...Austin Druckemiller Period 4 Waiting For Godot Waiting for Godot has been my main thought for about two hours now. While considering the work, its author, and the comments I have found about the play, I have come up with three hypotheses as to the meaning and theme. As I will explain my three hypotheses in my next few paragraphs, I would like to put forth my most accepted theory, and the answer that Samuel Beckett, the author of the play, put forth when questioned about the meaning of his strange little piece. I think many people put this theory forth as the true meaning of Waiting, and there are many aspects of it by which they can make their point. The most obvious is the title character, Godot, because the root word of the name is God. The many references to Christianity also create a close connection between the storyline and many important stories from the Bible. From the very beginning Vladimir and Estragon think about their salvation, consider death, and draw a parallel between themselves and the two thieves that were crucified along with Jesus, according to the Gospels. The general attitude expressed throughout the play is the hopelessness, or maybe the meaningless-ness of life. A good example of the hopelessness I am talking about is on page 3 when Vladimir is searching through his hat and says “Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer. How Shall I say? Relieved and at the same time… appalled. AP-PALLED. Funny. Nothing...
Words: 696 - Pages: 3
...Pastiche on Waiting for Godot The Theatre of the Absurd is a style of writing which portrays human life as a meaningless and futile existence resulting in one’s inevitable death. Similar to the Lost Generation movement created as a result of the death and destruction of World War I, the Theatre of the Absurd is a reaction to World War II in which the war survivors felt as though death was inevitable and therefore nothing in one’s existence mattered since material possessions would not travel with one after death. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot exemplifies the characteristics of the Theatre of the Absurd, not only through its content and dialogue, but also through its language and structure. The structure of dialogue chosen by Beckett, mixes short and concise sentences with meaningful ideas and opinions about the human condition. Although the dialogue appears to be an illogical banter, it would be a mistake to make the assumption that it has no meaning. For instance, throughout the play, Estragon and Vladimir repeat the lines “nothing to be done” and “nothing happens.” Such references along with the cyclical nature of the dialogue, suggest Beckett’s vision that human existence is bleak and that nothing significant ever really happens in our lifetimes, but instead the same situations are repeated throughout life. Beckett’s style revolutionizes the traditional play as he deviates from the orthodox playwright by creating a play with no central plot or storyline. There is no...
Words: 1145 - Pages: 5
...Logan McGeady 14 October 2014 ENG 121-020 Essay #2 Nothing To Be Done The play Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett engages the idea of what it means to be human and how meaningless life can really be. Beckett uses literary techniques to show that human life is based on chance, time is meaningless, and that people will impose meaning on life to distract themselves from the fact that their situation is unalterable. The realization of this drives the characters to rely on outside forces, which may or may not be real, for order and direction. The basic proposition Beckett imposes in the play is that chance is the main factor behind existence and human life. Therefore life is determined by chance and there Is nothing Vladimir or Estragon can do that can influence their life. This is established when Vladimir alludes to the story of the two thieves from the Bible. "One is supposed to have been saved… and the other…damned” (Beckett 4). The idea of percentage is important because this represents how the fate of humanity is determined randomly and without any reason. There is a percentage chance that a person will be saved and sent to heaven or damned and sent to hell, taking away meaning of human life and simply categorizing people into those who are saved, and those who are damned. Vladimir continues by citing the fault in the Gospels on the story of the two thieves. "And yet…[pause]…how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them...
Words: 954 - Pages: 4
...ANALYZING THE CONCEPT OF DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT ANALYZING THE CONCEPT OF DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT Deconstruction is a literary theory and philosophy of language derived principally from Jacques Derrida's 1967 work Of Grammatology. The premise of deconstruction is that all of Western literature and philosophy implicitly relies on a metaphysics of presence, where intrinsic meaning is accessible by virtue of pure presence. Deconstruction rejects the possibility of a pure presence and thus of essential or intrinsic meaning. Due to the impossibility of pure presence and consequently of intrinsic meaning, any given concept is constituted and comprehended from the linguistic point of view and in terms of its oppositions, e.g. perception/reason, speech/writing, mind/body, interior/exterior, marginal/central, sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture. Derrida says that one member is associated with presence (more highly emphasized) while the other is associated with absence. He proposes “difference” - a perpetual series of interactions between presence and absence - where a concept is constituted, comprehended and identified in terms of what it is not and self-sufficient meaning is never arrived at. Derrida's theories on deconstruction were influenced by the work of linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and literary theorists such as Roland Barthes (whose works were an investigation...
Words: 2164 - Pages: 9
...Waiting for Godot is hailed as a classic example of the "Theatre of the Absurd," Such dramatic works present a world in which daily actions are without meaning, language fails to effectively communicate. The characters reflect a sense of artifice, even wondering aloud whether perhaps they are on a stage. Waiting for Godot begins with two men on a barren road by a leafless tree. These men, Vladimir and Estragon, are often characterized as "tramps". The world of this play is operating on its own set of rules, its own system. There nothing happens, nothing is certain, and there’s never anything to do. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, a man or perhaps a deity. The tramps can’t be sure if they’ve met Godot, if they’re waiting in the right place, if this is the right day, or even whether Godot is going to show up at all. While they wait, Vladimir and Estragon fill their time with a series of mundane activities (like taking a boot on and off) and trivial conversations (turnips, carrots) scattered with more serious reflection (dead voices, suicide, the Bible). "We always find something," Estragon casually remarks in Act II, "to give us the impression we exist." The tramps are soon interrupted by the arrival of Lucky, a man/servant/pet with a rope tied around his neck, and Pozzo, his master, holding the other end of the long rope. The four men proceed to do together what Vladimir and Estragon did earlier by themselves: namely, nothing. Lucky and Pozzo then leave so that...
Words: 985 - Pages: 4
...Waiting for Godot is hailed as a classic example of the "Theatre of the Absurd," Such dramatic works present a world in which daily actions are without meaning, language fails to effectively communicate. The characters reflect a sense of artifice, even wondering aloud whether perhaps they are on a stage. Waiting for Godot begins with two men on a barren road by a leafless tree. These men, Vladimir and Estragon, are often characterized as "tramps". The world of this play is operating on its own set of rules, its own system. There nothing happens, nothing is certain, and there’s never anything to do. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, a man or perhaps a deity. The tramps can’t be sure if they’ve met Godot, if they’re waiting in the right place, if this is the right day, or even whether Godot is going to show up at all. While they wait, Vladimir and Estragon fill their time with a series of mundane activities (like taking a boot on and off) and trivial conversations (turnips, carrots) scattered with more serious reflection (dead voices, suicide, the Bible). "We always find something," Estragon casually remarks in Act II, "to give us the impression we exist." The tramps are soon interrupted by the arrival of Lucky, a man/servant/pet with a rope tied around his neck, and Pozzo, his master, holding the other end of the long rope. The four men proceed to do together what Vladimir and Estragon did earlier by themselves: namely, nothing. Lucky and Pozzo then leave so...
Words: 985 - Pages: 4
...Waiting Many critics consider Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, rst performed in Paris in 1953, the most important twentieth-century play in the Western canon. Despite the undeniable historical and aesthetic signi cance of Waiting for Godot, however, the question poses itself: to what extent may an absurdist play—about two bums waiting on the side of a country road for a person who never arrives— still strike us as relevant today? is question cannot be answered univocally, but depends on the interpretive choices made in the actual process of producing Beckett’s play on stage. My goal as the director of this Kennedy eatre production is to create a thoroughly contemporary experience that evades the usual clichés many have come to associate with Beckett’s style, such as monotony and leadenness. From this vantage point, I will now identify two major challenges to any stage production of Waiting for Godot in 2010—challenges relating to the historical and metaphysical background of the play. e setting (country road, tree), costume items (bowler hats, halfhunter watch), and habits of the characters (the pipe-smoking Pozzo), as well as the poverty and frugality of the two protagonists (a diet of turnips, radishes and carrots for Vladimir and Estragon), clearly suggest earlier historical periods such as the Irish Potato Famine from around 1850, the wasteland of northern France in the wake of the trench warfare of WWI, or America’s Great Depression in the 1930s. e names of the characters...
Words: 3965 - Pages: 16
...Deconstructive literary criticism uses binary oppositions. Binary oppositions can be defined as “ a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.” “Waiting for Godot”, a classic of modern theatre, is a tragicomedy in two acts which tells the story of two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting to meet a man named Godot. By using deconstructive literary criticism, the play can be analyzed threw the following binary oppositions: passive/active hopelessness/hope, forgetfulness/remembrance and staying/going. Vladimir and Estragon are in a constant state of waiting for Godot: “Nothing to be done. / I'm beginning to come round to that opinion."(Waiting for Godot). Although they are being passive they try to occupy themselves while waiting for Godot. Derrida states that in binary oppositions there is a unspoken hierarchy in which the first term functions as superior to the second term which is considered inferior: “ Derrida’s procedure is to invert the hierarchy in which the first term functions as privileged and superior and the second term as derivative and inferior. By showing that the primary term can be made out to be derivative from or a special case of the secondary term” By reversing the first term with the second a greater meaning can obtained. Although Vladimir and Estragon as in a passive state of waiting they attempt to keep active in order to pass the time. This shows that being active is valued over being passive: “ What about trying them. / I’ve tried everything/...
Words: 1146 - Pages: 5
...Little happens, not action, very few twist and character changes but when you finish this play you really think and changes how you think about your life. The average play is for pure entertainment while this is more of a life lesson within a script. Some similarity between this play and the average is the use of repetition. The main c characters repeatedly say dialogue such as “were waiting for goat” and seeing the boy twice to empathize the importance. 2. I think The overall theme is this play is existentialism. The human struggle to find meaning in a meaningless life. Most importantly to find fulfillity in life, lack of purpose: the uncertainty of life. The characters are both anxiety driven men who wait around for the mysterious Godot. They believe waiting for him in necessary for them to take action. They are waiting for something external to give them meaning. Their is also an religious interpretation in the sense people wait for religion to give them direction to the next course of action they should take. They rely on God to give their life purpose who could be an interpretation of Godot. 3. I believe in the original black and white movie the characters are portrayed more accurate rather then the newer colored movie. Information about their appearance is slim but “he walks in "short stiff strides, legs wide apart," and is heavier than Estragon. their is little information since there is no description of Estragon's weight. It tends to be the convention in most...
Words: 777 - Pages: 4
...to the audience that No Exit and Waiting For Godot serve as existentialist warnings. Sartre and Beckett, two men full of knowledge, suggest that many people live existentialist life styles; however, the two artists do not recommend this life style. Characters from both works demonstrate non-existentialist lives. They rely on each other, allow their behavior to alter based on other people and acknowledge that they are letting other people control their lives. In No Exit by Sartre, many characters display non-existentialist characteristics. To begin, Garcin does not leave the room when the door finally opens. Rather than decide for himself that he is not a coward, he begs Estelle to tell him that he is courageous. Without Estelle’s guidance, Garcin worries about his existence. To ensure that she actually exists, Estelle is in need of a materialistic object, a mirror. Worrying about how others see her, Estelle feels more comfortable with the mirror. Stripped of this materialistic object, she questions her existence entirely. That these characters were not were living their lives existentially is intertwined in the play. If Garcin and Estelle were living their lives existentially, they would have made decisions on their own. Garcin would have left the room without needing to be told that he is courageous. Estelle would have made judgment about herself without needing the mirror. In Waiting For Godot by Beckett, two men are waiting for Godot, a man that may or may not ever...
Words: 349 - Pages: 2
...Section: Society In Waiting for Godot Beckett proposes the view that happiness can never be enduring; it comes and goes and is subject to chance and change. Whether in postwar 1953 or credit crisis 2009, is encouraging people to think happy thoughts more like a desperate recourse to denial than a therapy struggling to engage with reality? Vladimir: Say you are, even if it's not true. Estragon: What am I to say? Vladimir: Say, I am happy. Estragon: I am happy. Vladimir: So am I. Estragon: So am I. Vladimir: We are happy. Estragon: We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy? Vladimir: Wait for Godot.( n1) An outbreak of happiness interrupts the otherwise bleak landscape of Waiting for Godot. Samuel Beckett's play, first produced in Paris during 1953, has justifiably become a classic of modern theatre. Neither comedy nor tragedy, but a mixture of both -- with ample quantities of clowning thrown in for good measure -- the whole becomes a vehicle for dramatic meaning and irony. It would be easy to discount this play as a period piece of postwar angst, belonging to the vanished world of existentialism that marked so much European culture after the Second World War. Following two world wars, mass genocide, and economies geared to armed conflict, happiness may have struck contemporaries in the early 1950s as a luxurious and vacuous entity. There was, for example, an urgent debate about whether any literature, art, or drama was possible after Auschwitz...
Words: 3036 - Pages: 13
...Jordan Young Durand INQS 125 November 8, 2015 What is a Tragedy? What makes a tragedy tragic? The plays Waiting For Godot, Exit the King, Oedipus the King, and Othello were all written in different time periods, different themes, with different writing styles, and from different parts of the world yet they all have the common theme of tragedy. How are four different plays so similar? In all four plays the characters are confronted with a change in identity, they are given false hope believing that they are going to succeed in achieving their ultimate goal, and they have human characteristics that make their story relatable to the audience making it more tragic. Most people would agree that tragedy is the demise of a character that is prefaced with false hope and ends with a change in the main character’s self-identity. What makes it tragic is that it created by human characteristics which make it relatable to the human experience. Hope keeps a person pushing forward. They have confidence in their actions and believe it will eventually lead them to the achievement of their ultimate goal. When faced with the fact that the hope you had is false hope it blocks your ambition and makes it harder to be able to strive for success. Oedipus and Othello are both given hope by their sense of nobility and by their desire to overcome an obstacle. To them it looks like things are going to get better and that they will keep their position above the people. Its human nature to want and...
Words: 1810 - Pages: 8
...Deconstruction essay The play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, is about two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who endlessly wait for another man named Godot to appear. In this play, there are several binary oppositions that contribute to the overall meaning of the play. Through the use of three binaries: forgetfulness/memory, active /passive, and despair/hope, it appears the meaning of this play would be that by waiting or being inactive one will eventually gain success. However, by reversing the binaries, it becomes apparent that the true emphasis of this play is that people need to be active in order to accomplish something. Throughout the play, Vladimir and Estragon repeat the same activities over and over. They forget events that have happened in the past while waiting for Mr. Godot to arrive. "And Pozzo and Lucky? / Pozzo and Lucky? / He's forgotten everything!" (Beckett 67). Not only are Vladimir and Estragon affected by this "amnesia," but several of the other characters also do not remember having previously interacted with the two primary characters. "Do you not recognize me? / No sir. / It wasn't you came yesterday. / No Sir" (Beckett 105). Although the audience knows that the same boy came and delivered a message to Vladimir, the boy refuses to acknowledge that fact. By reversing the binary of forgetfulness/memory, these moments create meaning. When another character forgets something, the others become angry, so the idea that forgetfulness is more valued does not make...
Words: 816 - Pages: 4
...Absurdity The term absurdity generally refers to the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life. This assumption about the basic condition of human beings has been adequately represented in literature. Though this assumption has its roots in some of the writings of nineteenth century, it emerged as a movement in twentieth century, especially in the works of Samuel Beckett, Ionesco and Genet. This group of writers, who are usually called post-world war writers, attempted to falsify the general notion that human beings are rational creatures who are part of an ordered social structure and who live in an intelligible universe. This kind of notion emerged as a result of the horrors of World Wars. Earlier, in the Victorian age there was a conflict between religion and science. People were in oscillation between these two systems. In the twentieth century, they lost hope in both systems as God didn’t come to help them and science, in fact, caused a mass destruction. At this juncture, gradually the reality started gripping the consciousness of the people. Though the foundational stones of western culture – Religion and Science dwindled, modern man is not in a position to accept this reality. He always attempts to search for a unified, logical and eternal reality. In other words, he tries to bring back the order of the society and make himself a part of it. According to the post-world war absurd writers, this kind of attempt of man is futile and more importantly, there is no such thing...
Words: 620 - Pages: 3
...Of all the books I’ve ever read, I don’t think I’ve ever been as confused as I was in “Waiting for Godot”. This is because there is nothing to be confused about, as there is little to no substance in the book to consider at all! Because of this, it is quite confusing to me that “Waiting for Godot” is such a critically acclaimed, award winning book. The only explanation for why the book is so popular is the fact that no one and everyone understand it, simultaneously. The empty plot line and lack of story allows each individual to, in a sense, write the book themselves. That theory explains the reason why there are so many different interpretations of the same text. One person could read it through their filter, and get something entirely different than another person with a different background. This book is full of deep symbolism. The most important, Gadot, I think symbolizes an escape, or a release from a variety of difficulties. The book has plenty of instances where the characters act in a bizarre manner, where they do things that go against common sense. They are acting this way because they are such lost, bored, confused, broken characters that are just waiting for Gadot to come so they can escape their situation. A particular instance that makes me think that Gadot symbolizes an escape is when they all fall down and cannot get up. This shows absolute hopelessness and lack of understanding. They cannot get up on their own because they are trapped in their situation, and...
Words: 604 - Pages: 3
