-power the force that is hurling him back again.
Auditory Imagery
Not all of the imagery in Beckett's plays is visual; in fact, much of it is auditory. The man in Act Without Words is trying to make a movement towards the sound of a whistle that is offstage. This is what makes him move at all, and this then allows us to see the visual representation of the futility of his actions. A similar auditory imagery is utilized in Happy Days, as Winnie is prompted into action by the sound of a bell. This auditory imagery suggests that human existence is more a matter of training than of productivity or free will, as the imagery is similar to that of the Pavolivian response a dog might have, far more than it is an image of a reaction that a person might have.
