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Overview
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is an absurdist tragicomic play set on a country road. The play was originally published in French with the title, En attendant Godot in 1952 and first performed in 1953, before it was translated into English in 1954.
The play features two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo who is a success-blinded materialist, Lucky, his servant, and the Boy who delivers Godot’s message.
Plot Summary of Waiting for Godot
Estragon tried to take off his boot but failed. Vladimir agreed with him that it sometimes appeared that there was nothing one could do. They were glad to be reunited after a night apart. With Vladimir’s help, Estragon succeeded in removing his boot, which was causing him pain. Vladimir, also in pain, could not laugh in comfort; he tried smiling instead but it was not satisfactory.
Vladimir mused on the one gospel account that said Christ saved one of the thieves. Estragon wanted to leave. They could not leave because they were waiting for Godot. They became confused about the arrangements and wondered if they were waiting at the right time, in the right place, and on the right day. They quarreled briefly but were, as always, reconciled.
They considered hanging themselves but decided that it would be safer to do nothing until they heard what Godot said. They did not know what they had asked Godot for. They concluded that they had foregone their rights. Vladimir gave Estragon a carrot, which he ate hungrily. They decided that although they were not bound to Godot, they were in fact unable to act. Pozzo entered, driving Lucky, who was laden with luggage, by a rope around his neck. Estragon and Vladimir mistook him for Godot but accepted him as Pozzo. Although he attempted to intimidate them, he was glad of their company. After ordering Lucky to bring him his stool and his coat, he gave Lucky the whip. Lucky obeyed automatically. Vladimir and Estragon protested violently against Pozzo’s treatment of Lucky. Pozzo deflected their outburst and the subject was dropped.
After smoking a pipe Pozzo rose. He then decided he did not want to leave, but his pride almost prevented him from reseating himself. The tramps wanted to know why Lucky never put down the luggage. Pozzo said that Lucky was trying to make Pozzo keep him. When Pozzo added that he would sell Lucky rather than throw him out, Lucky wept; but when Estragon tried to dry his tears, Lucky kicked him away. Then Estragon wept. Pozzo philosophized on this and said that Lucky had taught him all the beautiful things he knew but that the fellow had now become unbearable and was driving Pozzo mad. Estragon and Vladimir then abused Lucky for mistreating his master.
Pozzo broke into a monologue on the twilight, alternating between the lyrical and the commonplace and ending with the bitter thought that everything happened in the world when one was least prepared. He decided to reward Estragon and Vladimir for praising him by making Lucky entertain them. Lucky executed a feeble dance that Estragon mocked but failed to imitate.
Estragon stated that there had been no arrivals, no departures, and no action, and that everything was terrible. Pozzo next decided that Lucky should think for them. For this Vladimir replaced Lucky’s derby hat. Lucky’s thought was an incoherent flood of words that resembled a dissertation on the possible goodness of God, the tortures of hellfire, the prevalence of sport, and the vacuity of suburbs. He desperately upset his listeners, who attacked him and silenced him by seizing his hat. Having restored Lucky to his position as carrier, Pozzo and the tramps said many farewells before he and Lucky finally left.
The Boy called to Vladimir and Estragon. He came with a message from Godot, who would come the next evening. The Boy, a goatherd, said that Godot was kind to him, but that he beat his brother, a shepherd. Vladimir asked the Boy to tell Godot only that he had seen them.
By the time the Boy left, night had fallen. Estragon decided to abandon his boots to someone else. Vladimir protested and Estragon said that Christ had gone barefoot. Once again they considered and rejected the idea of separating. They decided to leave for the night. They stayed where they were.
The following evening the boots were still there and the tree had grown some leaves. The tramps had spent the night separately. Vladimir returned first. When Estragon came back he said he had been beaten again and Vladimir felt that he could have prevented such cruelty. Vladimir began to talk of the previous day, but Estragon could remember nothing but being kicked. Then they were overwhelmed by the thought of the whispering voices of the dead around them. They tried to break their silence but succeeded only in part. By a great effort Estragon recalled that the previous day had been spent chattering inanities. He reflected that they had spent fifty years doing no more than that.
They discovered that the boots left behind by Estragon had been exchanged for another old pair. After finding Lucky’s hat, which assured them that they had returned to the right place, they started a wild exchange of the three hats, shifting them from hand to hand. Finally Vladimir kept Lucky’s hat and Estragon kept his own.
Once more Estragon decided to leave. To distract him, Vladimir suggested that they “play” Pozzo and Lucky. Puzzled, Estragon left, but he returned almost immediately because some people were coming. Vladimir was jubilant, convinced that Godot was arriving. They tried to hide, but there was nowhere for them to go. Finally Lucky entered with Pozzo, who was now blind. Lucky fell and dragged Pozzo with him. Pozzo cried for help. Vladimir passionately wished to act while there was the opportunity—to do one good thing as a member of the human race, a species that appalled him. Pozzo was terrified, and Vladimir also fell in his attempts to raise him. Estragon fell too while trying to lift Vladimir. As they fought and argued on the ground, they called Pozzo “Cain” and “Abel.” When he responded to both names they concluded that he was all humanity. Suddenly they got up without difficulty.
Pozzo prepared to leave, but Vladimir wanted Lucky to sing first. Pozzo explained that Lucky was dumb. They wanted to know when he had been afflicted. Angry, Pozzo said that all their lives were merely momentary and time did not matter. He left with Lucky.
While Estragon slept, the Boy entered to say that Godot would come, not that night but the next. The message for Godot was that the Boy had seen Vladimir. The Boy left and Estragon awoke. He immediately wanted to leave. Vladimir insisted that they could not go far because they must return the next night in order to wait for Godot, who would punish them if they did not wait.
Estragon and Vladimir remarked that only the tree in the landscape was alive and considered hanging themselves again. Instead, they decided that if Godot did not come to save them the next night, they would hang themselves. At last the tramps decided to go. They remained immobile.
Analysis of Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is a landmark in modern drama. When it premiered in Paris, its originality stunned audiences: No one had seen or heard anything like it before. Initially, some were disgusted, some were puzzled, and some were wildly enthusiastic. Within a short time, however, audiences came to the theater prepared for a wholly new dramatic experience and went away with praises for Samuel Beckett. The play ran for more than three hundred performances in Paris, other productions were mounted in London and major cities on the Continent, and it was widely translated and performed around the world. After a disastrous United States premiere in Miami, Waiting for Godot went on to a successful New York run, suggesting that the play was best received by an audience of sophisticated intellectuals.
Nevertheless, audience enthusiasm has not been matched by unalloyed critical acclaim. To be sure, many critics as well as eminent playwrights have paid high tribute to the play. Several other critics have been repelled or baffled by Waiting for Godot, their reactions most often stemming from a misunderstanding of the play. In order to avert such misunderstanding, it is necessary to examine two crucial aspects of the play: its language and its philosophical orientation.
First of all, the language of the play is intimately connected to Beckett’s own background in language studies and literary influences. Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland, and took his bachelor’s degree in French and Italian at Trinity College. After teaching English in Paris for two years, he returned to Trinity to teach and complete his master’s degree in French. Next, he traveled in England and on the Continent, and he wrote poems, short stories, and novels in English. He at last settled permanently in Paris, except for a brief hiatus during World War II, and began writing in French in the late 1940’s. Waiting for Godot was originally written in French but translated into English by Beckett himself. The play is full of verbal and linguistic play; it is the work of a master of words and wordplay.
Second, during Beckett’s first sojourn in Paris, from 1928 to 1930, he met James Joyce, a meeting that launched a long and mutually satisfying friendship between the two Irish expatriates and language experts. The philosophical influence of Joyce on Beckett’s work is evident in the language play in Waiting for Godot. Puns, allusions, and linguistic tricks abound. Joyce and Beckett had little respect for literary convention, including, to an extent, the convention that everything in a book should make perfect sense or be perfectly clear.
Great effort has been expended, for example, in trying to decipher the word “Godot.” Beckett himself declined to explain, but critics, undeterred, continue to speculate. The most common view sees Godot as God with the -ot as a diminutive suffix. The French title En attendant Godot seems to lend support to this interpretation. Another suggestion is the analogy between Godot and Chariot (both utilizing the diminutive suffix), the latter being the French name for Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp. The kind of hat that the little tramp wears, a derby, plays a significant part in the stage business of Waiting for Godot. Some readings inevitably deteriorate into the preposterous—that Godot represents Charles de Gaulle, for example. A much more likely explanation involves an allusion to a highly obscure source: Honore de Balzac’s comedy, Le Faiseur (1851; also known as Mercadet). Balzac’s play revolves around a character named Godeau who strongly influences the action of the play but who never appears on stage. The parallels between the Balzac work and Waiting for Godot are too close to attribute to mere coincidence. Beckett, like Joyce, has a marked fondness for the esoteric literary allusion. It is possible, of course, to circumvent these literary contortions and simply view Godot as a state of being: the waiting, bracketed by birth and death, that we call life.
In addition, Beckett plays other word games in Waiting for Godot. Estragon, for instance, begins a sentence which Vladimir then finishes. Yet the overwhelming monotony of the dialogue, reflecting the monotony in the characters’ lives, is reminiscent of the exercise drills in old language texts of the “La plume de ma tante est sur la table” variety, further suggesting the debasement of language and the consequent breakdown of communication. The non sequiturs that emerge from rapid-fire exchanges in the dialogue echo the music-hall comedians of Beckett’s youth. Beckett’s penchant for wordplay reveals the influence of his language training and of his friend James Joyce.
The philosophical orientation of Waiting for Godot is another matter, however, for the years of Beckett’s residence in France coincided with a period of great ferment in existential philosophy, most of it centered in Paris. Beckett is not a formal or doctrinaire existentialist, but he could hardly avoid being affected by existentialism, for such ideas were part of his cultural milieu. There is no systematically existential point of view in Waiting for Godot—as there is in, for example, the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre and the novels of Albert Camus. Yet a generally existential and absurdist view of the human condition comes through very clearly in the play. Vladimir and Estragon, and Lucky and Pozzo are psychically isolated from one another; despite physical proximity, they are alienated and lonely, as indicated by their failure to communicate meaningfully. In that state of mind, each despairs, feeling helpless in the face of an immutable destiny. Unlike the formal existentialists, however, Estragon and Vladimir hope, and it is that hope that sustains them through their monotonous and immobile existence. They wait. They wait for Godot, who will surely bring them words of comfort and advice, and who will intervene to alter their destinies. By maintaining this hope, by waiting for Godot to come, Vladimir and Estragon avoid facing the logic of existential philosophy, which postulates hopelessness followed by a sense of futility, reducing humankind to absurdity. In this way, Vladimir and Estragon attain truly heroic proportions; they endure.
Beckett’s play has been criticized, even by Estragon, because, as the tramp puts it, “Nothing happens.” In fact, however, a great deal does happen: There is a lot of action, much coming and going. However, action in this sense is quite superficial, for all of it is meaningless. That very action assumes a rhythm and a pattern that constitute the structure of the play. The repetitious movements and dialogue reinforce the existential theme of the play: that life is a meaningless and monotonous performance of endlessly repeated routine. The pattern established in the first act is recapitulated in the second act, with only slight variation. Obviously the action in Waiting for Godot is not the action of conventional drama, but it is this unique fusion of theme and structure that accounts for the startling originality of the play and that rightly earns Beckett a place as one of the few genuine innovators in modern drama.
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