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.
Themes
Absurdity
Absurdism is a philosophical movement that originated in the 19th century from the work of Søren Kierkegaard. Its central tenet is that humans exist in an inherently chaotic world without any outside plan or meaning. It is closely tied to existentialism and nihilism and was later influenced by writers such as Albert Camus and cataclysmic global events like the world wars. The collective dramatic works of a diverse group of playwrights in the 1950s and 60s such as Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Jean Genet—writers who were influenced by Camus and absurdism—came to be known informally as the Theater of the Absurd.
A sense of irrationality permeates the play. The manner in which the play approaches time, for instance, can be considered absurd. The characters spend their time waiting for a man who never arrives, unable to remember why they are meant to be waiting. They struggle to remember when or where they were on the previous day. Even when they are on the cusp of realization, a silly incident such as the discovery of a boot will distract them from acknowledging the reality of their situation. Time repeats itself, discombobulating the audience through a repetition that the characters are unable to fully recognize.
The play’s characters are clumsy, accident prone, and clownish; their behavior is divorced from the poised, practiced actions that an audience might expect to see on a stage. For example, the dramatic tension of the character’s efforts at suicide is undercut by Estragon’s trousers falling down. This juxtaposition between despair and slapstick feeds into the surreal nature of the play. Just how seriously are we meant to take this? This question leads to audience to confront the deeper, more philosophical heart of the play. Just how seriously are we meant to take existence itself?
Another essential element of the play’s absurdity is the titular character, Godot, a person who is defined by his absence. An uninitiated audience might expect Godot to be the protagonist of the play, and his complete lack of appearance on stance is ridiculous. Every second that Godot fails to appear calls on the audience to interrogate the nature of the title and how it reflects on the meaning of the play. Godot might be interpreted as “God”: an external, invisible being the characters count on to give their lives meaning who may not exist and certainly doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon.
The final moments of the play perpetuate the relentless theme of absurdity. There is no real conclusion, no satisfying ending. The characters will seemingly continue in the same fashion forever. Even though they decide to leave, they remain fixed in the same space. Their behavior, thoughts, and predicament continue in perpetuity, a relentless and meaningless cycle.
Nihilism
Much of the play focuses on the pointlessness of the characters’ existence. This nihilistic sentiment can be found everywhere, even the title. The characters spend their lives waiting for something that never arrives. The verb of the play’s title remains unresolved, the characters do not grow change, nothing meaningful changes at all. Vladimir and Estragon occasionally almost arrive at an understanding or epiphany, but it is fleeting and quickly lost.
Throughout the play, both Vladimir and Estragon repeatedly state that there is nothing to do and nothing to be done. They lack an understanding of what is happening to them, but they grasp that they are in a powerless position. They are bored and unenthused with the endless waiting that their lives have become. This rejection of the characters’ agency is a dominant theme in the play. Even the conversations they have on this very subject are pointless repetitions of what has come before.
Just like the characters, the audience finds itself stuck, waiting for Godot to arrive. But Godot never appears. The audience is caught, waiting for some event, climax, or resolution, but it is offered nothing. In that respect, the play is meaningless becomes its meaning.
Repetition
In the closing minutes of the play, Estragon announces that he “can’t go on like this” (147). In isolation, it is a profound statement. Given the context that the characters have recently tried (and failed) to kill themselves, it is clearly sincere. However, we have heard this before. Throughout the play, Vladimir and Estragon have both announced that they do not wish to continue with their meaningless lives, but they do, nevertheless. The play exhibits dramatic irony in moments such as this. The audience has begun to suspect that the cycle will continue and that nothing will change for Vladimir and Estragon.
Actions and scenes are also repeated. The end of the first act is much the same as the end of the second act, with the characters frozen in place after deciding to leave. After witnessing the first act, the audience becomes aware of what will happen after the end of the second. By repeating the action, the play makes it clear that the next day Vladimir and Estragon will be back in the exact same spot, still waiting for Godot.
One of the clearest examples of repetition is the song Vladimir sings at the beginning of the second act. The song is meaningless and only half-remembered, packed full of lines which should denote meaning but fade into incoherence. At this point, Vladimir seems to come to a realization, the repetition of the song inspiring an understanding in his mind. However, just like everything else, this moment amounts to nothing. The song becomes representative of the way in which the theme of repetition functions as a whole within the play: Repeated lines and moments, while meaningless in their own right, collectively provide a demonstration of the cyclical and doomed nature of the characters’ lives.
Related Titles
By Samuel Beckett
