Introduction

Samuel Beckett, French, and English

playwright

Born - 1905, Dublin

Died – 1989, Paris, France

‘En attendant Godot’ -1948 in French

‘Waiting for Godot’-1954 in English

Play belongs to theatre of Absurd

 Theatre of the Absurd
• The theatre of the Absurd is the dramatic
movement in 1950s.
• Martin Esslin first used the phrase “theatre of the
absurd” in a 1961.
• French thinkers such as Albert Camus and
JeanPaul Sartre used the term absurd to described
what they understood as the fundamentally
meaningless situation of humans in a confusing,
hostile, and indifferent world.
• “Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s
reaction to the world apparently without meaning
and man as controlled or menaced by invisible
outside forces.” –Esslin Martin
 Pozzo

Vladimir

Estragon

Lucky

Boy- Messenger
 The play is the waiting of the two tramps Vladimir and
Estragon.
 Waiting for Godot does not tell a story; it explores a static
situation.
 The very title of the play suggests its central theme as
Martin Esslin has pointed out.
 “the subject of the play is not Godot but Waiting, the act of
waiting as an essential and characteristic aspect of human
condition”
 Throughout our lives we always wait for something…
 And Godot represent the objective of our waiting……an
event, a person, death. It can be a thing of one’s desire.
 “If we are active, we tend to forget the passage of time, we pass the
time, but if we are merely passively waiting, we are confronted with
the action of time itself.”
 This central theme, waiting, will be a recurrent reality within the
play, one that it seems to remind Vladimir and Estragon why they are
where they are: in no man’s land.

 Throughout the play Vladimir keeps on repeating that they are

“waiting for Godot.” Actually, Vladimir repeats it for eight times and
ninth was by Estragon.

 And “passed the time” or “will pass the time” is repeated five times.
 “Nothing to be done” repeated four times, two times by each.

Examples from the text

 Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (8).
 “Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says. Estragon: Who?
Vladimir: Godot” (13).

 “Estragon: Simply wait. Vladimir: We’re used to it” (39).

“Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why
not? Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (76).

 “Estragon: What do we do now? Vladimir: While waiting.

Estragon: While waiting” (86).
 “Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot” (88).
 Vladimir: Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is
clear. We are waiting for Godot to come” (91)
 “Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can’t. Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot” (96).
 “Pozzo: What is he waiting for? Vladimir: What are you waiting
for? Estragon: I’ am waiting for Godot” (100).
What they are waiting for ?
Waiting for
Godot…?

Someone or
Salvation
something ?

Meaning
Death ? and
direction ?

A reason for An impetus

dying ? for living ?
What becomes evident is that both of them are ‘tied’ to Godot,
they cannot do anything except to wait for him endlessly.

Godot, then becomes the only hope for survival.

He is the one that controls their lives and the only possibility of
redemption.

They can only be saved by Godot and therefore waiting until his
arrival is a fate.

Estragon and Vladimir are tied to each other by an abstract

bonds and by their common act of waiting for Godot…
 Time and void
 Waiting, as the central theme of the play leads the
two characters to avoid time and make the waiting
bearable by filling in time with futile actions.
 They are aware that there is ‘nothing to be done’
while waiting, and this becomes and obsessive
statement throughout the play.

 First, is the awareness that there is nothing that

can help them in their waiting, and the void and
anxiety have to be confronted, and this is restated
time and again, throughout the text.

 But it is critical for them to fill in time, which

will also becomes the third, most important
theme of the play.
 It will travel throughout the entire text,
becoming an obsession for the two of them.

Examples from text

 But it is critical for them to fill in time, which will also becomes the
third, most important theme of the play.

 It will travel throughout the entire text, becoming an obsession for

the two of them.
 “Vladimir: Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story.
Estragon: No. Vladimir: It’ll pass the time” (6).
 “Vladimir: What do we do no? Estragon: Wait. Vladimir: Yes, but
while waiting. Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?” (12)
  “Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed
in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but no so rapidly” (51).

Vladimir: We could play at Pozzo and Lucky” (82)

“Vladimir: How time flies when one has fun!” (86)
Passing the time, filling in time avoids thinking about their
present, absurd, condition:

“Vladimir: We’re in no danger of ever thinking any more”

Vladimir: What is terrible is to have thought” (71).

Examples of Nothingness in Waiting

“Estragon: Nothing to be done” (2).
“Vladimir: Nothing to be done” (4).
“Vladimir: Nothing to be done” (6).
“Estragon: Nothing to be done” (17).

So what ?
 We really don’t know even after reading/watching a play, it still
remain confusion that who actually is waiting and for what ?
Vladimir, Estragon, or we as reader or audience waiting for
Godot or end of the play.
 As time passes waiting becomes habit.
 Moreover, it is in the act of waiting that we experience the flow
of time in its purest, most evident form. If we are active, we tend
to forget the passage of time, we pass the time, but if we are
merely passively waiting, we are confronted with the action of
time itself.
But if we are merely passively waiting, we are
confronted with the action of time itself.”
The more things change, the more they are the
same. ‘The tears of the world are a constant
quantity. For each one who begins to weep,
somewhere else another stops’ says Pozzo
(32).
Waiting is to experience the action of time,
which is constant change: Pozzo is blind,
Lucky is dumb. And yet, as nothing real ever
happens, that change is in itself an illusion.