Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)

“The subject of the play is not Godot, but waiting.” (Melvin J. Friedom)

In addition to the themes implicit in the title itself, that is, the theme of waiting, there are several other themes in “Waiting for Godot”, which have captured critical attention. Some of these are triviality and boredom of human life, the theme of prevalence of suffering, the theme of ignorance, the theme of economic and intellectual exploitation and the theme of meaninglessness of space, time and identity. Then there is theme of Nothing to be Done.




The production of Waiting for Godot was regarded by some critics as a great landmark in the history of the English theatre, although other looked at it as one more example of the literary anarchy of the present century. Beckett’s subsequent plays made this initial conflict of opinion even sharper and fiercer, and indeed his development since Waiting for Godot made that play seem almost traditional in its methods and hopeful in its philosophy. One subsequent work, entitled Play, denies his characters the power of movement completely, and consists of first Act which is repeated to form the second Act. It is possible, by piecing together various critical points of view, to see Waiting for Godot as a coherent dramatic statement of Beckett’s view of the human condition.

From reading Waiting for Godot, we may gather that Godot has several traits in common with the image of God as depicted in the Old and the New Testaments. His white beard reminds us of the image of the old-father aspect of God. His irrational preference for one of the two brothers recalls Jehovah’s treatment of Cain and Abel; so does his power to punish those who would to ignore him. The discrimination between the goat-herd and the shepherd is reminiscent of the Son of God as the ultimate judge: as the savior for whom men wait and wait, he might well be meant as a cynical comment on the second coming of Christ, while his doing nothing might be an equally cynical reflection concerning man’s forlorn state.

This last feature seems that expects and waits for the old activity of God of gods. Whereas St. Matthews says: “And he shall seat the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left” in the play it is the shepherd who is beaten and the goat-herd who is favored. What Vladimir and Estragon expect from Godot is food and shelter, and goats are motherly, mild-providing animals.

We hear that once, Vladimir and Estragon had seen Godot. But they do not remember him quite clearly, and the vague promises he seems to have given them are treated with a light-heartedness born of doubt. In fact, it seems to them as if God, Godot, and Pozzo were sometimes merging into one blurred picture. When, in Act II, they talk of God, Gozzo appears and is mistaken by Estragon for Godot. Here the implication perhaps is that religion altogether is based on indistinct desires in which spiritual and material needs remain mixed. Godot is explictly vague; merely an empty promise, corresponding to lukewarm piety and absence of suffering in the tramps. Waiting for Godot has become a habit with them, a habit which is a “guarantee of dull inviolability, and an adaptation to the meaninglessness of life.

Two pathetic figures possibly tramps, though even this is not stated, wait beside a tree for a mysterious figure with whom, Vladimir asserts and Estragon believes they have an appointment.

Estragon and Vladimir are incapable of anything more than mere beginnings of impulses, desires, thoughts, moods, memories, and impressions. Everything that arises in them sinks back into forgetfulness before it arrives anywhere. They both live, to a large extent, in a twilight state and though one of them, Vladimir, is more aware than his companion, inertia or complete physical listlessness prevails throughout. They belong to a category of people well-known in Paris as clochards, people who have known better times and originally been cultured and educated. They make a point of being the rejects of destiny in love with their own position as outsiders.

Many critics say that waiting is itself the theme of the play. This waiting is compulsive. Estragon suggests more than once that they might leave, but Vladimir reminds him that they dare, they are waiting for Godot.

“Their waiting, however they may be cynical about it, contains a certain element of hope.” (Melvin J. Friedom)

The various attitudes of the tramps enhance this theme. For example, going to one edge and then to the other of the stage and looking into the distance, with the eyes shielded by the hand. Each act ends with a respite in waiting, but it is made clear that waiting must go on the next day and then the next, until Godot comes, of which they do not seem to harbor any real hope.

“The two tramps are in a place and mental state in which nothing happens and time stands still.” (Geoffrey Brereton)

Godot may be a representative in Beckett’s contemporary terms, of some authority who has promised protection to the tramps who may be regarded as symbolic of the ordinary French citizen under the German occupation or Waiting for Godot may be a symbol of man’s waiting for divine savior, a wait that, obviously must go on and on.
This view is strengthened by the fact that tramps admit that they did not request Godot to do anything definite for them. Vladimir says more than once that if Godot comes, they would be saved. Thus the action in the Waiting for Godot becomes applicable to all Christianity.

The way the two tramps pass time is indicative of boredom and triviality of human activities, the lack of significance in life and the constant suffering, which existence is. It also brings out the hollowness and insecurity of social intercourse. Estragon and Vladimir question each other, contradict each other, abuse each other, become reconciled to each other again. All these actions are without any serious meaning or intention. All these devices are employed to one end—to the end of making their waiting for Godot less unbearable. The world of this play is one in which no significant action is permitted; therefore even suicide is not within their reach.

“The usual climate of the play is one of cruelty.” (David Grossvogel)

One of the themes of Waiting for Godot is that suffering is an inseparable part of the human condition. Vladimir and Estragon suffer intensely and incessantly. Vladimir cannot even laugh without suffering excruciating pain. Estragon’s feet make life a long torture for him. They have nothing to eat either, except carrots, turnips and radishes.

This suffering pervades the episode of Lucky and Pozzo. In act II, both Lucky and Pozzo have suffered great physical affliction. The enslaved and chained Lucky has now been rendered dumb also. It is Pozzo who expresses the misery of the human lot in the striking metaphor of the birth astride a grave. And the worst of it is that the suffering is both purposeless and without the consolation of the hoped for end. In some profounder; non-rational send, everyone is ignorant to some extent.

The theme of exploitation is only implicit in that main story but it is explicit in the episode of Pozzo and Lucky. All the fine words Posso now speaks are derived, he confesses, from Lucky. Yet he holds Lucky on a rope and treats him worse than an animal.

Now having derived from Luckly, it is Pozzo who was planning to sell him at a fair, though it is his belief that a much better thing would be to kill him outright.

“It is characteristic of the haves that they employ the have-nots even to do their thinking for them.” (David Grossvogel)

The exploited become so demoralized that they are unable to offer any resistance to the exploiters. Even when Pozzo has become blinded, Lucky does not have the guts to free himself from his enslavement.

A concrete example of man’s desperate retreat from the unpleasant truth is the reaction of Vladimir and Estragon to the enigmatic pair, Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo treats Lucky more cruelly than he would an animal. One possible interpretation of the meaning here is that Pozzo represents mankind, and Lucky represents Christ. If this view is accepted, what takes place before Vladimir and Estragon is the re-acting of the Redemption. Vladimir an dEstragon, of course, do not recognize it as such, find it unpleasant, and prefer to continue waiting for the vague Godot. Faced by what they have apparently been waiting for, they find the truth unpleasant and, therefore, reject it. Another possible interpretation is that Pozzo and Lucky represent human life, Pozzo representing the physical aspect of the human personality and Lucky the spiritual, which is in time brutalized by the treatment it received and is reduced to the incoherence represented in the play by Lucky’s outburst when his “thinking hat” is put on his head. Pozzo himself in the course of the play turns blind, this perhaps being an indication of the transience of human power and domination. Seeing Pozzo blind, Vladimir tries to fit this fact into a time-scheme which might in some way explain it. Pozzo becomes furious with him and says,

“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time? It’s abominable….They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”

Waiting for Godot is a many-faceted play. Its meaning and implications are complex. Its theme have a certain topicality, at the same time as they possess a timeless validity and universality, it is an existentialist play. Estragon and Vladimir are the representatives of common humanity even Pozzo and Lucky also and Lucky seems to have suffered decline. Thus the themes of Waiting for Godot possess an inexhaustible richness of meaning and implication. The play ends on a strange note of hope of that the tramps would be able to bring a piece of rope with which they will hang themselves the next day.

“Hope of salvation is a subject of the play.” (Arnold P. Hinchliffe)

Theatre of the Absurd, is a literary term, which was used by Esslin to define the play written by Beckett. As far the main characteristics of the play, it is stated from the very outset that the dramatists depict a deeply serious attitude, which must be distinguished from an attitude of despair. According to them, life does not follow any laws and logical patterns. In other words, theatre of the absurd transfers irrationality of life on the stage. The talks and actions of the characters do not convey any meaning.

“In much of Beckett’s work, the tone means more than meaning, and it is this warmth, which denies the metaphysician the last word and qualifies absurdity.” (David Grossvogel)

There is, in fact, no plot in these plays. The time is static, the places are not specific. As a whole the theatre of the absurd is totally an unconventional play.

Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has same typical qualities of this kind of play. After the first performance of Waiting for Godot in1953. Some critics were of the views that Beckett had contrived an absolute negation of human existence. But after 30 years of serious critical discussion, critics have reached the conclusion that situation depicted in Waiting for Godot is symbolic of man’s general position in this world. In the world of Godot, there is complete impossibility of rational action. Estragon’s struggle with his shoes is an absurd as his effort to commit suicide. The striking dialogue, “there is nothing that I can do about it,” repeated again and again by Vladimir and Estragon is an epitome of the whole play. This dialogue has metaphysical implications. It is a comment on the absurdity of life.

The second act depicts the tramp’s loss of identity. Although both the tramp characters are bound in a friendly bond, they are unable to communicate with each other throughout the play, their relationship verges on uncertainty.

“Vladimir: Come here till I embrace you.
Estragon: Don’t touch me.
Vladimir: Where did you spend the night?
Estragon: Don’t touch me! Don’t question me!
Don’t speak to me! Stay with me.”

The play also depicts the difference in the attitude of the two tramps. Vladimir is of a speculative type of mind while Estragon is weaker and more temperamental. Yet both are at the mercy of Godot absolutely who has asked them to wait for him. The two tramps are in a mental state where nothing happens twice. The time stands still and their only preoccupation is to pass the time.

“Waiting for Godot does not tell a story, it explores a static situation; nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” (Melvin J. Friedom)

They are merely filling up the hours with paint-less activity. They deliberately even abuse each other so as to get their conversation going. All that Estragon can do is to eat a carrot or put on and put off his shoes. All that Vladimir can do is to remove his hat, peer inside, shake it thoroughly and put it on again. They are totally helpless in the presence of their mental condition. Hence whatever they do is highly farcical but at the same time, it is deeply tragic. In the treatment of comedy and tragedy, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot thus comes very close to the concept of tragi-comedy of the theatre of absurd.

In the English edition of 1956 Waiting for Godot was subtitled “A “Tragi-Comedy.” On being asked if he would care to enlarge on this, Samuel Beckett made no reply. In the absence of an authoritative lead, we are left with the tame but probably correct conclusion that Waiting for Godot is a tragicomedy because it combines tragic and comic elements. The former can be recognized at a reading or a performance, which will evoke a reaction that is more complex than simple pity. The characters are hardly the little men of the Charlie Chaplin tradition at whom one smile while feeling sorry from them. The human condition is that which we all take seriously because we recognize it as ours. Yet our response is not exactly fear, and even disquiet would seem too strong a term, for what worse thing could happen to them, or to us, than has happened already? If Godot does not come, they will be left as they, which at moments seems unbearable but is not absolutely so. And if they cracked, what difference would it make? Where could they escape to? One feels that even if there were ten more Accts in the play, the tramps would still be going through the same motions, since there is no line of development open to them. It is true that several are indicated, but they are all summed up in almost the last lines of the play:

“Estragon: Didi.
Vladimir: Yes.
Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what -year-old think.
Estragon: If we parted: That might be better for us.
Vladimir: We’ll hand ourselves tomorrow. Unless Godot comes.
Estragon: And if he comes?
Vladimir: We’ll be saved.”

The ending of waiting for Godot is a typical ending of this kind of modern plays. In an unusual sense, Estragon and Vladimir continue waiting for Godot even though the curtains are down. They stand facing the audience and uttering the words: “Let’s go,” but in fact, they remain motionless.

In the end, it cane be remarked that Waiting for Godot belongs to the theatre of absurd, in its treatment of themes, delineation of characters, symbolic undertones, from and style.

A recent critic named Ruby Cohn looks upon Waiting for Godot as one of the master pieces of absurdist literature.