Waiting for Godot - An Existential Play | Samuel Beckett

“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” - Samuel Beckett : Waiting for Godot (34)

Waiting for Godot,  a paragon of existentialism, is crafted by the brilliant mind of Samuel Beckett. Beckett, a modernist Irish writer, often associated with the ‘Theatre of the Absurd.' He was highly influenced by the French philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

Waiting for Godot is a highly celebrated existential play. Existential philosophy says that we human beings simply exist in a world that does not have any overarching moral order or meaning. We are not essentially good or bad, we are what we make of ourselves, what we think of ourselves and we are what we choose to believe. Questions such as life, death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in that existence are among them. The theories of existentialism assert that conscious reality is very complex and without an "objective" or universally known value.

We see, that, in  Waiting for Godot, all the four characters Estragon, Vladimir, Lucky, Pozzo discuss the problems of existence and also questions their own existence in an absurd way. As is shown in the play, they are waiting for an unknown person called ‘Godot’ at an unknown place. All of them suffer from meaninglessness, isolation, and frustration. As it happens, no Godot comes but ironically a messenger boy comes who informs that Godot will not come. And these characters become fed up of waiting repeatedly. The word ‘waiting’ is universalized in the play, which is an essential feature of any existential play. According to renowned critic Harold Bloom:

"Waiting for Godot portrays both the need for purpose and the emotional fragmentation that accompanies the struggle for this anchoring of self. Vladimir and Estragon have inherited a world they cannot master, and despite their heroic accommodations they cannot escape the turmoil that accompanies their sense of purposelessness." (124)

The paradox of survival in Waiting for Godot involves a re-reading of Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus had the choice of abandoning his rock at the foot of the mountain or of continuously rolling it to the top, the only certainty being that after the rock fell, he could, if he so chose, once more perform this arduous, useless act. The paradox of Camus’ Absurdism, like Sartre’s Existentialism, demands a tension between engagement and impotence and between logic and absurdity, where the awareness of life’s ultimate meaninglessness—when placed in the recesses of the mind—allows one to live fully and without anguish in a random and disordered universe. But Beckett’s heroes differ from those of Camus: they lack a sense of defiance regarding their lot in life. One would never imagine a weary, disconsolate Sisyphus at the end of his rope, either literally or metaphorically; but this is Vladimir and Estragon’s frequent situation. Jeffrey Nealon states:

"Waiting for Godot is the play of Vladimir and Estragon's words, not any agreed-upon meaning for them, which constitutes their social bond."(Sharma 275)

Renowned critic Martin Esslin argued in his The Theatre of the Absurd, that Waiting for Godot was part of a broader literary movement that he called the Theatre of the Absurd, a form of theatre which stemmed from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. Absurdism, pioneered by Soren Kierkegaard, itself is a branch of the traditional assertions of existentialism,  and puts forward that, while inherent meaning might very well exist in the universe, human beings are incapable of finding it due to some form of mental or philosophical limitation. Thus humanity is doomed to be faced with the Absurd, or the absolute absurdity of the existence in lack of intrinsic purpose. 

The play Waiting for Godot can be and has many interpretations. The question of existence can be noticed in almost all the dialogues of the play. We see two tramps wait beside a tree for a mysterious figure with whom Vladimir asserts and Estragon believes, they have an appointment. This mysterious figure hopefully will change their position for better. The existentialist element is visible in this dialogue: 

Estragon: Didi. 

Vladimir: Yes.

 Estragon: I can’t go on like this. 

Vladimir: That’s what you think. 

Estragon: If we parted? That might be better for us. 

Vladimir: We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. Unless Godot comes. 

Estragon: And if he comes? 

Vladimir: We’ll be saved.  (Beckett 87)

The tree scene of Waiting for Godot.

(Picture Credit- ocregister.com)

We see human beings on earth always expect somebody to save them from all existential problems. But ultimately nobody comes to save us or to solve our problems. The play Waiting for Godot does not tell a story, it explores a static situation. There are several existentialist elements present throughout the play and one is very evident in Estragon’s words:

“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” (Beckett 34)

I must say that this very line has become the tag line of the play.

The two heroes of this play neither recognize their own existence as accidental, nor think of transforming it into something positive with which they can identify themselves. What Beckett presents is not nihilism, but the inability of a man to be a nihilist even in a situation of utter hopelessness. In spite of their inaction and the pointlessness of their existence, these two tramps still want to go on. Millions of people today do not, after all give up living even when their life becomes pointless. Even the nihilist wish to go on living. Or ultimately, they go on living merely because they happen to exist and because existence does not know of any other alternative but to exist. Anthony Jenkins writes:

"...there can be no answers; Godot may or may not exist and may or may not arrive; we know no more about him than do Vladimir and Estragon." (40)

At a time, Beckett is talking about the problem of boredom and problem of living like many other existential philosophers. Pozzo and Vladimir have both entered a kind of risky zone when for a moment their boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of being. Neither of them likes what he sees, but both know that there is nothing to be done. We can see that Pozzo cries to Lucky when they make their last exit. 

To sum up, we can definitely say that Waiting for Godot is a remarkable existential play, as all the four characters Estragon, Vladimir, Lucky, Pozzo are always worried about their lot and try to adjust in the dreary setting of life. They fight with the hopelessness and meaninglessness of life. The uncertainty and unreliability with which Godot surrounds them reveal the existential outlook of the play. At first sight the play does not appear to have any particular relationship with the human predicament. But as we probe through the absurd dialogues we are confronted with the existential elements visible in the play. The perplexed helplessness of the couple ‘Vladimir’ and ‘Estragon’ appeals to us as our own helplessness on this earth.

Works Cited:

1. Bloom, Harold. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2008. Print.

2. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot. Ed. G.J.V. Prasad. London: Pearson, 2004. Print.

3. Jenkins, Anthony. The Theatre of Tom Stoppard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Print.

4. Anurag Sharma. “Waiting for Godot: A Beckettian Counterfoil to Kierkegaardian Existentialism.” Brill 2. 1 (1993): 275-280. Web.

5. <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Waiting _for _Godot> Accessed 10 November 2019