Waiting for Godot PDF

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This document explains why the play "Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play predicated upon existentialist ideas. ...

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This essay aims to discuss the ways in which Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play predicated upon existentialist ideas. Samuel Beckett is notorious for depicting weird and terrifying images in an ironic and humorous way in his plays. He is so influential because his works were one of the first to be part of the Theatre of the Absurd, which is the result of the horror during World War II affirming Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead”. The play is set on a country road with a tree and a mound where Vladimir and Estragon, the two tramps, have an arrangement there with someone named Godot who is supposed to give them purpose, and yet, no one with such knowledge and power crosses their path so they have to keep waiting. The process through which they have to go, which is living basically, is full of disappointments and seemingly endless despair. Miserable, bleak, sad, is that what life is? The answer is no and the existentialists have a perfect explanation why. They believe that through acknowledging the fact that life is meaningless, one has to create purpose, taking all responsibility for their choices. Since existentialism rejects all pre-established conventional concepts and beliefs, neither religion could be the answer to life, nor is any kind of authority to be listened to. The only one who remains is the self; hence the individual is ultimately free to live life genuinely; Jean-Paul Sartre formulates it: “Existence precedes essence”. Waiting for Godot is also known to be a tragicomedy because it is through humor that the situation is not deadly; it comes from the peaceful reception of a sequence of miserable events, disappointments and despair: “- I thought it was he. - Pah! The wind in the reeds. -I could have sworn I heard shouts. -And why would he shout? -At his horse.” The human condition suggests that it is necessary for a person to experience those conditions in order to be in full awareness of what life has to offer but chooses to be happy no matter what. “What do we do now, now that we are happy?” Asks Estragon, “Wait for Godot” replies Vladimir; they already have a purpose of life that they have chosen for themselves. The tragedy here is that they are consciously waiting for someone

to come and reveal them an enlightened path of ease and joy. It seems like their life is completely pointless; and here lies the thin line between absurdism and existentialism: while existentialists claim they could create their own purpose, absurdists declare that since everything is driven by chance, we can’t find meaning in a meaningless universe. "The essential is contingency. I mean that, by definition, existence cannot be identified with necessity. To exist is to happen without reason.... Every thing is purposeless” (1966 p. 238) Waiting for Godot depicts exactly how pointless it is to try and find something to live for. Albert Camus wrote in 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus where he is concerned with how different people respond to the meaninglessness world, and there are seven possible ways. The first one is suicide since there is no point in living; the two tramps talk about hanging themselves in both acts. They never do it, rather they discuss how they should do it so that both of them get killed, even though they don’t even have a rope. “-Wait, there’s my belt. - It’s too short. -You could hang onto my legs. - And who’d hang on to mine? - True.” Another method to avoid true existential realization is distraction: with food, comfort, alcohol, etc. Enjoying the pleasures of life wouldn’t provide it much meaning, however, while waiting Estragon tries to become more comfortable with his boots which in the first act are too small, and in the second are too big so there is no point in that. He also gets hungry twice, first time he gets a carrot and second time – a turnip which he violently rejected in the first act. The third reaction to absurdity is denial. Religious people, for example, are convinced that God is the meaning so they reject the whole absurdist idea; Vladimir tries to talk about the bible to Estragon and gets the answer “(with exaggerated enthusiasm) I find this really most extraordinary interesting.” so it’s not even a theme worth for discussion. Hence, the Bible doesn’t seem to enlighten the tramps so they continue waiting. Interestingly, according to Camus, becoming an actor is a legitimate way of dealing with the absurd by pretending to have meaning in other people or characters’ stories. Since the play is written for and performed by actors and they still aren’t satisfied with the results, this doesn’t seem to be the answer as well. The next method is becoming another type of artist and replace the futility with works of art, which have meaning. In the beginning of the second act Vladimir tries to sing while Estragon was gone.

“-I heard you singing. -That’s right, I remember. - That finished me. I said to myself, he’s all alone, he thinks I’m gone forever, and he sings.” Not only that doesn’t solve their problem, Estragon is even shocked that Vladimir would do such a thing instead of trying to find him. The following way of confrontation with the absurd is engaging in politics as power gives meaning to a lot of people. Pozzo has a slave, named Lucky, who he openly offences and drives him “by means of a rope”. Even though in the first act things are ostensibly going well for the mighty man, the authority doesn’t seem to be working out as in the second act things had only gone worse for both, him and Lucky. Camus ultimately rejects all these methods because they merely give the impression of meaningful life to the individual, which is complete delusion, according to him, even though he considers all of them at the same time. The final method, though, is the one that he recommends: Acceptance. If one is in complete peace with the pointlessness of life but still chooses to continue walking against the wind, he is enabled to live life as genuine as possible. “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” (1942, 28) By the end of act two, Vladimir seems to be quite enlightened that Godot is not coming; when the boy comes for the second time, the tramp makes statements, instead of asking questions, with which the boy just agrees. Nevertheless, Vladimir tells Estragon they are going tomorrow again; this is an act of resistance towards the universe itself: “The courage in it reveals true being”. (p. 181) The “Theatre of the Absurd” is a term pinpointed by Martin Esslin referring to a form of tragedy that emerged in the years following World War II. It is famously known as weird, since most of the plays relating to it are closer to “philosophy lessons rather than enjoyable, moving works of art”. What is even more absurd is that not even Samuel Beckett knows who Godot is and he claims that himself: “I don’t know who Godot is. I don’t even know (above all don’t know) if he exists. And I don’t know if they believe in him or not—those two who are waiting for him.” (Cohn, 2006, p. 122). Deriving from the philosophical approach to life, absurdism rejects any previous conventional form of theatre. It is characterized by “a pair of individuals living together or otherwise coexisting” a miserable life deprived from hope, in which dreams and illusions help the individual to deal with reality: - I was asleep. Why would you never let me sleep? - I felt lonely.

- I had a dream.” However the fascination of death seems to surpass these realms. There is very little plot since “nothing meaningful can happen” and action which is often repetitive. Waiting for Godot depicts two days in Vladimir and Estragon’s lives in which the same things happen to them but they are also not the same because the characters have changed, time has passed and therefore no one remembers the previous day. Driven by chance, the absurd situations in which the characters find themselves is always bleak, miserable and horrible; however, those terrifying images are fused with comedy, helping them confront the pointless reality; dr. S.C. Mundra specifies that especially “The final situation is absurd or comic”. The whole play itself is not meant to convey any meaning as it doesn’t offer a solution to a problem, hence it is purposeful. Waiting for Godot played a huge role in the making of the theatre of the Absurd. Vladimir and Estragon’s meaning in life is waiting for someone, who is going to come and tell them how to live but never comes; this relates to the existentialist idea that man is compelled to find his own meaning in life. The absurdism prevails because this purpose is completely pointless as are all of the other possible ways of confronting the meaningless universe unless the acceptance of the absurd because it reveals the reality of being. The difference is small but important considering the pointlessness that is depicted throughout the whole play. Its aim is also to represent how people are usually trapped in their own world, which is completely normal for them, but might seem weird to someone else, hence Samuel Beckett is ‘making the familiar look strange, and the strange familiar’ seeking to provoke existential thoughts in the individual, even though presented in an absurdist way it causes confusion. Considering Waiting for Godot’s open end, its structure, the way it depicts reality and the primitive concepts of time, it is affirmed that the play is absurdist, because life ultimately is pointless, predicated upon existentialist ideas.

Bibliography: •

Nietzsche, F. (1924). The Joyful Wisdom (T. Common, Ed.). New York: The Macmillan Company. (Original work published 1882)

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Sartre, J.P. (1948). Existentialism is a Humanism L'existentialisme est un humanisme (C. Macomber, P. Mairet, Ed.). London: Les Editions Nagel, Methuen & Co. (Original work published 1946)

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Baker, R. (1964). Full text of “Production book for Waiting for Godot”. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/productionbookfo00bake/productionbookfo00bake_djvu.txt

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"There's Lots of Time in Godot" in A Casebook on Waiting for Godot, p. 181

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Camus, A. (2013) the Myth of Sisyphus (J. Obrien Ed.). London: Penguin Modern Classics. (Original work published 1942)

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Hornby, R. (2015, February) Theatre of the Absurd. Unpublished intranet document, University of Portsmoth.

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Ahmed, A. Basic Concept of The Theatre of the Absurd. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/4752768/Basic_Concept_of_the_Theatre_of_the_Absurd...