Happy Days Themes

When a word is in a title you know it's a Big Deal. On the outset, we might think Happy Days is going to be a happy play about happy people in a happy land. Okay, maybe not that nauseatingly pleasa...

We would all like to believe that we have some control over the way we live, by making choices and being defined by the choices that we make (if you do something of your own accord, it makes you fe...

We're all familiar with the wedding phrase, "Till Death do us Part," from the Book of Common Prayer, which raises the question: are Winnie and Willie even alive, or are they in some sort of limbo s...

Winnie's gradual burial within the ground is never explained to us, yet as Ruby Cohn once said, it provides "a new stage metaphor for the old human condition—burial in a dying earth." The feeling...

We can all agree that, no matter what our perfect "happy day" might be, we would all like our days to pass with a sizable amount of ease and relaxation. We never want to have to try very hard to be...

Cats and dogs. Cops and robbers. Werewolves and vampires. They don't like each other but they have to live together—or at least near each other. What does this have to do with "The Absurd," you a...

Sun. Exhaustion. Sand. Bell. More sand. Heat. Loneliness. More heat. More sand. So why persist? Why continue? Well, according to Beckett there is within man a "smug will to live," which is somethin...

Like many of Beckett's other plays, Happy Days confronts the idea that words are always failing or breaking down. But what does it mean to be human if we cannot communicate? The use of pauses and W...

In life, we are always told to "live in the present," or to live "for now"... but that assumes that there is a past and a future. Living in the present could be a difficult feat, especially if you...

Winnie's isolation in Happy Days is something we can see in our own, modern lives. A 2006 study argued that "since 1985 Americans have become more socially isolated, the size of their discussion ne...