WAITING FOR GODOT

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin and after he was lecturer in Paris. At the outbreak of World War II he joined the French Resistent.

Waiting for Godot : Beckett took also inspiration from clowns: these are confused and lost, people are often driven towards madness, or have serious physical abnormalities, which represent and express their inner problems and situations they find abnormally everyday. This maybe because the man of the twentieth century is himself a clown. After the two world wars, he has lost all hopes in ideology and belief. The two main characters, unable to remember who they are, what they do, where they are and why they are at that place at that time. They manage to make only minimal operations, like putting on or taking off a boot, munch on a carrot ..... human types rather than individuals are well delineated and defined psychologically, to indicate the universality of their condition. As the man of the twentieth century, in fact, they are disoriented and passive. They dont have enough strength to react and can only wait for something to happen that could raise their positive situation. All the human condition is dominated by the expectation then, immediately indicated in the title of the work with the use of the gerund that indicates the continuity of the action.

The plot : Vladmir and Estragon, two French tramps are waiting for Mr.Godot in a county street. The two have never met him before and are not sure of either the date or venue. While waiting, comes Pozzo, a wealthy gentleman who holds the leash on his servant Lucky : here, in the passage that we read, although it is set in the open air, the play replicates the impossibility of change so usual in Becketts theatre: Vladmir and Estragon continually talk of leaving, but they do not move. When the two new characters have left the scene, there comes a boy, a messenger, who says that Godot will not come this evening but surely tomorrow. Rivedere il pezzo seguente. Vladimir and Estragon keep waiting again. In the second act, almost identical to the first, find the scene Pozzo and Lucky, in the meantime has become a blind and mute the other. Although the tree has leaves, confirming the time spent waiting. Again comes the boy Godot will not come that night, but certainly the next day. In truth, the guy does not even need to mention: it is Estragon who knows everything, realizes the truth and so already know the content of the message, so the messenger should not do is respond confirming. Vladimir and

Estragon waiting for properties.

Waiting for Godot is a strange and tragic farce where nothing happens twice in the same way as Beckett himself pointed out various times. A work unable to explain anything, because the essence is mystery, awkwardness, the incapacity to discover a sense to existence. Waiting for Godot is over all a poem about time, about the paradox between stability and change, about the difficulty to communicate between human beings. In a kind of modern catharsis, sharing the most intimate and profound anxieties, something like a discharging process takes place during the show. This process turns the absurdity of the human condition into something acceptable and, rather than discouraging, wants to illustrate another point of view able to face the mystery within the joy of a newly found liberty. In a universe the border between dreams and reality becomes more and more uncertain and the search of something real becomes endless, we want to continue to deceive ourselves because... Mr. Godot told me to tell you he wont come this evening but surely tomorrow.