Waiting for Godot and the Existential Theme of Absurdity, January 5, 1953

Samuel Beckett's controversial play Waiting for Godot broke with traditional dramatic forms by introducing the theme of nothingness and by innovating the techniques of the Theater of the Absurd Waiting for Godot, an avant-garde tragicomic play, was written by Samuel Beckett between 1947 and 1949, and published as En attendant Godot in 1952. First performed on January 5, 1953, in Paris, the play soon gained worldwide attention, as did Beckett and the Theater of the Absurd. The play's immediate reception ranged from boredom and disgust to wild enthusiasm. The Paris production was championed by many critics as a revolutionary breakthrough in modern drama. The first review of the Paris production, by Sylvain Zegel, was representative. He predicted that the play would be discussed for a long time. Zegel described the play as "an inexplicable miracle" and heralded Beckett as "one of today's best playwrights." Zegel sensed that the two tramps in the play represented all of humanity and that audience members had been confronted with a deep image of their own emptiness. Many reviewers after Zegel amplified on the manner in which Waiting for Godot contains universal existential dilemmas, surreal communications, and a consciousness-raising confrontation of the audience's own self-deception. Many critics and audience members found the play too unconventional and walked away in boredom or disgust. Beckett's break with traditional theater forms appalled some critics and viewers. Beckett's experimental theater, which combined elements of vaudeville, existentialism, and what was later to be called deconstructionism, was too radical for some. The first American reviewer, Marya Mannes, seeing a London performance, doubted whether she ever had seen a worse play. She characterized the play as "typical of the self-delusion of which certain intellectuals are capable, embracing obscurity, pretense, ugliness, and negation as protective coloring for their own confusions." The dialogue was characterized as "gibberish" between two "symbolic maniacs." Her review ended by quoting this line from the play: "Let us hang ourselves." She quipped that the line was unhappily not acted upon. In 1956, a large portion of the viewers at a performance in Miami, Florida, left in disgust during the intermission, enacting an early line in the play itself: "I have had better entertainment elsewhere." The audience had been misled by the play's billing as the "laugh sensation of two continents." Critics and audience alike complained that nothing happens in the play. In this assessment, the play's critics came closer to sensing the actual meaning of the play than they realized.Defenders of Waiting for Godot would argue that nothing happens in the lives of the audience. Proponents of what was to become the Theater of the Absurd contended that the more popular plays following a formula, such as boy meets girl, problem-climax-resolution, or heroic action, were actually superficial. They suggested that traditional theater provides mere escapist fantasies that serve to anesthetize the individual and help avoid the pain of truth. Beckett's formula--or,

better yet, his cyclical equation--of born-troubled-died denuded the bourgeois drama formulas. The lack of scenery, plot, action, and character development in Waiting for Godot actually draws the audience member into an existential encounter with his or her own truth. The ensuing vacuum created between the audience and the stage forces an encounter between the audience members with the absurdity of their own lives. Beckett's Waiting for Godot, although nominally about a pair of Rabelaisian existential tramps waiting for a mysterious Mr. Godot, actually encapsulates postWorld War II Europe, seen as godless and lost in the void. Through the dialogue of two clownish tramps, Beckett enacts the essential concerns and futility of the midcentury human condition. The breakdown in the very foundation of culture is allegorized: Midcentury humanity stood in a crisis in the areas of epistemology, religion, family, sex, government, and economics. The fact that Waiting for Godot touches on each of these ultimate human concerns has prompted thousands of productions and translations into more than twenty languages. A brief description of the play and its inaction will help make several points clear. The setting is a place where there is nothing but one scrawny tree, where two tramps engage in fruitless conversations while waiting for rescue from their misery. By this monotonous repetition, Beckett turns theater into life and shows life to be the illusion. Estragon and Vladimir consider hanging themselves in each of the two acts but decide that it is safer to not do anything. They obviously are filling time, fighting boredom while waiting for Godot. Impact of Event The impact of Waiting for Godot in the areas of experimental theater, philosophy, theology, and cultural criticism has been revolutionary. The Theater of the Absurd was practically defined by the play. Traditionally, theater has attempted to provide a standard intellectual and emotional catharsis for the audience and has acted as an agent that helps maintain social control by defusing untoward human emotions that might cause disruption of the status quo. In Waiting for Godot, rather than providing an emotional safety valve for the audience, Beckett deemed it more authentic and artistic to build up those pressures and help make them unbearable for the audience. In the absurdity of the play, the audience is brought face to face with its own spiritual schizophrenia. The viewer is confronted with the madness of the human condition. In observing two seedy tramps waste their lives waiting in vain for a Mr. Godot who never comes, viewers catch a reflection of the dull routine and self-deception of their own lives. Prior to Waiting for Godot, the essence of a play was believed to be in its text. In Beckett's play, concrete language, repetition, inaction, and confusion create a surreal mode of communication that transcends rational dialogue and dramatic movement. The textual content of the play becomes a prop that serves no central significance in the total impression. This use, or nonuse, of text represented a revolution in theatrical form. The play's impact on the history of modern theater is equally striking. Beckett's use of non sequiturs rather than coherent dialogue, his mixture of vaudeville and existentialism, and his unorthodox use of plot and props stimulated some of the most important dramaturgical experiments of the next thirty years. The repetitious movements and unique blend of structure and theme account for the startling impact of the play, which rightly earned Beckett a place as one of the great theatrical pioneers of the modern period.

Waiting for Godot reflects an era in which traditional frames of reference were no longer viable. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche introduced the concept of the death of God, and people have had to struggle with new theologies. The existential themes of alienation and emptiness are mirrored in the play. Beckett's play fits into the post-World War II French existential movement also represented by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Beckett's play is a signpost proclaiming the end of humanity's spiritual heteronomy. Waiting for Godot will be remembered as Beckett's most significant play and a major contribution to his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. The play continues to be regarded as one of the most controversial works of Twentieth Century theater, and it certainly is seen as seminal. Its minimalist approach to dramatic form and imagery, tangential dialogue, and theme of insignificance helped shape and define the Theater of the Absurd and modern theater. Whether critics denounced the play or acclaimed it, it was a landmark event in twentieth century Western culture and an expression of the crisis of the mid-century human condition. If, as is often believed, artists are the antennae of the race, Beckett proved prophetic in indicating the need for a new alternative. The old myths are obsolete; the new ones have not yet arrived, so we wait. Although the play has elicited diverse interpretations ranging from orthodox Christian to nihilistic atheist, most critics identify the play with post-World War II existentialism. In spite of the fact that Beckett did not identify himself as an existentialist, his plays express existentialism clearly and consistently, better, in fact, than proponents of existentialism who recommend it while not following their own recommendation. Theatergoers will continue to wait in line to see Waiting for Godot not because it diagnoses some cultural crisis or implies a solution but rather because it mirrors--with all of its concreteness, ambiguity, and mystery--the process and integrity of life itself. Relentless seeking, questioning, and reaching for a better future is perhaps the irreducible kernel of the human condition.
Source Citation: "Waiting for Godot and the Existential Theme of Absurdity, January 5, 1953." DISCovering World History. Online Edition. Gale, 2003. Reproduced in Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2004. <http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC>