If it is true that nothing or less than nothing

happens in Waiting for Godot, how is it that

we manage to be entertained as the
audience? If Waiting for Godot is moralistic
in nature,...
If it is true that nothing or less than nothing
happens in Waiting for Godot, how is it that
we manage to be entertained as the
audience? If Waiting for Godot is moralistic
in nature,...
If it is true that nothing or less than nothing happens in Waiting for Godot, how is it that
we manage to be entertained as the audience? If Waiting for Godot is moralistic in
nature, what's the moral? How does the play instruct us to lead our lives? Are these
lessons subjective and personal for each viewer, or objective and universal?

I believe that most people would agree that the play is intended to illustrate the author's
vision that there is no meaning or purpose in life. It might be called existentialistic, but
existentialism goes beyond asserting that there is no external or supernatural meaning to
human existence. Existentialism seems to encourage people to create their own meaning
in their lives. I don't believe Beckett cared whether his audiences did that or not. He
seems utterly nihilistic. He does not seem to want to suggest any solution to the human
dilemma. Life is meaningless. Period. There is a barely discernible humor running
throughout the play. It can be regarded as a comedy. The fact that life is a bad joke on
all of us can be seen as funny. The two tramps are funny. When the play was first
produced in America, one of the tramps was played by the comedian Bert Lahr, who
played the Cowardly Lion in the famous movie The Wizard of Oz. Lahr understood the
play as a comedy. It is also easy to see the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo as
comical.

Some people can't stand the play because, as you say, "nothing or less than nothing
happens." It is not like most plays, like those of Ibsen for instance, in which the author
holds the audience with some big social problem to which he offers a solution. If life is
meaningless, then there really is no problem, and there can be no solution and no
reasonable motivation. People who like the play appreciate its comic, or ironic, picture
of the meaninglessness of existence. This seems like a sophisticated attitude. Life has no
meaning, but still we go on living. The alternative is to hang ourselves--but why do
that? That wouldn't have any meaning either. So we all go on waiting for something to
happen, like Vladimir and Estragon. They are just tramps and we laugh at them--but at
least they know what they are waiting for. They are waiting for a man named Godot
because they obviously expect him to give them a handout. There must really be a man
named Godot and he must know they are waiting for him. Twice he sends a boy to tell
them he can't come today but will come tomorrow. Part of what is laughable about the
situation is that these two tramps should expect anyone to care about them. Godot may
care a little, but not very much.

The play was first produced in French in 1953. That was about sixty-three years ago,
and it is still being staged all over the world, still being talked about and debated over,
still being assigned reading in college courses. It has become a classic--and yet,
"nothing or less than nothing happens." If life is meaningless, then it is quite appropriate
that a play should be meaningless. That is what makes it "absurd." Since it is absurd, it
is funny, in an unsettling sort of way. It doesn't tell audiences to find their own meaning,
or to create their own (perhaps arbitrary and contrived) meaning. It leaves them
wondering what it's all about, just as they are wondering whether Godot will ever show
up.

I feel I have just added more words to the millions that have already been expended
trying to explain the "meaning" of this annoying but fascinating play.

What are the themes in Waiting for Godot?

Waiting for Godot, a play written by Samuel Beckett in 1953, finds two
characters, Vladimir and Estragon, endlessly waiting for the appearance of
Godot, an unseen character who never actually makes an appearance. The
English-language version of the play is a translation by Beckett of his French-
language play En attendant Godot, which he wrote in 1948.

There are many themes explored throughout Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
Here are a few:

Choices: Waiting for Godot portrays two men who find themselves indecisive
and unable to make any real choices. Rather than giving up on their wait for
Godot, they simply do nothing, unable to decide if they should stop or leave or
wait or stay. Consequently, they end up staying and waiting, though it is more
a consequence of not choosing than choosing.

The Absurd: Waiting for Godot portrays two men unable to communicate
effectively with each other as they attempt to utilize the same language. In
many instances, neither one seems able to fully understand the other though
they both are speaking English. Many of their actions are also confusing and
limited.

Time: For the characters of Waiting for Godot time is irrelevant; its not linear.
They have difficulties remembering what day it is, what hour it is, how long
theyve been waiting, and how much longer they must continue to wait. They
cannot remember events from the previous day, or even days, and continue to
pass the time exactly, or nearly exactly, as they did before. For Didi and Gogo,
time is inconsequential.

How important is movement in the play

Waiting for Godot ?
This is a penetrating question. Of course, the main emphasis is the non-
movement, the inertia of inactivity in the plot (emphasized by the important
last line: They do not move.) But there are two other movements in any
stage performance. Blocking (the changes of position by the actors) and
gesture (the language of stage gestures, both realistic and artificial, of the
actors hands, head, posture, etc.) In blocking, Beckett has prescribed much of
it: Pozzo and Luckys entrance, for example. But the director must choose the
proxemics (the closeness and distance between characters at any time). In
stage business, for example in the burlesque business of changing hats, or
the examining of boots, the director must select details of the movements for
rhythm and realism.

But what makes your question so intriguing is the overriding thematic idea
that movement itself, for Gogo and Didi, is simply a means to pass the
time. The meaninglessness of all effort is emphasized by the futility of
action itself: Did they beat you? Of course they beat me. This futility
is condensed in the scene where the tramps consider hanging themselves on
the tree.

Finally, the most condensed movement on the stage is the appearance of a leaf
on the tree in Act Two. Sudden, out of range of the tramps control, occurring
in the timeless space between acts, it finalizes the purpose of all movement, in
the play or in the world: Change is illusionary and meaningless, merely the
random fluttering of existence in the winds of nothingness.

Analyse the symbolism of Beckett's Waiting

for Godot.
If I understand you correctly, it appears that you wish for an analysis of the symbolism
of the play as a whole and not an exploration of individual symbols as they appear in the
play.

A symbol, by definition, refers to an object or situation which is used to represent an

idea or belief in a non-literal sense. The author utilises literal scenarios or objects to
evoke a deeper understanding of, or insight into an idea which he/she may believe has
universal application and relevance. Obviously, there would be different interpretations
in this regard since it is natural for us to perceive the author's supposed message within
different contexts.

And so it is with Samuel Beckett's, Waiting for Godot. The author had consistently
claimed that he had not written the play with any particular purpose in mind and was
frustrated by the fact that so many interpretations unnecessarily complicated something
so simple. Beckett repeatedly rejected any appeals for clarification on either
characterisation, plot or purpose of his remarkable play. That therefore leaves us with
the task of finding meaning in the work.

The play is a symbol for the purposeless nature of man's existence. Vladimir, Estragon,
Pozzo, Lucky and the boy, all represent mankind whilst Godot, it appears, represents the
ethereal, the unknown. There is no meaning or purpose in what the characters say or do
- it is all a futile exercise. The implication is that trying to find any meaning becomes an
exercise in absurdity, best illustrated by Lucky's garrulous, garbled diatribe in the first
act.

The situation in which the characters find themselves alludes to mankind's self-
indulgent nature. In order for us to support our belief in our self-importance, we need to
be seen to be investing our time in finding answers and being productive, in some way
or another. The play brilliantly depicts the folly of this notion, since none of the
characters actually resolve any of their issues and they become victims of the march of
time: they become older whilst waiting, Pozzo goes blind, Lucky becomes mute. In the
end, they are stuck at exactly the point at which they were at the beginning of the play.

The characters are caught in an ever-repeating cycle, forgetting the past either willingly
or unwittingly, and therefore not learning from it. Their existence has a
profoundly, almost ritualistic, repetitive nature about it. This further emphasises the
purposelessness of life - time passes on, but we find ourselves, as far as our spiritual or
intellectual evolution is concerned, right back where we started. Our supposed
scientific, religious and philosophical insights and developments have lead us
somewhere, but nowhere. There exists just as much meaning as there is in Lucky's
insight.

Symbolism is the key factor in Waiting for Godot; however, in order to understand the
symbols in the play, you have to understand where Absurdist Theater came from and
what it entails.

Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot sometime between 1948 and 1949; however, it
was not first performed until 1953. At the end of World War II, a change in theater
occurred. While Surrealism had existed in the 1920s, it resurfaced after the war not as a
fantastical element but as a moment of intense emotion and awareness that freed people
from the ordinary. Post World War II found France with a crisis of "moral order."
France had been controlled by Nazi Germany for a time, and then was freed. The result
left some confusion over what was considered moral and what wasn't. Under this new
confusion, Existentialism came into being. "Theater of the Absurd," is the best
classification of Waiting for Godot, which is a part of Existentialism. Absurdist Theater
is a term given to plays that show "a hostile meaningless universe looming large over
individuals who are unsure of or unconcerned about what to make of themselves, their
situation, and other things they encounter." When you think about France during and at
the end of World War II, it is easy to understand how it embraced Absurdist Theater.

The world of Waiting for Godot is not our world. It resembles our world, but it is not
intended to take place in the world that we experience. Didi and Gogo are supplicants
of Godot. While they have no power in this world, they feel that Godot must have some
type of power and possesses the things they do not have: home, family, friends,
servants, books, money, and a horse. There is a bit of fear from Didi and Gogo that they
might be slaves of Godot, but they really do not know. Their relationship to Godot is
not as clearly defined as it is with Pozzo and Lucky.

Certain aspects of our world exist in the world of Waiting for Godot, such as dancing
and singing to pass the time, and the Bible. There is a Fair, which is never seen, but it is
both happy and troubling. There is whimsical imagery when talking about the fair, but
the eventuality of Lucky's sale offers some foreboding. Time and geography are
different in the world. Didi do not know if they have been sitting in the same place or if
it has changed.

As in all Surrealism and Existentialism, symbolism plays a key part in the production of
the play. I will discuss four major aspects of symbolism: Duality, the tree, the
character's hats, and the waiting/ time; however, there are more symbols throughout
the play such as Gogo's inability to get close to people due to his sense of "smell" (his
repulsion of the banality of humanity), Lucky and Pozzo and the connection to self-
slavery and how the slaver and the slave are intertwined (Pozzo doesn't know how to do
anything. He would be powerless without Lucky's help), the oncoming night
representing death, and Lucky's dance "The Net"- showing how he has been enslaved so
long he can no longer dance true dances of joy, but can only stretch for freedom before
falling back into slavery.

Duality. 50/50 chances are a running theme in the play- in the conversation on suicide
it is decided that the tree branch may or may not break, concluding that one person may
live and one person may die. The two thieves one may be saved while the other id
damned in the end. Godot himself may only save one of the two main characters. The
entire play is bound in pairs: Vladimir and Estragon are bound together for what seems
throughout time. There are two thieves. Pozzo and Lucky come and leave as a pair.
Cain and Abel the first two brothers are discussed. The tree's movement between life
and death throughout Act one and Act 2. In addition, it must be noted that the play only
has two acts rather than the standard three of the time.

The theme of duality that runs through the play is intended to express the ambiguity of
not really knowing about God, time, existence. It shows the idea that we all have fifty-
fifty chances in who we are and where we will eventually end. Either we are right or
we are wrong in our decisions about what we are supposed to do with our life.

The Tree. The tree is the only prominent piece of the set. It is discussed that the tree
may be a willow that has given up weeping and is now dead. Didi and Gogo are to wait
beside the tree in order to meet Godot. However, they are concerned that it is the wrong
tree despite the fact that it is the only tree in what the audience can perceive as the
world. In general the tree is to have two branches that give the tree the impression that
it is a cross, contributing to the image of a cross. This connects to the idea that the tree
itself represents regeneration or resurrection. A side joke that is hidden in the text of the
play is that both Didi and Gogo consider hanging themselves from the limb of the tree
but decide against it because the limb will not support them. Under the ideals of
Catholicism, the salvation promised through the cross does not support those who
commit suicide.

The Character's Hats: Each character has a hat (except the boy). In the original play,
all characters had bowler hats, but in several modern versions, directors have chosen to
have various styles, so the audience can track the hats' movements. The bowler hats are
a nod to Beckett's joy of Vaudeville Theater where the majority of the performers wore
bowler hats. Likewise, the bowler hats are generally used through blocking with
vaudevillian hat tricks. The hats represent the identity and personality of each of the
characters. Vladimir (Didi) focuses almost completely on his hat. Throughout the play,
he is the thinker. Estragon (Gogo) is fixated on his boots and his hat is secondary. He is
the realist of the two companions. He has his feet on the ground. Lucky can only think
with his hat on, and Pozzo shows his dominance over Lucky by removing the hat and
returning it at his will. Lucky's hat is also used when Didi decides to wear it. This
indicates Didi's desire to change himself. It is interesting that Didi chooses the slave
rather than the master when he makes this shift. Finally, the hats are used to show that
uniformity comes from removing your personality. Every time the group agrees or
comes to a conclusion, all hats are removed.

Finally, the symbolism of Gogo and Didi waiting. At one point Gogo calls it hope
deferred. Both of the main characters are preoccupied with passing the time. It is
symbolic of how some people are so preoccupied with waiting for good things, bad
things, resurrection, death, the lives and choices of others, their own failings, etc. they
never move forward in life. The continual ramblings of Didi and Gogo trying to
entertain themselves during the waiting, exemplifies how people distract themselves
from their own hopes and dreams. Neither Didi nor Gogo come to any realizations
about their lives throughout the course of the play and this is shown in the final line
"Yes, let's go." The statement gives the expectation of movement, yet in the staging of
waiting for Godot, neither Didi nor Gogo move. The play is clear that there should be
an overall sense of lingering by the two actors giving the audience a clear statement that
they will not actually leave from where they are seated. This hints back at Pozzos
statement when he plans to leave that he cannot go forward. Such is life is the reply.
Pozzo must get a running start in order to leave the stage. It is important to note that
Pozzo loses his watch before he is able to move forward along the road. (He loses his
awareness and connection to waiting.) Gogo and Didi remain, however, eternally
focusing on the waiting.

Beckett's play is not exactly a symbolist play. That is not to say that it does not have
symbols. There are symbols galore in the play but the point is that it does not want to fix
any symbolic interpretation on itself. It rather vaguely opens up multiple symbolic
layers to seduce the reader into one or the other. None of these, on its own is a
substantial one, however.
The greatest seductive symbol in the play is the figure of Godot which is seen to
represent God, existence, meaning, the gaze of the other, a social big-brother figure, an
absent centre of authority and so on.

Waiting as a condition of being is yet another symbolic act in the play.

There is a symbolic import in the repetitive circularity of action in the two acts.

The boots, the hats, especially Lucky's thinking hat which produces his great speech are
all symbolic objects.

The tree, the country road, the leaves that appear on the second day, the way the two
tramps and Lucky and Pozzo fall in the shape of crucifixion in the second act, the social
category of the tramp--all these are symbolic in the play-text.

What is "theater of the absurd"? Explain it

with references from Waiting for Godot.
According to Holman and Harmon, the term stands for "the kind of drama that presents
a view of the absurdity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or rational
devices and by the use of nonrealistic form."

Typically, there is not a series of events that tells a story, but rather a pattern of images
which present people as bewildered beings in an incomprehensible universe. This is a
pretty good description of what happens in "Waiting for Godot". Nothing happens.
They sit and talk about things--nothing in particular--and wait for Godot who never
arrives. The reader who is careful and attentive will laugh hysterically as he reads the
play since there is wild humor in not only the situation but also the ridiculousness of the
conversation between the two who wait.

Check the link below for more explanation and examples from the play which illustrate
the term "theater of the absurd".

Waiting for Godot certainly includes absurd elements in its lack of real plot, and its
premise that the universe has no meaning and is, in itself, irrational. It also shows traits
of the absurd in its inclusion of existentialist topics, such as alluding to the self-
conscious and our inherent natural freedom to explore the carpe diem.

It breaks away from the traditional methods and literary devices for narrative, lacks
specific stage directions, leaving it amorphous and "up for grabs", and finally, the end is
never quite reached. A plot usually has a clear cause and effect of the rising action, but
here the characters continue doing their exploratory of the "self" without really seeing
Godot.

All absurdist plays are characterized for the chaotic organization, for its exploration of
existential nature of man, of the self, of the conscious, and of life as a mystery.
in the twentieth century and had a profound influence on generations of succeeding
dramatists, including such renowned contemporary playwrights as Harold Pinter and
Tom Stoppard. Initially written in French in 1948 as En Attendant Godot, Beckett's play
was published in French, later translated into English by Beckett himself as Waiting for
Godot. Beckett's play came to be considered an essential example of what Martin Esslin
later called "Theatre of the Absurd," a term that Beckett disavowed ."Absurdist Theatre"
discards traditional plot, characters, and action to assault its audience with a disorienting
experience. Characters often engage in seemingly meaningless dialogue or activities,
and, as a result, the audience senses what it is like to live in a universe that doesn't
"make sense." Beckett and others who adopted this style felt that this disoriented feeling
was a more honest response to the post World War II world than the traditional belief in
a rationally ordered universe. Waiting for Godot like Ionesco's Amde remains the
most famous example of this form of drama. Beckett often focused on the idea of "the
suffering of being." Most of the play deals with the fact that Estragon and Vladimir are
waiting for something to alleviate their boredom. Godot can be understood as one of the
many things in life that people wait for. Waiting for Godot is part of the Theater of the
Absurd. This implies that it is meant to be irrational. Absurd theater does away with the
concepts of drama, chronological plot, logical language, themes, and recognizable
settings. There is also a split between the intellect and the body within the work. Thus
Vladimir represents the intellect and Estragon the body, both of whom cannot exist
without the other. Albee's Zoo Story is clearly far more firmly anchored in reality.
Adamov's Professor Taranne came as a dream. But Becketts Waiting For Godot stands
somewhere between dream and reality. In Waiting for Godot for example Beckett
parodies and mocks the language of philosophy and science in Lucky's famous speech.
Harold Pinter, in his The Caretaker shows uncanny accuracy in the reproduction of real
conversation among English people. In its critique of language the Theatre of the
Absurd closely reflects the preoccupation of contemporary philosophy with language,
its effort to disentangle language, as a genuine instrument for logic and the discovery of
reality, from the welter of emotive, illogical usages. the Theatre of the Absurd has much
in common with the existential philosophy of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus. It was in
fact Camus who coined the concept of the Absurd in the sense in which it is used
in Waiting for Godot. The play has often been viewed as fundamentally existentialist in
its take on life. The fact that none of the characters retain a clear mental history means
that they are constantly struggling to prove their existence. Thus the boy who
consistently fails to remember either of the two protagonists casts doubt on their very
existence. This is why Vladimir demands to know that the boy will in fact remember
them the next day. According to Holman and Harmon, the term absurd drama stands
for "the kind of drama that presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by
the abandoning of usual or rational devices and by the use of nonrealistic form." This is
true of Waiting for Godot

What is the significance of the title of the

play Waiting for Godot?
In Waiting for Godot, the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend days
waiting for someone named Godot. A boy comes with a message that Godot is not
coming and they continue to wait. The waiting itself is an exercise in futility. Godot is
never going to show up and the two characters discuss options such as suicide (which
they fail in the attempt), keep waiting, and leaving. They try to leave multiple times, but
they can't. So, they keep waiting. The repetition and redundancy express the characters
steadfast desire for resolution despite becoming totally frustrated in the lack of results
for their time spent.

Godot, as if he were a savior or someone who can give them answers, represents
certainty and meaningfulness. Since he never arrives, Vladimir and Estragon are faced
with living in a world where certainty and meaning never present themselves. To
continue to wait for certainty and meaning, knowing they don't exist, is absurd.
Absurdism, in literature and drama, is usually presented in this way: humans searching
for meaning in a world where meaning is either always elusive or nonexistent.

The significance of the title rests on the situational irony that the wait for Godot is
entirely trifling. Yet, the collateral dynamics that result from this abortive task are as
illogical as the wait itself.

Within an existentialist context, the wait is symbolic of human reality. It is the

amalgamation of our need for hope, purpose and direction versus the reality that there is
no absolute law that explains any hope, purpose, or reason for anything. Realistically,
our lives are a product of perspective and upbringing, not to mention the eternal debate
of nature versus nurture. Hence, we all wait in different ways: praying, hoping,
meditating, thinking ahead, or stopping altogether.

Essentially, this "wait" is an existential problem for all individuals. The succession of
issues that present themselves in a lifespan may render us dependent on the expectation
that something may come our way, or may change us forever. In the meantime, we meet
characters, see things, and witness situations not unlike those seen by Vladimir and
Estragon: things that are odd, cruel, senseless, even morbid. It is all a part of existing.
The wait will always be there.

VLADIMIR
He didn't say for sure he'd come.
ESTRAGON
And if he doesn't come?
VLADIMIR
We'll come back tomorrow.
ESTRAGON
And then the day after tomorrow.
VLADIMIR
Possibly.
ESTRAGON
And so on.
VLADIMIR
The point is
ESTRAGON
Until he comes.

Samuel Beckett's English play Waiting for Godot is actually his own translation of a
play he originally wrote in French, under the title "En attendant Godot." The French
phrase has the literal meaning of waiting for Godot, but far more than the English
conveys the sense "while waiting for Godot," with more emphasis on what happens
while waiting than on Godot's eventual arrival (or failure to arrive).

While many critics have noted the sonic relationship between "Godot" and "God" in
English, this parallel does not really apply to the original French text, as the French
word for God is "Dieu," which does not bear any obvious relationship to "Godot."

What makes the title significant is that drama and dramatic criticism before the advent
of modernism emphasized plot and action. Aristotle, for example, defined tragedy as
follows:

Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; ... every play contains Spectacular
elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought. ... But most important
of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an
action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a
quality. ... Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the
chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without
character.

We generally think of waiting as a stage prior to action. In other words, we "wait" for
something to happen. In using the word "waiting" in the title of his play, Beckett is
suggesting that the play breaks with the tradition of drama-as-action and instead offers
us something different, a pure view into the characters in a state of inactivity.