EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. II, Issue 9/ December 2014

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A Critical Study of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

through the Lens of Post Modernism

SHIBAJYOTI KARMAKAR
Research Scholar
Vidyasagar University
India

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the various readings of Beckett’s
minimalist play Waiting for Godot keeping in mind the various aspects
of post modernism and its key features. The idea of Absurdity has been
brought to the main frame through a close study of Camus’s The Myth
of Sisyphus. The cyclical structure of the play further strengthens the
abstract ideas among the characters. Each character has been isolated
from the realm of Time as they are engaged in nonsensical
conversation which suggests no meaning at all. The idea of Godot’s
presence and absence has been symbolically studied in order to
establish the post structural ideas in the play. Derridean ideas of
deconstruction and Roland Barthes’ influential essay The Death of the
Author are all primary sources that have been read to establish the fact
that Beckett falls into the category of post structural world. The typical
characteristics of post modernism such as fragmentation, paradox,
word play and typical binaries have been thoroughly interpreted in the
context of the play. Spiritual emptiness and cultural superficiality play
a major concern in deconstructing any presupposed truth and
introducing us to the Beckettian world of deconstruction.

Key words: Theatre of Absurd, purposelessness, nothingness,

meaninglessness.

Beckett’s most popular absurd play, Waiting for Godot is one of

the first examples critics point out to when talking about the

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‘Theatre of Absurd’. Written and first performed in French in

1954, the play had an enormous impact on theatre goers due to
its strange and new conventions. “We are waiting for Godot” –
with this utterance Beckett introduces us with a mysterious
world that invites many critical discourses. The play begins
with waiting and ends with waiting; waiting therefore has the
most profound impact on everyone.
Martin Esslin, one of the eminent critics of the post
World War era has used the phrase ‘Theatre of Absurd’ to
describe the plays of 1950’s and 1960’s. Plays written by
Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter share the
view that after the Second World War man inhabits a universe
whose meaning is indecipherable, and that his existence in it is
without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and obscurely
threatened. By absurdity we mean the existence without any
meaning and purpose that we experience in our everyday life.
The idea of absurdity has been derived from an essay by the
French philosopher, Albert Camus who defined the human
situation as basically meaningless and stagnant. In Camus’ The
Myth of Sisyphus we find Sisyphus the man who scorns the
Gods then he challenges their power, and causes a lot of
troubles in life. As his punishment, ‘his whole being is exerted
toward accomplishing nothing.’ He pushes his entire body to
move a boulder up a mountain slope and when he reaches the
top, it rolls back to the very bottom. Sisyphus must repeat this
task for eternity. This is a painful experience for him. But
Camus believes that Sisyphus is happy. He may have hundred
times returned to his rock, yet he realizes that his fate ties him
to this endless and futile labour. He is the owner of that fate.
Once we are conscious of such useless and absurd things we do
daily, we can accept them as our duty. Sisyphus similarly walks
down the slopes, ready to try again, and ready to fail, because it
his purpose.

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Structurally, Godot is a cyclical two act play. It begins with

Vladimir and Estragon, who on the road side waiting for Godot.
Act two is simply a repetition of Act one. As they wait, they play
repetitive games, asked unanswered questions, speak much but
seldom answer. In fact Vladimir and Estragon’s situation is our
own. Through the characters’ repeating actions and words,
Beckett has shown us the absurd existence of our lives. While
waiting for something that does not exist, we run around
circles, make the same mistakes, and lose faith. Each day Godot
fails to appear. Vladimir and Estragon’s world is one of chaos.
The tree, which is the only setting, is barren on one day and full
of leaves the next day. Everyday Vladimir and Estragon
returns to the same place only to wait for Godot, who never
appears. No one seems to remember what happened the day
before. Neither Vladimir nor Estragon seems to be sure of what
happened in the past. They only make assumptions of their
existing values. Sometimes they contemplate suicide as a form
of escape. Beckett’s Endgame carries similar thinking. Hamm
and Clov, the two figures are even more isolated than Vladimir
and Estragon. Confined to a small room, the blind Hamm
meditates on the subject of life and death. His servant Clov
tries to provide him with a meaning which leads eventually to
nothingness. The repetition in both of the plays provides
evidence of unimportance of time in the lives of character. Life
is a lengthy period of waiting, during which the passage of time
has little importance. The amount of time the characters spent
on waiting and the amount of time they would do so in future is
unknown. But this type of existence was essentially
meaningless for them. The play emphasizes the common nature
of waiting for all people and therefore it suggests that the
meaningless of time is universal. If one is always waiting for
something to happen, the periods between that wait end up
being meaningless, and if the event finally does happen, the
process repeats itself. If that something never occurs with time,
the waiting becomes meaningless with time. In any case one is

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always caught in a period in which our existence has no

purpose and waiting is the only goal. From this we have to lead
a life without any purpose and meaning. This idea is well
demonstrated in Waiting for Godot.
Throughout the play, Vladimir and Estragon’s trivial
actions are used to fight the emptiness they are feeling in their
lives. Beckett purposely uses a tree as a symbol of the fluxity of
time. An example of their trivial actions is the switching of hats
between Vladimir and Estragon. Another example is Vladimir
feeding carrots, radishes, and turnips to Estragon. Vladimir
ends one of these trivial feedings saying, ‘This is become really
insignificant’. Time is indeed a significant factor to the
interpretation of Waiting for Godot, but serves no meaning
within the lives of the characters in the play. The insignificance
of our life in waiting for Godot corresponds to the importance of
the routine of waiting to pass the time in the play. Time is
essentially a kinetic one, not static; it is an act of illusion in the
play. At once Vladimir says that ‘Time has stopped.’ Vladimir
and Estragon end the play, just as they began it: waiting for
Godot. In Act one Pozzo is seemingly healthy, and he is certain
that he can see. He is travelling to market to sell Lucky, who
‘used to be so kind ... so helpful....so entertaining’ but he is now
unbearable to his master. In Act two the situation has
undergone change. Pozzo is blind and Lucky is mute. Pozzo has
no recollection of the meeting the day before. When Vladimir
asks about his blindness, Pozzo responds “I woke up one fine
day as blind as Fortune”. Vladimir, who is sceptical, asks him
for more details. Pozzo then quickly responds to it, “Don’t
question me! The blind has no notion of Time.” When Pozzo
asks Estragon about Vladimir’s age, he answers, ‘eleven’, once
again they establish the fact that we have no purpose in our
life apart from our birth and death. Boredom, which is another
form of inaction greatly, weakens one’s belief in capturing the
essence of life. Estragon opens the play by saying, “nothing to
be done”. Vladimir immediately follows him, “I am beginning to

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come round that opinion”. This sort of boredom creates much

doubt in Vladimir and Estragon. But the twist is that no one in
the play freely willing to claim that he is bored with the
situation and thus he is inactive. Instead they prefer to go on
living their lives by saying things like, “we always find
something to give us the impression that we exist”. In this
respect the play has been read within the fundamental
existential take on life. The fact that none of the characters
retain a clear mental history means that they are constantly
struggling to prove their existence.
The idea of companionship has the greatest sense of
meaning within the given context of absurdity. Neither
Vladimir nor Estragon could bear living alone. Each has a need
for a friend hence each character progresses on various actions
which is interdependent on one another. In Jean Paul Sartre’s
book, Existentialism and Human Emotions, he opines:
I cannot be anything unless others recognize me as such. In
order to get any truth about myself, I must have contact with
another person. The other is indispensable to my own
existence, as well as to my knowledge about myself. (10)

Vladimir recognizes Estragon as a necessary companion and

vice- versa so each is able to qualify himself as a meaningful
person. The two characters derive much of their self value from
their companionship. If Estragon seems to be weak, Vladimir
always allows her hands to help. Vladimir helps Estragon out
to get his boots on saying, “yes yes. Come on, we will try the left
first.” Vladimir is also the one who seems to be responsible for
feeding Estragon. When Estragon violently says, “I am hungry,”
Vladimir cheerfully responds, “Do you want a carrot,” as if
feeding Estragon is his most appealing duty. Vladimir and
Estragon certainly share the strongest desire for
companionship. This is apparent in the following dialogue.
VLADIMIR : come to my arms!
ESTRAGON: your arms?
VLADIMIR: My breast! (85-86)

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Both Estragon and Vladimir insist on chatting meaningless

matter in order to kill time. The above conversation hints at the
homo erotic reading of the play. As the play progresses,
Estragon says, “why don’t we hang ourselves?” Their lives have
turned so monotonous that they are now wishing to hang
themselves. It somehow correlates with Nietzsche’s idea that
“suicide is the deed of nihilism”. Hence it would be appropriate
to say that there is a link between the play and Nihilism which
lies within the domain of post modernism.
The play “Waiting for Godot” paves the way for the birth
of post structural world, in which Beckett seems to be one of the
torch bearers of Derridean world. Beckett’s central character in
the play have created a logo called Godot, a logo which seems to
be the ultimate source of erasing the misery of the characters
who find themselves drowned in the oozy ocean of incapability.
Godot is the sole power, which is expected to save and enrich
them and change their dystopia into utopia. The sense of
existence comes when there is the sense of self- esteem, the
sense of having the ability to think one’s own thought
independently. Beckett’s characters simply tie up to the logo
centric term Godot and have taken it for granted that Godot is
the dominant source of damnation and salvation. They believe
that the colourful meaning of truth can only be attained under
the shelter of the presupposed logos. The French philosopher
Jacques Derrida is one who has claimed the relationship
between language and reality in his texts, ‘Writing and
difference’ and Of Grammatology, where he denies the stability
of signification system in language. For him, there is no pre -
existent truth, ‘transcendental signifier’ or ‘logos’ to which one
can appeal to find meaning. His deconstruction therefore
affirms the importance of ambivalence, of the relation between
terms rather than the choice of one term over another.
In spite of being a poignant play about endless waiting,
the title “Waiting” has obvious symbolic dimensions. The title
demands interpretation of Roland Barthes’ ‘writerly text’ where

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the reader gets the greatest freedom of constructing meanings

of their own. We do not know who or what Godot is. Although
Godot is an offstage character, he is present from the very first
moments of the play. He is perceived in every word and every
move of the two friends. But Godot’s identity is obscure and this
has been the subject of much debate. Vladimir and Estragon
remain faithful to him and Godot remains their only hope. But
the more they talk and think about Godot, the more he becomes
obscure. The significance of the syllable God cannot be denied
in this context. There is also a reference to a character called
Godeau in a play by Balzac; Godot may be the unreachable God;
he is death; he is some kind of future utopia; he is the panacea
of food and shelter; he may be symbol of hope of the ordinary
French citizen under German captivation; he may be the
superlative creature who can save or punish the two
protagonists; in Greek mythology, Zeus was the supreme leader
of Greek deities and was known as Jupiter or Jove by the
Romans. He seized the throne of the universe by revolting
against his father, Cronus, in a war called Titanomachy. Zeus
then established his court on apex of Mount Olympus, the
highest mountain in Greece, which is placed on the borders of
Thessaly and Macedonia. As the ruler of the Universe, Zeus did
not tolerate any transgressions and punished his offenders
relentlessly and with no discriminations. The major similarity
hold between Zeus and Godot is that they assert the state of
being the absolute power. It is one of the important factors of
interpretation because both the Zeus and Godot are
superlatives as they are literally seen inspite of their physical
absence in the play. Beckett however does not help a lot in
finding the ultimate response to the inquiry of whom or what
Godot is. He once in an interview said, “If I knew, I would have
said in the play”. The author offers no clarity of attribution. It
is therefore hints at plurality and multiplicity of texts. The
author has been seen as a subject to several influences when
writing. Barthes says we can never know the true influence of

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writing because writing destructs every point of origin. In short,

Beckett attacks the classic tradition of modernism, presenting
his argument that there is nothing as the “Author” of a text, but
a scripter whose ideas are not entirely original. Barthes argues
in “The Death of the Author” that once the author is removed
from the text, it is within the reader of the text on which
various meanings of the text depend. The text therefore invites
many interpretations of the reader.
Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is an attack on modernist
idea of grand narratives. The play claims to interpret a world of
Vladimir and Estragon who are trapped by the modernist
nostalgia for the legitimating idea of Godot. The play is a
renaissance towards breaking the fossilized structure of the
prescribed norms and notion. Post modernism encourages the
study of meta- narrative, which became popular aftermath of
two World Wars. Post Modernism relies heavily on
fragmentation, paradox and questionable narrators. It refers to
the state of being that lacks a central hierarchy. In Post modern
world nothing is shaped within pre supposed universal truth.
Man lives today denying the objectives of a perfectly ordered
state. The world is a place where things happen randomly. We
live or we die by chance. The various conditions we endure, we
endure by chance. There is no well crafted plan, no scheme of
justice in world by which the universe operates. The enigmatic
road, the cryptic tree, and more importantly all of the
characters and their shades and moves in the play, are not
primarily establish any pre-supposed truth or any sense of
order or reason. Hence they exist in an ambiguous and absurd
world where every meaning is disseminated rather than
conveyed. It disperses throughout the realm of what Derrida
calls “Difference”, the realm of “Free Play”. And finally, one way
of understanding this play is to see it as an absurd play about
waiting, about waiting for the responsibility to perform, about
waiting for better future that we are not fully convinced
whether it will arrive or not.

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Lastly, we can say that our post modern world seems a place of
spiritual emptiness and cultural superficiality, in which social
practices are endlessly repeated and parodied. It is a world of
fragmentation and alienation where individual has no sense of
self and history. Time passes and the repetition comes and
comes at the same point of circle from where the journey
started.

WORKS CITED:

Begam, Richard, (1996), Samuel Beckett and the End of

Modernity, Stanford University Press, Stanford
Brater, Enoch & Ruby Cohn, (1990), Around the Absurd: Essays
on Modern and Postmodern Drama, The University of
Michigan Press, Michigan
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. London: Penguin Books,
2000
Cronin, Anthony, (1997), Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist,
Harper Collins, Londra
Durbach, Errol. ‘The formal pattern of Waiting for Godot’.
English Studies in Africa 13 1970 379–89
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of Absurd. Revised ed. New York:
Doubleday/Achor,1969.
Hinchliffe, Arnold P. The absurd. London: Methuen, 1969, 63–
72 (on the play and Endgame)
Pinter, Harold. ‘Letter [August 1955] from Harold Pinter to his
friend, Mick Goldstein, regarding Waiting for Godot’.
Pinter Review: Collected Essays 2003 and 2004 2004 5–6

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