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Man's Search for Meaning in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

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Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett; a tragic comedy in which Estragon and Vladimir wait for a person named Godot, who never shows up. This existentialist play, which takes place in a single setting, and time, follows the actions and the traditional rules of human existence, and doing nothing in their lives except waiting. Beckett has written a play in which nothing happens, and one minute is no different than the next. The play ends exactly the way it begins, with two men waiting impatiently for Godot and try to exist in the hostile and uncaring world by their human condition, e.g. they keep repeating themselves, talking nonsense, forgetting and trying to find the answer the question: Who and where is Godot? From the paradoxical …show more content…

The routine occurs in front of the audience and the same chain of events: Estragon sleeps in a ditch, Vladimir meets him at the tree, they are visited by Pozzo and Lucky, and a boy comes to tell them that Godot will not be coming that day, but will surely be there the following day. In this way repetition dictates the structure of the play. No climax occurs in the play because the only thing the plot builds to is the coming of Godot. However, by the end of the first act the audience has begun that Godot will never show up. Not very long into the second act before the audience realizes that all Vladimir and Estragon are really doing is wasting time, “Waiting for...waiting.” (50) This tells us that do something than waiting around, because Estragon and Vladimir do nothing than wait, and they should stop waiting or either find Godot or leave because Godot might not come forever.
Beckett has written an existentialism play showing that an individual must take action instead of just sitting around and waiting. In the entire play Estragon and Vladimir never refer to each other as Estragon and Vladimir, but rather Gogo and Didi their nicknames. Despite Vladimir and Estragon being two distinct characters on the stage, they constantly finish off each other’s sentences. In this sense Estragon and Vladimir are indistinguishable, and represent all of humanity, as Vladimir later says “all mankind is us” (74). In the second act,

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