Waiting for Godot

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 1954. Print.

“We are all born mad. Some remain so” (51)

- Estragon

Waiting for Godot was kind of like Groundhog Day, but without a plot. Or a point. But I think the point was that it doesn’t have a point. It’s comedic. It’s clowning. It’s slapstick. It’s absurdist. It’s a play that should be watched, I think, not read, because when you read it, you miss all the physical comedy (aside from imagining it).

I found one of the most compelling parts of the novel to be the characters’ lack of memory. At various points both Vladimir and Estragon seem like they might remember yesterday (10, 42) but ultimately, it is unimportant whether or not they remember yesterday, because any sense of time is lost in the stark place (inhabited only by a tree) where they wait for Godot. For all we know, they might have been waiting for him there forever. There is no real context which distinguishes between past and present. Even culture is meaningless. The Bible is a book Estragon says he “must have taken a look at” a statement which trivializes the scripture’s cultural omnipresence (8). Even thinking is impossible for the characters in Waiting for Godot, as Lucky’s seemingly-erudite speech––which cites non-existent scholars, and doesn’t make much sense generally––proves (29). Discourse has been rendered entirely meaningless. Vladimir and Estragon sit around and have conversations which are given the weight of deep philosophical debates, but which are quite banal and even ridiculous, focusing around carrots and shoes. I the play could be read as a satire of philosophy and other regimes of truth, since it shows how easily they are rendered meaningless without a cultural context. Without culture, without an established field discourse and a sense of time, there is no reason. Without reason there is madness.

Estragon and Vladimir’s relationship was also quite interesting and touching, despite the play’s (lack of) plot. They seem to delight in the scatological and the sexually subversive––they enjoy “abusing” one another (48); they, like Pozzo and Lucky engage in what seems to be a kind of voluntary dominant/submissive relationship (46, 43); Estragon enjoys watching Vladimir piss (38) and they revel at the idea of hanging themselves in order to get erections (12)––while at the same time, they also show tenderness towards one another (47, 48-9). Their relationship exists without context, since neither of them can really remember the past or how it is they got together or where they are now, but this only seems to indicate that love does not need reason in order to exist.