Lack of Closure in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Literature, as any other kind of art, is abstract and gives the readers the possibility of applying different meanings and therefore learning new morals. The critic Roland Barthes has wisely said that “Literature is the question minus the answer.” The tragedy Hamlet by William Shakespeare is a perfect example of how a central question is left unanswered thus allowing for

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.”

In conclusion, ignorance is portrayed several times through the young characters of the story. Through solving and

A novel is only as great as its author’s efforts. The ability to tie everything together in the end of a novel without leaving any unsolved questions, or relying on the ex machina technique, is the goal in which all inspiring authors reach for. Novelist Edith Wharton once said, “At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the “illuminating incident” to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.” This idea came from Wharton’s own work, The Writing of Fiction. In a different work of hers, a novel by the name of Ethan Frome, Wharton explores the concept of the illuminating incident very thoroughly. I have

The narrative perspective helps us discover the underlying moral of the story– that is its argument about how we ought to and ought not to believe or behave (Sellnow 2017). Part of the narrative perspective is the viewer’s narrative rationality which refers to the assessment of good reasons used to persuade masses of the moral (Sellnow 2017). Another element in this perspective is its coherence defined as plausibility. Often times viewers will better agree with a moral whose story is believable and characters relatable. And the more believable and relatable the more the story resonates and that connects to its fidelity or the degree to which the values in a story ring true (Sellnow 2017). Under a narrative lens several different aspects are examined such as the actions and conditions that create the active and static events, the setting, characters that based on their depth are either round or flat. With predictable characters being flat and the unpredictable round.

The novel leaves readers with a quandary, Haynes writes, that resonates with a deep question faced eventually by everyone: How shall I respond to claims that God speaks directly to individuals, instructing them to behave in ways I judge to be immoral? Stating that God issues commands for what appear to be immoral acts raises at least the perception, and comes close to asserting, that God commands and controls evil as well as good. For satisfaction atonement, Jesus’ death is aimed at God or aimed Godward-the target of Jesus’ death is God’s honor or God’s law. God’s honor not only needs the death, but God also arranges for Jesus to die to pay the debt to God’s honor. The evil powers who oppose the reign of God by killing Jesus-whether the devil, the mob, or the Romans-are the ones who are actually doing the will of God, are doing God a favor by killing Jesus to provide the payment that God’s honor or God’s law demands. Since the death of Jesus is also professed to be good and salvific, this image has God orchestrating both good and evil-salvation for some of God’s children depends on God directing the death of another of God’s children. Weaver explains to the audience how God answers to our call, how he knows how to heal us when we are hurting, and answers to the question of “Why did Jesus have to die?” or “How does Jesus’ death save?”.

4. What do these details tell you about the writer’s assumptions about the knowledge and experience of readers?

Is the quotation used to illustrate a point, provide clarification, or just to identify a part of the play?

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.

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.

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.

Extricating the meaning and point of the story may be easily done or become an extremely arduous task. However, individuals are given the choice to accept this moral, or point, and apply it to their own lives.

The periods of silence in Waiting for Godot are moments in which the characters realize where there is no certainty, there can be no definite meanings and words are just futile nonsense. No matter how much they use language, how long they talk to each other or what they talk about, silence will eventually fall on them like a haunting cloud, reminding them that they are no more than two tramps who are waiting for someone to redeem them.

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,

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.