Analysis Of The Play ' Waiting For Godot '

     Samuel Beckett was forty-two years old and living in post-war Paris when he wrote Waiting for Godot as an exercise to help rid himself of the writer's block which was hindering his work in fiction. Once he started, he became increasingly absorbed in the play, and scribbled it almost without hesitation into a soft-cover notebook in a creative burst that lasted from October 9, 1948, until he completed the typed manuscript on January 29, 1949. After some revision, he offered the script to several producers, but it was refused. Although Beckett himself gave up hope with the script, his wife was more persistent, and, acting as his agent, she continued to approach

Samuel Beckett’s plays are abstract and seemingly ludicrous in the minds of those “cultured” by “true” literature. However, that is not the point, or rather that is the point that Beckett wants to break. Thinking about love, the weather, or the next Trump scandal will not help us in our endeavor to understand who we are and why we are here. It is through Beckett’s works that he challenges our preconceptions of the world and who we have learned it from so that we can craft our most authentic selves, a “self” that is transparent and questioning. In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Act Without Words II, the play serves as an authentic reflection of life and actively questions and inquires on what it means to

"Nowadays the plays' meaning is usually blurred by the fact that the actor plays to the audiences hearts. The figures portrayed are foisted on the audience and are falsified in the process. Contrary to present custom they ought to be presented quite coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for empathy; they are there to be understood and politely added

This passage is characteristic of the style of writing that Beckett developed in most of his plays, especially in Waiting for Godot and Endgame. In Waiting for Godot, the reader discovers, in the first act, two tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), awaiting the arrival of someone named Godot. While they wait, two more men arrive: there is the tyrannical Pozzo whom at first Didi and Gogo mistake for Godot, and his slave, Lucky, who can 'dance ' and 'think ' for the audience. After Pozzo and Lucky depart, a small boy who pretends working for Godot appears to

1. How does the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon compare with the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky? What is the effect created by the contrast between these two pairs of characters? Is it significant that the characters appear in pairs, rather than alone?

American writer, historian, and philosopher, Will Durant once said "So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him." The earth or concept, rather, that holds man in a dreary cycle in this case is Time because it is an important concept. Time in literature is important to understand because it seems to play such a vital role of texts and helps the reader understand them better. Not only that, time can also be seen as an underlying theme that is significant because it questions and influences the structure of the story including the characters actions, dialogues, or story's plot, setting, etc. Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” use time to show

Samuel Beckett may have renounced the use of Christian motifs in Waiting for Godot, but looking at the character of Lucky proves otherwise. We can see Lucky as a representative figure of Christ as his actions in the play carry a sort of criticism of Christianity. His role suggests that the advantages of Christianity have declined to the point where they no longer help humanity at all.

Modernist fiction is incredibly dense and abstract. Writers from the twentieth century also seem to carry with them the weight of the world, and thus their fiction has been filled with realistic misery and pain. Still, these writers often add to this element with existentialist thematic structures, which construct a very unique and experimental viewpoint on a modern existence. This is what is occurring in both Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot as well as Albert Camus' The Stranger. The two a very different in format, yet both play upon the modernist idea of abandonment by God and the idea that there is an underlying sense of nothingness that guides modern life. Each focuses on the notion of free will and how it determines our lives in a world devoid of God. Together, these great works of contemporary fiction are a telling testament to the changing nature of sentiments regarding both religion and the meaning of life in a tumultuous twentieth century paradigm.

Gambaran ini telah dilukiskan oleh Samuel Beckett melalui karya drama absurdnya yang pertama iaitu En attendant Godot (Waiting For Godot). Samuel Beckett merupakan tokoh yang bertanggung jawab dalam mempopularkan drama absurd di kaca mata teater dunia selain daripada Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet dan Arthur Adamov. Seperti mana bentuk-bentuk drama absurd lain, Beckett memperlihatkan ketidakrasionalan ini melalui pengujudan masa dan tempat yang tergantung seperti mana juga idealisme perletakan masa yang tidak spesifik oleh Adamov yang beliau samakan dengan alam-alam mimpi. Kebanyakan watak-watak yang dilukiskan dalam drama absurd ditimpa kesengsaraan dan berupaya berdiri sendiri dalam menyelesaikan konflik yang ditanggung tanpa menangisi nasib takdir tersebut kepada tuhan. Demikian juga topik dan isu persoalan yang ditimbulkan adalah sukar untuk dikenal pasti di dalam drama berbentuk absurd. Ia seperti satu persoalan yang tergantung yang tidak menemui jawapan. Kesemua bentuk-bentuk yang membangunkan drama-drama absurd ini didasari oleh kekejaman peperangan yang melanda manusia pada ketika itu dan nasib manusia yang tidak terbela oleh tuhan yang kemudiannya diluahkan melalui pembentukan drama absurd barat.

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.”

Madness is a central theme in Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hamlet’s “antique disposition” (1.5) is used as a tool of manipulation. He acts mad in order to gain the upper hand over his enemies; he makes them believe his mind is elsewhere to distract them from his long-term goal of avenging his father with Claudius’s death. Hamlet’s portrayal of madness varies depending on which character he interacts with; with Polonius, he focuses on wordplay to make him seem outside of the situation. With the women in his life, he is much more aggressive; he verbally abuses his mother, and verbally abuses Ophelia. His abuse of Ophelia adds to her madness, as well. Ophelia is used as an object by everyone in the play; the adults use her as bait to try to figure out what is wrong with Hamlet and Hamlet uses her as a scapegoat for his madness. Her femininity and sexuality are the tool in which the others direct her—Claudius and Gertrude choose her for her romantic association with Hamlet, Hamlet uses that romantic association to disguise his goals, and also attacks her sexuality in order to enhance his “madness”. Because of this focus on her potential impurities, Ophelia’s madness sought to highlight her innocence. She reverts to a childlike state of detachment and ultimately takes her own life. Hamlet explicitly states that he is going to act mad on purpose; Ophelia’s actions are not as obviously calculated. Despite the other characters disregarding her actions as useless

Oxford dictionary defines absurdity as "the state or quality of being ridiculous or widely unreasonable” and this can be strongly felt in Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”. Actually, this play is well known as the Theater of Absurd due to its totally different genre of drama. The difference in genre is mainly due to the plot, the characters, the incoherence and repetitiveness in the conversations and actions which bring the audience to view this play as a complete change from the traditional type of drama.

Who is Godot and what does he represent? These are two of the questions that Samuel Beckett allows both his characters and the audience to ponder. Many experiences in this stage production expand and narrow how these questions are viewed. The process of waiting reassures the characters in Beckett 's play that they do indeed exist. One of the roles that Beckett has assigned to Godot is to be a savior of sorts. Godot helps to give the two tramps in Waiting for Godot a sense of purpose. Godot is an omnipresent character that helps to give meaning and function to the lives of two homeless men.

The characters are heavily dependent on each other, not only regarding chores but also to fight loneliness. They live with each other to mean something to themselves and the other. Like in the other play, Waiting for Godot, Vladimir always needed reassurances about whether he has met the other person (boy/pozzo & lucky).

In 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 relieve them from their boredom. Godot can be understood as one of the many things in life that people wait for. Waiting for Godot is part of the ‘Theater of the Absurd’. This implies that it is meant to be irrational and meaningless. Absurd theater does not have 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. Vladimir represents the intellect and Estragon the body, both cannot exist without the other.