Ángela Ucero Diego

English Studies

SENSE OF LIFE AND ITS COURSE IN BECKETT´S WAITING FOR GODOT

Life can be hard, not only because its ups and downs or difficulties, but for its mysteries
too. No one knows what the purpose of this life is, what is after it, what are they
supposed to do while living or even if there is one correct way in which you should live.
This fear and dissatisfaction are not well talked about through life and people continue
having the same doubts and concerns generation after generation. In Waiting for Godot,
this issue is portrayed by the character of Godot and two other main characters
experiencing the mystery of life not knowing what is coming or what to expect.

The most remarkable fact about the play is Godot and what it represents. The main
characters always wait for him, every day it’s the same and he never arrives as Beckett
wrote in the play “Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won't come this evening but surely
tomorrow” (44). This is the life, humans living it every day being the same with their
routines, not knowing what to expect from the future and living bored with the
knowledge that what they desire in life could never happen or arrive. And this situation
is mentioned by several characters, several times during the play the same that it is
repeated during life. Moreover, not only Godot never arrives, but he just does also not
exist, representing the absurd of life where humans sometimes make their minds waiting
for something that never even existed. People just live with expectations of important
things happening during their existence and it could not be that way, so they are
disenchanted and devastated since they cannot find a vital sense.

Apart from being pure criticism of the vital absurd, the play is also a representation of
life itself. The characters confront the existence without knowing what is to come but
specially for this motif, they have to live adapting to the situations and acting
accordingly to them. McMullan said, “the action of the play is generated by the
character´s verbal or physical improvisations from whatever items or occasions they
have to hand” (2), basing the play in the action happening without any special action.
This basically means that nothing really happens in the story and the spectator is just
watching the play happening in the same way the characters are watching the life going

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Ángela Ucero Diego
English Studies
on and on. Only simple actions vary with the improvisations that represent the little
changes of the daily life, as a change

in the way you did something, a new expression or a different silence in a sentence but
nothing more.

As a conclusion, Waiting for Godot is a play without a clear argument apart from being
a pure representation of the absurd of life and its daily repetitions, the routines and the
disenchantment it could lead to. The characters are always expecting something or
someone that they made up with their high expectations in life and that is never going to
come, the same that in real life the future often brings nothing, and people are just living
in discontent and disoriented, not knowing what to expect, what to do or how to live in
order to achieve their goals.

WORKS CITED LIST

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in 2 Acts. 1953

McMullan, Anna. Intercorporeal Performances and the Hauntings of History in

Waiting for Godot and Endgame. 1st ed., Routledge, 2010.