Waiting for Godot

 Thinking Activity: Waiting for Godot

"Why you should read Waiting for Godot"  

Samuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights originally Wrote “Waiting for Godot” in 1949 in French as “En attendant Godot”, later translated into English in 1954. This play has been performed as an absurd drama after the Second World War. As Martin Esslin addressed this play as, “One of the successes of the Post-war theatre” (Esslin). In this play two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for Someone known as Godot, who does not make an appearance throughout the play. The play begins with waiting for Godot and ends with waiting for Godot. The Subject of the play is waiting rather than Godot.

ESTRAGON

Let's go!

VLADIMIR

We can't.

ESTRAGON

Why not?

VLADIMIR

We're waiting for Godot.

ESTRAGON

(despairingly) Ah!

In act I Estragon said: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!” this becomes one of the themes and central ideas of the play as well as of the Twentieth Century.

 In Beckett’s this play, we can find the bourgeois ideology of late modernism. Vladimir and Estragon encounter Pozzo and Lucky, they discuss their miseries and consider hanging themselves, but they ended up waiting for Godot. They do not know why they were put on the earth, they are seeking existence, and they wait for Godot for enlightenment, it is salvation for them. The play begins and ends with the same words. Its final lines are: "Well, shall we go. / Yes, let's go. / (They do not move)."

[In both the acts speaker changes]

The nature of time is also an interesting subject of the play, for some and boring for others in the play. Time moves in a cycle, with the same events recurring repeatedly. The characters are living in a never-ending loop. Vladimir, who remembers everything knows that they have been there the other day to wait for Godot, but Estragon remembers nothing. If we look at the plot, both the acts are almost similar, it would be possible to increase the number of acts with this technique of Beckett.

In both Acts, evening falls into night and the moon rises. How would you like to interpret this ‘coming of night and moon’ when actually they are waiting for Godot?

The classic interpretation of night and dark represents death. The falling of night is as much a reprieve from daily suffering as death is from the suffering of a lifetime.

Unlike traditional literature, where the falling of the night and rising of the moon is regarded as bad omens, evening fades into night and the moon rises. However, in this play, everything is different because it was created in the modern era when writers/artists were defying every rule and regulation of tradition and that is one of the many reasons. 

There’s also the issue of the moon, as its appearance in the sky is the real signal that night has come and the men can stop waiting for Godot.  

Estragon, in act I comments, the moon is "pale for weariness […] of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us." Though the man who remembers nothing of yesterday, he does at this moment seem to comprehend the endless repetition of his life.  And if the moon is weary just from watching, imagine what that says about the predicament of the men themselves.

If we look at the falling of night and the rise of the moon, we can perceive it in two ways. One is that the moon is providing some form of relief to them since it is the end of the day and thus the end of the waiting. The other way to look at it is with hope because Godot did not appear and there is still a chance that he will appear the next day. 

It is exactly similar to what we do throughout our life. We, humans, are accustomed to the cycle of the sun. We go to work at sunrise and come back at sunset. As soon as the moon rises we fall asleep. well, not in times like this but that is what people used to do. But the sleep through the moonrise gives them another stress and that is another day of waiting.