"Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!"
Waiting for Godot is perfectly described by the above phrase said by one of the two main characters in the play. The play is a perfect satire on human nature that how one keeps waiting for the good things and God, the almighty, from which Samuel Beckett got to the term GODOT.
Samuel Beckett is a classic example of the "Theatre of The Absurd" who wrote a seminal work of the twentieth century “Waiting For Godot”, a tragic comedy. The two main characters Vladimir and Estragon keep waiting for a person named Godot who doesn’t arrive at two instances in the play. Godot is supposed to bring new hope with him in their lives so that they can move on.Often referred to as a play in which "Nothing Happens, Twice" .
It consists of two acts and nothing significant happens in both of them .In the beginning it is a bit confusing as the dialogues of the two main characters who are tramps, interchange arbitrarily and are repeated again and again, depicting the vicious circle of life.Pozzo mentioning the second one (Pipe) is not sweet as the first one, depicting how repetition brings dullness to life. Vladimir is shown to be a much stronger character than Estragon of a little helping nautre.Two other characters Lucky and Pozzo, arrive and go, bringing no significant change on Vladimir and Estragon, which signify how people arrive and leave in one’s life. At one point in the play, they try to commit suicide but as always are distracted by their useless talks and thoughts. It portrays the escapist nature of mankind.
The most important thing is that they have nothing to do in their lives except to wait for Godot who never comes. Instead a message is brought to them by a boy who says “he will be definitely coming tomorrow”. The message brings assurance to them that he exists and they again come back the next day to meet him.
Act two is almost similar to the first act and the play goes on .As a reader one wonders that why the writer wrote the second act. Act Two superficially does not signify much, but through this Beckett wants the reader to feel the futility of life and the absurd situation man is into. Man has created a complex world and and now his life revolves around it. Vladimir says that “it is not every day that we are needed” shows how meaningless their life is.
Waiting for Godot is perfectly described by the above phrase said by one of the two main characters in the play. The play is a perfect satire on human nature that how one keeps waiting for the good things and God, the almighty, from which Samuel Beckett got to the term GODOT.
Samuel Beckett is a classic example of the "Theatre of The Absurd" who wrote a seminal work of the twentieth century “Waiting For Godot”, a tragic comedy. The two main characters Vladimir and Estragon keep waiting for a person named Godot who doesn’t arrive at two instances in the play. Godot is supposed to bring new hope with him in their lives so that they can move on.Often referred to as a play in which "Nothing Happens, Twice" .
It consists of two acts and nothing significant happens in both of them .In the beginning it is a bit confusing as the dialogues of the two main characters who are tramps, interchange arbitrarily and are repeated again and again, depicting the vicious circle of life.Pozzo mentioning the second one (Pipe) is not sweet as the first one, depicting how repetition brings dullness to life. Vladimir is shown to be a much stronger character than Estragon of a little helping nautre.Two other characters Lucky and Pozzo, arrive and go, bringing no significant change on Vladimir and Estragon, which signify how people arrive and leave in one’s life. At one point in the play, they try to commit suicide but as always are distracted by their useless talks and thoughts. It portrays the escapist nature of mankind.
The most important thing is that they have nothing to do in their lives except to wait for Godot who never comes. Instead a message is brought to them by a boy who says “he will be definitely coming tomorrow”. The message brings assurance to them that he exists and they again come back the next day to meet him.
Act two is almost similar to the first act and the play goes on .As a reader one wonders that why the writer wrote the second act. Act Two superficially does not signify much, but through this Beckett wants the reader to feel the futility of life and the absurd situation man is into. Man has created a complex world and and now his life revolves around it. Vladimir says that “it is not every day that we are needed” shows how meaningless their life is.
In general the play does not give any message, that is exactly what the message is, the futility of life in itself. It invokes them to think on it, and hence the message is left to the individual. It is a must read play having many good ideas hidden in some of the dialogues , comic sense in the tragedy of lives, though a cynical one and you get much more out of it than what is contained in it.
By Tushar Tuteja
2009CE10351
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ReplyDeleteThe play Waiting for Godot, as described by its playwright Samuel Beckett, is a tragicomidy in 2 acts. The theme of the play is set right at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteEstragon: Nothing to be done.
Vladimir: I'm beginning to come round to that opinion.
Waiting for Godot epitomizes the absurdist philosophy. Everything about the play is absurd - the characters, their actions, their behaviour and mental conditions. The play has 2 primary characters Estragon and Vladimir who throughout the play engage each other in meaningless conversation in short abrupt sentences. Their conversation is redundant in nature since their words are never followed by actions.
Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go. (They do not move.)
Everything in the book seems to happen in pairs, or twice. Two acts. Characters are introduced and exit in pairs. They do the same things, have the same conversations, twice. As Tushar has correctly pointed out, Nothing happens, twice.
I disagree with Tushar when he says the second act is of no significance. The second act hints at the absurdist philosophy of futility. Estragon and Vladimir spend their time waiting, achieve nothing at the end of it, showing that they are not in control of their existence. Similarly the two acts show a role reversal in the auxiliary characters Pozzo and Lucky. The role of master and slave is reversed in the second act showing the futility of attempts made by humans at controlling their lives. The play is also in this respect highly existentialist in nature.
Throughout the play time is in abundance, the characters have nothing to do except to wait for Godot to arrive and alleviate them from their miserable existence. Time appears to be their biggest enemy as they are forced to sit and wait doing absolutely nothing, hoping for the unknown to help them out. As Tushar has rightly pointed out, the book is a satire on the human condition of inaction and hoping for divine intervention for their problems.
The play simply tries to bring out that man is not as much in control of his life as it appears to him. Their is no true significance to one's actions. Such strong sentiments are portrayed all through the play making Waiting for Godot one of the most famous exponents of the existentialist, absurdist plays.
Waiting for Godot, most likely a play on the conception of God or otherwise is a starkly bare narrative that conveys a deep sense of despair and emptiness with regards to life. The story as amply described by the previous authors basically describes two evenings in the life of two boys(who probably represent all of humanity) that again seem to represent all other evenings spent by these two boys(although they have supposedly already spent 50 years together, they still do act as small kids). Although one can quote and discuss the umpteen examples of this remarkably bleak narrative, I feel that what can be said about the narrative has already been said by both the previous reviewers. What I would wish to comment on though is the innate philosophy(or possibly two contradictory ones) that the play seems to embody.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Samuel Beckett wrote this play in the "modern" age of enlightenment and science, the author seems to have filled this text with a dark sense of hopelesness that probably stems from the continuing failure of science to answer basic questions. The constant references to the futility of thought are also strongly indicative of this lack of faith in science. For an author who was purported to be an existentialist for a while, it seems that Beckett had a bleak view on human potential and intellect. But seen in another light, the book is also possibly a play on religion, and all those who simply believe blindly in god, and live out their entire lives in search of this mystical figure. Thus in a way, Beckett wishes to convey the necessity of human imagination and ambition to shape the world. This sense conveys a strong sense of control that humans seem to have.
All in all the play does remarkably convey a sense of dread and despair in the existence of men, and at the same time also depict the remarkable possibilities that arise from human effort, by simply showcasing a bleak world in which the inhabitants seem to do nothing. This sort of duality is also likely to have been intentional, in that the author wanted to portray two ways to equate the two ways to see this text, with despair or with hope, and two ways to live life, by hoping for something or by working towards it.