supreme irritation, punctuated by short bursts of poetry. fuck.

This is another reread for me and one I have read countless times with my AP English seniors. I love to teach it because what initially seems SO basic -- "nobody comes, nobody goes, nothing happens, it's awful" -- actually means so much.

#52BookClub2024 Prompt #33 An abrupt ending

[The first term paper I wrote for university. Sorry.]

Identity in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

"We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?"

1. Introduction

In Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, Identity is only a means to establish an inlusive character and a way for the audience to realize their own search for a meaning in life. Do the characters in the play even exist for the sake of existing or are they just searching for an identity to live for?
In this essay I would like to discuss those questions and try to show that their fictional life on stage features no development, and is thus devoid of existential meaning. As opposed to this, I am going to show how the protagonists „experience both [themselves], and the plot in which [they] partake in as theatrical“[1]. This lack of meaning and desperate search for identity is typical in the literary genre of the Theatre of the Absurd, a term for a certain kind of plays coined by Martin Esslin[2], featuring the belief that there is no purpose to existence. This is shown at great length in this play, which features no development at all, neither in the characters nor in the plot.

2. Identity is only a means to establish an inlusive character and a way for the audience to realize their own search for a meaning in life

As Alain Robbe-Grillet points it out, “[i]t is not Godot . . . who has “to be,” but they, Didi and Gogo.”[3] They have to be and live on stage, bound in front of an audience, unable to reach anything. But this stage is not the background for their fictional life, it is the place where the tramps are gazed upon by an audience.

They lack any theatrical identity, “everything happens as if the[y] . . . were on stage without having a role.”[4] They lack a prepared and learned-by-heart text. “They must invent. They are free.”[5] But are they really free? They can talk and dispute, joke and argue, but all on a verbal level. The tramps can chatter all day long, but the quality of their words won’t become more exquisite by excessive use of them. By using language they try to form an identity for themselves. But nothing ever changes. There is no use in talking, their identity and existence is strapped to the fact that there won’t ever be any development at all:

They will still be there the next day, the day after that and so on . . . tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . . from day to day . . . alone on stage, standing there, futile, without past or future, irremediably present.[6]

They will always continue waiting, talking and arguing, meeting the same characters and searching for meaning. The boy is a symbol for the prolonged waiting time they have to overcome, he shatters their hopes for a conclusion.

They exist as a blank canvas for the actor which play them. The actors have to fill their identity with the meaning that they lack to show. In a odd kind of way, the characters know that they are being played by actors. Uri Rapp termed this “intrinsically theatrical double attitude . . . “inlusion””[7], which means that they “relate to each other as the audience relates to them, . . . with an ambivalent “inlusive” attitude that combines empathy and detachment, alienation and identification.”[8]

Their actions play with the expectations of the audience, they even reenact the audience and their viewing of the stage in certain parts. Estragon often occupies the role of an actor[9], he is “sitting, leaning, limping, falling”, a pantomime and the active one.[10] According to Kenneth Tynan, he resembles “Chaplin at his airiest and fairiest”, while Vladimir features “the ragged aplomb of Buster Keaton“[11]. Even his nickname Gogo originates in the verb to go (as opposed to Vladimir‘s nickname Didi, which originates from the French verb dire, to say), as suggested by Ruby Cohn[12]. Vladimir mimics the role of the “omniscient or understanding audience”[13], he comments and evaluates Estragon’s actions, as a critic would comment on a play. The same can be affixed to Pozzo and Lucky, with Pozzo being the watcher or audience and Lucky being the performer or actor.

There is also a level of “Inter-Inlusion” between these two groups:
When the two couples meet, they treat one another as an audience treats actors. As soon as they get to know each other a little better, the attitude of estrangement is replaced by one on which there is a flexible shifting between empathy-antipathy, affection-disgust, or simply indifference.[14]
To conclude this, they experience life not for themselves, but for the amusement of others. They re-enact the equivocations of vaudeville.[15] Their identity is fulfilled by diverting and entertaining those around them, without caring about themselves. They even ask for a reaction: “How did you find me? . . . Good? Fair? Middling? Poor? Positively bad?”[16] The audience can witness their own existence and search for a meaning to life in those characters.

But what is the meaning of their existence? One can easily come to the conclusion that there is no meaning at all, the life on the stage of Waiting for Godot is “a retreat from presence and being-there”[17], an infinite loop of recurring events, a cycle of pain and disdain, joy and comic relief; an extensive trip into the field of Absurdist philosophy.
G.S. Fraser suggested a Christian interpretation of the play, in which the vagrants Didi and Gogo “represent the fallen state of man . . . [and] [t]he squalor of their surroundings . . . represents the idea that here in this world we can no longer build no abiding city”[18]. I consider this interpretation highly improbable, simply because of Beckett’s atheistic worldview, as it was pointed out by Harold Bloom: “Beckett and Joyce shared the aversion to Christianity in Ireland. The two chose Paris and atheism.“[19]

3. Conclusion

All in all, the play is a means to let the audience recognize their own search for meaning in an absurd and repetitive life. The characters are holding up a mirror to the audience and let them realize their own existence, their wishes and their search for a meaning in life; the road of life features feeble and energetic moments, cowardly and courageous situations; bickering, amusement, boredom; speaking to one another without understanding a word,[20] all of which is both inherent in the play, as it is in real life.

All this to keep busy. To pass time. To live or to give themselves the illusion that they are living. It might be happiness, eternal life, the ideal and unattainable quest of all men - which they wait for and which gives them the strength to live on.[21]

Footnotes:

[1] Levy, Shimon. Samuel Beckett‘s self-referential drama: the three I‘s (Basingstoke, Hampshire [u.a.]: Macmillan, 1990), 92.
[2] cf. Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage [Knopf], 2004).
[3] qtd. in Morrissette, Bruce. „Robbe-Grillet as a Critic of Samuel Beckett.“ Samuel Beckett Now. Critical Approaches to His Novels, Poetry and Plays. (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 65.
[4] qtd. in Morrissette, 66.
[5] qtd. in Morrissette, 66.
[6] qtd. in Morrissette, 66.
[7] Levy, 92.
[8] Levy, 92.
[9] Levy, 92.
[10] cf. Cohn, Ruby. „Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett.“ Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965; rep. 1987).
[11] Tynan, Kenneth. ‚Kenneth Tynan in „Observer‘“. Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage. (London [u.a.]: Routledge & Paul, 1979), 96.
[12] cf. Cohn.
[13] Levy, 92.
[14] Levy, 92.
[15] Tynan, 96.
[16] Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in 2 Acts. (New York: Grove Press, 1977), 25.
[17] Morrissette, 70.
[18] Fraser, G.S. „G.S. Fraser in ‚Times Literary Supplement‘“. Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage. (London [u.a.]: Routledge & Paul, 1979), 99.
[19] Bloom, Harold. El canon occidental (The Western Canon). (Barcelona. Anagrama, 2005), 509.
[20] cf. Zegel, Sylvain. „Sylvain Zegel in ‚Libération‘“. Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage. (London [u.a.]: Routledge & Paul, 1979), 89.
[21] Zegel, 89.

Is this how people feel when they're looking at abstract paintings? If it is, I'm sorry, and I think now I understand. My first reaction to this play was "wait--what???" Yes, I got existential whatever, the meaninglessness whatever, blah blah blah. I like to think I'm pretty imaginative, but really I don't think even my imagination did justice to reading this play. I have a feeling this is a prime example of a work that NEEDS to be seen on stage.

"We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's go to work! In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!"- Vladimir in Act 2.

Finally ... About time I read the play that sparks the strongest disagreement between my parents. I'm with my dad on this one: brilliant.

Une pièce de théâtre originale et intéressante ! Je serais vraiment curieuse de la voir jouer sur une scène !

**uni read - canon**
This play was such a weird read, and honestly I’m not even sure that I fully understand what it was about or what happened, however it was funny and I definitely enjoyed it to a degree.