After major conflicts and wars follow a phenomenon where people or communities develop feelings of separation from their surroundings which amount to disillusionment and detachment. Post-war alienation emerged strongly during the periods between World War-I and World War-II because war destruction and the associated traumas made people lose contact with their prior social standards and personal identities. In such context, the expression “alienation” characterises people looking to understand their place in a transformational world post-war. Social distancing exists in multiple psychological, social and emotional degrees because individuals experience distance from cultural elements and societal structures that used to be a significant part of their lives. The concept of alienation appears in literature and philosophy through works that portray the existence of people during and after times of war.



This research paper evaluates post-war alienation through an analysis of two paradigms of post-war by Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (1957) and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958). These post-war paradigms not only expose internal realities and external shifts of modern human life by investigating themes of isolation and memory together with absurd human existence but also analyse how Beckett and Pinter use their lead characters in both works to show how people become estranged from themselves and society by depicting universal post-war disassociation. This paper also examines the common themes of the plays by analysing and comparing textual elements and applying existentialism and absurdism together with alienation as fundamental cultural concepts.