Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

• Waiting for Godot as a Modernist Literature

Introduction:-

• Waiting for Godot is a French play, translated into English by the author himself Samuel Beckett.
• Waiting for Godot is the most debated play, since its first premiere in very small theatre of Paris in 1953.
• This play has many characteristics of modernist literature. The play is not traditional. Protagonist of the play is two tramps.
• Making two tramps protagonist itself makes it Modernist text, because from traditional way of looking towards literature- it is believed that protagonist should be great person like king, prince, great warrior etc.
• Aristotle told that play should be of high seriousness, but if we look at Waiting for Godot, we find that nothing serious happens. Two tramps Vladimir and Estragon are just waiting on the stage for someone called Godot.
• It has no story, no plot - neither beginning nor end.
• Waiting for Godot is full of anxiety and interrogation. There are so many questions, but not a single answer- what is this all about?
• Modernist Literature is also experimentative in language & form. The language of the play is simple- but that simplicity is deceiving.
• Waiting for Godot explores the working of the human consciousness. It also rejects realism and the idea that art has to capture reality. (Bloom)
• Modernist fiction also defamiliarizes or makes strange what is common. Make it new is the modernist slogan. The play has no story or plot to speak of. Characters are almost mechanical puppets.
• If a good play must have fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, Waiting for Godot have neither beginning nor end.
• "Waiting for Godot does not tell a story, it explores static situation. Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful".

• Nothingness:-

• 'Nothing to be done'.

• The very first line of the play is 'Nothing to be done'. Nothingness is very remarkable characteristic of modern age. Nothing is something of the play.

• Setting:-

• A country road. A tree. Evening.

• Even in their waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir are unsure of the place where they are waiting.

• V: He said by the tree. Do you see others?
• E: What is it?
• V : I don’t know.....A willow.

• In this doubt & uncertainty, there is no authenticity to the existence of Vladimir and Estragon. Therefore nothing is certain. Life is meaningless.
• Estragon and Vladimir are also coming to the opinion after long waiting that nothing can be done. So it is great satire on positive thinking.

• ·        Existentialism & Absurdism

• Existentialism became popular in the year following World War 2, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy including theology, drama, art, literature and Psychology.
• Existentialist recognizes that human knowledge is limited and fallible. Waiting for Godot falls under the category of Theatre of Absurd, a term coined by drama critic Martin Esslin.
• Vladimir and Estragon caught in hopeless situation forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions, dialogues are full of clichés, wordplay and nonsense, plot that is cyclical or absurdly expansive.

• Who are we?
• Why are we here?

• Existentialist themes are displayed in the Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot to be an acquaintance, but in fact hardly know him if they saw him.
• Samuel Beckett, once asked who or what Godot is? replied, ' if I knew, I would have said so in the play'.
• To occupy themselves, the men eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats and contemplate suicide - anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay.
• The play "exploits several Archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos".

• The play also illustrates an attitude toward human experience on earth: the poignancy, oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, & bewilderment of human experience that can be reconcile only in the mind & art of the Absurdist. The play examines questions such as death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in human existence.
• The characters of the play are strange caricatures who have difficulty in communicating the simplest concept to one another as they bide their time awaiting their arrival of Godot.
• Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it, The Theatre of Absurd aims to create a ritual like, mythological, Archetypal, allegorical vision closely related to the world of dreams.
• The focal point of this dream is often man's fundamental bewilderment & confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answer to the basic existential questions:
• Why we are alive?
• Why there is injustice and suffering?
• All actions become senseless, absurd and useless...

•   Conclusion
• Waiting for Godot a drama presents distrust of language by as a means of communication. Language is nothing but a vehicle for conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchange. Thus, waiting for Godot is very remarkable work of modernist literature.