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Waiting for Godot

Notes
Lecture 14 Lecture 20
Waiting for Godot
A Brief Overview

Samuel Beckett Irish b. 1906 Waiting for Godot 1947 - 1949

Beckett was obsessed with man-as-machine and man-as-a-user-of-machines. (Descarts idea). If

man is a machine created by a perfect Being, why is that machine so defective? If man can
himself create machines, does he in some way resemble the Creator of man-as-machine? What
are the responsibilities of a creator toward his defective creature, and vice versa, and of one
creature toward another? (Frankenstein)

Most of Becketts characters suffer either from failure to face themselves, or from the pain that
results from only half-trying. In Waiting for Godot, Didi (Vladimir) hovers on the verge of self-
discovery but he is too terrified and so lapses into unfulfillment.

Kierkegaard Man is paralyzed by dread. Of what? Why? Because if he breaks out of his mind-
limited, objectivist way of life, the possibilities are infinite, and nothing is certain. In all crises
man must act decisively. The most tremendous thing which has been granted to man is the
choice (Genesis)

Sartre says that whether God exists or not is irrelevant; man to be manly must act as if there is no
god. He must not look outside himself for excuses, justification, guidance, salvation: We are
alone.

The main characters in Waiting for Godot yearn vaguely for existence, yet they insist on looking
outside themselves for salvation. Up against the need to choose, they choose by failing to choose.

What actually happens in Godot?

Near a roadside tree, two tramps meet as they meet daily: to wait for Godot. Estragon (Gogo)
fusses with his boots. Vladimir (Didi) fusses with his hat. They discuss separation, but make up.
Suicide, vegetables, religion, urinary troubles and Godot. Passing by are Pozzo (with a whip) and
his slave Lucky (on a leash.) Pozzo, who owns everything around, talks of many things. Lucky
cries, dances and thinks on command. Master and slave leave. A goat-boy brings a message:
Godot will come tomorrow. Didi questions him about his brother, a shepherd. Night falls.
Agreeing to leave, the tramps stand still.
Next day, the tramps resume waiting with games and talk. Pozzo (now blind) and Lucky (now
mute) return and collapse. Pozzo and Lucky leave. Didi soliloquizes. The goat-boy comes and
says Godot will come tomorrow. Night falls. Agreeing to leave, they stand still. The End.
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Meanings of:

Setting road archetype of journey, travel. Tree archetype of life, promise. Religious
symbolism?

Props leash symbolizes bondage. Boots = earth, body, roots. Hat = mind, rational side of life.

Plot Act I. The passive ones pass the time waiting

The active ones pass through
The passive ones get a message
The passive ones decide to go on waiting.

- Act II exactly the same four events

Act I describes circular events. Act II describes circular events. This play could go on forever!!
Note we know the causes of nothing!
Who is Godot that anyone should spend time waiting for him?
Characters

Estragon (GoGo) the earthy one. Practical and physical. Rather cultured, good vocabulary.
Overly dependent on Didi for security, leadership and rational direction. Name in French means
tarragon, a pungent herb used to make pickles and vinegar.

Vladimi Rational side of humanity. Verbal. Eager to present a good social image. Believe in
the world of the mind and accepts a higher reality outside himself. Acts as though loyalty to
Godot will bring guidance, security, redemption, salvation. Believes these things can be granted
from outside ones self. He will go on waiting for Godot to comein French, name has
connotations with word dis-dis, speak-speak.

Didi and Gogo are a pair which complement each other, i.e. Batman and Robin. A pair who
need each other, yet stifle each others growth. Note Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf parallels
this idea. They are miserable much of the time together, yet neither seems big enough to part
from the other. They are possibly parts of a divided self (Crime and Punishment). Gogo as the
unconscious mind, Didi as the conscious mind. They can not separate once and for all.

Pozzo personification of Raw Power. Owns all, has a slave, a whip to symbolize power. Since
the slave seems cultured and educated, why is the slave on Pozzos leash? Pozzo believes: You
dont need an education and a brain, all you need is the cunning to get people with brains on a
leash. (Romans with the Greeks) Materialistic. In Italian, Pozzo means well, as in gushing oil
well.

Lucky symbol of man-as-a-machine. Name is ironic, of course, and yet he is well fed, cared
for, etc a secure man/pet.

Pozzo and Lucky are a pair which complement each other. Pozzo symbolizes the sadist; Lucky
the masochist. Perhaps all slaves must become masochistic or else die in rebellion. Parts of a
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divided self. Materialistic man rejecting and suppressing his spiritual and cultural side. Pozzo
needs Lucky, and even so, he is dying and withering.

The Messenger in Greek drama, symbolizes resolution. Irony here he symbolizes

continuation He is a goat-boy Judeo-Christian concepts of sheep and goats. Only contact
between the tramps and Godota priest figureyet he works with the goats, not the sheep!

Godot who is Godot? You have the interesting problem of creating a character here in your
own imagethe name obviously contains the idea of Godwill Godot ever come to save the
tramps from their living nothingness?

They also serve who only stand and wait. John Milton

Go you into all the world

Jesus of Nazareth

WAITING FOR GODOT- Samuel Becket

Introduction:

The Theatre of Absurd literally means out of harmony. Ionesco, who is considered as
one of the major dramatists of the school of the absurd, defines, the
Absurd as that which is devoid of purpose. cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and
transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.
In Becketts words, human life is the endurance and tolerance to the boredom of living
replaced by the suffering of being.
Samuel Becketts first play, Waiting for Godot (1948) written originally in French is a play in
two Acts, in which two characters wait for someone named Godot, who never
arrives.

It does not tell a story, and it does not have a plot. Instead, it explores a static situation where
nothing happens, nobody comes and nobody goes. It represents an
awful human condition.

The play has a symmetrical structure. There are two Acts, two messenger boys, and two sets of
characters, that is Vladimir and Estragon, and Pozzo and Lucky. It appears to have been
structured on sets of binaries. It is considered that the structural pattern of the play is both
parallel and circular. The two acts, each made up of four identical sections.
Analysis:

In this play, the situation is Godot is one of monotonous sameness, and perpetual recurrence,
indicating that this cyclic pattern will continue like an unbroken circle till the end of time. We
are waiting for Godot is an endless refrain that occurs in both acts. The futility and the
monotony of such a wait is the link that holds both Acts together. This is heightened by the
sparse stage decor. There is only an open country road with a leafless tree. Beckett has not
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placed his characters in a specific place or time. He thus lends his play a universal dimension in
terms of time and space.
Vladimir, who is one of the two main characters of the play seems to be more responsible and
mature. He is addressed as Didi by Estragon and as Mr. Albert by the boy. While Estragon, the
second of the two main characters, is called as Gogo by Vladimir. Estragon seems to be
weak, helpless and always looking for Vladimirs protection. The next set of characters are
Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is the person who passes by the spot, where Vladimir and Estragon are
waiting beside a leafless tree. However, Pozzo becomes blind in the second act and does not
remember meeting Vladimir and Estragon. Lucky is the next character represented as slave to
Pozzo. He carries Pozzos bags and stool. In the first act, he entertains by dancing and
thinking aloud.however, in the second act he is found dumb. And, the next important characters
are the boy who acts as a messenger to Godot. He appears at the end of each act to inform
Vladimir that Godot is going to come on the next day. Godot, is the man for whom Vladimir and
Estragon are waiting unendingly. Godot never appears, his name is often thought to refer to God,
who does not arrive in the play.

In Act I, the two Tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait beside a leafless tree for Godot passing
time in verbal games. The play follows two consecutive days in the lives of a pair of men who
divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot who
never arrives. They claim that they know him, but in fact they have know acquaintance with him
as they admit that they would not recognise him if seen. To engage themselves, they sing, play
games, eat, talk, sleep and contemplate suicide anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".
Two characters, Pozzo and his slave Lucky arrive on the scene. Pozzo treats his slave rather
horribly. Lucky has to dance and think aloud to entertain his master and the tramps. After
sometime they leave and a boy arrives. The boy, obviously a messenger from Godot, informs the
tramps that Godot will definitely come the next day.
In Act II, there is no change in the scene. Continuing to wait, Pozzo and Lucky enter again.
Pozzo is now blind and Lucky is dumb. Once again they leave, and the boy arrives with the same
message. Though determined to leave, the tramps do not move. Only the tree has a few leaves in
Act II, otherwise there is no change in the act.
Act I

The play opens with the character Estragon struggling to remove his boot from his foot. Estragon
eventually gives up, muttering, "Nothing to be done." His friend Vladimir takes up the thought
and muses on it, the implication being that nothing is a thing that has to be done and this pair is
going to have to spend the rest of the play doing it. When Estragon finally succeeds in removing
his boot, he looks and feels inside but finds nothing. Just prior to this, Vladimir peers into his hat.
The motif recurs throughout in the play.

Their waiting is interrupted by the passing through of Pozzo and his heavily-laden slave Lucky,
who may, according to Beckett, "shatter the space of the play".Pozzo and Lucky have been seen
to represent a sort of double of Vladimir and Estragon, with similar roles, anxieties and
incertitudes. At one point, Vladimir observes that they are "tied to Godot" as Lucky is tied to
Pozzo. Vladimir also refers to Estragon as a "pig" several times later in the play, echoing Pozzo's
abuse of Lucky.
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Act II

Act II opens with Vladimir singing a round about a dog which serves to illustrate the cyclical
nature of the plays universe, and also points toward the play's debt to the carnivalesque, music
hall traditions and vaudeville comedy (this is only one of a number of canine references and
allusions in the play). There is a bit of realization on Vladimir's part that the world they are
trapped in evinces convoluted progression (or lack thereof) of time. He begins to see that
although there is notional evidence of linear progression, basically he is living the same day over
and over. Eugene Webb writes of Vladimir's song that Time in the song is not a linear sequence,
but an endlessly reiterated moment, the content of which is only one eternal event: death.

Pozzo and Lucky then arrive, with Pozzo now blind and insisting that Lucky is dumb. The rope
is now much shorter and Lucky who has acquired a new hat leads Pozzo, rather than being
driven by him. Pozzo has lost all notion of time, and assures
them he cannot remember meeting them the day before, and that he does not expect to remember
the current days events when they are over

Lucky and Pozzo depart. The same boy returns to inform them not to expect Godot today, but he
would arrive the next day. The two again consider suicide but their rope, Estragons belt, breaks
in two when they tug on it. Estragon's trousers fall down, but he doesnt notice till Vladimir tells
him to pull them up. They resolve to bring a more suitable piece and hang themselves the next
day, if Godot fails to arrive.

Again, they agree to leave but neither of them make any move to go.

Throughout the work one can find religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical and
biographical especially wartime references, there are ritualistic aspects and elements literally
lifted from vaudeville and there is a danger in making more of these than what they are: that is,
merely structural conveniences, avatars into which the writer places his fictional characters. The
play exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both
comedy and pathos.

Waiting for Godot also illustrates an attitude toward man's experience on earth: the poignancy,
oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, and bewilderment of human experience that can only
be reconciled in mind and art of the absurdist. If Godot is God, then Didi and Gogo's (mankind's)
faith in God is not only subject to doubt, but may also have almost entirely disappeared. Yet the
illusion of faiththat deeply embedded hope that Godot might comestill flickers in the minds
of Vladimir and Estragon. It is almost as if the faith of these two men has been tested to such
extremes that they can perfectly well see the logic of renouncing itbut they cannot completely
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Political: It was seen as an allegory of the cold war, or of French resistance to the Germans.
Graham Hassell writes, [T]he intrusion of Pozzo and Lucky seems like nothing more than a
metaphor for Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where society has ever been blighted by a
greedy ruling lite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means. The
pair are often played with Irish accents, an inevitable consequence, some feel, of Beckett's
rhythms and phraseology, but this is not stipulated in the text.

Existentialist: Broadly speaking existentialists hold there are certain questions that everyone
must deal with (if they are to take human life seriously), questions such as death, the meaning of
human existence and the place of God in human existence. By and large they believe that life is
very difficult and that it doesn't have an "objective" or universally known value, but that the
individual must create value by affirming it and living it, not by talking about it. The play
touches upon all of these issues.

Conclusion:

All pairs in the play exercise lack of compassionsometimes brutally, as when the main
characters, always looking at the advantage to themselves, seek to kick, instead of help, Pozzo,
who is calling out piteously for pity over and over again. Is the island with the single tree a place
of purgatory in which pairs eternally await an expression of compassion for their fellow, as one
evildoer expresses toward the Christ on the Cross? Is Godot in fact not a man but personification
of compassion that only arrives when created in the breast of man himself? The boy comes to say
Godot is not coming just after the pair in focus are particularly selfish and callous. The pair of
boys referenced in the play
are surely representing meekness and hope before compassion is consciously excluded by an
evolving personality and character, and may be the youthful Pozzo and Lucky; in which case,
Lucky would be the brother allegedly beaten by Godot. That would make Pozzo Godot, but also,
since both main characters beat Lucky, they are also Godot.

Some Insights

Contents

Information on the Play

Synopsis

About the Playwright

A Play in Which Nothing Happens Twice

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Grave

Synopsis: Waiting for Godot

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In all fairness, Waiting for Godot can hardly be summarized. One wag did it this way: And it
came to pass, nothing came to pass. Cliff s Notes, that erstwhile Bible of literary students,
offers this:

ACT I:

(1) Vladimir and Estragon Alone

(2) Arrival of Pozzo and Lucky: Luckys Speech

(3) Departure of Pozzo and Lucky: Vladimir and Estragon Alone

(4) Arrival of Boy Messenger

(5) Departure of Boy Messenger: Vladimir and Estragon Alone

ACT II:

(1) Vladimir and Estragon Alone

(2) Arrival of Pozzo and Lucky

(3) Departure of Pozzo and Lucky: Vladimir and Estragon Alone

(4) Arrival of Boy Messenger

(5) Departure of Boy Messenger: Vladimir and Estragon Alone

In conclusion, Waiting for Godot can hardly be summarized; only outlined.

The ploti.e., the sequence of eventsis not at issue here. What matters is what the director
does with the plotand setting, and lighting, and characters, and costuming. The main issue may
be futility; it may also be security based upon the predictability of daily existence. Or it may be
farcical hilarity engendered by the uselessness of unthinking repetitiousness in a world of
brilliant, but unrealized, possibilities. Or anything in between.

In a black-and-white world of ragged tramps, on the assumption (denied by Beckett) that Godot
signifies God, this play has been called the ultimate existential tragedyif such is possible. (In
the language of the play, French, Godor Dieuin no way resembles Godot.

It is only coincidental that English shows a connection.) In a colorful world of unimaginative

repetitions, it may be boring or pitiful or hilarious, depending upon the characters attitudes of
thats all there is, folks, shouldnt there be more, or aint it grand? Or in a magical world
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of potentially unlimited possibilities, it might be the quiet exhilaration of enduring transitory,

though incomprehensible, trials.

A major obstacle to agreement on what is happening and why, is the nebulous identity of Godot.
Some critics say an entity; others settle for an abstraction. Some identify him with God; others
insist on a-sexual, a-physical, a-spiritual idea-ness. Beckett himself said if he had known who or
what constituted Godot, he would have said so.

A Play in Which Nothing Happens Twice

Translated into over a dozen languages, Waiting for Godot has been performed in little theatres
and large theatres, by amateurs and professionals, on radio and television. Scarcely four decades
old, Waiting for Godot has sold over a million copies in the original French and nearly that many
in Becketts own English translation. Starring Steve Martin and Robin Williams, it was a smash
hit at the Lincoln Center Theatre, with tickets available by lottery only. Quite an achievement for
a comic drama in which absolutely nothing happens. (One reviewer, in fact, called it a two-act
play in which nothing happens twice.)

Waiting for Godot contains clowning of the highest degree, which attracts audiences, and likely
the plays enigma contributes to its appeal. Its symbolism is obscure or non- existent; its
message is individual to each audience member, and the nothing happens becomes our daily
existence.

On a lonely country road near a tree, two elderly men, half-tramp-half-clown, amuse themselves
with conversation that alternates between hope and despair as they wait for someone by the name
of Godot who has, they believe, given them to understand that their patience at the rendezvous
will be rewarded. Pozzo and Lucky, master and slave, enter and leave, and as the play ends,
Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting.

The tramps are essentially without identity; although they appear on the cast list as Vladimir and
Estragon, they address one another as Gogo and Didi, and when Godots messenger arrives to
announce that he, Godot, cannot come that day, he addresses Vladimir as Monsieur Albert.

The play is particularly fertile ground for symbol-seekers. Perhaps Godot is God, Christianity,
rebirth, redemption, hope and despair. After all, Didi and Gogo have memo- ries of a proper
Protestant Bible, and the barren tree of the first act sprouts a few leaves in the second act. Maybe
God has come and gone and not been recognized.

Perhaps Waiting for Godot is an allegory of French resistance to the Germans. It was written in
1949; Samuel Beckett had survived World War II in France, and the play was originally written
in French. Perhaps the play symbolizes Irish resistance to the English, or Becketts relationship
to James Joyce, or any number of other possible meanings.
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To all of these postulations, Beckett has emphatically denied symbolic explanation. The tree
sprouting leaves, he says, is not to show hope or inspiration, but only to record the pas- sage of
time. At the time of first production, when Beckett was pressed hard for an answer, he snapped,
If I knew who Godot was, I would have said so in the play. Or If Godot were God, I would
have called him that. We shall not likely find out who Godot is, and shall waste our time trying.

On the other hand, nothing can be clearer than what Didi and Gogo are doing. They tell us a
dozen times: They are waiting for Godot, and we are to leave it at that.

So what do we have left? Objectively, Didi and Gogo would like to die, but they are unable to
kill themselves because the will to live (over which they have no control) is stronger than the
will to die. They wearily occupy themselves with spinning out the skein of life. Their wordplay
is all that separates them from nothingness; it is their only weapon against the void, enabling
them to bear the unbearable wait; this ludicrous activity is intensely vital. They have
miraculously preserved tenderness and humor: a solicitude that never becomes aggressive, a kind
of desperate compassion that bathes the nameless desert.

Human relations

What we are doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to
know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is dear. We are waiting for
Godot to come.

The play is about waiting. This waiting is as likely to be the height of foolishness as the absolute
of virtue. But man, no matter how tattered and inarticulate, is still there; he has not yet walked
off and left the stage to darkness. Even if Godot never comes, the wait might as well include
laughter.

Waiting for Godot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Grave By David Kranes

Have you heard the one about the two tramps who were killing time? Or was it filling time?

Is Samuel Beckett the stage poet of gloom? Or is he a baggy-pant burlesque comedian? (Bert
Lahr acted in Godot; Buster Keaton in his Film.) Does the spirit involuntarily lift in the gaunt
Irishmans grove of denuded trees. . .or fall? Does the flesh fall and the voice arise?

We give birth astride the grave, Beckett utters at one point. Some critics arm them- selves with
the word birth; others with the word grave. Perhaps more of them ought to have chosen the word
astride.

Samuel Beckett, who always loved the shape and play of language, was fond of the epi- gram
from St. Augustine: Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume: one of the
thieves was damned.
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During this past year, in response to Becketts 1989 death, remembrances by writers such as Mel
Gussow of the New York Times stress his quiet and reflective caring, his interest in others. And
perhaps those finding only morbidity forget that in 1941 and 1942, Beckett worked in the French
Resistance and that in 1945 he worked for the Irish Red Cross in Normandy.

...you must go on, I cant go on, Ill go on, Becketts novel, The Unnamable, ends. In one of
Becketts last plays, Not I., a pinspot isolates only a mouth on stage, the rest of the body in
darkness. How utterly bleak, the gloom-seer criestaking the image and the title literally,
unaware probably of his or her own pun in a play about a voice: how utterly bleak. In the
beginning was the pun, says the titular character in Becketts novel, Murphy. I think
(hiccough)...I am, from another play. In fact, playing with the titleNot I/(eye)... rather,
mouth, the mouth self-confesses to being a mouth on fire, a stream of words which cant
stop...no stopping it. Bleak? How utterly alive!

Fear not; one of the thieves was saved.

It would seem we are on the playful and precarious edge of irony here...or even astride it. The
final stage gesture of the Auditor in Not I is that of helpless compassion. The helpless falls; the
compassion rises.

In a 1949 dialogue with Georges Duthuit, Beckett spoke to the subject of his own voice: its
gravity; its undying instinct:

...the expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, noth- ing from
which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obli- gation to
express.

and one notes that, in each phrase, the first word is no; the last word, express.

You are about to enter the world of Samuel Becketts most produced play, Waiting for Godot,
and will hear the following opening exchange (note the first words of each charac- ter):

Estragon: Nothing to be done.

Vladimir: Im beginning to come round to that opinion. Nothing. . . .Im beginning.