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Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT The critical reception that greeted Beckett’s first major play, and his first major success as a writer, was anything but ordinary. Some people seemed to recognize that a major talent had arrived on the scene, that they had witnessed the birth of a masterpiece in Godot, while others were completely baffled. Bewilderment best describes the feeling those first sophisticated theater-going audiences experienced; and that’s a feeling we may still have in the presence of this play today. At its opening in Paris in 1953, however, despite the bewilderment, it caused an immediate and deep sensation. You can feel the bewilderment right from the start in this New York Times review—Mr. Atkinson declares in his opening sentence that we shouldn’t expect him to “explain” the play, which is fair enough. But then he goes on to call it “a mystery wrapped in an enigma,” which makes the play sound about as inaccessible, as remote and impenetrable as can be. To be fair, it must have seemed that way to audiences who were expecting one thing and then received something completely other. But if the play were really that inaccessible then it would strike no one as a work of “genius,” and it wouldn’t have catapulted Beckett into worldwide literary fame. With an open mind, an open eye and open ear, I think you find this play is anything but inaccessible. It’s immediately accessible. The images, the tableau, are so accessible they’re unforgettable. Nothing could be more spare and stripped of mystery and illusion and “fiction” and “hidden symbolism” than this play. Like Ibsen and Brecht before him, and even more radically, Beckett completely changed our expectations for what can happen on a theater stage. Until Beckett audiences expected the “well-made” play, though they had learned to accept Ibsen’s “problem plays” and had even experimented, perhaps, with Brecht’s “alienation effect.” They were even hip to a “theater of ideas,” though these plays could be dull. Most people, even today, are pretty conventional in their expectations for drama, for what they expect to see when they go to the theater or to a film. They expect a well crafted, clever plot with interesting foils, intrigues and sidestories that amplify the main narrative. They expect narrative, storytelling. They expect characters they can “relate to” or “identify with”—people who are constructed to resemble people in real life. These people can be unusual, eccentric, quirky and interesting, but they should be life- like characters. It’s an expectation that goes all the way back to Aristotle, who demanded that the hero of tragedy be, among other things, “life-like.” People going to the theater expect elaborate scenery designed to evoke an illusion of reality. They expect verbal inventiveness, dialogue that “reveals character” and “provides exposition.” By all of these things have audiences traditionally been wooed into believing that the fiction they are witnessing is real. But Beckett withholds all of these things, without exception. He strips the set down to its absolute bare essence. The set for Waiting for Godot is famously stripped of everything that might provide a broader frame of reference, a sense of “reality.” Yet it seems real enough in its way; there’s the road, there’s the tree. We know what those are. We may even begin, or try to begin, to see them, bare as they are, as profoundly “symbolic.” We’re trained that way—making meaning is an ingrained, thoroughly familiar and usually rewarding activity—and besides, nothing else appears, so we have to make something out of it. Because what Beckett does to his set, he also does to character, story, and dialogue. There’s no character “development.” There’s no fictional “story.” There’s no linear action or dialogue that leads anywhere. There’s absolutely nothing to distract us from the unsettling tragicomedy of the characters’ fundamental thereness, the painful existential condition they keep returning to. As an audience, we are trapped in the web of their meaningless (but provocative) conversation. Is it meaningful, we wonder? We’re tempted to work at making it mean something. (Some of us are more tempted and more diligent than others.) But ultimately we return to an acute awareness of the essential absurdity of the condition we’re witnessing. Is that the point then, we wonder? What is the point, we may wonder, exasperated.

Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT - Brainstorm … · Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT ... with Brecht’s “alienation effect.” They were even hip to a “theater of ideas,” though

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Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT

The critical reception that greeted Beckett’s first major play, and his first major success as a writer, was anything but ordinary. Some people seemed to recognize that a major talent had arrived on the scene, that they had witnessed the birth of a masterpiece in Godot, while others were completely baffled. Bewilderment best describes the feeling those first sophisticated theater-going audiences experienced; and that’s a feeling we may still have in the presence of this play today. At its opening in Paris in 1953, however, despite the bewilderment, it caused an immediate and deep sensation. You can feel the bewilderment right from the start in this New York Times review—Mr. Atkinson declares in his opening sentence that we shouldn’t expect him to “explain” the play, which is fair enough. But then he goes on to call it “a mystery wrapped in an enigma,” which makes the play sound about as inaccessible, as remote and impenetrable as can be. To be fair, it must have seemed that way to audiences who were expecting one thing and then received something completely other. But if the play were really that inaccessible then it would strike no one as a work of “genius,” and it wouldn’t have catapulted Beckett into worldwide literary fame. With an open mind, an open eye and open ear, I think you find this play is anything but inaccessible. It’s immediately accessible. The images, the tableau, are so accessible they’re unforgettable. Nothing could be more spare and stripped of mystery and illusion and “fiction” and “hidden symbolism” than this play. Like Ibsen and Brecht before him, and even more radically, Beckett completely changed our expectations for what can happen on a theater stage. Until Beckett audiences expected the “well-made” play, though they had learned to accept Ibsen’s “problem plays” and had even experimented, perhaps, with Brecht’s “alienation effect.” They were even hip to a “theater of ideas,” though these plays could be dull. Most people, even today, are pretty conventional in their expectations for drama, for what they expect to see when they go to the theater or to a film. They expect a well crafted, clever plot with interesting foils, intrigues and sidestories that amplify the main narrative. They expect narrative, storytelling. They expect characters they can “relate to” or “identify with”—people who are constructed to resemble people in real life. These people can be unusual, eccentric, quirky and interesting, but they should be life-like characters. It’s an expectation that goes all the way back to Aristotle, who demanded that the hero of tragedy be, among other things, “life-like.” People going to the theater expect elaborate scenery designed to evoke an illusion of reality. They expect verbal inventiveness, dialogue that “reveals character” and “provides exposition.” By all of these things have audiences traditionally been wooed into believing that the fiction they are witnessing is real. But Beckett withholds all of these things, without exception. He strips the set down to its absolute bare essence. The set for Waiting for Godot is famously stripped of everything that might provide a broader frame of reference, a sense of “reality.” Yet it seems real enough in its way; there’s the road, there’s the tree. We know what those are. We may even begin, or try to begin, to see them, bare as they are, as profoundly “symbolic.” We’re trained that way—making meaning is an ingrained, thoroughly familiar and usually rewarding activity—and besides, nothing else appears, so we have to make something out of it. Because what Beckett does to his set, he also does to character, story, and dialogue. There’s no character “development.” There’s no fictional “story.” There’s no linear action or dialogue that leads anywhere. There’s absolutely nothing to distract us from the unsettling tragicomedy of the characters’ fundamental thereness, the painful existential condition they keep returning to. As an audience, we are trapped in the web of their meaningless (but provocative) conversation. Is it meaningful, we wonder? We’re tempted to work at making it mean something. (Some of us are more tempted and more diligent than others.) But ultimately we return to an acute awareness of the essential absurdity of the condition we’re witnessing. Is that the point then, we wonder? What is the point, we may wonder, exasperated.

But if reviewers are unwilling to “explain” the point—and they’re the experts, supposedly—should we even expect a point? And if we find one, should we try to “explain” it? Perhaps Waiting for Godot, like the poem in Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica” “should not mean but be.” It just is. This place and these characters are just there, expressing their “thereness.” They don’t mean anything so much as they are an image of an experience; looking at them is like looking at a way of seeing, of seeing the way Beckett sees, just as looking at a painting you see the thing the way the artist has seen it. The play may be, as MacLeish describes poetry, an image of “heaven and earth in the cage of form.” I would rather say, though, that it’s an image of human suffering in the cage of form. When this play was performed in 1957 at San Quentin—the first play to be performed there since 1913—the prisoners understood it right away. There are some audiences that respond immediately and sympathetically/empathetically to Didi and Gogo’s absurd paralysis. These audiences may even start to wonder—does this whole thing represent our condition? Do these clowns, this existential Laurel and Hardy act, represent us, they wonder? Could it be? One critic said memorably, and scathingly, of this play, “Nothing happens twice.” That may be true. But is it true? Can it be true and at the same time not true? Nothing would be more postmodern. If nothing happens, then how does a director fill a two hour film, or a writer a 109 page manuscript? What happens in this play? Might watching the film be a less disorienting, less bewildering experience if we lay some groundwork? WHAT HAPPENS?

The play’s main characters are Gogo (Estragon) and Didi (Vladimir) who are two destitute tramps—homeless, rootless, penniless, frequently beaten. They are physically suffering from various ailments but not critically, frequ4ntly confused, disoriented and forgetful, but not deranged. They are long-time friends, who are passing the time together, waiting together, though Gogo periodically wonders whether it might not be better for them to part. Why are they waiting? They are hoping for a solution to their present condition—Godot, they think, will help them by providing food and shelter (a loft in a barn, with hay). If they don’t wait for Godot, they imagine there will be a punishment. What do they want from Godot? Their needs seem simple enough. Food and shelter is about all they ask for, all they hope for, but Godot never appears. It’s not certain he ever will appear, since he keeps putting off their meeting for a tomorrow that never arrives. The futility of their waiting seems unbearable at times—their lives have no meaning or purpose. There’s “nothing to be done” (a frequently repeated refrain). The only solutions are “salvation” or “suicide,” both of which are considered and re-considered. But neither seems possible and they are still waiting at the end of the play, wanting to go somewhere “far away,” but powerless to do so. The play’s symbolic resonances (since we can’t wholly avoid thinking in these terms) should seem immediate and obvious. Didi is talking about “salvation” as the play opens, and “Godot” may come to represent “God” in many viewers’ minds, or perhaps the absence of God. The waiting tramps are “faithful” in their perseverance, as the Christian interpretation goes….Didi’s kindness and friendship is Christian charity…. BUT to interpret the play this way, critic Martin Esslin explains, you’d have to ignore the ever-present uncertainty of the supposed appointment with Godot, not to mention Godot’s seeming unreliability. You’d have to bury your awareness of the futility of the hope attached to this fruitless waiting that the play enacts. If Godot is God, then the condition of waiting for God is made to seem essentially absurd1. What Gogo and Didi really want to do is commit suicide, but since they can’t they are waiting for Godot; their “waiting” is really a rationalization to cover up their inability to act decisively or effectually. This would make it not only absurd but inauthentic, in existentialist terms. They really are just waiting out of habit. “Habit is the great deadener,” Didi declares—it rescues us from the painful awareness of suffering, but it is not in and of itself meaningful or purposeful or authentic in the existentialist sense of the word. Occasionally, despite the deadening effect of habit, of routine, our boredom is pierced by an awareness of suffering, our own, and others’. There’s enough reason to agree with Times reviewer that Waiting for Godot is about the “lost souls of the earth” who “go on living without knowing why.” But to call it “uneventful, maundering, loquacious” (in the pejorative sense) is to do it an injustice. Nothing was ever constructed more meticulously, artfully. No dialogue ever pared down so

1 Absurd: inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense; the condition or state in which humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe wherein people’s lives have no purpose or meaning.

economically. What it adds up to is not “nothing” but an extraordinarily powerful vision of existential truth, an awareness of the essential meaninglessness of existence and the uncertainty of “truth,” an awareness of the problems inherent in living and the fact that there are no magical solutions to these problems. This is something perhaps not very difficult to explain, but painful to explain. Beckett’s philosophical muse is a dour and formidable pessimist, Arthur Schopenhauer, who describes life as a “task” and as “drudgery” filled with

…universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife, compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and mind….the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which everything living works wit the utmost exertion of its strength for something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely we shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency entirely without ground or motive.2

Waiting for Godot seems inspired by these sentiments. The play is almost as ruthless as Schopenhauer in its catalogue of problems that are imagined as tragic and comic by turns: boredom, monotonous repetition, meaninglessness, despair, futility, mental and physical pain and suffering, illusion, delusion, and paralysis. We may have trouble explaining Waiting for Godot in the traditional ways we talk about theme and “meaning” because the play is so unconventional. Development is circular rather than linear, and this frustrates our linear, logical minds. Time moves repetitiously rather than progressively, frustrating another of our ordinary expectations. The characters, rather than developing in the traditional sense, have the echo the same conversation again and again; language is mystifying and meaningless, futile rather than fruitful (especially when Lucky “thinks”). All action in Waiting for Godot is mere distraction; it doesn’t lead anywhere other than to the central awareness with which it began, though by the play’s end we see it all the more distinctly, and feel the resounding thud: “Nothing to be done.”

2 Schopenhauer, Arthur qtd. in Bloom, Harold. “Introduction.” Modern Critical Interpretations: Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 2.

Analyzing WATING FOR GODOT

THEATER OF THE ABSURD Although audiences had already been introduced to modernist, experimental modes of theater before Beckett’s Waiting for Godot appeared in 1953, this is the play that had the most profound and wide-ranging impact. This is the play that started a trend which became known as “theater of the absurd.” Before this play, audiences could expect the “well-made” play—life-like, psychologically realistic characters, witty dialogue, and well-crafted, causal plots with neatly tied up beginnings, middles, and ends. But the theater of the absurd subverts these expectations at every turn. The characters are unfamiliar, weirdly motivated; their dialogue is filled with non-sequitors and “blather,” seeming nonsense. The movement of the plot is arbitrary; there’s no identifiable beginning, middle, and end—no “Freytag’s pyramid” to help us get a grip on the plot. Most strikingly, Beckett, like other dramatists working in this mode, is not trying to “tell a story.” He’s not offering any easily identifiable solutions to carefully observed problems; there’s little by way of moralizing and no obvious “message.” The circularity of Waiting for Godot is highly unconventional. Even today, it’s not what we expect at all. But it’s very common in the tradition of the theater of the absurd. Martin Esslin writes very lucidly about how the theater of the absurd works like poetry rather than narrative. Traditional narrative drama tells a story, develops dynamically. The characters grow and change before our eyes, and that is the point of the story—to reveal that growth, that change. We reflect on why it happened, what it implies, how we relate to it ourselves, what it means. But the theater of the absurd doesn’t aim for traditional narrative because it rejects such narratives as too artificial, too contrived. The world isn’t really as neat and tidy as all that. Things happen by chance, at random. Chaos and irrationality describe reality better than rationality and order. So the aim is not to create artificially causal plots, but to reveal for audiences a powerful image, which can be literal, metaphorical, analogical, or allegorical—like poetry. The ambiguity of the poetic image, then, replaces the dynamic development of traditional narrative in theater of the absurd. The image Waiting for Godot evokes, then, is poetic and lyrical in essence rather than narrative; like a lot of theater of the absurd, it’s both tragic and comic in nature. The play is therefore referred to as a tragicomedy, or “black comedy.” The tragedy is the futility—Vladimir’s desperation, his growing awareness of the absurdity of his situation; Gogo’s frustrated desire to leave. The comedy is everything else. In Beckett’s work, too, we are aware of how the imagery (everything from plot to character to dialogue to set) is characteristically stripped to bare essences. His plays take on an abstract quality which many compare to a kind of abstract expressionism for the theater. So we come back around to the question: why are these artists so unconventional? Why be abstract? Why not tell a story in the traditional way? Martin Esslin takes up this question in Absurd Drama (Penguin, 1965):

Why should the emphasis in drama have shifted away from traditional forms towards images which, complex and suggestive as they may be, must necessarily lack the final clarity of definition, the neat

resolutions we have been used to expect? Clearly because the playwrights concerned no longer believe in the possibility of such neatness of resolution. They are indeed chiefly concerned with expressing a sense of wonder, of incomprehension, and at times of despair, at the lack of cohesion and meaning that they find in the world. If they could believe in clearly defined motivations, acceptable solutions, settlements of conflict in tidily tied up endings, these dramatists would certainly not eschew them. But, quite obviously, they have no faith in the existence of so rational and well ordered a universe. The “well-made play” can thus be seen as conditioned by clear and comforting beliefs, a stable scale of values, an ethical system in full working condition. The system of values, the world-view behind the well-made play may be a religious one or a political one; it may be an implicit belief in the goodness and perfectibility of men (as in Shaw or Ibsen) or it may be a mere unthinking acceptance of the moral and political status quo (as in most drawing-room comedy). But whatever it is, the basis of the well-made play is the implicit assumption that the world does make sense, that reality is solid and secure, all outlines clear, all ends apparent. The plays that we have classed under the label of the Theatre of the Absurd, on the other hand, express a sense of shock at the absence, the loss of any such clear and well-defined systems of beliefs or values.

Bottom line: these artists have lost faith in a well ordered, rational universe. The world is a place where things happen randomly, by chance. You live or you die by chance. The conditions you endure, you endure by chance. There is no well-crafted plan, no scheme of justice by which the universe operates. Recall the Dante we found in Canto I of the Inferno. He was lost in just such a dark wood of meaninglessness. Didi and Gogo are equally lost in a dark wood, but Godot, unlike Virgil, never arrives. NIHILISM and EXISTENTIALISM Nihilism is a radical philosophy of meaninglessness. Wikipedia tells us that it is a “belief in nothing.” The world and all the humans in it exist without meaning, purpose, truth, or value. Any system of belief, or artistic expression, that denies or drains away meaning can be described as “nihilistic.” Nietzsche famously accused Christianity of being a nihilistic religion because it drained meaning away from earthly life and kept its followers focused on a hope-for afterlife. His declaration that “God is dead” reverberated throughout the 20th century. It’s not too hard to understand why nihilistic philosophy, which eventually gave way to a very un-nihilistic existentialism, threatened to overwhelm us in the mid-20th century. The waning of religious faith which really began in the Enlightenment and grew even stronger with the steady rise in our faith in the sciences was helped along by Nietzsche and the Holocaust. The devastation of WWI put a huge damper on the liberal ideals of secular social progress, and revolutionary movements like communism lost a lot of steam in the wake of Stalin’s totalitarianism. Hitler had plunged Europe into barbarism and genocide, justifying mass murder as the “civilized thing to do.” Atomic bombs demonstrated how fragile and insignificant human life could be. In the prosperous West, a kind of spiritual emptiness descended. Under these conditions, nihilistic philosophy and art flourished. Existentialism is a progressive step up from nihilism, because whereas the nihilist asserts meaninglessness out there and leaves it at that (justifying any behavior at all), the existentialist asserts meaninglessness (out there) but goes on to assert that it’s the responsibility of the individual to create meaning (in here)—that to create meaning, as Dante created The Divine Comedy to rescue his world from meaninglessness, is our human purpose. Of course it’s more complex than that, but that’s a bird’s eye view of their relationship. A thoughtful question to ask of Waiting for Godot is whether it expresses a nihilistic or existentialist perspective. And to kick that into high gear, you could ask whether or not it is a postmodern play. SET What do you expect from a set when you go to the theater? How does Beckett’s set defy your expectations? What’s the purpose, do you think, of his unconventional approach to setting? As precise as Beckett is in his set directions, and as spare as the stage is obviously supposed to be, there is still plenty of room for individual directors to interpret the setting in various ways. For instance, the following two sets are vastly different from the one you saw in the Beckett on Film production.

Here’s a set which appeared in a 1970 production at the Landestheater in Salzburg in Austria:

And here theater critic Joanne Klein describes the set used in the Studio Theater production in Washington, D.C. in 1998:

Russell Metheny's set design situated Beckett's vagrants in an environment that announced urban cataclysm ….In the sparsely articulated parking lot of a long abandoned drive-in movie site, Beckett's blasted tree shared the stage with a heap of shredded rubber (rubble?)…. Framed against the backdrop of a slightly askew, artfully corroded drive-in movie screen….

How important is setting to your understanding of the play? How do you think the different stages influence how you understand what’s happening in the play?

• The Salzburg set suggests some kind of grand statement, because the setting seems grand. It’s a grand stage all set for a grand tragedy. You might find the play more than a little ironic in such a setting. The tragedy may seem more like tragicomedy. Notice the mirror at stage rear—what a great touch!

• The Washington set brings the setting closer to home and makes it feel more “realistic.” It takes the play out of its surrealistic, dystopian, dream space and places us somewhere immediately identifiable. Suddenly we’ve seen these two tramps before; in fact we see them every day on East Market in downtown West Chester, by the Salvation Army shelter.

• The “Beckett on Film” set is less grand than the Salzburg stage and less realistic than the Washington one; instead it opts for the sparseness of Beckett’s script: a country road, a tree. The road and the tree are surrounded by mounds of rubble on which nothing grows in the first act, and a little green appears in the second. The set evokes a deadened, blasted landscape (War torn? Over-plowed? Desert? High altitude?) that struggles for growth and renewal despite its devastation.

Each of these sets seeks to amplify some aspect of the play’s meaning, or reinforce its impact. Individual directors can pursue different interpretations of the play, which leads to each production being unique in its own right. That is the magic of the theater. SOUND

In the film as in the theater there is no musical accompaniment. You might have noticed that in the film there was no music soundtrack. That probably seemed very odd to you, even if you didn’t think about it consciously. What was the effect of the lack of a music track?

• The effect most evident is that we hear the silences, which are an important part of the play’s imagery. The characters are always trying to fill the silence, which seems to represent some kind of intolerable void. Silence as void, as nothingness, is too disturbing, so they talk and talk ceaselessly to cover up their awareness of this scary, soul-crushing silence. There’s no music of the spheres to attend to in Waiting for Godot. But although the characters battle the silence again and again, Beckett seems intent for us, the audience, to hear it, experience it, think about it, feel it. The play creates several vivid images of silence.

• Michael Worton, in “Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theater as Text” observes the multifaceted silences in Waiting for Godot, noting the “silences of inadequacy, when characters can’t find the words they need; silences of repression, when they are struck dumb by the attitude their interlocutor or by their sense that they might be breaking a social taboo; and the silences of anticipation, when they await the response of the other which will give them a temporary sense of existence.” In all of these ways, Beckett makes “silence communicate.”

LIGHTING The one lighting effect is when day turns rapidly to night and the moon rises. The surrealistic, dreamlike effect of this heightened change from day to night amplifies the theme of uncertain time. ALLUSION Several biblical references enter the play, but some of the allusions that are less obvious are literary ones. At the end of ACT I, Gogo’s comment about the moon alludes to a Shelley lyric:

“To the Moon” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The mood arose up in the murky east, A white and shapeless mass.

II

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

Shelley’s poetry continues to reverberate in ACT II. These allusions are some of the play’s very few external references. Macbeth later echoes faintly, but distinctly, in Pozzo’s speech about the brevity and apparent meaninglessness of existence; are we suspended for one flickering instant between the birth canal and the grave? These references let us know that Gogo really was a poet, that these were educated men. Here’s the relevant passage from Macbeth (V,v:10-30):

MACBETH: I have almost forgot the taste of fears; The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts Cannot once start me.

[Re-enter SEYTON]

Wherefore was that cry? SEYTON The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

CHARACTER As strange as the character “development” is in this play, we can still differentiate the characters of Didi (Vladimir), Gogo (Estragon), Lucky, and Pozzo. They are all distinct—they each have a role to play, though it’s not by any means a conventional one. Start with Vladimir. PLOT / CONFLICT Traditional cause/effect plot development is abandoned in Waiting for Godot. The movement of the play is circular and symmetrical. The second act parallels the first. Nothing new happens except the tree grows leaves, indicating a surrealistic passage of time. The characters engage in ways that closely parallel the first act; the key difference seems to be an increased struggle in the second act to “pass the time,” which passed quickly in the first act because of Pozzo and Lucky, whose appearance is briefer in the second act. The dilemma intensifies in the second act because Gogo is more and more desperate to leave and Didi has to continually remind him why they mustn’t leave because they’re waiting for Godot. There is a kind of climactic thematic crescendo in Pozzo’s parting speech and another in Didi’s brief speech just before Godot’s messenger arrives for the second time. These brief speeches don’t necessarily provide much of a climax to the action as much as they deepen themes already established. You can see how this play presents us with a non-traditional plot, although there is a dilemma: the characters want to go but feel “stuck” waiting for Godot. They want to commit suicide, but have grown either too apathetic or too helpless to act on their desires. Habit deadens their own cries as surely as it deadens the cries of others.

THEME

We can’t fail to miss the theme of uncertainty in Waiting for Godot. Uncertainty is pervasive throughout the play: the uncertainty of purpose, of time, place, emotion, relationships, truth, and hope. Existence is the only certainty the play allows. The Cartesian dictum “I think, therefore I am,” is challenged, but essentially hold true. Didi and Gogo are themselves vivid dramatic representations of the Descartes’ body/mind split. Didi is all mind, Gogo all body. Thinking and inexhaustible talking may not be the same thing, but in the absence of the one the other will do. Throughout the play thinking is associated with doubt, with uncertainty, weariness, or absurdity. Clearly, the image of our ability to think is challenged in this play. Related to this critique of our rational capabilities is the play’s critique of language as meaningless blather and chatter on the one hand and oppressively authoritarian on the other. At times it is coercive; other times it’s rhetorically empty, full of hot air—worse than blather—hypocrisy, or mystification. Only rarely does it serve us well, leading us to truth or beauty, but we can’t sustain those functions very well. Pozzo’s poetic description of the twilight may be true and even beautiful, but it peters out—“And that’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.” Or we may run from the truth we’ve brought it to express, as Didi does near the end of the play—“What have I said?” The critique here seems to stem from a deep, postmodern distrust of the efficacy or absoluteness of language. We place our trust in it, but should we? Language is the source of all our illusions, the source of all the mythic fictions we’ve invented to console ourselves from an awareness of our real condition. These fictions have blinded us to the

reality, the truth of our existence. The only truth is this present moment, and to waste it by hoping for some future “salvation,” by waiting for a Godot that never comes, is tragic and absurd. The language of the play is stripped bare, scaled down to its naked essence. You won’t find a writer more capable than Beckett in this regard. The beauty of Beckett’s language is in its absolute economy. It’s a tight little fist that punches hard. The language of this play forces us to reflect on how we use language, really. Is it as neat and tidy as we think? Are we really that concerned about being logical or rational? Do we really describe “reality,” and how rational or logical is reality? How much of what we say is emotional, illogical, and ambiguous? In all of its aspects, including its language, Waiting for Godot confronts the absurdity of existence and challenges us to figure out who we are and what we’re doing here. In this random universe, where everything who lives and who dies, who’s up and who’s down, is a matter of pure chance, and the odds aren’t necessarily in our favor, what do we do? What’s our purpose? The existentialist would say that our purpose is to confront our existence, our being, to be aware of and a part of every passing moment—to make choices, to act—to live authentically, in good faith, aware of our essential freedom and responsibility. This is what Didi can’t or won’t do, and he persuades Gogo to keep him company while he continues to wait for Godot, while he pins his hopes on a future that may never arrive. His futile waiting is either absurd or heroic, depending on your own interpretation. Beckett was interested, it seems, in the relationship between hope and despair. Are Didi and Gogo in despair? Or do they have faith? There’s quite a lot more we could observe in terms of theme, though having said so much already, I think meaning in this play is probably best approached subjectively. How do you talk about the meaning of a circle? My observation of the play and everything I’ve read about it leads me to conclude there is very little objective interpretation which will make this play mean much more than it means quite obviously on the surface. Two tramps are waiting for someone they think will help them, but this person, Godot, never arrives. It seems reasonable to assume that Godot will never arrive, but Didi and Gogo go on waiting, perhaps because they hold out hope that he will, perhaps because they have nothing better to do. But what is this play really about? What does it all mean? What does it all have to do with us? Some audiences see immediately how they, like Gogo and Didi, are waiting, too. Maybe not for “Godot,” but for something. A little help, a little push, a little sunshine, a little windfall. The play takes pains not to be specific, to provide the space to read into it any way we want to. It does not preach a “message.” But when you think about it even a little bit, you realize that, just like Gogo and Didi, we’re waiting all the time, too. Think about it: aren’t we waiting for the war in Iraq to end, waiting to catch Osama bin Laden, waiting to win the war on terror? We’re waiting for President Bush to smoke out the evil-doers. If you’re a banker or a stockbroker you might be waiting for an end to bankruptcy court or class action suits or social security or taxes. Or an end to racism….an end to poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence… Many of us are waiting for environmental disaster, the next world war, the next flu epidemic, the next school shooting, the next terror attack… we’re waiting for security, good times, that great vacation, that better job, that better wardrobe, that better car, that smaller computer, smaller cellphone; we’re waiting for the perfect soul mate, the perfect body, the perfect moment… we’re waiting for our hopes to be heard, our prayers to be answered, our wishes to be granted… we’re waiting, and meanwhile, we’re….here. I remember asking you on the first day of class: what are you most looking forward to this semester? And many of you answered, summer vacation. Spring break. The end of the semester. Now that I think back, I was pretty thrown off guard by that response at the time. (I’ve always been naïve.) It struck me because I hadn’t been expecting that; I’m an idealist, but buried beneath my bitter disappointment with the real world, I’m basically an optimist. I had this optimistic illusion that as students you’d be curious about what the semester would hold, what your classes would be like—maybe not this class in particular since it’s a gen. ed. class, a requirement and not entirely a free choice—but the semester in general. So that illusion was popped right away. The truth is the truth—idealist or not I prefer it over illusion any day. Besides I recognized that this was an honest answer, given in a lighthearted, friendly way—but all the same it struck me as a little hostile (from my perspective as a teacher), and even a little poignant. You were waiting for the end of the semester and the semester had barely started. I remember, without understanding exactly why, that particular response disturbed me a bit, made me uncomfortable. If many of you were already waiting for the end of the semester, then it was almost certain that whatever might happen during the semester would be all but meaningless to you. You were looking past it. Through it. Beyond it. What you really would have liked was to be saved from it, delivered on a magic carpet from January straight to May. Now I understand more substantively why that kind of response made me uneasy: the possibility that we were about to enter into an absurd charade, that

instead of learning together we’d be killing time together. What I felt instinctively, subconsciously, in my gut, this play completely explains, and I couldn’t have explained it otherwise. As lighthearted as that response was, it was sad to me because it indicated such a profound disengagement with the moment, such a dispirited boredom (and the class hadn’t even started yet). In the light shed by this play, I can understand how you arrived in this class, at this semester, waiting for it to end. But unlike this play (which is art, not reality), the semester is now over. There is an end to the waiting. May is about to arrive. But in the flicker of an instant, summer will be over and you’ll be right back here once again. Not in this class. In another class. Which might seem very much like this class. And you might find yourself waiting yet again. Waiting for Godot is a poignant play about such waiting, about the repetition, the meaninglessness, the absurdity of waiting, of feeling (and being) suspended in time instead of moving forward in a meaningful direction. It’s not necessarily about the absence of God, or about Christian salvation, or existential despair, or nihilistic meaninglessness, or postmodern critiques of language, though interpretation is a subjective enterprise, and we can interpret literature how we choose. Still, many critics agree that a sensitive understanding of this play includes the awareness that it’s really an abstract play about waiting, about waiting for the possibility of a better future that we are not quite fully convinced will never arrive. How do we arrive in this seemingly absurd state of waiting? Laying an existential interpretation atop the play, we might say that this play confronts an unpleasant truth about the human condition. As human beings we’re all clinging to the hope of some kind of salvation, some kind of Godot to come and save us from our intolerable suffering—our poverty, our disease, our boredom, our quiet desperation. This hoping, this waiting, removes us from the potentially liberating awareness that the moment we’re actually suspended in, this moment between birth and death that glows so briefly, is ultimately more important than any vague “better future” we might desire. Everything in the play points to suspension: suspension of time, suspension of progress, suspension of reason, suspension of purpose. As drama, every convention has been suspended; the characters and their dialogue dance around in the ether of a nearly empty stage. There’s no shortage of void, as Didi declares. It seems the only thing that’s not suspended is our disbelief. These absurd characters are, ironically, so believable, so ultimately realistic, that it’s barely necessary to remind ourselves we’re in an imaginary world.