Vladimir and Estragon Vladimir and Estragon Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List In spite of the existential concept that man cannot take the essence of his existence from someone else, in viewing this play, we have to view Vladimir and Estragon in their relationship to each other. In fact, the novice viewing this play for the first time often fails to note any significant difference between the two characters. In hearing the play read, even the most experienced theater person will often confuse one of the characters for the other. Therefore, the similarities are as important as the differences between them. Both are tramps dressed in costumes which could be interchanged. They both wear big boots which don't necessarily fit, and both have big bowler hats. Their suits are baggy and ill-fitting. (In Act II, when Estragon removes the cord he uses for a belt, his trousers are so baggy that they fall about his feet.) Their costumes recall the type found in burlesque or vaudeville houses, the type often associated with the character of the "Little Tramp," portrayed by Charlie Chaplin. The Chaplinesque-type costume prepares us for many of the comic routines that Vladimir and Estragon perform.

The opening scene with Estragon struggling with his boots and Vladimir doffing and donning his hat to inspect it for lice could be a part of a burlesque routine. The resemblance of their costumes to Chaplin's supports the view that these tramps are outcasts from society, but have the same plucky defiance to continue to exist as Chaplin's "Little Tramp" did. Another action which could come directly from the burlesque theater occurs when Vladimir finds a hat on the ground which he tries on, giving his own to Estragon, who tries it on while giving his hat to Vladimir, who tries it on while giving the new-found hat to Estragon, who tries it on, etc. This comic episode continues until the characters — and the audience — are bored with it. Other burlesque-like scenes involve Vladimir's struggles to help Estragon with his boots while Estragon is hopping awkwardly about the stage on one foot to keep from falling; another scene involves the loss of Estragon's pants, while other scenes involve the two tramps' grotesque efforts to help Pozzo and Lucky get up off the ground and their inept attempts to hang themselves.

Thus, the two characters are tied together partly by being two parts of a burlesque act. The Monotony of Life, A Brief Analysis of Waiting For Godot | Understanding Weakness The Monotony of Life, A Brief Analysis of Waiting For Godot August 8, 2012 4 Comments Samuel Beckett has explicitly stated that the character Godot, in his classic play, Waiting For Godot, is not an allegory for God. If Beckett’s word on his play is believed to be true, there are still significant biblical corollaries that need to be analyzed in order to understand the main existential theme of meaninglessness in the play. The two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, eternally wait for a man named Godot on the side of a road they never take. In a Christian point of view, this could be seen as Vladimir and Estragon having the free will to take the path toward enlightenment, and yet choosing inaction instead (and thus never attaining salvation).

The parallels between Christian and Existential philosophy can be seen throughout the play, and if the reader is not aware of Becket’s statements on Godot, then they could come to the conclusion that Godot is indeed an allegory for God. This reaction can be most easily understood through Vladimir and Estragon’s initial hypothesis as to why they are waiting for Godot, “Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for? Vladimir: Were you not there? Estragon: I can’t have been listening. Vladimir: Oh … Nothing very definite. Estragon: A kind of prayer. Vladimir: Precisely.” One may argue however, that Vladimir and Estragon do not seem like reliable sources because of their flawed character traits, especially due to the irony of the play. However, there are many direct and indirect biblical references in the play that can support a Christian hypothesis. The biblical references pertain to salvation and are allegorical, particularly in one conversation where Godot is Christ the savior and the two tramps are the two thieves, “Vladimir: Our savior. Two Thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other… (he searches for the contrary of saved)… damned.

Estragon: Saved from what? Vladimir: Hell”. Vladimir suggests that if they do not find Godot, then they will be damned to the hell of living without meaning, hence the conflict of the play. The mood portrayed just by the setting alone is depressing (a country road, a dirt mound, and a willow tree), but very plain, almost like purgatory. Through a Christian interpretation, the main characters are the two thieves waiting in limbo to find out whether they will be saved. Although Vladimir and Estragon wait and come across a few travelers on the way, none of them are Godot. However, the tramps would not know that because they do not even know what Godot looks like. The first act seems inconclusive until the end of the day when a messenger boy is sent from Godot to tell the tramps that he is not coming. Interestingly enough, the messenger boy is none other than a shepherd, a recurring symbol in both the bible and Waiting For Godot. Jesus was sent by God to herd the sheep and guide them to salvation. Godot sends his shepherd to guide the tramps into inaction by not giving them any guidance at all.

The second act and day comes and goes the same as the last one, and the same as it always has gone and always will be for the tramps. Vladimir and Estragon deconstruct linear time within the play by not taking action, and thus suffer through the same day every day. The brother of the messenger boy from before comes to give the same news to the main characters. This boy seemingly gives a hint of Godot’s identity, “Vladimir: (softly) Has he a beard, Mr. Godot? Boy: Yes Sir. Vladimir: Fair or… (he hesitates)… or black? Boy: I think it’s white, Sir. Vladimir: Christ have mercy on us…” Through characterizing Godot as an allegory of a classical depiction of God, and then denying him being God, Beckett is saying that our perception of God is false. The play connects to the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard through the blending of Existentialist and Christian ideas. An individual must find God himself in order to escape meaninglessness, and not fatalistically wait for a divine being to arbitrarily save him. Like this: Like Loading...

Synopsis: Waiting for Godot — Utah Shakespeare Festival (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 plot--i.e., the sequence of events--is not at issue here. What matters is what the director does with the plot--and 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 tragedy--if such is possible. (In the language of the play, French, God--or Dieu--in 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 "that's all there is, folks," "shouldn't there be more," or "ain't it grand?" Or in a magical world 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. × Vladimir and Estragon Vladimir and Estragon Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List The rising curtain exposes a landscape that is strange and alien. It most resembles some strange place in outer space with its haunting and brooding sense of despair. A country road or an actual lonely road is the main setting, and there is a single tree.

We know there is a ditch on the other side of the road because immediately Estragon tells Vladimir that he slept last night in the ditch. The loneliness and the isolation of the setting sets the tone for the play. The idea of a road implies a journey, a movement, a purpose to life, but we see, instead, two deserted, isolated figures with no place to go and with no journey to look forward to. These figures are dressed in rags and tatters, clothes that would be worn by two tramps in an old, second-rate burlesque production. Thus the setting and the clothing make an ominous comment before we are too far into the drama. The play opens with Estragon involved in a tremendous struggle — but not a struggle of a highly metaphysical nature; instead, it is a physical struggle to get his stuck boot off his sore foot. The struggle has literally exhausted him, and he gives up the struggle with the opening words of the play: "Nothing to be done" (emphasis ours). Estragon's words are repeated two more times by Vladimir in the next moments of the play, and variations of this phrase become one of the central statements of the drama.

The phrase is innocent enough in itself and obviously directed toward a specific struggle the removal of the boot. But as frustrating as the boot is, this is still a minor concern when compared to what Estragon and Vladimir are to do with the problem of waiting for Godot. In response to Estragon's struggle with his foot, Vladimir ignores the immediate physical problem but agrees with Estragon metaphysically that there is "nothing to be done," even though he has not "yet tried everything." Thus the two opening speeches, innocent and simple enough in themselves, set the tone for the entire drama. The words carry a foreboding overtone which will be later associated with the word "appalled," or as Vladimir calls it, "AP-PALLED," and also the two tramps' inability to laugh. After the opening words, we find that the two tramps are linked to each other in some undefined, ambiguous way. Vladimir greets Estragon with the comment "I thought you were gone forever," and since they are "together again at last," they will "have to celebrate." Vladimir then discovers that Estragon spent the night "in a ditch . . .

over there" and that he was beaten by "the same lot as usual." This reference to a beaten man in a ditch carries overtones of other matters, but cannot be definitely correlated. For example, this could be an oblique reference to the biblical story of the Good Samaritan who finds a man beaten, robbed, and thrown into a ditch and rescues him. But no Good Samaritan has come to Estragon's rescue. Instead, he has apparently spent the entire night alone in the ditch, which means that both of them are, as their clothes indicate, in the most extreme, impoverished condition that they have ever known. Estragon remains concerned with his boots; Vladimir, however, is extremely impatient and finds the conversation about the boots to be profitless. He turns the conversation to more abstract matters. Very early in the play, then, the difference between the two tramps is established: Estragon is concerned about immediate, practical problems — the removal of his boots, the beating, and now his aching foot; Vladimir, in contrast, laments the general nature of their sufferings by remembering better days that used to be. Whereas Estragon's foot hurts, Vladimir is concerned with suffering of a different nature.

The philosophical concept of the nature of suffering is first introduced here by the contrasting physical ailments of each character: Estragon has sore feet which hurt him, and Vladimir has some type of painful urinary infection which causes him to suffer; one character hurts and the other one suffers. Ultimately, the physical disabilities characterize the two men (an aching foot is easier to locate and describe than is a painful urinary infection) and also symbolize the various spiritual disabilities of the two characters. Vladimir's thoughts shift from his urinary problems to the biblical concept of "Hope deferred maketh the something sick . . ." but he is unable to complete the proverb. (See Proverbs 13:12: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.") The proverb fits Vladimir and Estragon's condition perfectly since we will see them in a state of sickness of heart; their hopes are constantly deferred as they continually wait for Godot, and their desires are never fulfilled since Godot never arrives. Vladimir then concludes as did Estragon: "Nothing to be done." Estragon has not gotten his boot off, and he looks inside it to see what was causing the difficulty.

Vladimir then chastises Estragon for one of man's most common faults: blaming one's boots for the faults of one's foot. This accusation, of course, refers to the tendency of all of mankind to blame any external thing — boots, society, circumstances, etc. — for deficiencies in one's own nature. It is easier for Estragon to blame the boots for his aching feet than to blame his own feet. The idea of Estragon's foot hurting and Vladimir's suffering, combined with their appalling human condition, causes Vladimir to realize again that there is "nothing to be done." This suffering and lack of hope turn Vladimir's thoughts to the suffering of the two thieves on the cross and their lack of hope. Then from the Old Testament proverb about hope, Vladimir's thoughts turn to the New Testament and the possibility of hope expressed in the story of Christ and the two thieves on the cross. There were two thieves, as there are now two tramps, and one of the thieves was saved; therefore, maybe there may be hope for either Vladimir or Estragon if they repent — but there is nothing to repent of, except being born.

This remark causes "Vladimir to break into a hearty laugh which he immediately stifles," and he reminds Estragon that "one daren't even laugh any more"; one may "merely smile." This comment is another early indication of the seriousness of their condition. Vladimir's apprehension over laughing suggests that they both have a nagging awareness of the precariousness and insecurity of their condition, a condition that extends beyond their physical concerns. In the discussion of the thieves, Estragon is unable to participate fully because he can't remember the details. In frustration, Vladimir yells to Estragon: "Come on . . . return the ball can't you, once in a way?" Vladimir's complaint is descriptive of much of the dialogue in the remainder of the play; it is very much like two people playing a game with one another and one is unable to keep the ball in play. Estragon constantly fails to "keep the ball in play"; that is, throughout the drama, he is unable to sustain his end of the conversation.

Even in response to the matter of being saved "from hell" or "from death," Estragon merely replies, "Well what of it?" Therefore, even if they were to repent, Estragon can't understand what they might be saved from, who their savior would be, and, furthermore, why the four Gospels differ so significantly. The discussion is brought firmly to a close with Estragon's pronouncement: "People are bloody ignorant apes." From this discussion, the two tramps confront the central problem of the play. Estragon looks about the bleak, desolate landscape and tells Vladimir: "Let's go." The recurring thematic refrain is then put forth: they can't leave because they are "waiting for Godot." They are not sure they are in the right place; they are not sure they are here on the correct day; they are not sure what day of the week it is (maybe it is yesterday); they think they were to meet Godot on Saturday, but if today is Saturday, is it the right Saturday? At least, they are fairly certain that they were to meet by a tree, and there is only one tree on the horizon, but it could be either a bush or a dead tree.

The tree, whatever its symbolic value (the cross, the hanging tree, spring's renewal), is a rather pathetic specimen and cannot be a very hopeful sign. Completely frustrated, they resign themselves to waiting. Vladimir paces, and Estragon sleeps. Suddenly, Vladimir, feeling lonely, awakens Estragon, who awakens from his dream with a start. Estragon wants to tell about his dream (or nightmare), but Vladimir refuses to listen to it. Estragon's nightmare, even without its subject being revealed, symbolizes the various fears that these tramps feel in this alienated world. Vladimir's refusal to listen suggests his fear and apprehension of all of life and of certain things that are best left unsaid. Estragon, then, unable to tell about his nightmare, tries to tell a joke about an Englishman in a brothel. Again Vladimir refuses to listen and walks off. Estragon's attempt to tell his nightmare and then his attempt to tell the joke about the Englishman — a story that is never finished represent an effort to pass the time while the two are waiting for Godot.

Since they have been waiting and will be waiting for an indeterminate time, the essential problem is what to do with one's life while waiting, how to pass the time while waiting. When Vladimir returns, the two embrace and then they try to decide what they are going to do while waiting. During the embrace, the tender, fraternal rapport of the moment is suddenly broken by Estragon's mundane observation that Vladimir smells of garlic. This technique is typical of Beckett's method of deflating man's pretensions by allowing the absurd and the vulgar to dominate the action. The eternal question returns: what to do while waiting? Estragon suggests that perhaps they could hang themselves. That would certainly put an end to their waiting. Hanging also has another incentive: it would excite them sexually and cause each to have an erection and an ejaculation. But the matter of hanging creates some problems. Vladimir should hang himself first because he is the heaviest. If the straggly tree does not break under Vladimir's heavier weight, then it would be strong enough for Estragon's lighter weight.

But if Estragon went first, the tree might break when Vladimir tried it, and then Estragon (Gogo) would be dead, and poor Vladimir (Didi) would be alive and completely alone. These considerations are simply too weighty to solve. Man's attempts to solve things rationally bring about all types of difficulties; it is best to do nothing — "It's safer." Accordingly, they decide to "wait and see what [Godot] says," hoping that he, or someone, will make a decision about them or that something will be done for them. They will make no effort to change their rather intolerable and impossible situation, but, instead, they will hope that someone or some objective event will eventually change things for them. Having resolved to wait for Godot, they then wonder what he might offer them and, even more important, "what exactly did we ask him for?" Whatever it was they asked him for, Godot was equally vague and equivocal in his reply. Maybe he is at home thinking it over, consulting friends, correspondents, banks, etc. The tramps' entire discussion about Godot indicates how little, if indeed anything at all, they know of this Godot.

The fact that Vladimir can't remember what they asked of Godot indicates that they are unable to understand their own needs. They rely on someone else to tell them what they need. Similarly, the request and the possible response are discussed in terms of a person requesting a bank loan or some type of financial transaction. A philosophical question then begins to emerge: how does one relate to Godot? If he is God, can one enter into a business contract with this person? And if so, where is He? If Godot (or God) has to consult many outside sources before replying or appearing, then Vladimir and Estragon's condition is not very reassuring. And, if, as it now begins to become obvious, Vladimir and Estragon represent modern man in his relationship with God (Godot), then the modern condition of man is disturbingly precarious. What, then, is man in this modern world? He is a beggar or a tramp reduced to the most dire circumstances: he is lost, not knowing where to turn. He is denied all rights, even the right to laugh: ESTRAGON: We've no rights anymore? VLADIMIR: You'd make me laugh if it wasn't prohibited.

Furthermore, they are reduced to crawling "on [their] hands and knees." Of course, in ancient cultures, man always approached a deity on his hands and knees. But in Beckett's dramas, a character's physical condition is correlated with his spiritual condition; all outward aspects of the two tramps reflect man's inward condition. In a feeble attempt to assert their freedom, Estragon murmurs that they are not tied, but his assertion does not carry much conviction. The assertion, however feeble, that they are not tied might suggest man's revolt from God, because as soon as the idea of revolt is verbalized, they immediately hear a noise as though someone is approaching — Godot or God — to chastise them for heresy. They huddle together in fear: ESTRAGON: You gave me a fright. VLADIMIR: I thought it was he. ESTRAGON: Who? VLADIMIR: Godot. After the discussion of whether or not they are tied has occupied their thoughts, Vladimir gives Estragon their last carrot to eat. Now they have only a turnip left to eat, and these reduced circumstances make it necessary for them to continue to wait for Godot and possible salvation.

While eating his carrot, Estragon ruminates further about being "tied" or "ti-ed." Even though Vladimir feebly asserts that they are not tied, we noted that they are indeed tied to the idea of waiting. They cannot assert themselves; they have ceased struggling; there is even "no use wriggling." They are merely two stranded figures on an alien landscape who have given up struggling and are dependent upon waiting for Godot, realizing there is "nothing to be done." Thus, the play opens, and this section closes on the same note: nothing to be done. SparkNotes: Waiting for Godot: Characters Waiting for Godot Summary Act I: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's Entrance Vladimir - One of the two main characters of the play. Estragon calls him Didi, and the boy addresses him as Mr. Albert. He seems to be the more responsible and mature of the two main characters. Estragon - The second of the two main characters. Vladimir calls him Gogo. He seems weak and helpless, always looking for Vladimir's protection. He also has a poor memory, as Vladimir has to remind him in the second act of the events that happened the previous night.

Pozzo - He passes by the spot where Vladimir and Estragon are waiting and provides a diversion. In the second act, he is blind and does not remember meeting Vladimir and Estragon the night before. Lucky - Pozzo's slave, who carries Pozzo's bags and stool. In Act I, he entertains by dancing and thinking. However, in Act II, he is dumb. Boy - He appears at the end of each act to inform Vladimir that Godot will not be coming that night. In the second act, he insists that he was not there the previous night. Godot - The man for whom Vladimir and Estragon wait unendingly. Godot never appears in the play. His name and character are often thought to refer to God. More Help A Literary Analysis on “Waiting for Godot” By Samuel Beckett – Essay Sample A Literary Analysis on “Waiting for Godot” By Samuel Beckett – Essay Sample Home › Essay Examples › World Literature › A Literary Analysis on “Wait ... Samuel Beckett’s most celebrated play in two acts “Waiting for Godot” was first published in 1952 in Paris. Originally written in French, it was soon translated into English by the author himself.

The play tells about two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for someone named Godot. The tragicomedy doesn’t have any specific plot; there is no particular story being told, as it is usually done in dramatists’ works, but rather there is some static situation being described. Play’s main action is waiting. Despite its seeming simplicity and minimalism, the dramatic piece turns out to be amazingly rich, originally fun and tragic. Play’s characters deal with unsolved philosophical puzzles, inviting us to search for interpretations among all kinds of social, political and religious schools. The two protagonists, emotionally naked and miserable, serve to represent man’s pitiful vulnerability and unexplainable cruelty. Interpersonal relationships in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” are particularly significant, since the whole work is actually based on the interaction of the central characters and how they struggle to satisfy one another’s need for companionship and boredom. Vladimir and Estragon, who are united in their misery, escape loneliness in each other’s company and even if frequently tending to separate in fact reveal themselves to be a truly loving friendly couple, providing comfort to one another. Beckett’s drama is full of unpredictability.

The characters are unusual, motivated in bizarre and curious ways; their conversation is filled with mostly nonsensical blathering. The plot structure is perfectly random; there’s no certain opening, culmination, and conclusion. The play is full of never answered questions of which the most intriguing one is “Who is Godot?” The audience is not presented with some easily recognized solutions to accurately observed troubles. The spectator is surprised at not obtaining any directions to what is the play’s moralizing message. Beckett skillfully makes his listeners wait for something to happen in the play, subtly alluding to the emotions his central characters are experiencing. As they wait for someone named Godot (we never find out who he actually is), the two tramps wait for something to change in their lives, and meanwhile, they pass their time, talking about nothing in particular, discussing mostly insignificant matters, yet from time to time referring to the profound issues, uttering the words that bear deep philosophical meaning. The two major characters though alike in many ways, are in fact quite dissimilar. Even their physical performances differ. Vladimir is impatient, always reluctant to keep still or stay where he is because of boredom or nervousness. He generally walks or stands throughout the play.

Estragon is mostly motionless, not willing, or not having the strength or power to move. He is described as sitting down frequently or even dozing off for several times. When spending time together, they constantly experience a certain conflict of interest on this basis. When one is willing to take a nap, the other one is more enthusiastic about doing something more active, at least talk: “Estragon: Let’s stop talking for a minute, do you mind? Vladimir: All right. (Estragon sits down on the mound. Vladimir paces agitatedly to and fro, halting from time to time to gaze into distance off. Estragon falls asleep. Vladimir halts finally before Estragon.) Gogo! . . . Gogo! . . . GOGO! Estragon wakes with a start. Estragon: I was asleep! Why will you never let me sleep? Vladimir: I felt lonely.” (Beckett) Need custom paper on World Literature? We Deliver Top Quality On Time As Promised! Ready to get started?

Just click the button to be directed to a secure page so you can enter the details of your paper Waiting for Godot Summary - eNotes.com Waiting for Godot Summary Trivia Waiting for Godot Summary Estragon and Vladimir sit on a mound near a country road, waiting for Godot. Both are old men who have slipped into homelessness and despair, and while they sit they discuss their lives. Pozzo and his slave Lucky approach Estragon and Vladimir. Slave Lucky entertains them with his wild dancing. After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy brings Vladimir and Estragon a message: Godot will not come today. In the second act, Estragon and Vladimir again wait for their friend Godot, and again the boy comes with a message that Godot will come tomorrow. The two men are left waiting. link Link Summary of the Play Waiting for Godot is a play in two acts. Act I begins on a country road by a tree. It is evening. Estragon, an old man, is sitting on a low mound trying to remove his boot. Vladimir, another old man, joins him. They begin to chat. They have apparently known each other for years.

Once perhaps respectable, they are now homeless, debilitated, and often suicidal. They wonder out loud why they did not kill themselves years ago; they consider the possibility of doing it today. They are waiting for someone they call “Godot”. While they wait, they share conversation, food, and memories. Two other elderly men, Pozzo and Lucky, arrive on the scene. It is clear that Pozzo is the master, and Lucky is the slave. Upon command, the slave dances and thinks out loud for the entertainment of the others, until he is forcibly silenced. After Lucky and Pozzo depart, a boy arrives. He tells Estragon and Vladimir that Godot will not be there today, but will be there tomorrow. He leaves, and they continue to wait. The second act is almost the same as the first. The tree has sprouted leaves, Estragon and Vladimir chat while they wait for Godot, and Pozzo and Lucky arrive again. This time, Pozzo is blind and helpless, and Lucky is mute. After some interaction, Pozzo and Lucky leave, and the boy arrives. He has the same message as before. Godot will be there tomorrow. Estragon and Vladimir are left to wait as before.

The Life and Work of Samuel Beckett “I have a clear memory of my own fetal existence. It was an existence where no voice, no possible movement could free me from the agony and darkness I was subjected to.” So says Samuel Barclay Beckett who was born on or about Good Friday, April 13, 1906. He was born in Foxrock, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, in a large house called Cooldrinagh. Here, in this secluded three story Tudor home, surrounded by acres of gardens, a croquet lawn, stables for his mother’s donkeys and dogs, a hen house, and a tennis court, Beckett and his older brother spent their childhood. High brick walls separated them from the outside world, and ensured them uninterrupted tea parties, piano lessons, and formal dinners. Their much-loved father took them hiking and swimming. Their mother, against whom Beckett rebelled almost all of his life, took them to church. By the time they were five, the boys were in school. By the time they were 12, they were local tennis champions—aiming all shots at their opponents’ heads.

Before he left for boarding school in 1920, Beckett had already developed into an avid reader. He kept his books on a small shelf above his bed, along with busts of Shakespeare and Dante. At boarding school, he excelled at sports, and received a solid educational foundation. He entered Trinity College (Dublin) in 1923. There he became an intellectual. He read Descartes, French poetry, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Apollinaire, and discovered the theatre of O’Casey and Pirandello. He was also rebellious and moody. He had a reputation for reckless driving, heavy drinking, and irreverent behavior. In spite of this, he graduated first in his class in 1927 with a major in modern languages. In preparation for a teaching career at Trinity, Beckett went to France, where he worked with James Joyce, did research on René Descartes, and won a prize for his poem, Whoroscope. He wrote a study on Proust, noting: “We are alone.

We cannot know, and we cannot be known;” and “There is no communication because there are no vehicles of communication.” Living by these words, he resigned from teaching once he received his M.A. degree from Trinity in 1931. He had hated it, and his students characterized him thus: “An exhausted aesthete who all life’s poisonous wines had sipped, and found them rather tedious.” By the time his father died in 1933, leaving him a small income, Beckett’s character had already been formed. Between bouts with physical and mental illnesses that included flus, colds, aching joints, depression, anxiety, boils, cysts, constipation, insomnia, and glaucoma in both eyes, he would live the rest of his life as a writer. In the next fifty years he would go on to produce an impressive collection of work in a variety of genres. He created essays, poems, short stories, novels, plays, mime, and film. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In December 1989, after too long a stay in “an old crock’s home,” Samuel Beckett died of respiratory failure at the age of 83. Right before he died, he was asked if anything in life was worthwhile. “Precious little,” he replied. Before attempting to make any sense out of Waiting for Godot, it is necessary to put some things into perspective. When Beckett wrote this play (from October 1948 to January 1949), he was already more than forty years old. Half of his life had passed. He considered himself a novelist who wrote Godot #1 “as a form of relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.” It was like a game to him, a momentary release from the real work of constructing fiction. It was not the vehicle he would have chosen to make him famous. However, once it was performed in 1953, it did make him famous. It inspired an abundance of critical comment, explanation and exegesis in a relatively short time. It became a contemporary classic. Beckett consistently refused to comment on, or explain his work to the public.

“My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.” Beckett maintained control over his text throughout his life. Originally writing it in French, he translated it for an English-speaking audience, and both translated and directed the German production in 1975. He had it memorized and, when appropriate, changed some of the dialogue and stage direction himself. He wanted to “get it right”, he said. He was not alone in this. Over the years, the material has been scrutinized by experts with their own biases, all trying to get it right. There is a story in Beckett’s novel, Watt, written in 1942, about a Mr. Ash, who goes to a great deal of trouble to check his watch (one similar to the one that reappears in Pozzo’s pocket) for the exact time. “Seventeen minutes past five exactly, as God is my witness,” he says. However, right at that moment Big Ben, the official clock of Westminster, strikes six.

“This in my opinion is the type of all information whatsoever, be it voluntary or solicited,” Beckett’s narrator concludes. If you want a stone, ask a turnover. If you want a turnover, ask plum pudding.” This story characterizes some of the critics, as well as some of the interpretations of Waiting for Godot. It has been seen as existentialist (depicting man as lost as insecure in a world without God); Marxist (representing man turning away from his capitalist society, and embracing socialism and communism as alternatives to political alienation); Freudian (Vladimir represents the ‘ego’, Estragon represents the ‘id’); and Christian (the play as a parable illustrating man’s need for salvation). Yet, while these theories have some validity, they are all open to debate. They reflect a complex culture but limit understanding of the play. “The great success of Waiting for Godot,” Beckett said, “had arisen from a misunderstanding: critic and public alike were busy interpreting in allegorical or symbolic terms a play which strove at all costs to avoid definition.” The inspiration for Godot may be found in the work of the late nineteenth-century symbolist playwrights.

A description of symbolist drama, written by Remy de Gourmont in 1895, (which was also referred to as “static drama”), seems to have some relevance: Hidden in mist somewhere there is an island, and on that island there is a castle, and in that castle there is a great room lit by a little lamp. And in that room people are waiting. Waiting for what? They don’t know! They’re waiting for someone to open the door, waiting for their lamp to go out, waiting for Fear and Death. They talk. Yes, they speak words that shatter the silence of the moment. And then they listen again, leaving their sentences unfinished, their gesture uncomplicated. They are listening. They are waiting. Will she come perhaps, or won’t she? Yes, she will come; she always comes. But it is late, and she will not come perhaps until tomorrow. The people collected under that little lamp in that great room have, nevertheless, begun to smile; they still have hope. Then there is a knock - a ‘knock’ and that is all there is: And it is Life Complete, All of Life.

While it may be helpful to examine the roots of Beckett’s work, it is also necessary to mention that a new category was invented by critics of the fifties and sixties to house Waiting for Godot. This category, Theater of the Absurd, was used to describe the new kind of theater that Beckett represented. While Martin Esslin defined it as “striving to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought,” other critics had their own interpretations. They characterized it as having absurd dialogue, characters and situations. It included the work of dramatists as diverse as Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Eugene Ionesco. Some critics referred to Eugene Ionesco as the Grand Master of the Theater of the Absurd. His play, The Bald Soprano, produced in Paris three years before Waiting for Godot, ran for twenty years and was the first example of the “anti-theater theater.” Although it seemed to follow the outline for light comedy by using a drawing room setting, it quickly transformed the clichéd dialogue of two model British families into madness and hysteria.

This was absurdity in its typical sense, as hilarious farce. This was not the kind of absurdity represented by Beckett, whose work was characterized by despair and deprivation. His work more closely resembles Camus’ idea of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus. Beckett’s characters live in a world that no longer makes sense, that has no God, and offers no easy answers or solutions. Godot never comes. Kierkegaard (1813-1835), in a more Christian sense, labeled this Despair. Ionesco once remarked, “I started writing for the theater because I hated it.” Beckett’s thoughts went even deeper. In his novel, Molloy, his character states, “You would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.” Ionesco made every attempt to explain himself and his work to the public. Beckett did just the opposite. He resisted the impulse to explain or categorize his material.

In fact, he abhorred all attempts to do so. He wanted form and content to remain inseparable, and the reading or experience of his work to speak for itself. Although he attempted to be silent on the subject of his own work, agreeing with the French poet Baudelaire (1821-1867), about “the devastating vanity and uselessness of explaining anything to anyone,” Beckett wrote literary criticism. Initially, he did it for the money, and toyed with the idea of making it a career. His essay on Joyce for Our Exagmination, his book on Proust, and his reviews for the Bookman and the Criterion, were all commissioned. After 1934, however, Beckett’s criticism became more personal. He wrote in defense of friends and fellow artists who were unjustly attacked or ignored.

At one point, railing against the idea that art has a primary duty to be clear and accessible, Beckett wrote: “The time is not perhaps altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear.” In his essay on Joyce, Beckett wrote “no language is so sophisticated as English—it is abstracted to death,” and claimed that the public’s inability to understand information stems from being “too decadent to receive it.” In another instance, he attacked the average reader by writing, “This rapid skimming and absorption of the scant cream of sense is made possible by what I may call a continuous process of copious intellectual salivation.” The essay on Proust was Beckett’s critical masterpiece. In it he establishes his own basic philosophy about the inability to understand experience because of the dearth of methods for expression. He blames this on Time (“that double-headed monster of damnation and salvation”), Memory (“yesterday has deformed us or been deformed by us”), and Habit (“the ballast that chains a dog to his vomit”). Throughout his life, Samuel Beckett also wrote poetry.

In 1930, he received first prize in a contest conducted by the Hours Press for his 98 line poem Whoroscope. This poem was based on the life of René Descartes (1596-1650), a French philosopher and mathematician. Although it was praised for its swift and witty language, the poem was difficult to interpret. Beckett was asked to provide explanatory footnotes for it, which he did. Clearly, at that point in his life, he was compliant. He continued to write poetry through the 1930s and 1940s in both English and French. Then, in 1974, after a break of twenty-five years, he began to publish poetry again. Before, during, and after Waiting for Godot, Beckett wrote novels. His first published novel Murphy (1938), was one of grotesque but comic action, and included characters such as Miss Rosie Dew, Miss Carridge, Augustus Tinklepenny, Bim and Bom, Dr. Killiecrankie, and Murphy, who takes a job at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat. At the end of the novel, Murphy dies accidentally.

Although his last request is to be cremated and have his ashes flushed down the toilet of the Abbey Theater, they remain scattered on the floor of a saloon. From 1942 to 1944, while living in Roussillon, Beckett wrote Watt, which included veiled autobiographical accounts of his life. The main character is a patient in an asylum, who dictates his story to a fellow patient in a confusing language with a distorted chronology. A note in the addendum of Watt gives a sense of Beckett’s paradoxical humour. “The following precious and illuminating material should be carefully studied. Only fatigue and disgust prevented its incorporation.” Watt was not designed for a postwar public’s reading pleasure. It did not get published until 1953, and it was immediately banned in Ireland. This did not prevent Beckett, the novelist, from continuing on. His next novel was Molloy (1947), the first of a trilogy that was to include Malone meurt and L’Innommable. Molloy is presented in two phases with two stories—one about Molloy, and the other about Moran. Both characters suffer from paralysis.

When Molloy speaks, it is difficult to know whether events are real or imagined. Boundaries between his conscious and unconscious mind are blurred. When Moran speaks, everything he says is immediately cancelled, and nothing that happens is to be believed. This novel was referred to by critics as an “epic of the absurd,” taking place in a “void” and outlining disintegration—of the heroes, of time, and of life. Malone meurt was the book Beckett was writing in 1948 when he took his break and created Godot. Apparently Beckett’s friends and family were worried that the introductory sentences in this novel, “I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all. Perhaps next month,” applied to Beckett himself. They insisted that he stop writing and rest. Whether or not he was heeding their advice, he did humor himself by writing Godot, “to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.” Critics assumed that the philosophical underpinnings of Malone meurt were from the writings of Descartes (1596-1650), who wrote about the supposed split between the physical/mechanical and the mental/spiritual universes.

There was also the influence of Geulinex (1624-1669), who wrote “Where you are worth nothing, there you should want nothing;” and Berkeley (1685-1753), who said there is no reality except in the mind. Beckett, as usual, responded by claiming, “I don’t know where the writing comes from and I am often quite surprised when I see what I have committed to paper.” His novels end with failure or death, the concept of “lessness is part of them”. They become more and more difficult to follow as the humor is engulfed by tragedy, and the language is used to imitate what is being narrated. When Malone dies, his pencil finally gives out along with his consciousness: or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never or with his pencil or with his stick or or light light I mean never there he will never never anything link Link Estragon tries to take off his boot but fails. Vladimir agrees with him that it sometimes appears that there is nothing one could do. They are glad to be reunited after a night apart.

With Vladimir’s help, Estragon succeeds in removing his boot, which was causing him pain. Vladimir, also in pain, cannot laugh in comfort; he tries smiling instead, but it is not satisfactory. Vladimir muses on the one Gospel account that says Christ saved one of the thieves. Estragon wants to leave, but they cannot leave because they are waiting for Godot. They become confused about the arrangements and wonder if they are waiting at the right time, in the right place, and on the right day. They quarrel briefly but then, as always, they reconcile. Estragon and Vladimir consider hanging themselves from the nearby tree but decide that it would be safer to do nothing until they hear what Godot says. They do not know what they have asked Godot for. They conclude that they have forgone their rights. Vladimir gives Estragon a carrot, which he eats hungrily. They decide that although they are not bound to Godot, they are in fact unable to act. Pozzo enters, driving Lucky, who is laden with luggage, by a rope around his neck. Estragon and Vladimir mistake Pozzo for Godot but accept him as Pozzo.

Although he attempts to intimidate them, he is glad of their company. After ordering Lucky to bring him his stool and his coat, Pozzo gives Lucky the whip. Lucky obeys automatically. Vladimir and Estragon protest violently against Pozzo’s treatment of Lucky, but Pozzo deflects their outburst and the subject is dropped. After smoking a pipe, Pozzo rises. He then decides he does not want to leave, but his pride almost prevents him from reseating himself. The tramps want to know why Lucky never puts down the luggage. Pozzo says that Lucky is trying to make Pozzo keep him. When Pozzo adds that he would sell Lucky rather than throw him out, Lucky weeps. Estragon tries to dry the servant’s tears, but Lucky kicks him away; Estragon then weeps. Pozzo philosophizes on this and says that Lucky has taught him all the beautiful things he knows but that the fellow has now become unbearable and is driving him mad. Estragon and Vladimir then abuse Lucky for mistreating his master.

Pozzo breaks into a monologue on the twilight, alternating between the lyrical and the commonplace and ending with the bitter thought that everything happens in the world when one is least prepared. He decides to reward Estragon and Vladimir for praising him by making Lucky entertain them. Lucky executes a feeble dance that Estragon mocks but fails to imitate. Estragon states that there have been no arrivals, no departures, and no action, and that everything is terrible. Pozzo next decides that Lucky should think for them. For this Vladimir replaces Lucky’s derby hat. Lucky’s thoughts are an incoherent flood of words resembling a dissertation on the possible goodness of God, the tortures of hellfire, the prevalence of sport, and the vacuity of suburbs. The words desperately upset Lucky’s listeners, who attack him and silence him by seizing his hat. Having restored Lucky to his position as carrier, Pozzo and the tramps say many farewells before Pozzo and Lucky finally leave. The Boy calls to Vladimir and Estragon. He brings a message from Godot, who will come the next evening.

The Boy, a goatherd, says that Godot is kind to him, but he beats the Boy’s brother, a shepherd. Vladimir asks the Boy to tell Godot only that he has seen them. By the time the Boy leaves, night has fallen. Estragon decides to abandon his boots to someone else. Vladimir protests, and Estragon says that Christ went barefoot. Once again they consider and reject the idea of separating. They decide to leave for the night, but they stay where they are. The following evening, the boots are still there and the tree has grown some leaves. The tramps have spent the night separately. Vladimir returns first. When Estragon comes back, he says that he has been beaten again, and Vladimir feels that he could have prevented such cruelty. Vladimir begins to talk of the previous day, but Estragon can remember nothing about it except for his being kicked. They are then overwhelmed by the thought of the whispering voices of the dead around them. They try to break their silence but succeed only in part. By a great effort, Estragon recalls that he and the others spent the previous day chattering inanities.

He reflects that they have spent fifty years doing no more than that. They discover that the boots left behind by Estragon have been exchanged for another old pair. After finding Lucky’s hat, which assures them that they have returned to the right place, they start a wild exchange of that hat and their two hats, shifting them from hand to hand. Finally Vladimir keeps Lucky’s hat and Estragon keeps his own. Once more Estragon decides to leave. To distract him, Vladimir suggests that they “play” Pozzo and Lucky. Puzzled, Estragon leaves, but he returns almost immediately because some people are coming. Vladimir is jubilant, convinced that Godot is arriving. They try to hide, but there is nowhere for them to go. Finally Lucky enters with Pozzo, who is now blind. Lucky falls and drags Pozzo down with him. Pozzo cries for help, and Vladimir passionately wishes to act while he has the opportunity to do one good thing as a member of the human race, a species that appalls him. Pozzo is terrified, and Vladimir also falls in his attempts to raise him. Estragon falls too while trying to lift Vladimir.

As Estragon and Vladimir fight and argue on the ground, they call Pozzo “Cain” and “Abel.” When he responds to both names they conclude that he is all of humanity. Suddenly they get up without difficulty. Pozzo prepares to leave, but Vladimir wants Lucky to sing first. Pozzo explains that Lucky is dumb. Estragon and Vladimir want to know when he was afflicted, and Pozzo, angry, says that all their lives are merely momentary and time does not matter. He leaves with Lucky. While Estragon sleeps, the Boy enters to say that Godot will come, not that night but the next. The message for Godot is that the Boy has seen Vladimir. The Boy leaves, and Estragon awakes. He immediately wants to leave, but Vladimir insists that they cannot go far because they must return the next night in order to wait for Godot, who will punish them if they do not wait. Estragon and Vladimir remark that only the tree in the landscape is alive, and they consider hanging themselves again. Instead, they decide that if Godot does not come to save them the next night, they will hang themselves. At last the tramps decide to go, but they remain immobile.

link Link Waiting for Godot is an unremitting picture of despair and futility. It established a new direction for modern theater and made Samuel Beckett one of the foremost dramatists of that new trend in theater. In each act, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, longtime friends, appear at twilight on a desolate country road in the middle of nowhere to wait for an obscure figure named Godot, whom they have never seen, but whom they believe will rescue them from their otherwise empty and banal lives. The play may be understood as a metaphor for the human condition in the modern world. Designed to cope with the banality and emptiness of their lives, this behavior is ritualistic. Every day they return to the same place to wait for the mysterious Godot. To pass the time and to fill the emptiness, they engage in comic banter and vaudevillian shtick. In act 1, just as the two tramps discuss whether they are tied to each other, this place, and to Godot, two others, Pozzo and Lucky, arrive, tied together by a long rope. Their arrival provides a grotesquely comic interlude that dramatizes the tramps’ condition.

Bound together and inseparable, Pozzo and Lucky share a common fate: Neither can do without the other. Metaphysically, all these “ties” represent the desperation of humans bound to a meaningless existence they cannot abandon. Figuratively speaking, the tramps are at the end of their rope. Aware that language has failed them, their thinking is disorganized and fragmented, their memories inconsistent and unreliable, and their lives insignificant and absurd, the tramps struggle to find a reason to go on living. Their lives are reduced to the barest essentials: They own nothing, eat only carrots and turnips, sleep in ditches, and wear frayed and worn-out clothing. Although Godot has never come, they continue to wait. The two acts appear to repeat themselves: The tramps arrive and engage in various banters; Pozzo and Lucky appear; and at the end of each act, a boy materializes, a messenger from Godot but never the same boy. As the curtain closes in both acts, the tramps announce their intention to leave but do not move. Despite the apparent repetition, significant differences define the two acts. In act 1, Vladimir, optimistically, and Estragon, cynically, wait for Godot.

When Pozzo and Lucky, tied to each other with a long rope, arrive instead, the tramps, desperate to believe that Godot has arrived, confuse Pozzo with Godot. Amused by their misidentification, Pozzo denies he is Godot. Nonetheless, the tramps see in them an opportunity for diversion and for company. Gregarious, pompous, and somewhat formidable, Pozzo tells them they are trespassing on his land. In direct contrast, Lucky, his degenerate slave, is completely submissive. Devoid of human expression, obsequious, and pitiful, he cannot speak unless prompted by Pozzo. In sympathy, the tramps ask Pozzo to make Lucky speak. At Pozzo’s command, Lucky begins an incomprehensible speech filled with fragmentary and oblique references to academic issues, history, and the Bible. Gradually his speech increases in tempo and finally dissolves into incoherent phrases and words. The others, totally frustrated by what sounds like the ravings of a madman, silence him by knocking him down and physically restraining him. When Pozzo and Lucky depart, the tramps are alone again to face the reality that Godot has not arrived.

While they are in the pit of their despair, a boy messenger arrives and announces that Godot will not come today but surely tomorrow. Disillusioned and frustrated by the fact that they have heard all this before, the tramps declare their intention to leave. The curtain comes down, but the tramps do not move. In act 2, some slight but significant changes occur. The tree has sprouted a few leaves, Pozzo is blind, Lucky is dumb, the boy messenger claims he is not the same boy who appeared yesterday, and Vladimir’s optimism is shattered. As a result, he staggers under the weight of the hopelessness of their situation, whereas Estragon’s cynicism is confirmed. In structuring the play in two acts, Beckett was influenced by Saint Augustine’s remark: Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned. Fascinated by their symmetry, Beckett borrows the structure for Waiting for Godot. Act 1 builds on a slight, but perceptible, movement toward hope. Act 2, on the other hand, moves from guarded optimism to despair. To Vladimir, the fact that the tree has grown leaves is a sign of hope.

However, this hope is destroyed when Pozzo turns up blind and Lucky dumb, and a new messenger arrives denying he appeared previously. Frustrated and exhausted by his struggle to maintain hope and to make sense out of these events, Vladimir reaches a level of despair not seen before. He questions whether life has meaning, and more frantically, whether meaning is possible. Like Estragon, he entertains the thought that he can no longer endure his life. Throughout the two acts, he has attempted to convince Estragon and himself that salvation is possible. By the end of act 2, that hope has faded. link Link Arguably, Waiting for Godot provides an optimum point of entry not only into Beckett’s enigmatic body of mature work but also into the antirational theater that emerged on the European continent during the decade following World War II, permanently altering the expectations of spectators (and playwrights) all over the world.

In Beckett’s first performed and published play, as in contemporary (but quite different) plays by Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Max Frisch, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plot is all but discarded as a necessary element of drama, the tension residing instead in metaphysical concerns and in interaction (or noninteraction) among the characters. The play is set on a desolate roadside, requiring little in the way of scenery. Two aging tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), reminiscent of the film comics Laurel and Hardy gone to seed, exchange desultory conversation as they wait for the arrival of a man called Godot, who in fact never appears. Vladimir, like Laurel, is spare of build; Estragon, like Oliver Hardy, considerably stouter. “Nothing to be done,” says Estragon in the play’s first line, which in fact summarizes all the ensuing dialogue and action, although Estragon, at that moment, refers only to the act of taking off his shoes. Beckett’s lines, even when translated into English from the original French, tend thus to send ambivalent messages and meanings that continue to reverberate long after the curtain falls.

Like most of Beckett’s marginal characters in both plays and fiction, Didi and Gogo, as they address each other with childlike nicknames, have obviously known far better days; both are well educated, as their dialogue soon makes clear, yet education proves to be of little help in their current predicament. Shot through with philosophical speculations and learned references to Holy Scripture, the prolonged interchanges between the two tramps have prompted many commentators to find in the play religious overtones that may or may not have been intended; more to the point, it seems, is the simple act of waiting, and the basically human instinct to talk (or keep busy or both) in order to stave off boredom. Divided into two approximately equal acts, the action of Waiting for Godot twice relieves Vladimir and Estragon of boredom through encounters with two additional characters, the arrogant, autocratic Pozzo and his mute (or at least tongue-tied) manservant Lucky, attached to Pozzo’s body with a rope. Pozzo, like Estragon, is portly of build; Lucky, like Vladimir, is almost painfully thin. All four of the main characters are well past middle age, with ailments and impediments to suit.

Pozzo, a caricature of the self-important rich man, will have lost his sight between his first and second encounters with the tramps; Lucky, although mute, will suddenly deliver himself, toward the end of act 1, of a learned but incomprehensible monologue that, for later generations of spectators, would recall the printouts of an ill-programmed computer gone berserk. Apparently unexpected and quite unpredictable, Waiting for Godot would soon achieve landmark status in the history of Western drama, drawing upon the familiar (stock characters from silent film or British music hall, bowler-hatted and stiff-gaited), yet leading toward unexplored territory, in concept as well as in location. Still contemplating suicide, as they have more than once in the past, Vladimir and Estragon decide to leave because Godot has yet to show himself. As the curtain falls, however, they are both still in place, waiting.

Question: Which play has tramps Estragon and Vladimir as the main characters?
Answer: Waiting for Godot