Characters And Setting In Samuel Beckett's 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 characters, while possessing unique character traits, essentially fulfill the others need and together satisfy a whole person. They spend the play searching for meaning and their identities as the characters themselves even confuse their names and by the end loose all sense of individuality, “Ros: We are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. Guil: Which is which” (Stoppard 121).

The play merely focuses on time and how Vladimir and Estragon wait for no apparent reason even though they know Godot isn’t going to come. These meaningless arguments and waiting is all they are ever portrayed doing, repetitively contemplating leaving the place or leaving life for that matter – hanging themselves on the tree and committing suicide. This makes it seem like as though the characters are stuck, and have no way out of the situation. Thoughts of leaving the place always get ignored as they once again go back to the beginning – hoping that Godot will arrive. This is because they are afraid that something might go wrong if they stop this ‘waiting’ which is indeed a significant, day to day component of human existence.

Inaction, the act of restraining oneself from action with hesitant and contemplative behaviour, is one of the main themes of the plays Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Every protagonistic character in each play has an internal conflict on whether to engage in activity or to abstain from action. Hamlet constantly delays his plot for revenge on Claudius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not play a part in the action unless instructed to do so. William Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard approach this theme in the plays by incorporating their own philosophies about inaction, however, all the protagonists face a similar fate: lack of progress and death.

The choice of characters in Waiting for Godot appear to come from a mad house. The main ones, Vladimir and Estragon seem to be struggling in their life where they have little if no memory of how their days passed by, “What did we

     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

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.

The beginning of the play makes Vladimir and Estragon seem interchangeable; they constantly parrot each other, to the point where even they seem bored. Pozzo's statement about his pipe, that the second pipe is never as "sweet" as the first, applies to this play and life in general—it suggests that feelings and events dull with repetition. Throughout his works, Beckett refers to habit as the “great deadener”. The end of Act I establishes Vladimir and Estragon's hopelessness. Even when they both agree to go, and Vladimir says "Yes, let's go," the two men do not move. Even their resolution to go is not strong enough to produce action. This inability to act renders Vladimir and Estragon unable to determine their own fates. Instead of acting, they can only wait for someone or something to act upon

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.

The characters are symbolic figures who convey Beckett’s message and vision. The major characters are Vladimir and Estragon. They function as the mouthpiece of anger and irritation, and through them Beckett gets his message across to the audience. They do not know who they are and where they are. In this respect, the endless country-road is symbolic of endless anguish of modern man. Godot for them means a certain state of certainty. The idea of waiting means a static and immobile attitude towards life. They do not take any action, so they can never reach certainty. As long as, they wait doing nothing, they can never achieve this certainty. They are leading a life of boredom and frustration. They have no past, no present, and are waiting hopelessly

Beckett purposefully strips the setting of all elements of reality—namely time and definition. In Waiting for Godot, his stage directions simply state, "A country road. A tree. (1)" Such simplicity initially seems to muddy the clarity of the work, causing confusion as to the location and specifics of the characters' plight and conditions. However, as Daryl McDaniel constitutes, bareness of the set only serves to create a "complex fictional and highly theatrical world (McDaniel 1)." As the play goes on, this vague scenario also serves to make the work universal, due to the commonality of such elements in nature. Similarly, although Endgame's plot plays out in a more confined and defined space, a room with two high windows and two ashbins, the surroundings are bleak and undefined. Collectively, Beckett's use of setting defies reality. Jean-Jaques Mayoux elaborates on this point to clarify, "a realistic setting would spoil everything (Mayoux 42)." Beckett's intentional bleaching of the set allows for the perfect portrayal of the world as incomprehensible. The distortion of time serves to enhance the incomprehensibility of Beckett's works. Not only does Beckett fail to specify a time period, the element of time passage becomes unfathomable, implying the same about the world in which we live. Waiting for Godot opens with the

The movie Gulliver’s Travels has a wide array of characters. These characters are played by very professional and talented actors. Some of these include, Jack Black as Gulliver, Jason Segel as Horatio, Emily Blunt as Princess Mary, Amanda Peet as Darcy Silverman, Billy Connolly as King Theodore and finally, Chris O’Dowd as General Edward, the antagonist. All of these characters play a central role in the film, whether they are the antagonist, the hero or the Princess. All the roles are important and were exceptionally done.

If hope does not exist, Vladimir and Estragon will never fulfill their desires. Throughout the boy’s appearance, Vladimir continues to interrogate him, asking him several questions about the mysterious figure that is Godot. Asking the boy about Godot, Vladimir asks, “What does he do, Mr. Godot? Do you hear me?” (106), to which the boy merely replies as “He does nothing, Sir” (106). Thus, the futile nature of hope is depicted through Beckett’s use of symbolism. As Godot symbolizes hope, and the boy stated that “He (Godot) does nothing...” (106), this hints the redundant existence of hope. Rather, it is merely something individuals rely on to keep living, as for the case of Vladimir and Estragon, who continuously wait for Godot. While they contemplate suicide many times throughout the book, it is their motivation and continuous strive to wait for Godot that keeps them living to the next day. While “Godot” has failed Vladimir and Estragon many times, failing to show up to the exact spot that they believed they would meet him, they keep on waiting. Their strive and motivation is depicted as Vladimir says, “Tell him... Tell him you saw me and that... That you saw me. You’re sure you saw me, you won’t come and tell me to-morrow that you never saw me!”

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.