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 play starts in Orgon’s house. Where him and his mother (Madame Pernelle) are having a discussion about Tartuffe, who is a beggar and a holy man. The other members of this family strongly dislike Tartuffe because they believe that he is a self righteous con artist.

Orgon, the main character, starts off at the beginning of play with an infatuation towards his guest Tartuffe. Tartuffe uses this to his advantage and persuades Orgon to hand over his daughter’s hand in marriage instead of the man that she had previously been promised too. Throughout the play, Tartuffe shows his true self to everyone except Orgon and works his plan to take over everything that Orgon has. Everyone tries to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is just playing him, but Orgon continues to take the side of Tartuffe and accuses his family of being liars. Finally, Elmire convinces Orgon to hide in the room while she has a conversation with Tartuffe, so that she is able to get Tartuffe to show himself without knowing it. This is a crucial point in the play, because Orgon and his mother, madame Pernelle were the only two people that were backing Tartuffe and that were on his side. After hearing the advances that Tartuffe makes towards his wife, Orgon changes his view on Tartuffe and goes on a rampage against the “holy” man. This changes

     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

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.

Shakespeare was an amazing author. No wonder, there are movies that would be based off of his original stories or themes. There are many movies that have the same theme or plot as some of Shakespeare's literature. One example that comes to mind that relates to Shakespeare is Trainwreck. The movie Trainwreck is a romantic comedy about two people who didn't think they would ever love someone but end up loving each other. The movie shows how even though people may not think they will end up falling in love, the world always has a way of brining people together. This movie has the same theme as Shakespeare because in Shakespeare people might not know who they love, or if they love anyone at all. In the movie Trainwreck, it is the same thing.

Milhaud created his own style where he has added in the ballets L’Homme et son Desir (1918), Le Boeuf sur le toit (1919), and La Creation du monde (1923). He also composed incidental music for Claudel’s Protee (1920) and for Claudel’s tragedies Agamemnon (1913), Choephores (1915), and Les Eumenides (1917-22). His other operas are Christophe Colomb (1930), Le Pauvre Matelot (1926), David (1954) and Medee (1939).

The two works are written in very different styles, but each has its own unique quality that adds to the overall success of the works themselves. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a play, and is thus written with stage directions and dialogue instructions, as it is meant to be both a piece of literary mastery and a wonderful stage experience. It is this traditional play structure that counterbalances the more modern thematic

Chekhov is the true precursor of the theater of the absurd. Before the beckettian "waiting" there was the

“Significant texts in any period arise from particular ways of thinking and possess an enduring relevance.”

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?

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.

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.

Samuel Beckett subtracts the key elements of characters and setting from his play, Waiting for Godot, resulting in a less guided interpretation from the reader. The lack of description and thought in the language represents the stagnancy of the characters and proves that there is, “Nothing to be done” (Waiting for Godot, 1).  The setting is first described in the play as “A country road. A tree” (Waiting for Godot, 1). In leaving the landscape undescribed, there is little to grasp about the effect of the scenery on the play’s outcome. The main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, also only distract from the play’s direction through their constant pauses in speech and reluctance to move forward, both physically and mentally. Their efforts to pass the time until Godot’s arrival prolongs the story without adding any progression. The characters often speak of what they could do instead of waiting, but they never act, leaving them both unable to realize the meaningless of their live.

In Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett produces a truly cryptic work. On first analyzing the play, one is not sure of what, if anything, happens or of the title character's significance. In attempting to unravel the themes of the play, interpreters have extracted a wide variety symbolism from the Godot's name. Some, taking an obvious hint, have proposed that Godot represents God and that the play is centered on religious symbolism. Others have taken the name as deriving from the French word for a boot, godillot. Still, others have suggested a connection between Godot and Godeau, a character who never appears in Honore de Balzac's Mercadet; Ou, le faiseur. Through all these efforts, there is still no definitive answer as to whom or what Godot