waiting for godot as an absurd play assignment

Waiting for Godot as an absurd play

When Martin Esslin published his book The T heater of Absur d in 1960, only then did the phrase “Theater of Absurd” become popular. The theatre of absurd illustrates an attitude and a frame of mind towards life, where human existence is a conundrum of illogical, senseless, and hopeless activity.

The movement, activity, and chats of the characters of an absurd drama do not carry any real sense. And it is on this idea that Beckett penned his most popular absurd play “Waiting for Godot” . It does not have a proper plot or a proper setting. The talks and the actions of the two central characters Vladimir and Estragon do not carry any real sense. And all these make Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” an absurd play. 

Table of Contents

The absurdity of human existence in “Waiting for Godot”

The absurdity of human existence is a main aspect of an absurd play. And Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” exhibits this absolute truth through the characters of Vladimir and Estragon . They dwell in a world without any consoling allusions about the necessity of law and order, the assurance of life after death, and the significance of work and accomplishment. They dwell in a world where anything can happen at any time, where savagery and cruelty can take place at any time. They are living such a life where there is no help of any kind. Vladimir and Estragon are basically quite sincere about their indistinct liability to wait for this unknown figure who might or might not arrive and who might or might not reward for their devotion and sincerity.

Lack of setting in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”:

The setting of “Waiting for Godot” constitutes an absurdist atmosphere in the audience. The setting of the play consists of a barren country road, a tree, and a ditch constituting the desolate, unearthly countryside whose only inhabitants are two tramps Vladimir and Estragon. There is nothing to be done and there is no such best place to go around. The tree, often an emblem of growth and creation with its fruits and flowers, is evidently lifeless. But Vladimir and Estragon are also sure that Godot has asked them to come to this place. This shows that Godot wants human beings to feel the barrenness and fruitlessness of life. Such a setting of the play reminds us of the condition of the world after the two world wars as the world wars caused anxieties, confusion, hopelessness, and new problems to all of humankind. 

Lack of a proper plot in “Waiting for Godot” 

In a literary work, a plot should focus on a single action and is also likely to have a proper start, a middle, and an end. But Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” does not have an exposition or beginning, middle, and an end. The play’s end is precisely the same as the start. Throughout the play, the playwright does not even try to develop the characters or describe them. The central characters Vladimir and Estragon’s unending waiting for an unknown figure is the principal activity of the play. “Nothing happens twice” , comments Vivian Mercier, an Irish Critic. What Beckett wants to convey through this play is nothing happens – and in real life too nothing happens. 

Unreliability of language in “Waiting for Godot” 

According to Esslin, a traditional play depends on witticism and sharp dialogues, but the absurd drama depends on disjointed and incomprehensible babbling . Samuel Beckett discarded language as an authentic and dependable source of certainty. Becket was aware that language could never carry meaning accurately. This is also the reason why he portrays Vladimir and Estragon passing most of their time playing around with words and expressions. They are constantly chattering and babbling but they are not able to reach any kind of result. 

Stuttering and fumbling are noticeable in the character’s speech, for instance, Pozzo’s expression on Vladimir’s critique: “I cannot bear it… any longer… the way he goes on… you’ve no idea… it’s terrible.”(Act I, Waiting for Godot) . This speech from Pozzo is much like baby talk. When Estragon is talking to Vladimir, hesitancy is noticeable in his words. “Er… you’ve finished with the… er… you don’t need the… er bones, sir?”(Act II, Waiting for Godot). Actually, Samuel Beckett wanted to show the disconnection between speech and memory, meaning and reality. Thereby, he reveals how irregular and deceptive language is.

Conclusion:

To conclude we can say that Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”  consists of all the characteristics of an absurd drama . Meaningless, senseless, illogicality, and ignorance which surrounded humankind following the world wars and created an absurd existence, is represented by Samuel Beckett in “Waiting for Godot” . Beckett observed this purposeless condition and portrayed it through two tramps Vladimir and Estragon. Beckett illustrated these two tramps in a useless condition without any genuine action. Nonetheless, “Waiting for Godot” as an absurd play has gone on to become a masterpiece that remodeled the face of postmodern drama.

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A Summary and Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Waiting for Godot is one of the most important plays of the twentieth century. But analysing its significance is not easy, because Beckett’s play represents a major departure from many conventions and audience expectations regarding the theatre.

Beginning life as a French play which Beckett wrote in the late 1940s, Waiting for Godot premiered in London in 1955, initially to negative reviews, although the support of the influential theatre critic Kenneth Tynan soon transformed its fortunes.

Curiously, one of Beckett’s motives for writing the play was financial need: he was in need of money and so made the decision to turn from novel-writing to writing for the stage. Indeed, Beckett considered Waiting for Godot a ‘bad play’, but posterity has begged to differ, and it is now viewed as perhaps the greatest English-language play of the entire twentieth century.

Before we offer an analysis of the play’s meaning and structure, here’s a quick summary of its plot.

Waiting for Godot : summary

The ‘plot’ of Waiting for Godot is easy enough to summarise. The setting is a country road, near a leafless tree, where two men, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for the arrival of a man named Godot.

In order to pass the time while they wait for Godot to arrive, the two men talk about a variety of subjects, including how they spent the previous night (Vladimir passed his night in a ditch being beaten up by a variety of people), how the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is described in the different Gospels, and even whether they should hang themselves from the nearby tree.

A man named Pozzo turns up, leading Lucky, his servant, with a rope around his neck like an animal. Pozzo tells them that he is on his way to the market, where he intends to sell Lucky. He eats a picnic, and Vladimir requests that Lucky entertain them while they wait for Godot to arrive.

After Lucky has performed a dance for them, he is ordered to think: an instruction which leads him to give a long speech which only ends when he is wrestled to the ground.

Lucky and Pozzo leave, and a Boy arrives with a message announcing that Godot will not be coming today after all, but will come tomorrow. Vladimir and Estragon decide to leave, but then promptly remain exactly where they are.

The second act of the play opens the next day – although, oddly, the tree has grown a number of leaves overnight, suggesting that more time than this has passed. Vladimir and Estragon discover Lucky’s hat which he had left behind, and the two men role-play at pretending to be Lucky and Pozzo.

They then throw insults at each other to pass the time. Lucky and Pozzo return, but they have changed overnight: Lucky can no longer speak, and Pozzo is blind.

When Lucky and Pozzo fall to the ground, Vladimir and Estragon try to help them up, but end up falling down too. Pozzo has no memory of meeting the two men the day before. He and Lucky leave again, with Vladimir and Estragon left to wait for Godot.

The Boy returns, but he denies being the same one that came to them yesterday. Once again, Godot will not be turning up today, but will come tomorrow, he tells them. The two men decide to hang themselves in their desperation, using Estragon’s belt, but all that happens is his trousers fall down.

They decide to leave, but stay exactly where they are – presumably determined to stay another day and continue ‘waiting for Godot’.

Waiting for Godot : analysis

Waiting for Godot is often described as a play in which nothing happens, twice. The ‘action’ of the second act mirrors and reprises what happens in the first: Vladimir and Estragon passing the time waiting for the elusive Godot, Lucky and Pozzo turning up and then leaving, and the Boy arriving with his message that Godot will not be coming that day.

With this structure in mind, it is hardly surprising that the play is often interpreted as a depiction of the pointless, uneventful, and repetitive nature of modern life, which is often lived in anticipation of something which never materialises. It is always just beyond the horizon, in the future, arriving ‘tomorrow’.

However, contrary to popular belief, this is not what made Waiting for Godot such a revolutionary piece of theatre. As Michael Patterson observes in The Oxford Guide to Plays (Oxford Quick Reference) , the theme of promised salvation which never arrives had already been explored by a number of major twentieth-century playwrights, including Eugene O’Neill ( The Iceman Cometh ) and Eugène Ionesco ( The Chairs ).

And plays in which ‘nothing happens’ were already established by this point, with conversation and meandering and seemingly aimless ‘action’ dominating other twentieth-century plays. So, what made Beckett’s play so innovative to 1950s audiences?

The key lies not so much in the what as in the how . The other well-known thing about Waiting for Godot is that Vladimir and Estragon are tramps – except that the text never mentions this fact, and Beckett explicitly stated that he ‘saw’ the two characters dressed in bowler hats (otherwise, he said, he couldn’t picture what they should look like): hardly the haggard and unkempt tramps of popular imagination.

Precisely what social class Vladimir and Estragon come from is not known. But it is clear that they are fairly well-educated, given their vocabularies and frames of reference.

And yet, cutting across their philosophical and theological discussions is their plain-speaking and unpretentious attitude to these topics. Waiting for Godot is a play which cuts through pretence and sees the comedy as well as the quiet tragedy in human existence.

Among Beckett’s many influences, we can detect, in the relationship and badinage between Vladimir and Estragon, the importance of music-hall theatre and the comic double act; and vaudeville performers wouldn’t last five minutes up on stage if they indulged in pretentiousness.

In this regard, comparisons with Albert Camus and existentialism make sense in that both are often taken to be more serious than they actually are: or rather, they are deadly serious but also alive to the comedy in everyday desperation and futility.

An important aspect of Camus’ ‘ Myth of Sisyphus ’ is being able to laugh at the absurdity of human endeavour and the repetitive and futile nature of our lives – which all sounds like a pretty good description of Waiting for Godot .

In Camus’ essay, Sisyphus survives the pointless repetition of his task, the rolling of a boulder up a hill only to see it fall to the bottom just as he’s about to reach the top, by seeing the ridiculousness in the situation and laughing at it.

And the discrepancy between what the play addresses, which is often deeply philosophical and complex, and how Beckett’s characters discuss it, is one of the most distinctive features of Waiting for Godot . When the French playwright Jean Anouilh saw the Paris premiere of the play in 1953, he described it as ‘ The Thoughts of Pascal performed by clowns’.

Given the similarity between ‘God’ and ‘Godot’, some critics have analysed the play as being fundamentally about religion: God(ot) is supposed to be turning up (possibly a second coming: Vladimir and Estragon cannot recall whether they’ve met Godot before), but his arrival is always delayed with the promise that he will come ‘tomorrow’.

And in the meantime, all that the play’s two main characters can do is idle away the time, doomed to boredom and repetitive monotony.

The anti-naturalist detail about the leaves on the tree – implying that, in fact, more than a ‘day’ has passed between the first and second act – supports the notion that we should extrapolate the action of the play and consider it as representative of a longer span of time. But to view the play through a narrowly religious lens ignores the broader ‘point’ that Beckett is making.

And what is that point: that everything in life is monotonous, dull, faintly absurd, and above all, pointless? Perhaps, but with the important follow-up point that, despite this futility and absurdity, life continues. Vladimir and Estragon’s decision to leave at the end of the play is contradicted by their physical unwillingness to move, suggesting that they have no intention of ‘leaving’ life.

Indeed, although they agree to end it all and hang themselves from the tree, their attempt to do so ends in absurdly comic farce, with Estragon’s trousers falling down.

They may well make another attempt the next day, but one of the key messages of Waiting for Godot is strikingly similar to what we find in Camus: an ability to see the comic absurdity amidst the tragedy of living, and to ‘go on’ despite everything.

2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot”

I just watched the beginning but I can’t get into it. LOL.

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Waiting for Godot

Samuel beckett, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Humor and the Absurd

Waiting for Godot is a prime example of what has come to be known as the theater of the absurd. The play is filled with nonsensical lines, wordplay, meaningless dialogue, and characters who abruptly shift emotions and forget everything, ranging from their own identities to what happened yesterday. All of this contributes to an absurdist humor throughout the play. However, this humor is often uncomfortably mixed together with tragic or serious content to make a…

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Written in 1953, Waiting for Godot was a somewhat late successor to the vibrant experimentation in art and literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries known as Modernism. Modernist writers saw themselves as dramatically breaking with the past and innovating in all aspects of art, literature, and culture. Beckett's play shares with Modernist works a fascination with pushing the boundaries of literary genre, representation, and etiquette, as well as an interest in language…

Closely related to the Modernist and Postmodernist aspects of Beckett's play is its conception of time, an issue of fascination to Modernists and Postmodernists alike. Perhaps the most important thing about time in the play is that it is uncertain. All of the characters (and thus the audience, as well) are unsure of exactly when the play is taking place. The time period of the play is unclear, as is the relative chronology of the…

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Beckett's play is filled with a great deal of physical, mental, and emotional suffering. Vladimir and Estragon (especially Estragon) are starved for food, in physical pain, and "bored to death." Both fear an anonymous "they" who threaten to beat them at night, and are frequently unable to move of their own accord. Estragon mentions "billions of others," who have been killed, but does not elaborate. Lucky , meanwhile, is treated horribly, pulled about by a…

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 27, 2020 • ( 0 )

It is the peculiar richness of a play like Waiting for Godot  that it opens vistas on so many different perspectives.  It  is  open  to  philosophical,  religious,  and  psychological  interpretations, yet above all it is a poem on time, evanescence, and the mysteriousness of existence, the paradox of change and stability, necessity and absurdity.

—Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd

Two tramps in bowler hats, a desolate country road, a single bare tree—the iconic images of a radically new modern drama confronted the audience at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris on January 5, 1953, at the premiere of En attendant Godot ( Waiting for Godot  ). Written during the winter of 1948–49, it would take Samuel Beckett four years to get it produced. It is easy to see why. As the play’s  first  director,  Roger Blin,  commented,  “Imagine  a  play  that  contains  no action, but characters that have nothing to say to each other.” The main characters—Vladimir and Estragon, nicknamed Didi and Gogo—are awaiting the arrival of Godot, but we never learn why, nor who he is, because he never arrives. The tramps frequently say “Let’s go,” but they never move. We never learn where the road leads nor see the tramps taking it. The play gratifies no expectations and resolves nothing. Instead it detonates the accepted operating principles of drama that we expect to find in a play: a coherent sequence of  actions,  motives,  and  conflicts  leading  to  a  resolution.  It  substitutes  the  core  dramatic  element  of  suspense—waiting—and  forces  the  audience  to  experience the same anticipation and uncertainty of Vladimir and Estragon, while  raising  fundamental  issues  about  the  nature  and  purpose  of  existence  itself,  our  own  elemental  version  of  waiting.  If  modern  drama  originates  in  the 19th century with Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, Beckett, with Waiting for Godot, extends the implications of their innovations into a radical kind of theatrical experience and method. The theatrical and existential vision of Waiting for Godot   makes it the watershed 20th-century drama—as explosive, groundbreaking, and influential a work as T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is for modern poetry and James Joyce’s Ulysses is for modern fiction. From its initial baffling premiere, Waiting for Godot   would be seen, it is estimated, by more than a million people in the next five years and eventually became the most frequently produced modern drama worldwide, entering the collective consciousness with a “Beckett-like landscape” and establishing the illusive Godot as a shorthand image of modern futility and angst.

Like his fellow countryman and mentor Joyce, Beckett oriented himself in  exile  from  his  native  Ireland,  but  unlike  Joyce,  who  managed  to  remain  relatively safe on the fringes of a modern world spinning out of control, Beckett  was  very  much  plunged  into  the  maelstrom.  He was  born  in  Foxrock,  a  respectable suburb of Dublin, to Protestant Anglo-Irish parents. His education at Portora Royal School (where Oscar Wilde had been a student) and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received his degree in French and Italian, pointed him toward a distinguished academic career. In 1928 Beckett won an exchange  lectureship  at  L’École  normale  supérieure  in  Paris,  where  he  met  Joyce and assisted him in his labors on Finnegans Wake . Beckett returned to Trinity as a lecturer in French but found teaching “grim.” He would state: “I could not bear the absurdity of teaching others what I did not know myself.” In 1932 he left Ireland for good, except for short visits to his family. When World  War  II  broke  out  Beckett  ended  a  visit  home  and  returned  to  Paris,  later stating, “I preferred France in war to Ireland in peace.” During the war Beckett joined the French resistance in Paris, and when his group was infiltrated by a double agent and betrayed to the Gestapo, he was forced to escape to unoccupied France in 1942, where he worked as a farm laborer until the war’s end.

In  1946  Beckett  struggled  to  restart  his  interrupted  and  stalled  literary  career  that  had  produced  a  critical  study  of  Marcel  Proust,  a  collection  of  short stories ( More Pricks Than Kicks ), a volume of poems ( Echo’s Bones ), and two novels ( Murphy and Watt ). The turning point came during a visit to his mother in Foxrock. He would later transfer the epiphany that gave him a new subject and method to the more dramatic setting of the pier in Dún Laoghaire on a stormy night in Krapp’s Last Tape : “Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indigence until that memorable night in March, at the end of the jetty, in the howling wind, never to be forgotten, when suddenly I saw the whole thing. The vision at last. . . . What I suddenly saw then was this . . . that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most.” Krapp’s revelation breaks off, but Beckett himself completed his sentence, saying “that the dark I have always struggled to keep under” was “my most precious ally.” As Beckett biographer James Knowlson summarizes, Beckett’s insight meant that he would “draw henceforward on his own inner world for his subjects; outside reality  would  be  refracted  through  the  filter  of  his  own  imagination;  inner  desires  and  needs  would  be  allowed  a  much  greater  freedom  of  expression;  rational  contradictions  would  be  allowed  in;  and  the  imagination  would  be allowed to create alternative worlds to those of conventional reality.” Beckett would thereby find the way to bypass the particular to deal directly with the universal. His fiction and plays would not be social or psychological but onto-logical. To mine those inner recesses, Beckett would reverse the centrifugal direction of most writers to contain and comprehend the world for the centripetal, of reduction down to essentials. Beckett, who had assisted Joyce in the endlessly proliferating Finnegans Wake, would overturn the method of his mentor. “I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one’s material,” Beckett would observe. “He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding.” This realization required a means of presentation that Beckett found in minimalism and composition in French, which he found “easier to write without style.” Restricted to a voice and its consciousness,  Beckett  would  eliminate  the  conventional  narrative  requirements of specificity of time and place and elaborate background for characters and a complex sequence of causes and effects to form his plots. In Beckett’s work the atmosphere of futility and stagnation around which Chekhov devised his plays and stories has become pervasive. The world is drained of meaning; human  relationships  are  reduced  to  tensions  between  hope  and  despair  in  which consciousness itself is problematic. Beckett’s protagonists, who lack the possibility of significant action, are paralyzed or forced to repeat an unchanging  condition.  Beckett  compresses  his  language  and  situations  down  to  the  level of elemental forces without the possibility of escaping from the predicament of the basic absurdity of existence.

Returning to Paris after his epiphany, Beckett began what he called “the siege in the room”: his most sustained and prolific period of writing that in five years produced the plays Eleutheria, Waiting for Godot , and Endgame ; the novel  trilogy  Molloy,  Malone  Dies,  and  The  Unnamable;  and  the  short  stories  published under the title Stories and Texts for Nothing. Beckett stated that Waiting for Godot began “as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.” It gave dramatic form to the intense interior explorations of his fiction.  The  play’s  setting  is  nonspecific  but  symbolically  suggestive  of  the  modern  wasteland  as  the  play’s  protagonists,  Vladimir  and  Estragon,  engage in chatter derived equally from metaphysics and the music hall while they  await  the  arrival  of  Godot,  who  never  comes.  What  Godot  represents  (Beckett  remarked:  “If  I  knew,  I  would  have  said  so  in  the  play,”  and  “If  by  Godot  I  had  meant  God,  I  would  have  said  God,  not  Godot.”)  is  far  less  important than the defining condition of fruitless and pointless waiting that the play dramatizes. Beckett explores on stage the implications of a world in which nothing happens, in which a desired revelation and meaningful resolution are endlessly deferred.  At  art’s  core  is  a  fundamental  ordering  of  the  world, but Beckett’s art is based on the world’s ultimate incomprehensibility. “I think anyone nowadays,” Beckett once said, “who pays the slightest attention to his own experience finds it the experience of a non-knower, a non-caner.” By powerfully staging radical uncertainty and the absurdity of futile waiting, Godot epitomizes the operating assumptions of the theater of the absurd.

The  most  repeated  critique  of  Waiting  for  Godot  is  voiced  in  Irish  critic  Vivian Mercier’s succinct summary: “Nothing happens, twice.” The play, sub-titled A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, does not, in the words of Martin Esslin, “tell a  story;  it  explores  a  static  situation”  that  is  encapsulated  by  the  words  of  Estragon: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” In act 1, Didi and Gogo await the anticipated arrival of Godot, to whom they have made “a kind of prayer,” a “vague supplication” for something unspecified that Godot has agreed to consider. However, it is by no means certain whether this is the right place or day for the meeting. To pass the time they consider hanging themselves (“It’d give us an erection”), but the only available tree seems too frail to hold them, and they cannot agree who should go first. Another pair arrives: Lucky, with a rope around his neck, loaded down with a bag, picnic basket,  stool,  and  great  coat,  being  whipped  on  by  the  domineering  Pozzo,  who claims to be a landowner taking Lucky to a fair to sell him. They halt for Pozzo to eat, and he asks Gogo and Didi if they would like to be entertained by Lucky’s “thinking,” which turns out to be a long nonsensical monologue. After Pozzo and Lucky depart, a boy enters, addresses Vladimir as Mr. Albert, and delivers the message that Mr. Godot will not be coming this evening but will surely come tomorrow. After the boy exits, Vladimir and Estragon also decide to leave but make no move to do so.

Act  2  takes  place  apparently  the  next  day  at  the  same  time  and  place,  although the tree now has four or five leaves. Again Vladimir and Estragon begin  their  vigil,  passing  the  time  by  exchanging  questions,  contradictions,  insults, and hats, as well as pretending to be Pozzo and Lucky, until the originals  arrive.  However,  Pozzo  is  now  blind  and  bumps  into  Lucky,  knocking  them both down. After debating whether they should help them get up, Didi and Gogo also find themselves on the ground, unable to rise, with Vladimir announcing,  “we’ve  arrived  .  .  .  we  are  men.”  Eventually,  they  regain  their  footing, supporting Pozzo between them. Pozzo has no recollection of their previous encounter, and when asked what he and Lucky do when they fall and there is no one to help them, Pozzo says: “We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.” When Didi asks if Lucky can “think” again for them before they leave, Pozzo  reveals  that  Lucky  is  now  “dumb”—“he  can’t  even  groan.”  Vladimir  wonders about their transformation since yesterday, but Pozzo insists time is a meaningless concept:

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born,  one  day  we  shall  die,  the  same  day,  the  same  second,  is  that  not  enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move.

Beckett generates meaning in Waiting for Godot   through image, repetition, and counterpoint. In their bowler hats and pratfalls, Vladimir and Estragon are versions of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, tragic clowns poised between despair and hope. Act 2 repeats the sequence of action of act 1 but deepens the absurdity as well as the significance of their Waiting for Godot  . Unlike Pozzo and Lucky, whose relationship parodies the master-slave dynamic and a sadomasochistic conception of existence in which death is the only outcome of birth, Vladimir and Estragon complement each other and live in hope for Godot’s arrival and the  revelation  and  resolution  it  implies  (“Tonight  perhaps  we  shall  sleep  in  his place, in the warmth, our bellies full, on the straw. It is worth waiting for that, is it not?”). The hope that Godot might come, that purpose is possible even in the face of almost certain disappointment, is their sustaining illusion and the play’s ultimate comic affirmation. As Vladimir explains, “What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are Waiting for Godot   to come. . . . We have kept our appointment and that’s an end to that. We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?” To which Estragon replies: “Billions.” By the comic calculus of Waiting for Godot   continuing to believe in the absence of  the  possibility  of  belief  is  true  heroism  and  the  closest  we  get  to  human  fulfillment. Beckett’s play makes clear that the illusions that prevent us from confronting the core truth of human existence must be stripped away, whether in the storm scene of act 3 of King Lear when bare unaccommodated man is revealed or here on a “Country road. A tree. Evening.”

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Home / Drama / Samuel Beckett / Waiting for Godot / “Waiting for Godot” as an Absurd Play | Absurd Theater Characteristics

“Waiting for Godot” as an Absurd Play | Absurd Theater Characteristics

Martin Esslin wrote a book titled “Theatre of the Absurd” that was published in year 1961. It dealt with the dramatists who belonged to a movement called “Absurd Theater” though it was not regular. Samuel Beckett was one of those dramatists who had largest contribution in “Absurd Theater”. His play “Waiting for Godot” also belonged to the same category and was called absurd play.

Absurd Theater:

There was no regular movement regarding theater of absurd rather it was a group of people who wrote plays without following the conventional rules. In simple words, performance of plays that were written by group of unconventional writers was called theater of absurd.

No clear definition of theater of absurd is available. However, Martin Esslin provided an informal definition of absurd plays and “absurd theater” in following words:

“If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these [plays of absurd] have no story or plot to speak of; a good play is judged by subtlety of characterization and motivation, these are often without recognizable characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babblings.” Martin Esslin on absurd plays

Characteristics of Absurd Theater:

From the above said remarks it is crystal clear that absurd plays were entirely different from traditional plays. These remarks provide us following characteristics of absurd theater:

• No story or plot
• No characterization and motivation
• Neither a proper beginning nor ending
• Unexplained themes
• Imitation of dreams or nightmares instead of nature
• Useless dialogues

“Waiting for Godot” as an Absurd Play:

“Waiting for Godot” fulfills every requirement of an absurd play. It has no story, no characterization, no beginning nor any end, unexplained themes, imitation of dreams and nightmares and above all it contains useless dialogues.

No story or plot:

“Waiting for Godot” does not tell any story nor does it has a plot. The play starts with waiting and ends with it. Characters do not go anywhere. They stand still in front of audience and do nothing except passing the ball. They talk and pass the time. The play lacks action. Actions of characters are not related to plot but to themselves. Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and audience perceive that perhaps real story of the play will start after Godot’s arrival but Godot does not appear on stage nor is he introduced to the audience. Eventually, play ends with waiting. In this ways, “Waiting for Godot” fulfills first requirement of an absurd play.

“Waiting for Godot” is Absurd Play due to Lack of Characterization :

We don’t know past of the characters. They are not introduced to the audience. We know only their names and their miserable situation. Their motifs are unclear. Although it is explicit that they are waiting for Godot yet it is not told to the audience that what purpose Godot will serve if he comes. Hence, lack of characterization proves that “Waiting of Godot” is a play of absurd theater.

No Beginning and End:

It has no beginning nor has any end. It starts with a situation and ends with it. Both the acts start and end in same way. For instance, when characters come on stage they reveal their purpose. They say they are waiting but Godot does not come and the act ends with waiting. Second act is also the copy of first act with minor differences. The play goes on and eventually ends with wait. Hence, there is no proper start of the play nor does it has a proper end. It is a journey from nothingness to nothingness as observed by an eminent critics.

It is a play in which nothing happens twice…. “Nothing happens, nobody comes … nobody goes, it’s awful!”.

Fulfillment of this requirement also proves that “Waiting for Godot” is an absurd play.

Useless Dialogues Make “Waiting for Godot” as an Absurd Play:

Most of the dialogues of this play serve no purpose. Incoherent babbling is also important ingredient of theater of absurd as mentioned by Esslin. Whole play is based on delivery of dialogues but most of them have no apparent meanings. Every dialogue is full of symbols. Every word refers something in hidden meaning but it lacks the interest of audience because it lacks action.

Dialogues create action in every play. Action looses its importance without worthy dialogues. In case of “Waiting for Godot”, no action has been presented, therefore, dialogues are boring and they are written just to pass the ball. Thus, they are meant to pass the time. Word “nothing” has been repeated numerously in the play. It actually indicates nothingness in it. Thus, dialogues of the play are nothing but incoherent babbling. “Waiting for Godot” can be called an absurd play due to this trait of absurd theater.

Unexplained Themes:

Unclear themes also make “Waiting for Godot” a play of absurd theater. Audience do not observe any obvious theme in the play. Superiority of a play is always dependent on its themes. “Waiting for Godot” has no obvious theme. If there is any, it is hidden. Moreover, it presents individualistic vision of the writer. There is an effect of alienation in the play with respect to themes.

Themes of “Waiting for Godot” | Thematic Concept of Samuel Beckett

Imitation of Nightmares:

This play does not hold the mirror up to nature. It does not portray the manners and mannerisms of the ages. Esslin is true in his definition of theater of absurd. This play “seem[s] often to be reflection of dreams and nightmares”.

At last but not the least, “Waiting for Godot” is entirely unconventional play. Samuel Becket violated all dramatic conventions. Indeed, every ingredient of theater of absurd has been fulfilled by him. Regardless of that this play is successful. He wrote this play to break the rules of traditional dramatists. “Waiting for Godot” completes every factor of theater of absurd, therefore, it can successfully be called the play of absurd.

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Theatre of Absurd and Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' as an Absurd Drama

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Santiago Riaza Martínez

IOSR Journals

This research paper explores the absurdity in Samuel Beckett's notable play "Waiting for Godot". Samuel Beckett is considered to be a prominent figure among the French Absurdist. "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett, is one of the masterpieces of absurdist literature. The creative features of this play such as title, setting, structure, theme, characters, dialogues, and actions are overviewed through the lens of absurdity. The play "Waiting for Godot" was first written in French in 1948 and called En attendant Godot, Elements of absurdity for making this play are very lively and charming. Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot" focuses on the absurdity of life.This play completely deals with the life of a modern man who feels tense and its meaningless life. According to the Absurdist, "There is no meaning in life. The life is permeated men but there is no man. Human life is like a bubble" This work based on the belief that the present world is irrational, purposelessness, and meaningless and the search for order brings the individual into disagreement with the universe. This paper is an enterprise to shed light on "Waiting for Godot"as an absurd play.

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Andreia Irina Suciu

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot The Dual Motif

Lina Alzouabi

Following two world wars, the human essence was affected by pessimism and a loss of faith. As a result, new existentialist literature was produced, resulting in a new wave of absurdist fiction plays. The theatre of the absurd was first termed by Martin Esslin, whereas the term 'absurd' was first used by Albert Camus in his classic essay 'The Myth of Sisyphus'. Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," a tragic comedy, (1952) is among the most mysterious dramas of the twentieth century that represents the philosophy of absurdism. By adopting the philosophy of theatre of the absurd in analyzing "Waiting for Godot," this study focuses on Beckett's employing the dual motif in the plot of the play and its implications, represented in chances that play a significant role rather than logic in the characters' lives. As a result, the study concludes that Beckett's use of such a technique underlines the equal opportunities in the world of the play, where chances have their effects on humans; Godot might or might not come, and the characters might leave or not: illustrating the unpredictability of the real world.

Charity Kalu-Okere

The phrase ‘Absurd Drama’ or ‘The Theatre of Absurd’ gained currency after Martin Esslin’s book ‘The Theatre of Absurd’ was published in 1961. Esslin points out that there is no such thing as a regular movement of Absurd dramatists. According to him, the term is useful as “A device to make certain fundamental traits which seem to be present in the works of a number of dramatists accessible to discussion by tracing the features they have in common.” The term Absurd means having no rational or orderly relationship to man’s life; meaningless; lacking order or value. By Absurd, Esslin meant a life lived solely for its sake in a universe which no longer made sense because there was no God to resolve the contradictions. This could also mean a life of despair. The Theatre of the Absurd shows the world as an incomprehensible place. The spectators see the happenings on the stage entirely from the outside, without ever understanding the full meaning of these strange patterns of events, as newly arrived visitors might watch life in a country of which they have not yet mastered the language. The confrontation of the audience with characters and happenings which they are not quite able to comprehend makes it impossible for them to share the aspirations and emotions depicted in the play. Thus, the absurd and fantastic goings-on of the Theatre of the Absurd will, in the end, be found to reveal the irrationality of the human condition and the illusion of what we thought was its apparent logical structure. However, the absurd plays were characterized by non specific, unrecognizable characters that are presented almost like mechanical puppets. These dramas speak to a deeper level of the audience’s mind. It challenges the audience to make sense of non-sense, to face the situation consciously and perceive with laughter the fundamental absurdity.

Tilamsik: The Southern Luzon Journal of Arts and Sciences

Karen Padilla , Tilamsik: The Southern Luzon Journal of Arts and Sciences

The article is a discourse analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, thus exploring the language that exemplifies the Theatre of the Absurd. The study presents an evaluation of the absurd language through analyzing its devaluation. This demonstrates and foregrounds how the play radically and deliberately abuses and violates the Gricean Maxims and confuses Speech Acts so as to accentuate the play’s theme and effect of “absurdity.” Subsequent to examining selected characters’ utterances, it is concluded that there is an evidently high number of instances to which the play breaks the cooperative maxims, and likewise there is an enormous number of events to which the play conveys the mismatch between speech act and the perlocutionary effects. Thus, the study expounds on the absurd subject and theme as reflected through the (mis)use of language. The paper accordingly reinforces the notion of absurdity: the “senselessness, purposelessness, and uncertainty” of human condition and existence as manifested through an equal repudiation of the rational, coherent, and discursive language. Furthermore, the study offers critical readings/interpretations parallel to the absurdist subjects of existence, uncertainty, time, loss of meaning and stuggle for meaning making. The study therefore delves into the linguistic and literary dimensions of the Absurd theater, contributing to the existing readings and interpretations of this literary piece, and likewise to the knowledge of Pragmatics as applied to a literary text. Various linguistic and literary tools can be further employed to probe the wide range of linguistic and theoretical issues involved in the literary domain.

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While keeping in view the elements of absurdity, the study focuses the analysis of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” and Camus’ novel “The Outsider”. The artistic features of these works such as title, setting, structure, theme, characters and actions/dialogues are overviewed through the lens of absurdity. Both of the texts have these issues in some proportion with different contexts but many similarities. The absurdity appeared was in the form of meaninglessness of life without any goal and purpose, chaos in life, love for death and emotional and spiritual barren characters.

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The objective of this research paper is to analyze Samuel Beckett's two plays "Waiting for Godot" and "Endgame". Main themes of the novels included in this analyses are: Absurdity, hopelessness, existentialism, repetition, comedy, destruction, agony, obscurity, nothingness, freedom and uncertainty. The findings of the study show that Backett's two plays reflect the environment prevailed in the Europe after World War-II when destruction, despair, isolation and hopelessness were gripped the whole Europe. Backett portrays man as cynical, comfortless and incapable to understand the universe.

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Waiting for Godot As An Absurdist Play

The chief traits of french drama: .

Absurd drama is the drama which treats human life and human situation as absurd, unfit or foolish. The absurd dramatist takes things rationally and not romantically. It is a drama without traditional plot, story, or division into acts and scenes. It has fewest possible characters. In this type of drama, dialogues are very short and crisp. The playwright tries to communicate the meaninglessness of life through dialogues. The Theatre of Absurd prefers existential themes, occasionally it woos nihilism too. The characters are insubstantial. They become significant for the symbols they represent. Things are not explained; they are merely hinted at or suggested.

Waiting for Godot having the Qualities of Modern French Drama: 

The brutality of French drama in the post war years derives in part from the physical explicitness with which the symbol of the antihuman has been portrayed. Samuel Beckett is one of those who have fascinated by the precarious world of the contemporary situation. After the first performance of Waiting for Godot, in 1953, Critics were convinced that Beckett had contrived an absolute negation of human existence, a drama situated beyond extinction.

Want of Action, No Significant Happening: 

Want of action is one of the major features of an absurd play. Except waiting and waiting, nothing significant happens. The waiting also becomes useless because Godot does not arrive despite such a long waiting. In the world of Godot even the minimal action is impossible. A pair of battered shoes, the tramp's symbol, is the first centre of focus - Estragon is trying to remove his shoes. Estragon's first comment is, “Nothing doing”. 

Tramps’ Losing Identity: 

In an absurd drama, the characters generally lose their identity. In Waiting for Godot too tramps lose their identity in the II Act. Their relationship is in doubt. They spend the night apart. Life of them is an endless rain of blows. Suicide is a recurrent temptation, but it requires an assertion of which they are not capable. 

Allegory of the Play: 

The allegory of the play thus, carries the interest of a detective story, but one in which the clues are found in ourselves and the discoveries are about ourselves. Didi and Gogo, Pozzo and Lucky, are each a part of ourselves. There is an excitement in recognizing truths in what seems to be a grossly fantastic morality play. There is another excitement in recognizing how we differ from our representatives on the stage, where we expose or conceal a greater share of Didi or Godo or Pozzo or Lucky. 

The Vindictive Environment: 

In Godot , we see the vindictive environment in which tramps live, while Didi worries whether they have come to the right place, or on the right day, and the oblivious Godo takes his pleasures in teasing his companion about place and time. Beckett's device of the second visit of the boy, whom the audience sees as one and the same although he claims to be another, helps to induce the uncertainty that Didi also feels. Time stands still, yet the tree grows a leaf or two. Nothing has changed, yet Pozzo and Lucky are blind and dumb. 

Manner of Presentation: 

The special feature of Godot is its manner of presentation. “The saddest play and yet the funniest,” declared the English press. Beckett chooses to paint his urgent portrait of life - in - godlessness in the lowest and simplest terms for which he has a precedent. He writes an overdrawn music - hall or vaudeville sketch, with its comics and their cross - talk dialogue of cohesive and suggestive rhythms, a connection of mimicry and fooling. They speak the compressed behaviour - language of the circus, and sometimes of the primary force of the Italian light comedy. 

Dealing with the Absurdity of Man's Existence in this Universe: 

In the very beginning of the play both Estragon and Vladimir agree that they have nothing to do, they think that they have lost each other. Estragon has spent the last night in a ditch and is often beaten by the people. He admits that the struggle has been of no use. Estragon becomes desperate when his efforts to take off his boots prove futile. Both the tramps ultimately cherish thoughts about suicide. Sometimes they feel that they should jump from a tower and kill themselves; at other times they want to hang themselves immediately with a tree. The existence of the other pair of characters - Lucky and Pozzo is also absurd. They too are in an absurd human situation. Pozzo is driving Lucky by means of a rope tied round his neck. Seeing the tramp, Pozzo gives a sudden jerk to the rope and Lucky falls to the ground along with his burden. The tramps feel like helping Lucky to his feet but one restrained both by their own apprehension and by Pozzo's warning that Lucky is vicious. Lucky is a serf, tortured and unhappy. Even his master Pozzo is not happy. He wants to get rid of Lucky by selling him, though it would be far better to kill him. When Estragon tries to wipe Lucky's tears, he is violently kicked by Lucky, and Estragon howls with pain. Lucky goes dumb and Pozzo goes blind. 

Something Enigmatic in the Atmosphere: 

Its mixture of comedy and near - tragedy proves baffling, and at first we are not sure as to what attitude we should adopt towards the different phases of its non - action. The situation of the tramps is both funny and tragic: it is human situation. We do not know why and for whom the tramps are waiting. Like the tramps we all are waiting for something - some Avtar, some golden age of civilization, or for death to relieve us from all pain and misery, cares and anxiety. The characters are in a state of bewilderment, misery and revolt. The situation in which the characters are is the situation in which we all are. We all feel that all of us, at some time or the other, pass our life in transparent deceptions just as the two tramps are. The modes of civilized way of life and civilized behaviour are put to winds. There is a mixture between reality and unreality in the behaviour of the two tramps in the II Act. 

The Setting of the Play: 

The setting of the play is bare. There is only a tree in the first act which is without leaves . In the second act it attains some new leaves. The whole background reminds of man's loneliness and alienation. There is suffering, agony, anxious wait, futility and all sorts of absurdity. Man is baffled at his existence, at his transitoriness and that his existence therefore is futile. Man must end as soon as possible. These existential overtures too make the play an absurdist drama. So from the point of view of structure, theme, motif, characters, atmosphere, setting and language, we find the play an absurdist one. 

Conclusion: 

Thus, Crux lies in the funny situation, the absurdist existence of man. Life as well as death is treated as a joke. All human action and nit - wittery and drama is a hollow joke. Nothing can relieve man of his misery; he must suffer gladly. 

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