@article{2018,title={THE MATTER OF WAR IN THE PLAY “"PICNIC ON THE BATTLEFIELD" BY FERNANDO ARRABAL},abstractNode={Fernando Arrabal is one of the most important Spanish playwrights of the Twentieth Century Theater whose plays are performed all over the world. His first play Picnic on the Battlefield is based on the matter of war. The play contains a sharp criticism of early 20th century and the contrast between individualism and collectivism. It portrays a picnic of Tepán couple, their son Zapo and an enemy soldier on the battlefield during an undefined war. In the atmosphere of the picnic the characters all notice that none of them knows why and against whom they fight and they all decide to end the war. But the nature of the war is not so simple like they perceive. Their pure and kindly desire to end the war and the strangeness to the reality that surrounds them prepare their tragic end. Arrabal expresses this reality with his expert language and by using the humor factor. His play combines the absurd with the black humor, the real and reasonable thing with the unreal and unreasonable. This paper focuses on Arrabal’s play Picnic on the Battlefield and aims to analyze the matter of war and the way that the author makes a parody of antiwar. This study examines the challenge between characters of the play as well as their fictional world and the real world. This article also shows how war builds fundamental source of literature. },author={Esra Kılıç},year={2018},journal={International Journal of Language Academy}}