Waiting for Godot

“Why don’t you help me?”

Estragon and Vladimir are friends, though they often quarrel and disregard each other. In this instance, Vladimir loudly muses on a half remembered quote and is about to launch into a stilted monologue. Slipped in between Vladimir’s lines, however, Estragon makes a desperate plea for help. He is frustrated, confused, and cannot even take his boot off. Though the help he seeks might explicitly be referring to the boot, the subtext suggests a deeper malaise: For all of Vladimir’s pontifications, he can do nothing to help them escape. 

“I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Colored they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty.”

This quote helps to establish the irony of the text and the hopeless situation in which the characters find themselves. First, Estragon is made thirsty by the thought of the Dead Sea. As one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, the Dead Sea would utterly fail to quench his thirst, which Estragon fails to comprehend. Second, in discussing the Bible, Estragon is only able to focus on aesthetics. He does not engage with the ideological or philosophical content of the text, but instead reduces it to imagery and pictures. Like his situation, the Bible is an unknowable, impenetrable problem, one which Estragon can only engage with on a surface level. 

“I get used to the muck as I go along.”

The competing mentalities of the two main characters begin to emerge. In moments such as this, they demonstrate that they are actually quite different, even if they are both caught in the same impossible moment. While Estragon is a pessimist, who believes things only get worse as they go along, Vladimir is more of an optimist. He finds himself able to become acquainted with a situation and see the positive sides. Thus, he is the character who gets used to the situation (“the muck”) while Estragon—who has already raised the possibility of suicide—believes everything can still get worse. 

“You’re not Mr. Godot, Sir?”

The arrival of Pozzo and Lucky disrupts the established dynamic between the two characters and helps to demonstrate how little they know about their own purpose. Estragon struggles to remember Godot’s name and then mistakes Pozzo for Godot. That they know so little about the man whose arrival defines their lives shows how absurd Vladimir and Estragon’s existence has become. 

“I am perhaps not particularly human, but who cares?”

Throughout the play, Estragon and Vladimir search for purpose and identity. They cannot remember anything beyond that they must wait for Godot. When Pozzo arrives, he states bluntly that their search is meaningless. His humanity—or lack thereof—is both figurative and literal. His mistreatment of Lucky makes him cruel, while the entire nature of his existence is so bizarre and absurd that his literal humanity is questionable. Most importantly, neither the question nor the answer matter. 

“If we all speak at once we’ll never get anywhere.”

This dialogue functions as a meta-commentary on the play itself. The entire play is—in essence—just the characters speaking to, at, or over one another. Vladimir and Estragon constantly speak over one another and, just as Pozzo suggests, they never get anywhere. If all they do is talk, then they will remain in stasis. The entire plot of the play is summed up in one subtle line. 

“Time has stopped.”

While the other characters sit around on the stage talking, Vladimir becomes agitated. He is the only character who seeks an explanation for their absurd circumstances. Quotes such as the one above are theories which he posits, potentially explanations. Most importantly of all, no one listens. Estragon and Pozzo continue their conversation; Vladimir himself will forget the theory in a short span of time. 

“Oh tray bong, tray tray tray bong.”

Estragon’s reply is not only a repetition of what Vladimir has already said, but it is translated into French and written in a phonetic manner. In essence, Estragon is repeating a thought until it is nothing more than a jumbled absurdity. He butchers the pronunciation of the words, robbing them of meaning and suggesting that Vladimir’s answer is as irrelevant and as meaningless as his own. 

“Lucky executes the same movements, stops.”

The dance performed by Lucky represents the predicament faced by Estragon and Vladimir. Like them, he is forced to repeat a series of meaningless and unsatisfactory performances without any seemingly good reason. Just as Lucky executes the same movements, Vladimir and Estragon repeat the same day over and over, achieving just as little as Lucky. 

“Given the existence as uttered forth […] unfinished …”

Lucky’s delivers his absurd monologue without any punctuation, while the other characters become increasingly agitated. The words are meaningless, beginning as something of an academic discourse before devolving into absurdity. The academic phrases are nothing more than aesthetic flourishes, ways to hide or mask the true meaningless of the speech. 

“Adieu. Silence.” 

Though Pozzo seems to wish to depart, neither he, Vladimir, or Estragon seem to know how to actually leave. Instead of walking away, the characters are caught in a loop, exchanging platitudes until the absurdity of their situation becomes all the more evident. This exchange highlights how each of them is trapped, whether by the setting, the dialogue, or even the system of manners which requires them to bid one another farewell. 

“And dug the dog a tomb…”

Repetition defines Vladimir’s song. As the second act begins and the characters begin to reenact the same day all over again, Vladimir begins the scene by singing a song in which the lines are repeated over and over again, creating a never-ending loop. It is a loop within a loop, part of the endless repetition and absurdity which defines the lives of the characters.

“End of the embrace. Estragon, no longer supported, almost falls.”

This stage direction is a physical manifestation of the extent to which Estragon depends upon Vladimir. Alone in the deserted wasteland, Estragon would quickly resort to hanging himself (as he suggests many times). His friendship with Vladimir and the conversations they have provide him with a reason to remain alive. While he struggles with meaning, he depends on Vladimir and their friendship to provide some semblance of structure and purpose in his existence. 

“Things have changed here since yesterday.”

Vladimir’s statement is both true and untrue. While there are minor cosmetic changes to the scenery (such as the leaves on the tree being mentioned and Estragon’s wound), the entire scene repeats the first act. Vladimir has noticed the miniscule changes but failed to recognize the larger scale manner in which everything has remained exactly the same. 

“We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?”

The way Estragon phrases this question reveals his uncertainty. What should be a firm statement about the nature of existence becomes doubtful, simply because it is phrased as a question. Estragon is not asserting his existence but just wants his friend to confirm it for him. Unable to remember anything, increasingly discombobulated, Estragon is turning to his friend for support with difficult issues of a metaphysical nature.

“He pushes Estragon towards the auditorium.”

With Estragon worried that he is surrounded, Vladimir points him in the direction of the audience and suggests that it may be his only route of escape. At the same time, however, he is gesturing toward the audience and announcing that there is “not a soul in sight” (110). This is an example of the play casting the audience in the same condition as the characters. Like Estragon and Vladimir, the audience is now included in the great nothingness, equally as trapped by the absurdity of life.

“Pozzo is blind. Lucky is burdened as before.”

In act two, it is Lucky who leads his blind master instead of the other way around. However, the reversal is mostly superficial. Pozzo is still the master, Lucky is still the slave. As much as things might appear to change, the unalterable dynamics remain in place.

“In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!”

Vladimir is the character who comes the closest to stating the truth about the predicament in which he and Estragon find themselves. However, when he says something sincere and accurate, it is never seized on or developed. Estragon is happy to ignore such statements, considering them musings by his philosophical friend. Though the two men spend all day talking to one another, the true meaning of their words is rarely understood or processed. 

“Who farted?”

In a bleak play about meaningless lives and doomed nihilism, there is a comedic element which only adds to the absurdity. As the blind Pozzo clambers around on the floor, crying out for help, and Estragon begs Vladimir to run away with him, Estragon cannot help but provide a brief moment of crude humor amid the philosophical pontifications of Vladimir. The juxtaposition between the two characters’ personalities, as well as the tone of their comments, further demonstrates that—even amid the bleak nihilism—they complement one another.

“I begin to weary of this motif.”

As the play draws to a close, its repeated motifs continue to accumulate. Each repetition builds on the last, smothering the reader with the themes of the play. Vladimir sides himself with the audience. Just as the audience is being beaten down by the frustrating and fleeting nature of the characters’ memories, Vladimir provides a sympathetic thought. It is as close as the characters come to being self-aware.

“I used to have wonderful sight."

Now blind, Pozzo assures the other characters that his sight was once remarkable, but this is untrue. In the first act, he needed to use spectacles to examine objects in detail. As such, it becomes apparent that not everything Pozzo says can be taken on face value. He lies and exaggerates, so any information he is able to pass along to Vladimir and Estragon is inherently dubious.

“But tomorrow I won’t remember having met anyone today. So don’t count on me to enlighten you.”

No matter who he asks, Vladimir finds no explanation for his current predicament. Though Pozzo seems aware of the trouble that people in this place have with memories, he couches this awareness in terms of his own unreliability. By explicitly stating that he is not to be trusted and giving an accurate diagnosis of the problem, Pozzo only adds more uncertainty. Vladimir (and the audience) no longer know who to trust or what to believe.

“Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?”

Now alone on the stage, Vladimir has time to think. He reflects on what Pozzo has told him, as well as the difficulty he and Estragon have experienced. He delivers a monologue, a purely theatrical device which is notable in a play which so routinely dismisses typical dramatic conventions. Like the play itself, the monologue has no resolution. Though the words are literary and packed with flourishes, Vladimir ends his speech by saying “I can’t go on” (141) and then forgetting what he has just said.