Samuel Beckett - Life and analysis of Waiting for Godot

In questo appunto di letteratura inglese ci si focalizzerà brevemente sul contesto in cui Beckett è vissuto e i suoi successi per poi passare ad un'analisi dettagliata del contenuto, personaggi, stile e tempo della sua opera "Waiting for Godot".

Humanism and pessimism: description of the historical context

After the war many intellectuals had to reconstruct their country from a moral and a political point of view.

The World War II, which had produced the Nazi concentration camps and the atomic bomb, had generated a new conscience of the destructive potential of scientific knowledge. Post-war culture embodied a modern humanism as the basis for a new society but with pessimism. According to existentialism man was determined by his free choice.

Sartre was the major existentialist thinker and influenced the dramatists of the Theatre of the Absurd such as Beckett.

The term “Theatre of the Absurd” indicates a type of drama which expresses “the metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition”. In the post-war time there is a lack of reference points of the past, and existence is out of harmony. This kind of theatre is different because there isn’t a logical construction of rational ideas. Another important feature of this theatre is incapacity to communicate with his fellow men.

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Briefly narration of Beckett’s life

Beckett was born near Dublin in 1906. He graduated in Dublin in 1928. He worked in Paris (at the Ecole Normale Superieure); here he came into contact with avant-garde intellectuals and artists of the 1930s, above all with Joyce. He joined the French Resistance during the World War II. During these years he wrote a partly autobiographical novel called Watt, and Trilogy Molloy, Mallone Dies. He wanted to explore and describe the human condition. He became famous with his first play and awaited Godot. (Waiting For Godot – 1953). Later he got a Nobel Prize for literature.

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The Beckett’s plays

Beckett wrote for the Theatre for over twenty years, introducing the Theatre of the Absurd. All his plays deal with the inability to communicate, both loneliness and human impotence and negation.

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Waiting for Godot: general introduction

It was performed in Paris in 1953 and this play disrupted all the conventions of the traditional Theatre because there was no plot, nothing happened. The setting was a desert and there was only one object: a bare tree; and Mr Godot, whose arrival appeared to be dissolution, never arrived. This play became a great success and was translated into many foreign languages and performed all over the world.

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Key aspects of Waiting for Godot and analysis of the two acts

In Beckett’s Theatre we can see a static world where things never change, but they end in an endless circle. This is emphasized by physical condition (handicapped or moribund) and also by absence of plot and circular structure. The characters seem to be imprisoned in a single place.

The play is divided into two acts and it is about two French tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who spend their time waiting for Godot. We see them standing by the side of a road in a bare landscape with a tree. They are talking about the supposed appointment with Godot, who represents their only hope to escape from their miserable situation. They have no idea about the day it is. They spend the time speculating on the reasons of their condition; they also think to kill themselves. The conversation often becomes fragmented. The characters become absorbed in their thoughts and memories. This monotony is interrupted by the appearance of another couple of characters: Pozzo and Lucky. Later a boy appears with a message from Godot saying that Godot will arrive the next day.

The second act takes place the next day and repeats the structure of the first. Pozzo, now blind, doesn’t remember anything of the previous day. The boy returns with another message from Godot saying he will arrive the next day. At the end of the play the two protagonists consider the idea of killing themselves, and try to commit suicide, but they fail for comical reasons. Even if the effect is comic, its meaning is tragic.

This meant that for Beckett the same ideas and events are simultaneously tragic and comic. Finally the protagonists decide to leave but they remain standing where they are, waiting for Godot.

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Endless repetition: Beckett’s play characteristics in comparison of the traditional ones

The only facts that the audience can notice are the suffering of the tramps, their attempts to pass the time, their waiting for Godot, their wish to part, the appearance of Pozzo and Lucky, and the boy announcing that Mr Godot won’t come that evening but the next.

In fact in this play nothing happens; there is a lack of events and the structure is circular and negative, while a traditional play has an introduction, development, a solution of the problem and a conclusion. Here the setting and the time are always the same. The structure of the second act is symmetrical to the first: there is a repetition of the things seen and heard in the first. In the play there is a sense of endless repetition and people have the sensation that the events will happen many times again. The characters have no memory in the first act, but in the second neither Pozzo nor the messenger boy can remember. This causes a disorienting effect on Vladimir, Estragon and the audience.

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Time conception in Waiting for Godot

In traditional plays there is a chronological development of the events, while in Beckett’s works there is an impression of immobility because there isn’t a past or future but only a series of repetitions. All these works are timeless, but the characters are obsessed with the problem of time and they try to fill it with dialogues and waiting for somebody.

Characters’ analysis in Waiting for Godot

• One feature of Beckett’s works is that everything is reduced to the bare essentials, so the characters are not clearly defined people. They have no personality and no memory and so they depend on the other to feel that they exist. The relationship between Vladimir and Estragon doesn’t give the idea of two people communicating with each other or expressing their ideas or opinions. These characters play an elaborate language game.

Godot is very enigmatic. Some critics think that Godot could refer to the absence of God in the modern world, but Beckett himself didn’t agree with this interpretation. Godot can be considered a central absence around which the characters organize their activity. The arrival of Godot (desired and feared) could be the end of the absurd tragic comedy of existence for Vladimir and Estragon, but without arrival they are unable to leave the stage.

According to Martin Esslin what gives meaning to the play is the waiting itself. The waiting is an essential aspect of the human condition, so Godot represents the objective of our waiting: an event, a thing, a person, death!

Themes that can be found in Waiting for Godot

The message of the play is: there is no meaning in life, we have no purpose, and we live in an absurd and indifferent universe. This idea is close to the philosophy of French existentialism. The loneliness and man’s confinement and the inability to communicate in the play are symbols of the human condition. People are trapped and destined to loneliness and lack of communication.

The language in Beckett’s plays is made up of linguistic stereotypes that represent the vacuity of ready-made phrases. The words produced by the characters are only a way to fill days and nights, so the dialogues become more fragmented and broken in grammar and meaning. Beckett emphasizes the inadequacy of words with the use of mime, silence and circus-like gags.