Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

"Two men await the coming of the distinguished, however elusive, Godot." Not often can a play be summed up in one sentence, but any other comment on this work is pure speculation. Perhaps it is an allegory toward the human condition and seperation of God, but maybe it is just two lazy idiots who sit around waiting for life to happen to them. But it may be neither. In a monotonous French play like this, it is important to add something worth reading about. In Waiting for Godot, the quick exchange of dialogue may be the only element that keeps a reader going. But blessed is he (or she) that does sludge all the way through, because there is a resounding, yet noiseless impact of allegory and verisimilatude in this short drama.

Although Samuel Beckett's "Wating for Godot" may seem absurd and out of this world, it really is an amazing play. The reason for all of its nonsense is the simple fact that it is a play in the absurd! It is set on a blank stage with only two main characters and a tree, with some other guests scatered about the performance. And although this play may seem dull and dry is really can be either inspiring and hopefull or disapointing and pointless, it's the way that you percieve it. To those that see the action of these two men as meaningless, stupid and dumb, they see thier mission of waiting for Godot as dissapointing. Its those people who think that waiting for Godot day after day is always a let down. It's the same routine, with a few changes, and at the end it is always " Godot will see you tomorrow." However, some believe that this play is inspiring and hopefull. The men show some kind of loyalty to Godot and never give up hope. They just keep comming back hoping that Godot will come today. And while they are waiting, the explore the thoughts of themselves and some questions of life and meet others with different incites. They live their lives waiting for Godot and although he never comes, they seem content in comming back the next day, enduring the same old routine, just to see if Godot will come. The humor is witty and the language is a blast to figure out and follow. This is truly and entertaining play.

Before starting this book, I was told that it's about two guys sitting by a tree waiting. Sound boring, right? It actually wasn't that bad. It's about believing, and having hope. These two guys sit by a tree every day waiting for Godot. They just sit there every day, talking and waiting. They're not sure if he'll ever come,but still, they go back every day. In the end, they are still waiting, hoping that Godot will eventually come, but knowing he probably won't. Everyone does it. They wait around, hoping something will happen or someone will come, knowing that it probably won't, but they're not willing to give up. It's like sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring, or in a relationship where one person is holding on hoping for things to work out, when the other has already given up. As frustrating and depressing it may sound, it's life and it happens every day. Beckett is just telling it how it is.

Almost every work of Literature is famous for telling an interesting story, perhaps a masterful insight into human sexual relations, a gripping portrayal of a power struggle, a gasp inducing twist in the climax. In short, in the majority of Literature, something actually happens.

Waiting for Godot, along with certain other works by Beckett such as his Sartre inspired drama 'Endgame' pretty much stands alone as an exception to this. It is one of the most famous, and controversial plays of the 20th Century. As everyone knows, it focuses on the ruminations of two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon who stand on a road by a tree waiting for Godot. After two days (and two and a half hours of stage time), Lucky and Pozzo have appeared and performed an absurdist farce, a boy has asked what message he should relay to Godot but Godot himself never appears. By the end of the play, the two tramps are no further forward, only the passing of time has elapsed and a few leaves on the tree have sprouted.

That, in a nutshell, is the human condition. We exist, time passes, things happen to us which, looking at it from the grand scheme of things are absurd and meaningless then we die. Who is Godot? God himself - in whom belief in his existence is a futile fallacy? People speculate as such but it is essentially futile. Beckett himself was notoriously reticent when it came to divulging what meaning there was in the play. He once said he just 'liked the shape of it'. That's about it.

Towards the end of the first act, Estragon exclaims 'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!'. This line was apparently greated with a hearty 'hear hear' from an audience member when it first opened in London.

Beckett was astonishingly well read in Literature, theatre, languages (most of his major works were originally written in French as he wanted the discipline of writing in an acquired second language), philosophy and psychology. His detractors demean his work on the grounds that it says nothing. Beckett, on the other hand, considered that after a lifetime of scholarship (and depression), that nothing was the most valuable insight to offer. Just before he died, he said that he could no longer bring himself to write as he considered every word to be 'an unecessary stain on silence and nothingness'. Following his advice, I too shall stop.

Some can and, indeed, many have swum chin-deep in their deconstructionist farm offal analyzing works from the great literary canon of the West. No need to do that in this instance. First, WFG is hardly susceptible of analysis under any critical theory. Second, it's not a literary work (hence the result cited in the preceding sentence). The perfect inability on the part of people who should know better to say the "Emperor has no clothes" is the only tragicomedy associated with this tiresome nonsense.