Absurdity In Waiting For Godot

Theatre is a complex art that attempts to weave stories of varying degrees of intricacies with the hope that feelings will be elicited from the audience. Samuel Beckett’s most famous work in the theatre world, however, is Waiting for Godot, the play in which, according to well-known Irish critic Vivian Mercier, “nothing happens, twice.” Beckett pioneered many different levels of groundbreaking and avant-garde theatre and had a large influence on the section of the modern idea of presentational theatre as opposed to the representational. His career seemingly marks the end of modernism in theatre and the creation of what is known as the “Theatre of the Absurd.”

The purpose of human life is an unanswerable question. It seems impossible to find an answer because we don 't know where to begin looking or whom to ask. Existence, to us, seems to be something imposed upon us by an unknown force. There is no apparent meaning to it, and yet we suffer as a result of it. The world seems utterly chaotic. We therefore try to impose meaning on it through pattern and fabricated purposes to distract ourselves from the fact that our situation is hopelessly unfathomable. "Waiting for Godot" is a play that captures this feeling and view of the world, and characterizes it with archetypes that symbolize humanity and its behaviour when faced with this knowledge. According to the play, a human being 's life is totally dependant on chance, and, by extension, time is meaningless; therefore, a human 's life is also meaningless, and the realization of this drives humans to rely on nebulous, outside forces, which may be real or not, for order and direction.

One thing is for certain: Waiting for Godot illustrates the inanity of everyday life. Inanity is defined as “silly and dumb”, but absurdism takes that to mean that life’s futility is funny. In the first act of Waiting for Godot, one can almost imagine the audience laughing and then thinking of the lines:

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett's existential masterpiece, for some odd reason has captured the minds of millions of readers, artists, and critics worldwide, joining them all in an attempt to interpret the play. Beckett has told them not to read anything into his work, yet he does not stop them. Perhaps he recognizes the human quality of bringing personal experiences and such to the piece of art, and interpreting it through such colored lenses. Hundreds of theories are expounded, all of them right and none of them wrong. A play is only what you bring to it, in a subconscious connection between you and the playwright.

As a result of the Second World War, theatre of absurd appeared to present illogical world through its philosophy that life is absurd. This theatre has its roots in the existential philosophy which are combined with dramatic elements to create a new style to show the absurdity of the world. This genre of theatre took somehow a long time to catch because its playwright techniques seemed to be illogical to the theatre world. However, Theatre of the Absurd accomplished its eventual popularity when the Second World War highlighted the ultimate instability of human life (http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~sek5/classpage.html). Theatre of the Absurd reflects the changes that happened in science, psychology, and philosophy in the twentieth century(Esslin,1968:14).

Beckett did not view and express the problem of Absurdity in any form of philosophical theory (he never wrote any philosophical essays, as Camus or Sartre did), his expression is exclusively the artistic language of theatre. In this chapter, I analyse the life situation of Beckett's characters finding and pointing at the parallels between the philosophical background of the Absurdity and Beckett's artistic view.

In Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, it is essential that the play is characterized by time and hopelessness. That the purpose of life is unanswerable; there is no apparent meaning to it. When first analyzing the play, there is an uncertainty if anything happens within the play or the title character’s significance because of the constant repetition without achieving answers throughout the story. Waiting for Godot captures the feeling that a situation is hopelessly unfathomable. The play characterizes hopelessness with forms that symbolize humanity and its behavior with all the characters. It emphasizes that because a human’s life is dependant on chance and that time is meaningless, reassuring that a human’s life is meaningless. The reality of this makes humans ambiguous, looking for outside forces, which may or may not be imaginary, for direction. Just as Vladimir and Estragon cling onto Godot, without knowing whether or not he or it is real.

Harold Pinter belongs to the group of the twentieth century absurdist playwrights who came to become known as the innovators of an Avant-garde style in their playwritings by breaking away from the old concepts of morality, religion and sentimentality. The post world war playwrights and writers such as Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Genet, Adamov and T. S. Eliot became well aware of the social, political and economic tribulations that jeopardized the existence of modern man. The utter helplessness of man and his futile efforts to escape resulted in the emergence of the theories of absurdism and existentialism, and there was a shift in the definition of what was considered the real and the unreal. Harold Pinter’s play “The Birthday Party” explicates the sense of absurdity of human life trapped in a claustrophobic atmosphere. The theme of absurdism in Pinter’s “The birthday Party” consists in the playwright’s implication that there is no logical progression of the plot.

In 1953, Samuel Beckett opened in Paris the French version of “Waiting for Godot.” This tragic comedy depicts the vigil of two characters (Vladimir and Estragon). By a dismal roadside, the two await the momentous coming of Godot. This character, however, never appears. This brings both Vladimir and Estragon to the point of a comedic suicide. It is comic because in ends with a broken belt and falling pants. No one dies. The two friends give Godot another day. If he fails to show, the two will try again more seriously. At this point, the play ends. The puzzled audience leaves with unanswered questions. Some critics say that the plays conclusion is the point. It parallels, as well as parodies, human life.

In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, one of the most prominent dramatic styles Beckett uses is the tragicomedy. This blend of the two classic forms of drama adds a sense of dark humor to the play. When it is performed, the play’s seemingly random acts of comedy are dispersed through the tragedy. which provides a physical act to be performed on stage, as well as expanding the depth of the ideas presented. Beckett uses the tragicomedy style to demonstrate how tragedy and comedy are two of the most important parts of life, and to provide a shocking and stark contrast between ideas presented in the play.

The Theatre of the Absurd is a collection of plays written after World War II that were considered of having ridiculous and random ideals. Many of these plays came from Europe, including Rhinoceros by Ionesco. In Rhinoceros, the main character Berenger is a man who is not keeping up with himself and is having a midlife crisis. Everyone else in the town is living a normal life when the townspeople start to turn into rhinoceroses. With his differentness and being so out of place, he is the only one left as a human over a rhinoceros. Now that Berenger wants to be like everyone else and turn into a rhinoceros, he cannot because of his major differences. In the play, Rhinoceros, different aspects of the Theatre of the Absurd come through in the crazy storyline created by Ionesco. No communication and no logic are two of the aspects of the absurd writing concepts during this time period. One of the absurd aspects of no communication is found through the lines of the play.

Originally performed in 1953 in French, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot took the stage at the Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto. The play tells the story of Vladimir and Estragon, two men who wait for Godot, someone or something they have not met to seen. The Soulpepper Production illustrates the journey that plays with Vladimir and Estragon’s mind and emotion, in regard to the interactions with their surroundings and themselves. The main focus of the production directs the audience’s attention towards an enclosed setting that limit the actions originally sought in the play. The production however, focused more on Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship, the play does not capture the same effect. Thus, the production is a mere interpretation from what the play offers in portraying the stage. From the play to the stage, Waiting for Godot illustrates how an enclosed setting represents Vladimir and Estragon’s mind.

The play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is famous for its cyclic storyline and non-existing plot. In the lines, Beckett incorporates themes of existentialism and the loss of hope. Throughout the two acts of the play, the main protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their days waiting aimlessly for a mysterious figure named Godot. While central in the play, Godot never makes an appearance in any act, and merely exists as a name. While Pozzo and Lucky, two other characters make their appearance in each act of the play, the boy is perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing. The boy, whom appears towards the end of each act, exemplifies the never-ending cycle of the search for hope that remains unfulfilled through the use of symbolism,

Theatre of the absurd is one of the prominent schools of drama which flourished during the twentieth century. Absurd plays usually convey the believe that human existence is pointless and life is irrational, meaningless, and futile. Therefore, they illustrate humanity’s correspondence to the absurdity of the world especially after the two destructive world wars. Although people struggle to give life meaning, their inability to find any led them to experience anxiety and confusion. As a result, people started to doubt religion, question the existence of God, and suffer from weak faith. Samuel Buckett’s play Waiting for Godot deals with several themes that highlights the absurdity of human conditions.

Waiting for Godot represents human existence as pointless and futile. The play seems to question whether pointless waiting for something is a better alternative than wandering a devastated earth in which nothing makes sense, a bleak choice at best. The World War One poems we addressed in class are interesting because they both confirm and deny the pessimistic outlook on human existence presented by Waiting for Godot. I believe that whether the poem supports or challenges the play depends on the strength of the poet’s beliefs in concepts such as God, loyalty, and love, concepts which are so fundamental in man’s thinking that only a traumatic experience can enlighten someone to see past them. The more committed the poem is to such concepts,