This play confuses me. Because I cannot say that I enjoy it. But I do respect it.

I think a part of
this play that frustrates me is my inability to totally grasp it. It isn’t one of those plays that feels
confusing for the gimmick of it, but there is just something unattainable to me about it. It leaves
me with so many questions. Why does Vladimir remember while Estragon forgets? What is
happening with Pozzo and Lucky? Am I supposed to know who/what Godot is? What is the deal
with those boots? There is nothing going on, and I am totally lost, but I am incredibly fascinated
by this play. I like how it moves.

Waiting for Godot embodies that idea we discussed in class of shattering a play and seeing its
themes in every shard. This existential dread, this absurdity, this search for meaning—I’m not
always sure what I’m seeing—but it radiates through every beat of the play. I would argue that
the entire play is characterized in Estragon’s line “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody
goes, it’s awful!” What a weird choice for a play, but it works.

Yet, in a play where not much happens, there is still transformation. Our two protagonists do
not change in visible ways, but the world around them is in flux. The tree grows leaves; Pozzo
goes blind; the rope around Lucky’s neck grows shorter. The action in each act is relatively
similar, but by allowing both halves of the play to be near mirror-images of each other when
something is different, its relevance feels heightened. We go through all the motions of the first
act, but this time Vladimir begins to feel the tension that comes with all of these repeated
actions. The eventual revelation of the cycle in which they are stuck in feels like the climax of
the play. It is certainly a moment of transformation. He demands the boy remember him next
time. He questions if Godot will ever come (we know he won’t). But when Estragon wakes up
and the two decide to leave, the stage direction reads “they do not move.” This moment allows
us to see that this world and these circumstances have and will go on forever.

I’ve read this play before, but for the first time, the ending hurt. Vladimir wants this cycle to
stop and it simply will not. Here is a play (in sharp contrast to the Glass Menagerie) where I
cannot see the playwright’s devices. I am feeling so much, and I am completely lost to how he is
doing it. There are parts of this play—moments where the vaudevillian, farcical nature are in
full effect—where I simply don’t care. This is likely because these moments do not line up with
my own sense of humor, but putting my own comedic tastes aside, the absence of meaning in
such an absurd way makes Vladimir’s revelations all the more painful. Nothing they did in this
whole play mattered, and no one but Vladimir can even remember it. It makes your whole life
feel empty—where you’re too apathetic to even kill yourself.

Nothing happened. Nobody came. Nobody went. Nobody will. It’s heart-breaking.