Waiting for Godot

 Hello friends,

Waiting! Waiting! Waiting!

To wait is awful!

We all are very hectic in our day-to-day life. We think that we are doing something very significant in our life.

Not only permanently but even temporarily what we are doing?

Does this really have any kind of meaning?

Waiting! We are just passing our time. We are waiting. We wait for our ultimate destination death as we have nothing to do. We think that we are doing something precious and worthy but life is itself absurd and thus, whatever we are doing becomes meaningless. Here, meaninglessness is itself becomes meaning and so,

‘Nothingness is something.’  

Existentialist Samuel Bucket gives ‘Existentialism’, ‘meaninglessness’, and ‘waiting’. Here, what Bucket tries to tell through waiting is not about something which comes to an end but is endless. Samuel Bucket interestingly differentiates the meaning of ‘waiting’ than ordinary meaning of the word- waiting as which comes to an end or gets cannot be define as waiting. Waiting means to stay or remain at one place until something happens and that is the death only.

This blog studies some of the interesting discussions from Bucket’s  play “Waiting for Godot”.

Watch Ruchi Joshi's video on waiting in waiting for Godot.

(1)What connection do you see in the setting (“A country road. A tree.Evening.”) of the play and these paintings?

Landscape is something very interesting frame to study. When landscape is portrayed with human and nature both, plays very significant role. Life is absurd. There is journey and this journey is towards the death only. Samuel Bucket is inspired from the Casper David Fredrick’s painting  ‘Longing’.  This painting suggests longing of life. Waiting and longing both remains throughout the play and it is endless.  Trees symbolizes hope and country road suggests that show must go on.

The tree is the only important ‘thing’ in the setting. What is the importance of tree in both acts? Why does Beckett grow a few leaves in Act II on the barren tree - The tree has four or five leaves - ?

Bucket uses trees as symbol and both setting of the play.  Nothing happens. This same thing is repeated into the ACT II. It doesn’t make any kind of difference.  There is a slight change into ACT II is there is 4 or 5 leaves on the barren tree. Thus, tree plays important role which signifies hope for tomorrow.   Valdimir looks at the tree and notice that and says that...."Yesterday evening all bare and black . Now it has leaves on it."  Symbols represents that the things are constantly changed in life also. All things are going to change through time and all days are not same .It constantly changed into gloomy or happiness . So, Tree represents both  the sides of life - and have hope for tomorrow.  Hope is endless and hope is the only thing through which human being is alive today. Hope never going to die. Hope supports us to avoid the meaninglessness of life .

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

We can say that, ‘Nothing to be done’ is central idea of the play. This is exactly the central idea of the play.

" Nothing happens , nobody comes , nobody goes, it's awful."

Both the characters are suffering from uncertainties. They are equally afraid of too. It also suggests that things keep on changing in our life. Constant change! 

Estragon : Wait! I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off alone, each one for                 himself. We weren't made for the same road.

Valdimir : It's not certain.

Estragon : No, nothing is certain.

 

Evening turns into night. Light always not gives the  positive attitude in life. Somehow night is connected to Death. And  Valdimir said that ' Will Night never comes?' means they have questions that whether they get salvation or not from the life.

The play begins with the dialogue “Nothing to be done”. How does the theme of ‘nothingness’ recurs in the play?

To which we can call heart?  Essence or core? Nothing happens throughout the play. In each and every scene and every action nothing is done!

Vladimir and Estragon both are doing nothing as such which is significant in life.  And Nothingness becomes the theme of the play. ' Nothingness'  is the central idea of the play. 

Both are waiting for "Godot" but they don't know  'Who is Godot? When does he come?, 

Where does he show up?, Why does he have to come?, 

the most fundamental question:  Why do they have to wait for Godot?'

Above all things are not only related to Estragon and Vladimir but through these characters writers represents humankind who are helpless and nothing have to do without killing time. We just pass our time on earth as we have nothing to do . All things are insignificant in life whether you are intelligent or physical strong . As one is master or slave , as one is blind or dumb , there are no any importance of anyone because all has to pass their time with same fate and such way there is no any differences among them . Nothingness is the centre is everything and  it becomes something in the play.

 

Do you agree: “The play (Waiting for Godot), we agreed, was a positive play, not negative, not pessimistic. As I saw it, with my blood and skin and eyes, the philosophy is: 'No matter what— atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, anything—life goes on. You can kill yourself, but you can't kill life." (E.G. Marshal who played Vladimir in original Broadway production 1950s)?

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die,

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams.

For if dreams go,

Life is a barren field

Covered with snow.

Langston Hughes

 

Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence.  Death is an inevitable occurrence. Freedom, in an existential sense, refers to the absence of external structure. That is, humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured. We must give the world a structure which we ourselves create. Isolation recognizes that no matter how close we become to another person, a gap always remains, and we are nonetheless alone. Meaninglessness stems from the first three.

If we must die, if we construct our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

“Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit!”

― Bill Maher

How are the props like hat and boots used in the play? What is the symbolical significance of these props?

I have highlighted some symbols throughout the play and will be explored deeply in-short: Tree, Lucky’s Baggage, Pozzo’s Rope, Night Fall, Hat, Names, The Boot, The Bone.

Estragon's boots, instead of symbolizing rational thought processes on the other hand symbolize the fact that there is nothing to be done for the two men in a less pensive and more active way. Estragon, who focuses more on boots than hats, is more earthy and realistic because he is more grounded than Vladimir.

In act two Estragon and Vladimir exchange their hats and Lucky's hat back and forth, trying different ones on. Given the importance of these hats to their individual owners, this scene can be seen as representing the fluidity and instability of individual identities in the play.

At the end of the first act, when Estragon puts his boots aside, this doer-thinker role seems to change for a while. Estragon starts philosophizing. He contemplates about the moon, and then when Vladimir asks him about his boots, he says that he can go barefoot because Christ did as well. 

“Vladimir: Christ! What’s Christ got to do with it? You’re not going to compare yourself to Christ! / Estragon: All my life I’ve compared myself to him” 

And Vladimir is the one who tries to act at this point. He is the one who wants to leave and find shelter for the night. However, in the second act Estragon takes his boots back and the roles switch back again.

Do you think that the obedience of Lucky is extremely irritating and nauseatic? Even when the master Pozzo is blind, he obediently hands the whip in his hand. Do you think that such a capacity of slavishness is unbelievable?

What makes slave or master? 

Power or position?

This suggests that one is constructed to be happy even in slavery. Lucky has all that chances to run away but he is not going anywhere but lives in that only!

Yes, at first sight, it is seems that the obedience of Lucky is extremely irritating and nausea tic. Writer describes the slavery of Lucky to his Master. His entry is evidence  in the play.  The treatments of Lucky directly connected to animal - Horse.   When Lucky enters into the play, it heard like Horse is coming.  How one can to be the slave of others? When Pozzo is blind , Lucky is not able to walk himself without command of his master. Though he has chance to run way from such slavery , he happily accept his slavery and totally dependent on his master.

 

Who according to you is Godot? God? An object of desire? Death? Goal? Success? Or  . . .

 

Many believe that Godot is really God. I think that Beckett initially wants us to believe he is God simply because of the name, but it's more involved than that. Godot is 'who' we are waiting for, and in the course of the play that can take on many meanings.

We all occasionally feel that something is missing in our lives, and Godot possesses traits of God in both the Old and New Testaments. There are many who 'wait' for God to change their lives and do nothing to change them on their own. Beckett uses parables from the Bible.

"At the end of Act I, when the boy arrives to say that Mr Godot " won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow " and Vladimir proceeds to question him about his "credentials", the boy reveals that he minds the goats and his brother minds the sheep. Placing these two words together is enough to suggest one of Jesus’s best-known parables, frequently used in art and sermon, the parable of the sheep and the goats.”

Godot constitutes the centre of their life though he does not arrive in the end of the play and there is no hint that he will, even after the play ends. So there is an implication that the tramps will go on waiting for this elusive being who is like a mirage in the desert. The title of the French original En attendant Godot meaning ‘while waiting for Godot’ is less ambiguous than the English one. Descriptive as it is, it gives an impression that the play is more about the act of waiting than about the arrival or identity of Godot. However, in a postmodernist context in which the idea of decentering is important, it would be relevant to critique the Godot-centric universe of Estragon and Vladimir.

When asked who or what Godot stands for, Beckett stated ‘If I knew, I would have said so in the play’. This Beckettian statement could be understood with reference to the play-text which does indicate who Godot might be, but only through diverse, unrelated references to Godot, references which do not help one arrive at any ultimate conclusion about the identity of Godot. In other words, when Beckett says ‘If I knew, I would have said so in the play’, this statement might indicate this inconclusiveness, plural connotations or ‘polysemy’ about the identity of Godot. The diverse textual references to the polysemy about the identity of Godot are instrumental in explaining that the idea of centre is an illusion in the Godot-centric universe of Waiting for Godot.

Truth about being is non-being as the goal of every life is death. Life in itself is meaningless; people give meaning to life in their own way. In other words, though life in itself is meaningless, in order for people to exist, life is ascribed diverse meanings. The idea of plurality could be understood also as an absence of any absolute meaning of life. Indeed, this is a point that Derrida himself emphasizes throughout the essay, and most evidently in the epigraph of the essay ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’. The epigraph is taken from the French essayist Montaigne and it reads as ‘One needs to interpret the interpretations more than the things’. In other words, Derrida is indicating the need to interrogate the existing interpretations or philosophical systems (which have, for example, foregrounded the idea of ‘centre’) which is exactly what constitutes Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction. The idea plurality of centres, absence of any absolute centres, or the notion that centre is a myth are some of the observations that would, for Derrida, constitute the concepts of indeterminacy and inconclusiveness, the hallmarks of postmodernism. The critiquing of the idea of centre would also be the basis of Derrida’s interrogating of logocentrism and phallogocentrism.

Keeping this in mind, one could probably understand Godot not as ‘who’ but as ‘what’. 

Godot could be understood as an experience. Godot could be understood as the experience of waiting itself, or even life itself. If Godot has no existence outside the text of Waiting for Godot – as Beckett insisted whatever he had to say about Godot is there in the text- then Godot could be understood as a posited entity, any posited entity that helps one go on waiting, or for that matter, living. To live is to create the purpose of life, and Godot is such a purpose for which the tramps wait and thereby live on.

It is in this context that, in a Derridean sense, Godot can be understood as a required hypothesis. Godot is certainly a hypothesis which is yet to be proved. Even if Godot’s identity cannot be ascertained and there are multiple opinions about his possible identity, still Estragon and Vladimir need to posit Godot. Positing Godot gives a reason for them to wait, assuming the existence of somebody called Godot, gives them a sense of safety and security in an otherwise meaningless and therefore unsettling universe. Even if Godot does not exist, Godot is to be posited because Godot is a necessity in the life of the tramps.

 

“The subject of the play is not Godot but ‘Waiting’” (Esslin, A Search for the Self). Do you agree? How can you justify your answer?

 

Do you think that plays like this can better be ‘read’ than ‘viewed’ as it requires a lot of thinking on the part of readers, while viewing, the torrent of dialogues does not give ample time and space to ‘think’? Or is it that the audio-visuals help in better understanding of the play?

Did you feel the effect of existential crisis or meaninglessness of human existence in the irrational and indifference Universe during screening of the movie? Where and when exactly that feeling was felt, if ever it was?

Yes, I feel the effect of existential crisis or meaninglessness of human existence in the irrational and indifference Universe during screening of the movie. Existentialists deals with such subjects like...Death, the meaning of the human existence, the place of God in human existence , the meaning of value , interpersonal relationship, the place of self - reflective conscious knowledge of one's self in existing. They are waiting for 'Godot' and in between they just killing their time. For passing the time they both play with Hat or Boot. Though both things stand for different symbols both Estragon and Vladimir are same place , and same fate also. Means.. there is no difference whether one is intellectual or not. What makes difference in between them 'Nothing'. At the end, there are tried and decide to committee suicide but they can't because our instinct of life is more powerful than the reason of the death.  

Vladimir says that " Shall we go? Let's go. but they don't go and readers have question " Where to go?"

Vladimir and Estragon talks about ‘hanging’ themselves and commit suicide, but they do not do so. How do you read this idea of suicide in Existentialism? 

The phenomenon of suicide is one of the primary concerns for mental health professions. The health-care literature is dominated by discussions that focus variously on local and national suicide prevention policies, on the assessment of those individuals judged to be at risk of committing suicide as well as the appropriateness and efficacy of interventions for those who express suicidal ideation and display suicidal behaviours. What appear less frequently in the literature, however, are critical analyses of the concept of suicide and, in particular, critical reflections on the manner in which the concept of suicide has been, and continues to be, understood or ‘framed’.

Vladimir and Estragon talks about ‘hanging’ themselves and commit suicide, but they do not do so because we have habit of living life. Our instinct of life is always more powerful than the reason of death. We have a habit of living before we acquire a habit of thinking and reason always goes to thinking. Thus, such instinct is over power over the thinking capacity. Thus, they can't do suicide because they have hope for tomorrow just like ' Act Of Eluding' .

Existentialism is not gloomy term it is an attitude to prove that man is maker of his own fate.Existentialism is positive term  to look life with different perspective. Its all about consciousness. It  don't driven by sensibility or emotionality or melodrama kind things. It is connected with lived experience.

So far as Pozzo and Lucky [master and slave] are concerned, we have to remember that Beckett was a disciple of Joyce and that Joyce hated England. Beckett meant Pozzo to be England, and Lucky to be Ireland." (Bert Lahr who played Estragon in Broadway production). Does this reading make any sense? Why? How? What?

With the help of historical background, we can read this play with colonial and post colonial aspect. As we know that Irish  people are suffering from slavery of  English. Lucky himself can't free from this idea. Master - Slave relationship fully described here. After the blindness of his master ( Pozzo) Lucky can't be free because he doesn't want. So, Ireland always be slave of England and we read this with colonial perspective.  Master - Pozzo don't like to give the answers to others. With Furiousness Pozzo says that....

" Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! Whhen! 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? " None of My Business"

 

Thank you.

 

 References:

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot. Ed. G.J.V Prasad. India: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Bordewijk, Cobi. “THE INTEGRITY OF THE PLAYTEXT: DISPUTED PERFORMANCES OF ‘WAITING FOR GODOT.’” Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, vol. 1, 1992, pp. 143–156. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41337887. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.

Derrida, Jacques, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.”

 

Esslin, Martin. “Samuel Beckett: The Search for the self .” The Theatre of the Absurd. United States of America: Anchor Books, 1961. Print.