WAITING FOR GODOTBY SAMUEL BECKETT

Samuel Beckett Biography

SAMUEL BECKETT

(possibly April 13, 1906 - December 22, 1989)

Although Beckett insisted he was born on Good Friday, April 13 1906, his birth certificate puts the date a month later.

An absurdist Irish playwright, novelist and poet.

SAMUEL BECKETT

studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927, and shortly thereafter took a teaching post in Paris.

There he met James Joyce, who was to have a massive influence on him.

Beckett continued his writing career while doing some secretarial duties for Joyce.

In 1929 he published his first work, a critical essay defending Joyce's work.

in 1930 he won a small literary prize with his poem "Whoroscope," which largely concerns René Descartes, another major influence.

SAMUEL BECKETT In 1930, he returned to Trinity College as a

lecturer, but left after less than two years, and began to travel throughout Europe.

spent time in London, publishing his critical study of Proust there in 1931, and in 1933, in the wake of his father's death, he began two years of Jungian psychotherapy with Dr. Wilfred Bion, who in 1935 took him to hear Jung's third Tavistock lecture, an event which he would still recall many years later.

In 1932 he worked on his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers he decided instead to split it into several smaller parts and re-titled it More Pricks Than Kicks, and in 1933 it was published in this form.

In 1935 he worked on his novel Murphy, which still showed the heavy influence of Joyce, and then in 1936 departed for extensive travels around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen, and also noted his distaste for the Nazi savagery which was then taking over the country.

SAMUEL BECKET

In 1937, he returned to Ireland briefly, but after a falling-out with his mother he decided to settle permanently in Paris.

In December, when refusing the solicitations of a pimp, he was stabbed and nearly killed, and while recovering he met the woman who would be his lifelong companion, Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil. (In 1961, in a secret civil ceremony in England, he married her, but mainly, as with Joyce, due to reasons relating to French inheritance law.)

In 1938 he published Murphy and the next year translated it into French.

SAMUEL BECKETT He remained in France at the outbreak

of World War II and following the 1940 occupation by Germany, Beckett joined the French Resistance, working as a courier.

During the next two years, on several occasions he was almost caught by the Gestapo but in August of 1942 his unit was betrayed by a former Catholic priest and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon, in the Vaucluse département on the Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region.

Although Samuel Beckett rarely spoke about his war time activities, during the two years he stayed in Roussillon, he helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains. While in hiding, he began work on the novel Watt which he would complete in 1945.

For his efforts in fighting the German occupation, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government.

SAMUEL BECKETT

Beckett is most famous for the play Waiting for Godot (published 1952, English translation published 1955), which opened to mainly bad reviews but slowly became very popular and is still often performed today.

Like most of his works after 1947, the play was first written in French (under the title En attendant Godot).

Beckett is thus considered one of the great French "absurdist" playwrights of the twentieth century, along with Ionesco and Jean Genet.

He translated his works into the English language himself.

SAMUEL BECKETT

Beckett's theatre is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human situation.

Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969.

Beckett died December 22, 1989

OTHER WORKS BY SAMUEL BECKETT

Eleutheria (1940s, first published 1995)

Waiting for Godot (first published 1952)

Endgame (published 1957) Happy Days (published 1960) All That Fall (radio play, 1956) Act Without Words I (1956) Act Without Words II (1956) Krapp's Last Tape (1958) Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s) Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s) Embers (1959) Rough for Radio I (radio play, never broadcast, 1961, rewritten as Cascando) Rough for Radio II (radio play, early 1960s) Words and Music (radio play, 1961) Cascando (radio play, 1962) Play (1963)

Film (film, 1963) The Old Tune (radio play, adaptation of Robert Pinget's La Manivelle, published 1963) Come and Go (1965) Eh Joe (television play, 1965) Breath (1969) Not I (1972) That Time (1975) Footfalls (1975) Ghost Trio (television play, 1975) ... but the clouds ... (television play, 1976) A Piece of Monologue (1980) Rockaby (1981) Ohio Impromptu (1981) Quad (1982) Catastrophe (1982) Nacht und Träume (television play, 1982) What Where (1983)

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOTBy Samuel Beckett

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT

Waiting for Godot qualifies as one of Samuel Beckett's most famous works.

Originally written in French in 1948, Beckett personally translated the play into English.

The world premiere was held on January 5, 1953, in the Left Bank Theater of Babylon in Paris.

The play's reputation spread slowly through word of mouth and it soon became quite famous. Other productions around the world rapidly followed.

The play initially failed in the United States, likely as a result of being misfiled as "the laugh of four continents." A subsequent production in New York City was more carefully advertised and garnered some success.

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT

Waiting for Godot incorporates many of the themes and ideas that Beckett had previously discussed in his other writings.

The use of the play format allowed Beckett to dramatize his ideas more forcefully than before, which is one of the reasons that the play is so intense.

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT

Beckett often focused on the idea of "the suffering of being."

Most of the play deals with the fact that Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for something to alleviate their boredom.

Godot can be understood as one of the many things in life that people wait for.

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT

The play has often been viewed as fundamentally existentialist in its take on life.

The fact that none of the characters retain a clear mental history means that they are constantly struggling to prove their existence.

Thus the boy who consistently fails to remember either of the two protagonists casts doubt on their very existence. This is why Vladimir demands to know that the boy will in fact remember them the next day.

ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT

Waiting for Godot is part of the Theater of the Absurd. This implies that it is meant to be irrational.

Absurd theater does away with the concepts of drama, chronological plot, logical language, themes, and recognizable settings.

There is also a split between the intellect and the body within the work. Thus Vladimir represents the intellect and Estragon the body, both of whom cannot exist without the other.

WAITING FOR GODOTCharacters

VLADIMIR AND ESTRAGON When Beckett started writing he did not have

a visual image of Vladimir and Estragon. They are never referred to as tramps in the text.

[Beckett said]: The only thing I'm sure of is that they're wearing bowlers.

There are no physical descriptions of either of the two characters; however, the text indicates that Vladimir is likely the heavier of the pair. The bowlers and other broadly comic aspects of their personas have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films.

Vladimir stands through most of the play whereas Estragon sits down numerous times and even dozes off.

Estragon is preoccupied with mundane things, what he can get to eat and how to ease his physical aches and pains; he is direct, intuitive. He finds it hard to remember but can recall certain things when prompted

They have been together for fifty years but when asked – by Pozzo – they don't reveal their actual ages.

Vladimir's life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair.

Throughout the play the couple refer to each other by pet names, "Didi" and "Gogo.”

POZZO AND LUCKY We learn very little about Pozzo besides the fact

that he is on his way to the fair to sell his slave, Lucky.

He presents himself very much as the Ascendancy landlord, bullying and conceited.

He confesses to a poor memory but it is more a result of an abiding self-absorption. "Pozzo is a character who has to overcompensate. That's why he overdoes things ... and his overcompensation has to do with a deep insecurity in him."

Pozzo controls Lucky by means of an extremely long rope which he jerks and tugs if Lucky is the least bit slow.

Lucky is the absolutely subservient slave of Pozzo and he unquestioningly does his every bidding with "dog-like devotion".

Lucky speaks only once in the play and it is a result of Pozzo's order to "think" for Estragon and Vladimir.

Pozzo and Lucky had been together for sixty years and, in that time, their relationship has deteriorated.

Lucky has always been the intellectually superior but now, with age, he has become an object of contempt: his "think" is a caricature of intellectual thought and his "dance" is a sorry sight.

Despite his horrid treatment at Pozzo's hand however, Lucky remains completely faithful to him. Even in the second act when Pozzo has inexplicably gone blind, and needs to be led by Lucky rather than driving him as he had done before, Lucky remains faithful and has not tried to run away; they are clearly bound together by more than a piece of rope.

THE BOYS The boy in Act I, a local lad,

assures Vladimir that this is the first time he has seen him. He says he was not there the previous day. He confirms he works for Mr. Godot as a goatherd. His brother, whom Godot beats, is a shepherd. Godot feeds both of them and allows them to sleep in his hayloft.

The boy in Act II also assures Vladimir that it was not he who called upon them the day before. He insists that this too is his first visit. When Vladimir asks what Godot does the boy tells him, "He does nothing, sir." We also learn he has a white beard – possibly, the boy is not certain. This boy also has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy that came in Act I or the one who came the day before that.

GODOT

The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate.

WAITING FOR GODOTSetting

SETTING There is only one scene

throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a

country road by a tree. The script calls for Estragon

to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Beckett's own 1975 German production – this is usually a stone.

In the first act the tree is bare.

In the second, a few leaves have appeared despite the script specifying that it is the next day.

The minimal description calls to mind "the idea of the lieu vague, a location which should not be particularised."