34 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel BeckettWaiting for Godot
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Hats
With so few other unique items found on the stage, those props that the text describes in detail take on an added importance. Vladimir, Estragon, and Lucky all wear hats. They are interchangeable, switching back and forth between the characters as they are lost and found. As Vladimir finds Lucky’s hat and switches it for his own, there is the suggestion that this is not the first time that this has happened. Ultimately, whose hat belongs to whom is a meaningless distinction.
Though Lucky is mostly silent throughout the play, Pozzo informs Vladimir and Estragon that they must give him the hat if they want him to perform. For Lucky, it seems, the hat is transformative. When it is on his head, he is able to speak; when it is removed, he falls silent once again. The next day, when he appears on stage after losing his hat, Pozzo informs Vladimir that Lucky is now mute. The hat—and the change it precipitated in Lucky —is lost.
At the beginning of the second act, Vladimir and Estragon perform a complicated series of hat switches in which they swap three hats between themselves. This routine speaks to the wider themes of the novel: There is a lack of permanence, stability, and identity; characters can switch around memories and experiences as easily as they can change hats. Even Lucky’s hat, transformative as it was, is as interchangeable as all the others. It provides Vladimir with no additional powers, nor does Lucky recognize it the next day. Instead, its importance and the powers are as transient and as fleeting as everything else in the play.
Estragon’s Belt
At the end of the second act, Estragon suggests for the second time that he and Vladimir hang themselves. Though they have a tree, they do not have the rope they need to hang themselves. Estragon’s solution is to use his belt as a noose. The two men test the strength of the belt, which snaps. The importance of this is clear: the belt was the men’s means of escape; in their meaningless lives, suicide might have been the one way in which they could have asserted any kind of agency. The breaking of the belt is the removal of the one option left available to Vladimir and Estragon.
If the belt represents the men’s ability to commit suicide (a bleak, despairing symbol), then the only real impact it has on their lives is to make Estragon’s trousers fall down to his ankles. This is a clownish, silly moment. The contrast between the desperation of the suicide attempt and the slapstick dropping of Estragon’s trousers suggests that even the men’s earnest despair is not something that the play takes seriously. No matter what these men hope to achieve, no matter what means of escape they devise, they will never be able to escape the pure absurdity that is their lives.
As the audience wonders about what changes Estragon may now face after his failed suicide attempt, they also may wonder what would have happened if one character had managed to kill himself and the other had not. Whatever bleakness the play suggests, the constant source of solace the two characters have is each other. The fact that the belt breaks denies the men escape through death, but it also allows them to remain in each other’s company.
The Tree
The tree is one of the few elements of stage design described in the text, though it is not written about in great detail. Most of the information about the tree derives from the introductions to each act and descriptions voiced by the characters.
In the barren wasteland where the characters exist, the tree is one of the only signs of life. From one act to another, it begins to sprout leaves, suggesting the passing of time and the changing of the seasons. Given that the characters are seemingly locked in a monotonous, repetitive existence, this passing of time is important. It suggests a wider cycle of life, one that both resembles and operates at a higher level than that of the characters. The tree is, in essence, locked in its own cycle. Though it appears to be more natural, the tree is forced to repeat the same process over and over. It grows leaves and then loses them, time passing and resetting the loop just as it does for the characters. While it might not be as immediate, as pressing, or as dramatic as the loop that traps the characters, it is a loop none the less. As such, the appearance of the leaves reminds the audience of the ways in which the themes of the play reflect the natural world. What frustrates Vladimir and Estragon is their capacity to understand—or attempt to understand—the cycle that traps them. Having no consciousness, the tree is liberated from the pain of this mental and spiritual reckoning.
The tree is also a narrative marker. Vladimir and Estragon have been told to wait for Godot beside the tree. Though Godot never arrives, the tree signifies the possibility that he may come in the future. If the characters are not beside the tree, then they will certainly miss Godot. The tree becomes the proxy for Godot, but the aesthetic qualities of the tree suggest that the hope of his arrival is diminished. Both Vladimir and Estragon criticize the tree’s pathetic appearance. The tree, like the possibility of Godot appearing, is slim, broken, and disappointing.
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By Samuel Beckett
