The Importance Of Religious Faith In 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.”

This is established at the beginning of Act 1, through an allusion to Christian philosophy in Vladimir’s dialogue about the fable of the two thieves, where ‘One is supposed to have been saved and the other damned’. In his allusion to the Bible, Beckett emphasises chance being woven into even the most sacred of texts that supposedly hold the ultimate truth for humanity. Moreover, in his book Understanding Samuel Beckett (1990), Alan Astro highlights that it is God 's silence that causes the real hopelessness amidst all the comical actions of Beckett’s characters. He suggests, "the recourse to bookkeeping by the philosopher (Pascal) no less than the clownish tramp shows how helpless we are with respect to God 's silence". However, while Beckett’s play is concerned with a loss of meaning, it raises a positive message, implying “we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it” (Kaufmann). While Beckett sees little reason for hope after witnessing the trauma caused by the very weapons meant to preserve world peace, he is unable to relinquish it entirely. This is evident in the symbol of the tree. The tree is central to the set design of the play, for the sprouting of leaves in act 2, metaphorically suggests new life and resolution- an image of hope against

The basic premise of the play is that chance is the underlying factor behind existence. Therefore human life is determined by chance. This is established very early on, when Vladimir mentions the parable of the two thieves from the Bible. "One of the thieves was saved. It 's a reasonable percentage" (Beckett, 8). The idea of "percentage" is important because this represents how the fate of humanity is determined; it is random, and there is a percentage chance that a person will be saved or damned.

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

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 other common feature in many religions is the distinction of sacred places, time, events or people from ordinary ways of life (Steinicke and Volkhard 17). Muslims, for instance, have set up Fridays as their holy day of worshipping Allah. Every member of the Muslim faith are expected to present themselves to the Mosques on Fridays in order to thank God for almost everything that had been done to them. Friday, therefore, is not like any other day in Muslim’s calendar. The Buddhists have built temples where they worship on specified days or time (McKim 28). The temple is also furnished with idols representing Buddha in order to separate such a place from any other building. Christians consider churches as the most holy grounds for worshipping God. The place that has been selected for worshipping or meeting to discuss matters related to religion is usually separated from other places in order to show the importance. Such a distinction makes it easier for people to notice the difference and strengthen their faith or belief in the supernatural being (Walter 79). A day that has been set a set for worshipping shows a recognition that the belief is real and people should focus on strengthening their faith.

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

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.

Life is just a board game waiting for the each individual to make their moves based off of their choices with no rules to the game, which is similar to the existentialism philosophy. The ideology emphasizes the notion that an individual has the power to determine their own decisions free of restrictions and facing the consequences of their actions. One main concept that writers of this philosophy debate is the topic of God and its relation to how people determine the way they will act. In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, the main characters Vladimir and Estragon idealize Godot as God due to the biblical allusions in the play, while modern society relates Godot to the sense of purpose in their life.

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

Emmanuel Levinas was a twentieth century Jewish philosopher who published many essays and works about the ethics within religious faith and God’s role among men. Levinas’ ideologies are fairly contradictory to the ones instilled upon me growing up in a Catholic faith. In his writings, Levinas shuts down the idea of an all forgiving God, while shining all the importance of living an ethical, merciful lifestyle on the practice of religion. Although his beliefs bring forth a lot of curiosity and reflection within me, I find it to be very difficult to accept them as true, most likely because of my Christian up-bringing.

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?

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.