Studii de Limbă Engleză și Literaturi Anglo – Americane [602593]

UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
Studii de Limbă Engleză și Literaturi Anglo – Americane

LUCRARE DE DISERTAȚIE

Coordinator Științific :
Asist . Univ. Dr. GEORGIANA ELENA DILĂ

Absolvent: [anonimizat]2018 –

UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
Stud ii de Limbă Engleză și Literaturi Anglo – Americane

WAITING FOR GODOT – A PHILOSOPHICAL PLAY
(AȘTEPTÂNDU -L PE GODOT – O PIESĂ FILOSOFICĂ )

Coordonator Științific:
Asist . Univ. Dr. GEORGIANA ELENA DILĂ

Absolvent: [anonimizat]2018 –

ABSTRACT

In this dissertation I am going to give a general overview about the term Absurdism and
about the Theatre of the Absurd and its integration into the world of literature in order to offer a proper
analysis of the play Waiting for Godot , by Samuel Beckett. This paper will also provide an
interpretation of the play, focusing on the routine of the main characters, the two tramps Vladimir and
Estragon, who are waiting for a man named Godot who eventually does not come, a tragic -comedy
where no thing happens twice.
The interpretations of the play are extremely varied, and they all depend on the reader’s point
of view. I believe anyone who read this dramatic text tried to give it a satisfactory explanation of the
presented events and found themsel ves facing a difficult challenge. The main feature of Waiting of
Godot is that the play is a philosophical one belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd and this thing is
shown by the fact that in the play one can find different option of interpretation which can be both
compatible and incompatible with the text, meanings to which not even the author has ever thought
about.
The subject of the paper Waiting for Godot – A philosophical play is as the title suggests a
powerful analysis of the play from a philosop hical point of view, concentrating mainly on how the
author used elements of Absurdism and how he employed the philosophy of the Theatre of the Absurd
in order to create this masterpiece who brought him notoriety worldwide.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………… 3
AN INTRODUCTION TO WAITING FOR GODOT – A PHILOSOPHICAL PLAY
………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …….. 5
CHAPTER 1 A THEORETICAL APPROACH ………………………….. ………………….. 7
1.1 Context and background ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………. 7
1.2 A taste of Samuel Beckett’s life (1906 – 1989) ………………………….. ………………………….. …… 10
1.3 Samuel Beckett’s development as a playwright ………………………….. ………………………….. … 12
CHAPTER 2 EXPLORING WAITING FOR GODOT ………………………….. ……….. 15
2.1 Structure and theme in Waiting for Godot ………………………….. ………………………….. ………… 15
2.2 Discovering the characters of the play ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………… 18
2.3 Critici sm and popularity of Waiting for Godot ………………………….. ………………………….. …. 24
CHAPTER 3 SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD 26
3.1 Presenting elements of Absurdism and the Theatre of the Absurd ………………………….. … 26
3.2 The connection between the author and the Absurd through his plays ………………………. 30
3.3 The portrayal of Beckett’s belief in Absurdism as reflected in the play ……………………… 33
CONCLUSIONS ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……… 38
BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …… 40
REZUMAT ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………… 43

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AN INTRODUCTION TO WAITING FOR GODOT – A PHILOSOPHICAL
PLAY

This paper sheds an analytic light on Samuel Beckett’s best known play, Waiting for Godot
and on the immense sea of concepts and meanings that one can find in it, how Absurdism and The atre
of the Absurd plays a crucial role in understanding its content. This paper aims to explain why
Beckett’s work is so significant and why it will last.
While trying to find the right author and the right work, I turned to one of my favourite quick
reads, Waiting for Godot . Having gone through several pages of the play, I started to notice how the
author is making his readers to somehow identify with the characters in discussion: common situation
in human condition, and men’s despair unable to find a mea ning for his existence. This realization
gave birth to the title of this paper, Waiting for Godot – A Philosophical Play .
The objectives of this paper are to take you into the world of ideas of tragicomedy and the
Theatre of the Absurd, but also to allow y ou to appreciate how this magnificent play is different from
all kinds of view from the other plays. The main aim of my paper is to concentrate on all of the
elements which helped Samuel Beckett in creating such a complex work, a play that brought notoriet y
to the author, who intrigued, excited and somehow amused readers and audience worldwide.
Considering the actuality of the theme and its level of research, this paper proposes to deepen the
study of the author’s style, thereby the main note of originality and freshness consists in a research
with analytical character over the work of this writer, research connected to a bibliography, significant
and updated.
The initial desire evolved in an ambition of making a synthesis of the numerous studies and
volumes in a paper that can constitutes itself in an effective instrument for those interested in the
genius that Samuel Beckett is. This orientation, naturally dictated the restricted methodology of my
research and I, thereby, tried to reunite the analysis and t he synthesis by adding the demonstrative
force of example and also following the clarity and concision of the ideas by using the hermeneutic
method which is based on mostly the interpretation of texts without using too much statistic data. Of
course, I was not happy to just register the positions of the authorized voices that my bibliography
reunited, but I also tried to advance personal critic opinions whenever I considered necessary.
The paper will be structured into three chapters, each chapter being or ganized in subchapters.
A Theoretical Approach is the name of the first chapter in which I will try to give every possible help

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in the understanding of Samuel Beckett’s works. First, I will present the Context and background of
the author’s theatre and I w ill give a proper explanation of modernism and postmodernism. I will
emphasize the fact that there is no simple pattern in modern drama since 1900, but rather a tension, a
continual dialect. It is such interaction, not only within the modern drama, but als o between the
contemporary plays and the classics of the past, that makes theatre of the latter half of the 20th century
in general, and its leading exponent Beckett in particular, such a fascinating object of study. The
chapter will continue to briefly pr esent the most important events in the author’s life, because I believe
that Beckett’s work has its origin in his individual experience and life which is the key for the
interpretation of his writings, and in the last part of the chapter I will describe th e author’s
development as an important and notorious playwright, with a briefly analysis of his novels, radio and
television plays, this separation showing an increasing emphasis on dialogue, on speaking and on
listening as it represents the crucial first phase of our response to the world.
The second chapter will be called Exploring Waiting for Godot and as the title suggest, it will
give a description of the play, taking into account first the structure and theme, this leading to the
obvious character ana lysis and the relationship between them in order to assert that Beckett’s
characters proclaim their identities through their interaction with the external world. The entire plot
centers on the two protagonists and their waiting for the mysterious character named Godot, and I will
try to demonstrate why he is an important figure for the main characters, why does he not appear, and
why they are waiting, the second chapter concluding with criticism and the popularity of Waiting for
Godot .
These chapters will lay the foundation of the final and third chapter which it will be called
Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd which is, in fact, the object of this paper. This chapter
will explore the elements of the Absurd as a general concept and the Theatre of the Absurd and will
continue with the connection between the author and the concept of absurd throughout his most
important and popular plays: Endgame , Krapp’s Last Tape etc. This chapter will also explore the
themes of words, memory, waiting and hope, an d how Beckett uses absurdity to play around with the
concepts of time and space.
All of these important aspects that will be discussed in the presented chapters will prove the
fact that Waiting for Godot is a philosophical play and that it is belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd
because Beckett is an author who does not present plays that assume to know the answer. One have
to read them and try to give them a personal interpretation because a play of Samuel Beckett who has
a thousand readers it means it h as a thousand different interpretations.

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CHAPTER 1
A THEORETICAL APPROACH

1.1 Context and b ackground

Samuel Beckett’s complete dramatic work can be contained in a single volume, in
contradistinction to any other important playwrights who have left a well -grounded body of work, and
yet Samuel Beckett is considered to be one of the world’s most important person who was engaged in
the art of writing for the theatre. Taking into account the fact that Beckett rejected any relationship
with any national and cult ural tradition, leads to a complicated problem in trying to locate this author
with any movement in particular, but this chapter will give a significant construction of ideas and
themes in which Samuel Beckett found inspiration over his entire career as a writer.
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines modernism as a “ usage, mode of expression,
or particularity of style or workmanship c haracteristic of modern times”. The term derives from the
Latin modernus , which means “now time” (Baldick, 2008: 74 ).
“Modernism” or “modern” can suggests at any rate three indistinguishable interpretations. At
a general level, it can express innovation, something which is in contrast to the old, ergo expressing a
particular belief in progress. Another interpretation can be understood to a more specific level as the
modern period established from the philosophical point of view with the Enlightenment thinking. And
the last interpretation would be strongly connected with a certain tendency in arts which give special
importance to subjective experience, and non -realistic representations of reality as suggested by some
particular poetic tendencies (Dadaism, Poeticism, Cubism) and the writings of mostly Europeans
(Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, British Bloomsbury group of authors, James Joyce, who
in my opinion is the most important novelist in which the term “modernism” is highly emphasized in
his brilliant works), and, of course, American authors such as T. S. Eliot, and the Lost Generation.
All of the writers me ntioned above tried to present in their works another reality that was not
about the chaotic world which World War I created. The literary movement which was created at the
beginning of the 20th century put an accent on the subjective experience and, thus producing a reaction
against the traditional forms of writing before the turn of the century. Modernism, the great literary
and artistic movement achieved its finest flowering in the early decades of the 20th century with such
artists as Proust and Picasso , as mentioned above, and went into decline in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Economic and political turmoil lasting from Hitler’s raising to power, but also Stalin’s death forced
the movement in a state of temporary suspension. The end of the World War II in 1945, when
humanity awakened from a nightmare of totalitarian oppression, a period in which was no time to
pursue art for art’s sake, made it possible for the literary movement Modernism to encounter a final
lowering between the 1950s and the 1970s. In this revi val, known as Post -modernism, Samuel Beckett
had an important role in laying down the directions of post -modern literature.
Keeping with the ideas that the early 20th century established in literature, ideas reflected by
the human experience which put the accent on inner subjective experience, a term emphasized by the
first person narrator and stream -of-consciousness narrative method, modernist writers expressed in
their literary works the fact that the world cannot be perceived in an objectively form, but rather
subjectively by the human mind. The authors adopted a new style of writing manifested by the use of
non-chronological, fragmentary composition and in a portrayal of the relationships between the
characters. Modernist literary writings, thus became often ironic and parodic, writers reached the
conclusion that they can transform the ancient myths and place or consider them in a new and different
context, ergo becoming modern myths that are connected to the modernist cultural experience, as
portrayed, for example, in James Joyce’s masterpiece novel Ulysses , published in 1922.
Post-modernism, being closer to our times, shows less distinctly significant temporal and
aesthetic contours, but it is obviously that it includes the “new novel” in France, Ame rican Abstract
Expressionism and music, films, and the so called Theatre of Absurd. This theatrical phenomenon
was defined by its leading theorist, Martin Esslin, as “tending toward a radical devaluation of
language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage
itself”; the element of language, as Esslin explains, “still plays an important part in this conception,
but what happens on the stage transcends and often contradicts, the word spoken by the characters”
(Esslin, 1968: 26). This aspect concerns us because we must view Beckett’s significance as a
playwright, since this phenomenon lays in the context of the contribution that stage has offered to the
post-modern acceleration, and the response to this concern has been given by the restrictive label of
the Theatre of Absurd. But these ideas will be further discussed in an analytical manner in the next
chapters.
Unlike modernism, post -modernism does not deal anymore with concrete or any other
scientific rules, it em braces the manner in which the writers can create something without any rules
with the purpose to draw the rules of what will have been done, and this aspect is quite ordinary in
Samuel Beckett’s writings. Each writer starts once more, over and over again, creating its own rules

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as it goes along. Post -modernism is a term who can endure multiple definitions: it is believed that
post-modernism is used to portray an incredible palette of aesthetic, cultural, literary, and
philosophical demeanors. Literature is one of the great field in which post -modernism can be
represented, although this movement is a phenomenon of vast interpretation which concentrates on so
different aspects. In the post -modernism literature the boundary between fact and fiction is dissolve d.
There are no boundaries between fiction and reality, ergo there is nothing absolute or eternal, these
facts creating some particular features of post -modern literature, such as: ambiguity, complexity,
fragmentation in dialogue, pastiche, irony, parody, black humour, all the elements that can be found
in Samuel Beckett’s work.
The author in discussion is one of the few dramatists to have make something suitable for a
new use or purpose in his plays. He adapted popular forms of entertainment to so -called “ serious”
drama. His intention in particular is comic: it cannot be emphasized enough that Waiting for Godot is,
correctly or satisfactorily performed, a very funny play. As Roger Blin, Beckett’s first and greatest
director, once said, “He’s unique in his a bility to blend derision, humour and comedy with tragedy:
his words are simultaneously tragic and comic” (Fletcher, 2000: 22). There is no conflict between
these devices which helped Beckett create this masterpiece, because all that matters, as Beckett onc e
said, “is the laugh and the tear”, and in that particular moment we are able to see a great truth, and
that is the ability to laugh at our condition is the only way we can survive life, coming to the conclusion
that Samuel Beckett’s great achievement is to have shaped this simple revelation into a dramatic
symbol: that of two clowns , the protagonists Vladimir and Estragon, waiting on a country road for
someone who fails to keep the appointment, they are waiting for Godot.
When coming to analyzing Samuel Beckett’s works, one can come to the conclusion that his
writings seem like are deviating from what is expected, they are somehow abnormal, atypical, making
one believe that he has something to do with modernism. By being associated in some manner with
James Joyce, and with his inexhaustible efforts to reinvent the literary forms of expression, Samuel
Beckett is saw as an exemplary modernist, despite the complications that appear in trying to
generalizing his innovations, such as absence of conventional plo t, static nature of the action, tramps
as protagonists, the austere stage -setting. For a while, during the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed more
obvious for critics to use Beckett’s writings to create the basis for a particular rupture within
modernism moving be yond the forms of order represented by high and classic modernism into a world
of unlimited possibilities. Indeed, for a time, Beckett became the exemplary postmodernist, according
to the following formula: “where modernism turned from the world in the eff ort to create a second

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-order world of art, postmodernism pluralized this act of world -making” (Connor, 2014: 2).
This part of the chapter had a tendency to scramble into the different faces of the play Waiting
for Godot on a postmodern solid foundation, w here modernism cannot be denied. The play contains
both modernist and postmodernist characteristics, such as annulment of linear historical time,
imprisonment within an ahistorical prospect, predisposition of uncertainty or the notion of fifty -fifty
chance s, and most important of all displaying absolute absurdism in all parts of the play have helped
to pave the path to give it a postmodern critical examination and observation.

1.2 A taste of Samuel Beckett’s l ife (1906 – 1989)

To understand an author’s ideas and works it is necessary to become acquainted with his life
and environment which might well have influenced his personality. Therefore, I feel it suitable at this
time to briefly comment upon the life of the author in question.
Beckett’s life has proved to be as enigmatic as his works. A lot of things have changed since
the publication of James Knowlson’s Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett , a biography about
one of the author’s closest friends. In spite of the fact that Samuel Beckett is consider ed to be an
austere person, who is isolating himself from the rest of the world like a philosopher, it has come to
the conclusion that, in fact, his work is very much connected to his Irish childhood. He is best known
for the absurdist drama Waiting for Go dot, first performed in Paris on January 5, 1953, a play which
received worldwide acclaim and became the first of a series of critical successes, some of them written
earlier.
Samuel Barclay Beckett (to give him his full name) was born in Dublin on April 1 3th, 1906, in
a rich Protestant family. His deep pessimism led him to consider his birth a “calamity’, and yet his
childhood was happy enough. Because of his mother’s very depressive character, Samuel did not feel
much love towards her, and this thing mig ht be an explanation for his attraction to French than to his
mother language. Although a regular church -goer, Beckett’s father was less passionate in his
Protestant belief than his wife or elder son, Frank. But for young Samuel Beckett, this faith did not
survive his student days, instead Christian mythology was to remain an important motif behind his
writings, as we shall see when we come to look closely at his plays, Waiting for Godot in particular.
As one would expect of such brilliant student, Samuel Beckett was marked out by his
teachers for an academic career, and as a first step in this direction was chosen to represent Trinity in
the regular scheme for exchanging lectors with the prestigious École Normale S upérieure in Paris.

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During his studies the re, he had developed a very good relationship with a French teacher, Thomas
Brown, and there began a real love for French. Samuel Beckett strongly believed the fact that habit
and routine is the cancer of life, and social intercourse a mere illusion, it ha s become quite obvious
that the daily grind of a university lecturer’s work must be seen as an unbearable situation and after
just four terms at Trinity College, Samuel Beckett has enough. And so like Belacqua, the hero of his
volume of short stories More Pricks than Kicks , who, though indolent by nature, “enlivened the last
phase of his solipsism…with the belief that the best thing he had to do was to move constantly from
place to place” (Beckett, 1943: 43), the author in discussion embarked on a period of wandering, a
period in which he wrote poems and stories, done odd jobs, Samuel Beckett moved from Dublin to
London and then to Paris, he travelled through France and Germany, this thing leading to the
conclusion that with no coincidence many of Beckett’s characters are tramps, wanderers and they are
all completely lonely.
The playwright took his post at the École Normale in October 1928, where he formed a close
friendship with a student, Alfred Peron, who died later in a German concentration camp, and wh ose
death affected him deeply, but the most important event of his two years spent at the École was the
meeting with James Joyce, with whom he developed a beautiful friendship, despite the fact that Joyce
was old enough to be Beckett’s father and had an ex uberant temperament, whereas Beckett was more
taciturn, but James Joyce was a genius and Samuel Beckett recognised this immediately. Their
friendship was so close that whenever the author passed through Paris, Beckett always made time to
see Joyce: “Becket t was addicted to silences, and so was Joyce; they engaged in conversation which
consisted often in silences directed towards each other, both suffused with sadness, Beckett mostly
for the world, Joyce mostly for himself. Joyce sat in his habitual posture, legs crossed, toe of the upper
leg under the instep of the lower; Beckett, also tall and slender, fell into the same gesture. Joyce
suddenly asked some such question as ‘How could the idealist Hume write a history?’ Beckett replied,
‘A history of represen tations” (Ellmann, 1959: 661).
In 1933, when Hitler took power, Beckett was in Dublin. This period of time was the beginning
of a very hard period for the author. His great love Peggy died from tuberculosis, and soon Beckett’s
father died from a massive heart attack in 1937, which totally overwhelmed him. Then, his mother
sent him to London for a psychanalysis, during which he wrote his first novel More Pricks than Kicks ,
this period of time being a mark of when Beckett’s indubitable style appeared.
Influenced by his friend Alfred Peron and his own repulsion for Nazism, he chose to join the
French Resistance, a period when Beckett was able to overcome hard times: was betrayed to the

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Gestapo, he took the job on gathering information about the German troo ps movements, and then
being caught with this compromising material, all these experiences which have survived in the heroes
of his later novels and in their feelings about “writing their report”. This is what Moran said in the
novel Molloy , which was publ ished six years after the war ended: “ A letter from Youdi, in the third
person, asking for a report. He will get this report… One day I received a visit from Gaber. He wanted
the report… I have spoken of a voice telling me things… It told me to write the r eport… Then I went
back into the house and wrote. It was midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was n ot
midnight. It was not raining” (Beckett, 1951: 175 -176). The contradiction in the last sentences
emphasize what Beckett felt about the espionag e he was called upon, by having a state of mixed
feelings or contradictory ideas about he was called upon.
After the liberation of France in 1944, Beckett continued his Paris existence. There, he wrote
those works in French, and later translated to Engli sh, on which his entire reputation will permanently
rest: Molloy , Malone Dies , The Unnamable , and the play Waiting for Godot .
Taking into account the influence that he has applied to the modern theatre, both as a writer
and director, he enjoys the conside ration of major figures as the playwright Harold Pinter and the
director Peter Hall, who acknowledge the enormous genius of Samuel Beckett and who regard him as
the greatest modern master of theatre.
His plays and fiction are written in an unrealistic, ab stract style that probes into difficult
philosophical questions about human existence. Some of Samuel Beckett’s known works besides
Waiting for Godot are plays Eleuthéria and Endgame , novels such as Murphy , Molloy and Malone
Dies, volumes of short stories More Pricks than Kicks and collection of poems Echo’s Bones and
other Participates . Beckett wrote both in French and English and in 1960 he won the Nobel Prize for
Literature.

1.3 Samuel Beckett’s development as a playwright

The author’s point of view in the early period is influenced by James Joyce because of their
close friendship. After the end of World War II, Beckett realized that he could never achieve to Joyce’s
writing potential, so he changed his idea, in having the revelation that Joyce was in control of his
material and he was always adding information to it, while he was impoverished by it, in lack of
knowledge. This fact changed completely his literary direction and turned to write four major plays

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using French to express, embody and fulfill his works, among which En attendant Godot (Waiting for
Godot ) is considered to be as representative for the concept of ‘the absurd’.
Taking into account the fact that Samuel Beckett’s writing career embraces six decades, from
the early 1930s to the last 1980s, it does not come as a surprise the fact that the author developed
enormously as a dramatist during this period, that we can affirm, in fact, that his evolution can be
marked in six extensive phases.
Tracing down his life, we can say that the first phase represents the beginners years during the
1930s, in which he met James Joyce and he has first poems published. He also wrote a college sketch
Le Kid , a parody of Corneille’s drama Le Cid , and began an ambitious project, a four -act play Human
Wishes , in which he describes the relationship between the English writer Dr. Johnson and his
benefactress Mrs. Thrale, but only one scene was ever completed.
The second phase represents the period in which Samuel Beckett wrote two full -length plays,
Eleuthéria that is still unperformed, and Waiting for Godot , immediately after the interruption of the
war years between 1939 and 1945. In this phase, the author finds his distinctive voice as a playwright,
a phase in which he realize the fact that it is clear that Godot, with only five characters, would be
cheaper and easier to put on than Eleuthéria who was content to abandon writing. The popularity of
Waiting for Godot, put so much pressure on Samuel Beckett that he must abandoned translating his
French works into En glish, and started to write another play, as the BBC suggested, at radio drama
and All That Fall (1957) was the result.
A third phase occurred in 1950s, when Beckett was trying to write another play, besides All
That Fall , who was for the author a new depa rture because he moved into a different field: radio, and
finally produced Endgame . These two works, plus the Acts Without Words (1957) and Krapp’s Last
Tape (1958) constitutes another phase in the author’s dramatic development. Despite the fact Beckett
wrote Godot in one go, his next play proved to be much harder to write as the various stages of the
work went through can be traced in the manuscript deposited in the library of Ohio State University
in the United States. The strange nature of Endgame , its r efusal to make any progression or
development of the situation on stage, reminds us of the remorseless monologues in the novel The
Unnamable (1953) and in the Texts for Nothing (1955), whereas the characteristics of Waiting for
Godot are similar to that of the pre -war novel Murphy (1938). Krapp’s Last Tape is equally radical, a
mono -drama in which the characters are reduced to one, an old man commuting with an earlier self
throughout the tape recorder that brings back voices from his past.

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The forth phase of its dramatic development opens in 1959 with a radio play called Embers .
During this period, Beckett discovered that the origin of a sound on the radio is ambiguous and
uncertain, thing that made the author to exploit this discovery to the full and after Cascando in 1963,
he did not find any other challenge in the radio field, so he moved his attention into film (with Film ,
1965) and television (with Eh Joe , 1966). He was encouraged in this new interest by the television
service in southern Germany, Stutt gart, which invited him to direct Eh Joe himself, in German
translation. This phase was also rich in stage -play as well, not only radio, film and television, with
plays of great originality, with the help of which Beckett perpetually discovered new ways of using
the theatrical space: Happy Days (1961), Play (1963), Come and Go (1966), and Breath (1969).
Because of the fact that Samuel Beckett spent so much time in the late 1960s directing his own
plays in Paris and Berlin, many thought that Beckett has writ ten his last play in Breath , in 1969, but a
fifth phase began in 1972 with the publishing of Not I , a very difficult work for an actress to perform.
All of the works of the last period of Beckett’s life, in the sixth phase of its development as a
playwrigh t, are all very short, giving the impression that they were written for a specific event, or for
a particular actor whose work has impressed Samuel Beckett. Thereby Catastrophe was written in
1982 to support the Czech recusant Vaclav Havel and A piece of M onologue (1979) for David
Warrilow to perform.
As a novelist, he is primarily known for his French trilogy: Molloy (1951), Malone Dies
(1952), and The Unnamable (1953). These, like his dramatic pieces, are also concerned with the
deterioration of humanity .
We came to the conclusion that in all of Beckett’s works comedy plays an important role. But
the comedy is so twisted and shadowed by irony and tragedy that audiences usually cease to laugh
once the play has progressed past the initial exposure. Vladimi r and Estragon at first appear hilarious
on stage, but as the play continues they become more and more viewed as a pair of tragic figures.
Thereby, Beckett has the ability to transform man’s only instinctive gift of self -comfort, which is the
ability to la ugh, into a mockery of horror, and even in his old age, Beckett proved to be as inventive
and unpredictable as ever.

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CHAPTER 2
EXPLORING WAITING FOR GODOT

2.1 Structure and theme in Waiting for Godot

In one of his best known play, Samuel Beckett, whose name is often associated with the
theatre of the absurd, places his characters at the edge of a country road, near a tree, watching the
arrival of a certain Godot. The play follows alongside its two acts the dialogue between Estragon and
Vladimir dur ing the two days of waiting, as well as the interventions of another couple of characters
composed of Pozzo and Lucky. Basically, nothing is happening in the two acts of the play. From the
day it appeared, the play has been a real success and it continues to fascinate to this day. In fact, the
writing of Waiting for Godot did not constitute for the author anything but a literary exercise inspired
by Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon .
The waiting is the central theme of the mos t important work of the Irish playwright Samuel
Beckett, the play Waiting for Godot . Wrote between the years 1946 – 1947, and published in 1952, it
remains until today an emblematic play of the absurd genre. “Nothing to be done” (Beckett, 1954: 1),
what ca n you expect from a play that starts this way? The deconcentrated tone of the line is that of
the man who has lost all the hope of a change. Of the one who has nothing to do, but to wait. What?
Or whom? In this case, Godot.
The waiting for Godot is the w aiting for a salvation. Although they dream to a somehow
happiness, the characters of the play deeply feel the acute absence of happiness, as Vladimir states:
“Can’t you see he’s thinking of the days when he was happy? Memoria praeteritorum bonurum – that
must be unpleasant” (Beckett, 1954: 63).
The play Waiting for Godot was first written in French with the title En attendant Godot in the
year of 1952. The play is rightly called an avant garde play because it broke all the rules in creating
theatre . It has important distinct feature which differentiate it from other important plays,
characteristics such as: the austere stage -setting; tramps as protagonists; the use of language and
linguistics devices such as speech -pace or pauses silences; absence o f conventional plot, and perhaps
the most important feature the static nature of the action: nothing is happening after all in Waiting for
Godot . Waiting for Godot is composed of two acts that follows the same layout: two ne’er -do-wells,
Vladimir and Estra gon, are gathering near a willow, where they are waiting in vain for a somewhat

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Godot. The static couple, Vladimir and Estragon, showing the interdependent relationship between
the carnal and intellectual, is completed with the dynamic pair Pozzo – Lucky, embodying the typical
relationship master – slave. The antics of the four characters are building throughout an amazing
alternation of short lines, some of them repetitive, sometimes true leitmotifs, like: “Vladimir. We’re
waiting for Godot. Estragon. True .” (Beckett, 1954, 33), and the comic erupts from the dislocations
of meaning caused by the stunning jump from one line to another. Act II brings the same postponing
of the long waiting of Godot, but there are clues that this waiting is in vain prolonged t hrough a delay
always resumed to a perpetual tomorrow.
A small, but eager audience gathered in the night of January 5, 1953, at the Théâtre de
Babylone to see a new play written by a 46 year old man, who was widely published, but little known
Irish. No on e in the audience, or the author himself, could have thought that Beckett’s first staged play
would be performed in thousands of theatres all over the world and that it will become one of the most
discussed, influential literary landmarks of the 20th centu ry.
What counts in the play is the waiting, its duration indicated by the gerund in the title. Beckett’s
strength lies in the refusing of Godot’s arrival and this refusal leads us into a spiral of expectation,
which is an endless repetition. The two tramps (in French “clochards”) will always return to the same
place that is actually a non -place, a country road with a tree. About this décor indicated by the author,
as well as the other acting indications in the play, was much talked, speculating the symbol w ith which
this space is loaded. During the text, the “Silence” indication is frequently encountered, constituting
the state of expectation and uncertainty. The anxiety slowly and slowly takes over the two tramps.
The questions they ask are as natural as po ssible in this order of derision and in the seemingly natural
context of the absurd theater. Is it the right day? Is the place well chosen? Did Godot already go there
and the meeting was missed? What will they do waiting?
One evening, on a lonely count ry road near a tree, two men, half -tramp half -clown, are waiting
for someone named Godot, who has given them to understand that their patience at the waiting will
be rewarded. The two, Estragon (“Gogo”) and Vladimir (“Didi”), are not sure what form Godot’s
gratitude will take, any more than they know for certain whether they have come to the right place or
have indeed turned up on the appointed day. As the idea of waiting is central to the play and since the
act of waiting is inseparable from the notion of time, Waiting for Godot provides opportunities for the
writer to explore modern man’s experience of his own existence.
They occupy the time as best they can until distraction appears in the shape of Pozzo, a local
landowner on his way to the fair to sell his servant Lucky. Pozzo halts awhile with Estragon and

17
Vladimir, eats his lunch in their presence, even grants them his bones when his menial spurns them,
and then in gratitude for their society has Lucky dance and then think aloud for them. The three
become so agitated by Lucky’s intellectual performance that they all set up upon him by removing his
hat. Not long afterwards Pozzo takes his leave, driving Lucky before him. Estragon and Vladimir have
not been alone many moments before a small boy appears wi th the news that Mr. Godot “won’t come
this evening but surely tomorrow” (Beckett, 1954: 36). The boy runs off, night falls abruptly, and after
briefly contemplating suicide by hanging themselves from the tree, the two friends decides to call it a
day. But , despite their decision to go, they do not move as the curtain falls:
“Estragon. Well, shall we go?
Vladimir. Yes, let’s go.
They do not move. There is a pause, then – the CURTAIN quickly falls ” (Beckett, 1954: 38).
The curtain raises the following day on a scene identical except for the fact that the tree has
sprouted a few leaves. Vladimir is joined on stage by Estragon and much the same things happen
except that when Pozzo and Lucky appear, Pozzo reveals that he has gone blind and Lucky dumb.
Then all four collapse on top of each other but somehow manage to get up again. Pozzo becomes
exasperated by Vladimir’s anxious questions about time, bellowing that life itself is only a brief
instant. He leaves, driving Lucky before him, and after another brief i nterlude the boy comes on a
second time and delivers the same message as before. The sun sets, the moon rises abruptly, the men
again contemplate suicide but without much determination, and then, despite their agreement to leave,
make no movement as the cu rtain falls. So ends the play, in which, as one critic wittily, but
inaccurately put it, nothing happens, twice.
The play is not overwhelming, but it will definitely impress its audience and readers. Some
passages are hard to read and understand, like Luck y’s speech, but these things are compensated by
other poetic passages full of profoundness and intensity hide under the mask of ordinary. Some
associated the name of Godot with the God that the humanity and the two characters are waiting (“But,
at this pla ce, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not“(Beckett, 1954, 58).
Like a salvation, suiciding is contemplated too, the tree considered to be a willow is thought to be a
good spot for hanging themselves. Our characters continued to live, Estragon saying that “we always
find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression that we exist” (Beckett, 1954: 49).
The idea that Beckett’s work primarily addresses the sordid side of human existence with
tramps and cripples living in garba ge cans is fundamentally wrong. He described people in such
extreme situations, not because he was interested in the sordid and the ailing aspects of life, but

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because he focused on the essential aspects of human experience. The central themes of such a la rge
part of world’s literature – the social relationships between individuals, their behaviors and
characteristics, their struggles for rank and position, or their conquest for the sexual objects – appeared
to Samuel Beckett as simple external concretizati ons of existence, accidental and superficial aspects
which masks the basic problems and the fundamental anxiety of the human conditions. The essential
questions to Samuel Beckett seemed to be: How can we be reconciled with the fact that, without ever
askin g for this, we were born and thrown into the world, forced to exist? and, Who are we, what is the
true nature of our being? What does it mean for a man to say “I”?
Waiting for Godot is not a play with rationality; it does not bring any morality to impose o n
the reader or spectator; it does not reflect any particular hope. To understand such a play, one must
see in it the immensity of the reduced world to the dimensions of one’s spirit, in the two tramps, a
perpetual ambivalent humanity. In fact, the author’ s stake is the capture of the state of waiting in
which the modern man finds himself. The waiting of Godot – an invocation, a pretext, a veil, a mask.
Everyone sits down, serious, agitated or choleric, next to each other, waiting for Godot, which, of
cours e, never appears. But it leaves you with excitement, with the smile, the twisting of the moment,
printed on the face and in memory.
I believe that what makes the play to be so appreciated is precisely the fact that for every reader
Godot will represen t something else and the only fundamental condition to really understand the play
is to have known, at least in minor forms, the anxiety of waiting.

2.2 Discovering the characters of the play

Being one of the first play labelled as the Theatre of th e Absurd, Samuel Beckett’s main goal
was to create realistic characters by using the absurdity. Like all the people in the mid -20th century,
and also nowadays, the character’s lives are full of absurd situations, emptiness and nothingness. The
play has fiv e characters who I will give a proper analysis in the following pages using examples from
the drama.
The main characters of the play are two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon. Like all Beckett’s
non-existentialist heroes, this characters do not have an age, a look, or any other significant
particularity designed to get them out of anonymity. The two are living in a silent universe, where
nothing never happens, where the lack of activity is part of the quotidian. This thing explains the
apathy in which they liv e, and the inactivity from which they do not want to get out. “Nothing to be

19
done” is a leitmotif which appears over the entire play. “Nothing is happening, no one is coming, no
one is leaving, it is terrible”, Estragon affirmed. The only thing that the tw o are doing is to wait for
Godot, a character about we know nothing. No one knows who he is, what does he want, where does
he came from, why is he coming or if he is coming. After all, all of these things do not have an
importance. Godot is an utopia, mayb e there is not a Godot. The waiting of Godot is only motivating
the existence of the two friends. In a world in which nothing is ever happening, a new appearance in
the action could change everything, it could be the definitive salvation or damnation. They can only
define Godot as an unfulfilled hope, a hope to which man cannot live. The appearance in the scene of
a new couple of Pozzo and Lucky, one being blind and the other dumb suggests that the characters
can be easily permutated between them, being abl e to lose their pronounced psychological character,
without the structure of the play to suffer.
Vladimir and Estragon are complementary and contradictory characters, they cannot survive
without one another. Pozzo and Lucky, on the other hand, symbolize the mind versus the body, both
having the purpose to confirm Vladimir and Estragon’s meaningless in life. Godot, however, is not a
real character, but rather a symbolical one. He is a manifestation of the human waiting for something
or someone, for a meani ng and purpose in life. Even though these characters include absurd and
senseless dialogues, their words and actions are full of symbolical meaning, proving the fact that while
their name suggests the opposite, they are closer to reality than any other cha racter from the traditional
narrative plays.
Vladimir and Estragon are two complementary characters dependent on one another , we
might state at some point that they are alone together . At the same time, they both have contradictory
nature, but all these differences eventually transform into interchangeable relationship. Vladimir is
the one who is responsible, more logical and more intellectual. Estragon constantly relies on Vladimir
and his character is presented as more down -to-earth and more emotional. Vladimir is the one who
thinks, while Estragon is the one who is more preoccupied with physical, Vladimir is the reasonable
one, hopeful and positive, and Estragon is the dreamer, the negative and despairing. Their difference s
can be shown through numerou s examples from the text. When they talk about the Bible in the first
act, Vladimir is concerned w ith the two thieves from Christ’ s crucifixion, while Estragon states he got
interested in the Bib le because of pictures in there:
“Vladimir. Gogo.
Estragon. (Irritably ). What is it?
Vladimir. Did you ever read the Bible?

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Estragon. The Bible… ( He reflects .) I must have taken a look at it.
Vladimir. Do you remember the Gospels?
Estragon. I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured, they were. Very pretty. The Dead
Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That’s where we’ll go, I used to say, that’s
where we’ll go for our honeymoon. We’ll swim. We’ll be happy.
Vladimir. You should have been a poet.
Estragon. I was. ( With a gesture towards his rag s.) Isn’t that obvious?
There is s ilence .” (Beckett, 1954: 3).
Despite the fact that Estragon’s tone of the speech provokes Vladimir’s observation is not in any way
comic, it somehow prepares the pathetic joke, which is in fact very funny.
While eating his carrot, Estragon says, the more he gets used to things, the less he likes them.
Vladimir thinks the opposite way. While Estragon sleeps, Vladimir does not want to know anything
about his dreams. Estragon is trying to tell Didi his nightmare, but Didi orders him not to do that.
Vladimir remembers past events, while Estragon forgets them soon after they happen .
These distinctions are necessary to emphasize as a starting point in analyzing and defining
stage space within the set, as Walter Asmus, Beckett ’s associate director, stated in Berlin, in 1975:
“Beckett says that Estragon is on the ground, he belongs to the stone. Vladimir is light, he is oriented
towards the sky. He belongs to the tree. Is the rehearsal stage the same size as this one? It is very
important because of the distance between stone and tree. This distance must be very nearly the same”
(McMillan and Fehsenfeld, 1988: 137).
Despite the fact that there are not any physical descriptions of either Vladimir or Estragon, the
text still shows the fact that Vladimir is the heaviest of the pair. Some comic aspects of the characters,
such as the bowlers, reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy (a comedy double act during
the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, and they became well known during the late
1920s through the mid -1940s for their slapstick comedy), as Gerald Mast wrote in The Comedic Mind:
Comedy and the Movies : “The hat -passing game in Waiting for Godot and Lucky’s inability to think
without his hat on are two obviou s Beckett derivations from Laurel and Hardy – a substitution of form
for essence, covering for reality” (Mast, 1979: 2nd edition).
Their relationship could be seen as parent – child relationship. Vladimir is more mature and
more responsible. He has to ta ke care of Estragon characterized by child -like immaturity and
forgetfulness. For instance, like a parent embarrassed by a child, Vladimir is completely ashamed
when Estragon asks Pozzo for bones or for money.

21
Although both of them often wonder if they wou ld have been better off alone, neither one is
capable of leaving the other . This is why they have complementary natures and need to stay together.
Popular belief is that mostly Estragon depends on Vladimir for his life. However, Beckett shows that
Vladimir needs Estragon just as much because Vladimir needs a co mpanion, he needs to be needed.
Whenever Estragon needs help, Vladimir is always there to help. For instance, Vladimir helps him to
get on his boots in Act II . Another example is found in Act I when E stragon is hungry and Vladimir
takes a carrot out of his pocket as if feeding Gogo is somethin g he normally does every day. When
analyzed as individual characters, both Gogo and Didi have their own particular features. One of thes e
features seems to be Vla dimir’ s contradictory nature. Initially, Vladimir is shocked with Pozzo’ s
mistreating Lucky. Shortly after, he criticizes Lucky for not being a good slave to a great master such
as Pozzo. Another interesting feature deals with Estragon. Although he is beli eved to be les s
intellectual, he does have a habit of tossing out unbelievably profound comments a few times. When
Estragon suggests in Act I to hang themselves, he imm ediately realizes that the branch might not
support Vladimir because he is heavier:
“Estragon. This is how it is. ( He reflects .) The bough… the bough.. . (Angrily ). Use your head,
can’t you?
Vladimir. You’ re my only hope.
Estragon. (With effort ). Gogo light – bough not break – Gogo dead. Didi heavy – bough break
– Didi alone. Whereas –
Vladimir. I hadn’t thought of that “(Beckett, 1954: 8).
Therefore, this proves their interdependence and emphasizes the fac t that Vladimir also needs Gogo’ s
companionship.
Martin Esslin said “ the subject of the play is not Godot but waiting, the act of wait ing as an
essential and characteristic aspect of human con dition”. Indeed they are waiting, but th ey are waiting
with a purpose. They want to wait for Godot even if he does not come the next day. They are waiting
for their betterment and throughout the pla y this waiting for Godot acts as a salvation for them. If
Godot is the social approval, then the boy who comes at the end of each Act of the play is the
messenger of the society. He informs the couple of God ot’s non -arrival. Estragon and Vladimir wait
for Godot and the waiting goes o n.
Pozzo and Lucky play significant role in Waiting for Godot because together they represent
the antithesis of each other. They also represent complementary natures, even though their relationship
is on a more primitive level. Pozzo is a master, while Lucky is a slave. Pozzo is rich, powerful, arrogant

22
and self -centered behaving like a dictator. He exudes force and authority. Lucky is subo rdinate slave
who carries Pozzo’ s luggage, dances and thinks for him. Pozzo treats Lucky br utally, and is obeyed
at once, if not always correctly. The two friends, however, need each other: Pozzo needs Lucky’s
menial services, and Lucky needs a master to guide him.
Furthermore, Lucky taught Pozz o the values of a life such as beauty, gra ce, trut h of the first
water. This presents Pozzo and Lucky’ s relationship as the relationship between body and mind:
“Pozzo and Lucky represent the relationship between body and mind, the material and spiritual sides
of man, with the intellect subordinate to the appetites of the body. Now that Lucky’ s powers are
failing, Pozzo complains that the y cause him untold suffering” (Esslin, 1993: 49).
This type of relationship shows the interdependence between Pozzo and Lucky in the same
manner as the relationship betwee n Vladimir and Estragon. They are unable to function without one
another since Pozzo needs someone to master and Lucky needs someone to serve. This obscure
relationship may be seen in Act I when Pozzo says that Lucky does not want to put down his bags
because he wants to impress his master and show him how hard working slave he is. Their
complementary natures a re emphasized even more in Act II when Pozzo goes blind and Lucky is
mute. They are still tied together and they need one another. Due to their inter relation, Pozzo might
have gone blind since Lucky couldn’t speak any longer. Pozzo’ s blindness causes him to b e
completely dependent on Lucky’ s guidance which is demonstrated in a rope between the two of them.
Analyzing the two pairs of characters of the p lay (Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky),
the pairs split, however, into other two pairs: Vladimir and Lucky who represent the intellect, with
emphasis on their hats and on Lucky’s hair, and Pozzo and Estragon being the lower nature, putting
an accent on Estragon’s preoccupation on his boots and on Pozzo’s baldness. As seen during the play,
Vladimir feels drawn to Lucky, and Estragon feels a kinship with Pozzo, but taking into account their
names, the pairs divide and regroup: the eight letter names (Vl adimir – Estragon) have the destiny to
remain together, and the five letter names (Pozzo – Lucky) likewise, but because of their contrasted
natures they can fulfill this destiny only in uneasy harmony. And so, Vladimir and Estragon bicker
like an old marri ed couple, contrasting the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky, who is more violent
considering the fact that Pozzo bullies Lucky, but is also made to weep by him.
The dynamic between these four characters give the play its underlying unity and its uniqu e
quality of equilibrium. Everything in the play balances out: Estragon and Lucky who are giving each
other physical injury, Estragon’s fear of being tied is reflected by Lucky’s being tied in real fact. This
kind of balance is completely characteristic of the play because Samuel Beckett is an artist for whom

23
the shape is extremely important, and the “shape” of the relationships between the four characters in
the play is of more interest to him than the characters themselves.
In Waiting for Godot everybod y is waiting. About Godot, we barely know something, he is an
emblematic character who keeps the spirits alert throughout the entire “game” even though he is not
present. When analyzed as a character, the widely accepted interpretation is that Godot actual ly
presents God or the divine intervention. Beside the controversial debate over his name, there are some
examples from the drama showing there i s something divine about Godot.
Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for his salvation and comfort. Although he is not present in
the play, both of them deeply believe he exists. All of this gives Godot omnipresent qualities , a
personal god without extension who exists outside the boundaries of time . Whether this notion of
Godot being a supernatural agency is true or not, the symbolical and alle gorical interpretation of
Godot’ s character is more importan t.
The act of waiting may be related to the notion of time. In Waiting for Godot , the act of waiting
enables us to experience the flow of time in the first hand. If we are not waiting but rather doing
something, the time passes – hence we are devoid of this experience. The analogy of the flow of time
and the act of waiting is reflected i n the character of Godot. Godot’s arrival will make the flow of time
to stop which c onsequently might bring the new hope for Vladimir and Estragon, but also the new
hope for the human kind:
“Vladimir. We’ve nothing more to do here.
Estragon. Nor anywhere else.
Vladimir. Ah, Gogo, don’t go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better.
Estragon. How do you make that out?
Vladimir. Did you not hear what the child said?
Estragon. No.
Vladimir. He said that Godot was sure to come tomorrow” (Beckett, 1954:37).
The five characters of the play are illogical and disjointed , but simultaneously they are all
interdependent. As a result, they all present a mankind where no one could survive by himself or
herself. Within this mankind, there are smaller interdependent pairs such as Vladimir and Estragon,
Pozzo and Lucky, and Vladimir and Estragon as opposed to the fictional character of Godot. They all
are waiting for something or someone and th e main purpose of their lives is the passage of time.

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2.3 Criticism and popularity of Waiting for Godot

Despite the fact that, in Romania in the year of 198 9, the event of Samuel Beckett’s death was
overshadowed by the substantial events that were occurring at the same time, when the people of the
country overthrew the Ceausescu family, and the collapse of Communism regime which was crossing
the entire Easter n Europe. These events were presented in The Times , Ceausescu’s obituary appeared
in the same day as Beckett’s – December 27 – but even then it was absolutely obvious whose death
preserved real significance, as the article about the politician was assigned beneath the page, while
Samuel Beckett’s occupied the top half of it, because as history teaches us, kings and other politicians
fade into time, while artists live forever, and so long after all of this kings, princes and politicians have
been relegated t o a footnote in the history books, Samuel Beckett’s plays will still be performed around
the world and studied in schools and universities worldwide.
Ever since it received its premiere in the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, the play is a real success
even today, and one might put the question: Why are we still waiting for Godot? The answer lies, I
believe, in its ambiguities. This large sea of interpretations has been a real help for the play in avoiding
to become outdated.
I believe that some part of t his fascination which this play has over the readers and viewers is
the need for interpretation for a play called “tragicomic” and which is extremely cryptic, written in a
minimalistic manner, but at the same time with a dose of humour put above the substr ate contoured
in a pessimistic approach (like the rest of Beckett’s work). And this need to find a meaning was further
accentuated by the author himself who stated that he cannot find a meaning in his plays, so everyone
will have to find them alone. The pl ay can really be seen in a different way, usually as an allegory or
as a collection of disparate metaphors with political connotations (Ireland vs. Great Britain), or biblical
(Godot’s identification with God, which might offer a lot of consistency to the action or to the lack of
action), or Freudian meanings (the name of Gogo that would come from Ego, Didi is a rational
overturned Id, and the two together with the absent Godot would make a typical Freudian triad), or
even homosexual (taking into account th at the main characters, Vladimir and Estragon are behaving
like they are living together as partners in a couple).
Although, the play Waiting for Godot was to be voted the most important 20th century English
drama, its destiny was not at all smooth and lu minous. Relevant and predictable is the beginning of
its road on the stage which came after long waiting. In February 1952, Roger Blin, who directed the

25
play at the Théâtre de Babylone, and who played Pozzo, appealed to the radio to enter the play into
the circuit of contemporary theater. In fact, this was the first setting broadcasted by the French Radio.
About Waiting for Godot , a play now canonical and with a great importance in the literary
world, which back then abolished the canon and even the idea of canon, were written libraries in the
meantime. Widespread in the world of the theater, the play maintains her resistance to interpretation
because the lectures about it abound, the hypotheses abound too and resort to sophisticated theories,
and even so its content remains mysterious, powerful, obsessive and lonely in its uniqueness. From
here, we can see, of course, its resistance over time. Sixty years of colloquiums, famous, controversial,
and extravagant fittings on stage, sixty years of unanswered qu estions, ridiculous and brilliant
interpretations, sixty years of unpredictable life and unpredictable scenes.
Samuel Beckett believed that the only person who can stage his play is Roger Blin, and when
he send him the typescript, Blin was captivated by i t and most of all was curious to find out why
Beckett thought of him in the first place, and the answer was simple: Beckett was living under the
idea that the ideal condition for a great performance was that the theatre should be empty, exactly as
it happe ned when Blin performed Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata at a small Left Bank theatre in Paris.
And the playwright was absolutely right in making Roger Blin his first choice, because ever since the
play has gained success after success and became immortal. Since then, the press reaction was
predictably mixed, but what counted more were the reactions of fellow writers, which were extremely
enthusiastic about it. “The influential avant -garde novelist Alain Robbe -Grillet perceptively credited
Roger Blin with emphasiz ing the circus aspect of the play and thus contributing materially to its
success” (Fletcher, 2000:38). In fact, Blin was the one who came with the idea of cutting some parts
of the play that seemed way too long or literary, and this fact explains why the second French edition
which appeared after the Babylone premiere differs from the first one in 1952. “The fortunes of
Waiting for Godot elsewhere in the world have been, if anything, still more brilliant. It was seen in
Warsaw, then part of the Soviet syst em, even before it was staged in London, where it ran first at the
Arts Theatre “(Fletcher, 2000:38).

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CHAPTER 3
SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

3.1 Presenting elements of Absurdism and the Theatre of the Absurd

In order to understand the works that capture the Absurd, we must determine the concept of
absurd and find its historical and philosophical roots. Indeed, before the absurd literature appeared,
aware of its problems, the theoretical thinking posed the problem of absurdity. In ou r age, where
literature has so many philosophical implications, it was natural for ideas of thinkers to penetrate the
world of art. The idea of the absurd can be said to have preceded its literary representation. Indeed,
even if there is a genuine experien ce of the absurd, an intuition, a sense of absurdness, eventually the
absurd represents a theoretical atti tude towards the world, life, the human knowledge. So there is an
idea of absurdity. This theoretical attitude, this idea is required first and foremo st.
The Absurd (Latin “absurdus”, French “absurde”) is a literary aesthetic category derived from
the cultivation in the “fertile fields” of the arts of the word of the Aristotelian principle, reduction ad
absurdum, by developing in “sensitive matter” the “inverse -logical” meanings, that the “reverse of the
real”, the “existential negative”, constitutes, in fact, in a “revealing solution” of what it is “positive”
and vice versa. In the modern context, the absurd means ridiculous, unnatural, and hilarious, contrary
to reason and common sense. The authors of the Theatre of the Absurd were preoccupied with the
disoriented and the lonely individual in a senseless universe.
The absurd can have two meanings: one belonging to the rational, logical plan, where th e
concept of absurd opposes the rules of logic, including elements incompatible with each other, and
one in the theory of knowledge or metaphysics, going beyond the realm of logic and considering
absolutely absurd everything that opposes intelligence, reas on, irreducible by thinking. Thus, the
absurd becomes the anti -rational.
We cannot look for the germs of a current phenomenon like the Theatre of Absurd without
first having defined its nature sufficiently to be able to discern from which of the recurrin g elements
that combine and recombine in the kaleidoscopic patterns of changing tastes and outlooks is made up.
“The Theatre of the Absurd is a return to old, even archaic, traditions. Its novelty lies in its somewhat
unusual combination of such antecedent s, and a survey of these will show that what may strike the

27
unprepared spectator is iconoclastic and incomprehensible innovation is in fact merely an expansion,
revaluation, and development of procedures that are familiar and completely acceptable on only
slightly different contexts” (Esslin, 1961: 327).
The absurd theater appeared in France in the middle of the 20th century. It is a drama that seeks
to impress the reader and the spectator, tends to paradoxes, surprises, and exotic language. This
direction in theatrical art results from the philosophy of existentialism. The term “existentialism” is
derived from the Latin “existential”, which means existence. This philosophical direction, in the center
of which lies the fate of the personality, the problem o f faith and unbelief, the loss and the attempt to
rediscover the meaning of life again. The work of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus is, to a certain
extent, a form of expression of this philosophy, they can even be called the ideologists of absurd
theate r. Their philosophy is characterized by the study of man caught in a “border situation” between
life and death, where there is a real manifestation of man, his real essence. Here, the “mask”, the
personality explodes and remains the naked individuality, fe eling the tragic (and often the absurdity
of their position). At this point, the person is nothing else but existence: “waiting” (Samuel Beckett),
or “destructive uprising” (Jean Genet).
Playwrights concerned with the absurd theater lived in France, alt hough not all of them were
of French origin: Samuel Beckett was Irish, Eugène Ionesco was born of a Romanian father and a
French mother, and Arthur Adamov was of Russian origin. Each of these playwrights considered
themselves estranged and alone, in a host ile world. Their point of view was deeply pessimistic:
humanity was struggling in vain to control its destiny in order to find a goal in its personal life as well
as in general. It seemed that the whole action was devoid of any reason and meaning, and not only
that the mankind was perceived as disharmony with other individuals and with the environment, but
it even insinuated that there was no valid means of communication between its members.
The Theater of the Absurd appeared in the late 1950s, in Europe, with papers dealing mainly
with the subject of human existence that does not have a specific purpose, which leads to the actual
breaking of communication. The style of the plays was illogical, dominated by noisy discourse and
conclusions unrelated to the content. The fascination of the absurd theatre, during both in the 1950s
and in the contemporary world, seems to be hard to match with any other trend that will question the
fundamentals of the performance as Samuel Beckett did. Indeed, there are few criti cal views that said
that the absurd theater would represent the most important theatrical phenomenon of the 20th century.
Without ever wanting to be in a dramaturgy movement, the author who is the subject of my study has

28
been joined by literary critics as exponent of a true “revolution” of theatrical forms best known as
absurd dramaturgy.
The term “absurd” was introduced by critic Martin Esslin, who mentioned the notion in his
title The Theatre of the Absurd , published in 1961. In the first edition of the book, the author claims
that the absurd writers have been inspired by the theme of Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (book
that approached the notion of meaningless life of man), naming as the main authors of this literary
movement Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet. Other elements present
in the absurd plays are: a senseless universe, a man who is controlled by several forces, characters that
are tripped in a routine, nonsense, the insertion of tragic images, scenes that are rep eating or that are
taking too long, or the puns. Esslin also tells us that from the style’s point of view, the absurd theater
is based on the following literary movements: tragicomedy – the absurd plays are in their essence
tragic, but the way in which thi s tragedy is viewed, through bizarre and nonsense, brings with it the
comic. The best example in this regard is William Shakespeare, which has been the source of
inspiration for some authors of the absurd.
The absurd theater was an important step made by playwrights to the stage by endowing
objects and things with new, rich, ambiguous, and disturbing meanings. The absurd theater
disintegrates the anecdote, quits characters with biographies, removes motivation, and replaces the
progression of action with s equence of events and situations, becoming a continuous approach to
conquering realities. The décors are generally stylized, working more with the symbols. The action is
not animated by the events, real events, but by anguish, by nightmares, by fears, and by the characters’
obsessions. The apparent lack of sense of absurd space on stage has to be built, organized to the
smallest details, because nothing is accidental in the scenic signs economy. The materialization of the
scenic image implies that each of i ts components (décor, costume, light, and music) should be as
dynamic as possible. In the plays of the absurd theater, actors can have all the means of stage
expression – word, stage motion, gestures translated into dance or pantomime, a wide range of colo rs
of stage expressivity. Appeared as an avant -garde movement in France in the 1950s, also known as
the new theater, anti -theater, experimental theater, the absurd theater entered in the history of
contemporary theater with this last name, consecrated by c ritic Martin Esslin in his 1961 book, The
Theater of the Absurd . Thus, this theater manages to enter the great concert of arts with an arsenal of
own means that have a higher generalization force than those specific to the realistic -psychological
theater.

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Over time, the theater has been looking for new changing resources. The meanings of the stage
elements have been enriched by the use of new associations, so that each theatrical sign reaches to
acquire new qualities from the previous ones, and we refer to décor, costumes, props, the overall stage,
light, music, including the actor’s game who gets new valences (gestures, tones, and mimics).
Gradually, the boundaries between the arts have been eliminated and this has led to interferences
between word, dance, music, painting, and sculpture. The objects, mimics, and the pantomime brought
into their plays by Ionesco and Beckett and other playwrights have come closer to the text of total
theatrical language.
Martin Esslin found the expression “theater of the a bsurd” that quickly took place around the
world, being adopted by almost all the exegetes of this aesthetic phenomenon. But Ionesco never
adhered enthusiastically to this label which he found it to be “imprecise”. Esslin draws attention to
the particular i mportance of the formal factor in absurd theater. One cannot speak of a language of
absurdity, but only of the personal style of one or another of the movement’s exponent. In the case of
Eugène Ionesco, the theoretician notes the creative function of the d ilemma and the absolute
supremacy of subjectivity and spontaneity. The creator of The Bald Prima Donna (La Can tatrice
Chauve , in French) has never claimed to be a great builder of formal structures, rigidly polished under
the authority of any formula. On t he contrary, he always recognized his dependence on inspiration
and the panic feeling he had when he felt deserted by “muses”. The testimony of the way his works
were made is indispensable to the one who wants to understand his theater, but they should not be
confused with some absurd patterns that anyone would use to become an anti -play author. In fact,
despite the generalizations suggested by the author, Ionesco’s “monsters” are so personal that they
exclude any possible form of epigonism. Far from offeri ng recipes, they are just some recordings,
demonstrating the irresistible pleasure of the playwright’s theories. As an indisputable proof of the
spontaneity of the creative act, the author himself is astonished at his own plays, which he tries to
explain t o us by understanding them himself.
As there it does not exist an “absurdism”, a literary school of the absurd, it has not appeared
yet and it is unlikely to appear, with all the trying for this purpose, especially with Albert Camus’
attempts in parti cular, an absurd systematic philosophical thinking. In fact, Camus himself, who in Le
Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus ) gave the first essay on the absurd, and showed that there is
no “absurd philosophy”. Those whom we have personally thought to be t he fathers of absurd
spirituality – Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus – are, in fact, one an existentialist philosopher, and
the other one a thinker and writer who started from the meditation of the existentialist problems. Their

30
thinking – anyway they wou ld define themselves, is placental related to existentialism. Absurdity, is
in fact, a topic of thought in existential philosophy.
The conclusions cannot be clear after reading an absurd text. More important than the
conclusions are the sensations that the writing offers to readers: almost unrelated to the text, as if
beyond it, there is a certain form of suffocation, specific to Beckett, behind all of the writing. The
encounter with my own self, having as a pretext a reading, is due to the fluidity of t he text, which
makes it possible to juggle with its own system of meaning interpretation and the reception of emotion.

3.2 The connection between the author and the Absurd through his plays

Throughout his writings, Samuel Beckett is looking for the answe rs to these fundamental
questions: “Who am I?” or “What does it mean when I am me?” and here lays the paradox because
“while there may well be a grain of truth in this, it is surely far from providing a complete explanation
for the deep existential anguish that is the keynote of Beckett’s work and that clearly originates in
levels of his personality far deeper than its social surface” (Esslin, 1961: 30). He put an emphasis on
our helplessness of represent ourselves. The impossibility is double: the object cannot be represented
because “it is what it is” and in the same manner “I am who I am”. The mystery plays at the level in
which the word catches in trap the image, catches the mimic, and the thinking.
Samuel Beckett never dissociates the word of space, of gesture, of motion, of light, of place,
or of physical position. The dramatic force of the concrete poetry of his theater consists in the fact that
it addresses more to the senses and nerves than to the discursive comprehension. The priority given
to the visuals and even the gravity of a single image in the most recent plays retraces the split of a
genesis: on the one hand, the inner monologue, the voice, and on the other hand, the building of the
visual images that develops occupying the entire space. There are times when the presence of
tranquility and silence is so intense in the plays that eventually, it becomes itself a protagonist.
Beckett’s world is empty, or better known, is progressively emptied of objects, food, living
beings, nature, all th ose things which adds to the effectiveness of some of the accessories kept by the
playwright. In Beckett’s writing object acts as a game holder. Hamm’s rolling chair, Nagg and Bell’s
bins, Winnie’s mound, the bottle to where the character tries to reach, t he three cubes, and all these
things contribute to the subjugation of the character, although they can, at the same time, constitute a
barrier against the nothingness. In fact, the last plays show that what limits the word through the
weight of the presenc e is the body itself.

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Samuel Beckett’s first novel Murphy appeared in 1938 and is a model of his later works, is to
some extent concerned with an analogous situation between the hero and his girlfriend Celia, who
vainly tries to make him take up regula r employment so they can get married, but has to see him elude
her again and again. Innovation is the rejection of traditional elements of intrigue, characters and
decoration. Alternatively, Beckett’s theater illustrates the experience of expectation and s truggle with
exhausting futility. The torment and agony of being in a void world is increased in Beckett’s next
novels. Samuel Beckett’s writings reveal his immense erudition. His work is full of subtle allusions
to a multitude of literary sources, as well as countless philosophers and theologians. Beckett’s thinking
was influenced by the Italian poet Dante, the French philosopher René Descartes and the Dutch
philosopher of the 19th century Arnold Geulinex – a student of Descartes who discussed how man’s
physical and spiritual sides interact – and finally his respected Irish colleague, James Joyce. But to
understand Beckett’s works, it is not essential to recognize all the literary, philosophical and
theological allegations. The tragic waiting, the life with out horizons, the deception, and the
impossibility of communicating in a marginal and absurd world, the degradation and the fall are the
obsessive themes of Samuel Beckett’s bilingual work. Almost all the features of the Irish artistic
psychology, from dep ression, anxiety, eccentric taste, to moral boundaries, language probing,
paradox, and word composition are found in Beckett, just as the traits of French existentialism, and in
general, the philosophical ideas of the end of the World War II meet in his wo rk.
About Beckett has been said to be essentially tragic because it reflects a brutal truth that is at
the service of any case. Romul Munteanu (a Romanian editor and a literary critic and historian)
appreciated his work as a “Sisyphus myth of expectation” , the Irish playwright being irremediably
bound by a myth of circularity, eternal and meaningless rehearsal.
In one of his most known play, Endgame , published in 1957, two other couples are presented
in the same way: Hamm – Clov and Nagg – Nell. Hamm is a paralytic and blind master, and C lov, a
subordinate being, perhaps the son or Hamm's valet. Clov wants to escape from the authority of the
first, which he hates in the mystery. But an escape is ruled out because beyond the enclosed space,
beyond the shel ter they live in, there is nothing left. The second complementary couple with an
episodic role is Nagg and Nell. Both paralytic and presumptive parents of Hamm are buried in garbage
cans. If in Waiting for Godot we can get some information about the protag onists from the etymology
of the names, t his is no longer possible in Endgame . Thus, Vladimir has a glorious resonance, Pozzo
a Mediterranean one, Lucky obviously Anglo -Saxon, and Godot leads you, by pronouncement, with
the thought, imme diately to the Engl ish God, or to the German “Gott Todt ”. Both expressions translate

32
“dead God”. Neither Endgame the non -heroes have no age, no face, and nothi ng is said about their
clothing. The play is considered the most somber creation in Beckett's work, due to laconism,
concentration and the lack of action and intrigue. We're dealing with a reversed Godot . No one comes
in the first play , nobody goes in the second. Everything happens in an exasperating uniform ity that
leaves no room for nothing.
In Krapp’s Last Tape , a play in one act, published in 1959, there is only Krapp, a 69 -year-old
shortsighted , who relives through the tapes the main events of his life, and this makes possible a
dialogue, through pre -recorded tape, between an old man and his middle -aged self, and t heir shared
sarcastic jokes about the young man they both once were. The disappearance of the human couple
demonstrates that man's alienation in time and space is total. Solitude occurs everywhere, human
relationsh ips are only apparent. A 69 years old Rap , is analyzing Krapp's band when he was at the age
of 39, without assuming his past, present or future. He only regretted the happiness that he could have
and did not have. The taped tape, the character, reveals a Krapp different from the sexagenar ian
disco vered by the spectator when lifting the curtain. It goes through a total dissolution, a loss of
identity, an alienation in an affective and intellectual plane. Although only one person is onstage,
Beckett manages to have two characters, in effect, by means of the recorded voice of the younger
Krapp. The protagonist’s purple nose is due to his drinking, of course. His shabby garb not only
reveals his present poverty and neglect, it also shows him as a clown, and thus links him to another
Beckettian clown fig ures, such as Estragon and Clov: “played the clown, all alone, hour after hour,
motionless…spell -bound, groaning” (Beckett, 1951: 195).
In Happy Days! , from 1961, Winnie, a woman of about 50 years of age, reflects on her life in
anticipation of the death that will come when she sinks into a mound of dirt , lying in the middle of a
meadow. The character's love for life, the joy of seeing a day pass, sheds new light on Beckett's
creation. The tragic is mixed with gentleness, despair with hope, and better desi re with pessimism.
Everything seems like a hymn dedicated to the love of life and the joy of living. Of all the Beckett’s
characters, Winnie is the most complete and human. Winnie's partner is Willie, who stands beside her
without a word. He pla ys the role of tape recorder from Krapp’s Last Tape . Winnie remembers
moments of her life too, but, unlike Krapp, her memory brings to light the happiest moments.
Beckett's people are "aliens in existence, joining them as a chance" (Munteanu, 1970: 191).
Their drama is based on the impossibility of communicating. Beckett's work is traversed by deep
pessimism doubled by a gradual de humanization of characters. With the exception of Winnie, his
characters have understood that they live in a universe of despair for which there is no solution. They

33
have come to terms with the idea that they are insignificant components of a huge mechanism from
which they cannot escape.

3.3 The portrayal of Beckett’s belief in Absurdism as reflected in the play

Samuel Beckett is said to be a controversial playwright because of his extraordinary manner
in expressing his idea through his drama, Waiting for Godot . Samuel Beckett makes of Waiting for
Godot the violation of the conventional drama and as the direction o f expressionism and surreali sm
experiment in drama and theatre. He became on e of the pioneers of absurdist playwrights beside
Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet.
Waiting for Godot is a play w hich evokes much criticism and interpretation from its
unconventional style and characteristics wh ich serves absurdity. Waiting for Godot is considered to
be a violation of the conventions of realism in drama because it is refusing to create the images of
human being who acts plausible behavior in familiar scenes within the appropriate an d chronologica l
time. Waiting for Godot serves absurdity within its theme, plot, characterization, setting and it is
specified in the dialogue througho ut the play. From its theme as well as reflected by the plot, serves
uncertain arra ngement of events and there is no id entifiable beginning, middle, and end. From its
characterization, the lack of detailed information about the characters: Vladimir , Estragon, Pozzo,
Lucky, and t he boy exemplifies that the characterization do not blend into a unified representation of
human behavior and it does mean a bsurdity. Setting, also serves absurdity because of its abnormal
condition and atmosphere, we c an see that throughout the play there is no clue or hint that can point
out the location of t he whole act except the author just stat es that two men are waiting on the country
road by a skeletal tree and that Estragon sits on a low mou nd. Last, the dialogue specifically contains
absur dity, we can see it throughout the play that Estragon and Vladimir talk incoherently and in the
middle o f the play Lucky conveys his spe ech grotesquely and without meaning .
The conflict in the absurd is the essence of man's existence. But also the essence of a person
is confronted w ith a conflict with his "mask" (a person). Therefore, man does not live, but only exists.
In the dramaturgy of this direction, usually there is no intrigue and no subject. The authors sometimes
intentionally "break" each story, and leaving it from any interconnection. They refuse realism, and
there is nothing absurd about it. None of them has stated that the person in itself is absurd, but
everything is done to get rid of traditional and cunning ideas and break into the basic truths of the
basic elements of human existence. The absurd theater has had a considerable impact on the evo lution

34
of dramatic art, radically renewing its means of expression and broadening its thematic universe.
Regarding theater, the playwright believed that it should be materially a real exploration, a concrete
experience, to give the opportunity to imagine b etter, to be unpredictable .
The character in the absurd theater is surprised in meditating on the world, questioning
existential status: “Estragon (giving up). Nothing to be done.
Vladimir. I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve trie d to put it from me
saying, “Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything” (Beckett, 1954: 1).
In classical theater, the character is perfectly framed in a typological structure from which he
never deviates. He has no discontinuities and ther efore his reactions are from the beginning
predictable. The traditional theater's hero is conceived by the reduction to an archetype meant to
suggest general human traits. The theater of the absurd revealed by an eventless intrigue brings to
light a hero w ithout a face. The character's physiognomy is irrelevant because it is devoid of character,
empty frames . It is not individualized by its immutable character, nor by a social hierarchy or clothing
details. The unconventional does not have a clear psycholog ical profile, being barely sketched. In
addition, it does not have age or biography. The theater of the absurd had a considerable impact on
the evolution of dramatic art, radically renewing its means of expression and br oadening its thematic
universe. Some arguments that would characterize this t rend are: joining the opposite aest hetic
categories, contrasts; l anguage mélange ; lack of unit regulations; lack of logic; t he presence of the
irrational, the unconscious, the dream of the nightma re, the strange, th e grotesque , the violence , and
all these elements can be found in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot .
The Absurd is also manifested in the language, which is no longer a clear one, giving rise to a
tense state, but also to the comic, at the same time. The concise, uncoordinated dialogue, the
agglomeration of interrogations, in fact, suggest a dissolution of the character's inner world, whose
attempts to put order in a chaotic world become useless:
“Vladimir. You must have thought a little.
Estragon. At the very beginning.
Vladimir. A charnel -house! A charnel -house!
Estragon. You don’t have to look.
Vladimir. You can’t help looking.
Estragon. True.
Vladimir. Try as you may.
Estragon. I beg your pardon?

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Vladimir. Try as you may” (Beckett, 1954: 45).
The words no longer fulfill the function of communication, the writer feeling caught in the
whirl of the new literary orientation, breaking the patterns of the traditional dramatic text:
“Vladimir (after a pause). We could do our exercises.
Estragon. Our movements.
Vladimir. Our elevations.
Estragon. Our relaxations.
Vladimir. Our elongations.
Estragon. Our relaxations.
Vladimir. To warm us up.
Estragon. To calm us down.
Vladimir. Off we go. (He hops from one foot to the other). (Beckett, 1954: 55).
In the classical theater, space and time are well determined, while in the theater of absurd we
have to deal with a new method of definition. The traditional theater is approaching the surrounding
reality, there being even a fidelity in the chronology of the facts. The sp ace appears precisely delimit ed
and the time is determined and t his creates a certain embellishment of imagination. The disappearance
of reality makes the absurd theater appear a multitude of spatial and temporal plans . But if you can not
talk about a physi cal time, you can talk about an inner time, an individual time of the character. In the
absurd theater appeared the opportunity to juggle with time. It is compressed, prolonged, stopped,
hurried or repeat. The space is one of the essential components both in classical and absurd theater.
The space is precisely the place where the piece is created. It can mean a house, a room, a battlefield,
a market, a forest, etc. In the theater of absurd , however, the intrigue is measured quite often, in closed
spaces, pr oviding an assurance of anxiety and obsession through isolation from the outside. The closed
space becomes synonymous wi th regression, alienation and di sintegration. Space and time become
symbolic, not having the meaning of traditional dramaturgy. There ar e no longer any coordinates that
fix, customize the character gaining new valences. They become subjective, merging as if they were
the hero's state. Space is not a typical one, a frame of action, but it reflects the psychology of the
character, the subcon scious, becoming an act of drama. Most of the time, it is a closed, suffocating,
resonating with the anguish of the characters. There is also a proliferation of evil that threatens the
security of individuals, who become the victims of their own isolation.
“SCENE – A country road. Evening.

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Estragon is seated on the mound, trying to remove one of his boots. He pulls at it with both
hands, panting. He stops, exhausted, rests, tries again, but again fails. Vladimir enters with short, stiff
strides, his legs wi de apart.
Estragon (irritably). Not now, not now.
Vladimir (hurt; coldly). May one enquire where his Highness spent the night?
Estragon. In a ditch.
Vladimir (admiringly). In a ditch! Where?
Estragon (without a gesture). Over there (Becket, 1954: 1).
The a bsurd theatre is not an imitation, but a re fraction of reality. He claims to express this
reality in a non -relative and contingent form, but universal and permanent: that of the irrational
universe of the atomic era. In other words, the theatre of the absu rd considers its elf a s pecific art,
which must free it self from any constraint to obey only the laws that are his own. The anti -theatre
generally rejects the traditionally accepted dramatic categories: time and place, action, characters, and
language . “(Th ere is silence)
Estragon (presently). Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.
Vladimir (to Pozzo). Tell him to think” (Beckett, 1954: 28).
The unpretentious manner, the persistent tendency to violate the taste of the public, typical of
absurd dramaturgy, should not be considered strange. If the theater of absurdity is characterized by
innovative attitudes, even in these innovative tendencies it is proclaimed the connection with a long –
term theatrical tradition. A tradition that is essential ly characterized by the diminution of the
importance of dramatic text, a text which in modern theater was considered to be the main vehicle of
the spectacle. The anti -theatre is not only destructive, it builds upon the ruins it has caused. Considered
in this positive aspect, it is essentially a picture of the human condition, and especially of man's anxiety
and unhappiness in the struggle with an absurd universe that can neither satisfy his deepest aspirations
nor answer the questions that are following him .
“(There is a silence. Estragon looks attentively at the tree)
Vladimir. What do we do now?
Estragon. We wait.
Vladimir. Yes, but while we wait.
Estragon (after a pause). What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir. From that bough. I wouldn’t trust it.
Estra gon. We can always try. (…)

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Vladimir. Well? What do we do?
Estragon. Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer” (Beckett, 1954: 8).
Finally, the absurd theater presents an original comic and tragic dosage. In a world from which
every trace of the absolute is cas t, there can be no tragedy or pure comedy: the comic is tragic and
vice versa. The human being is also ridiculous and merciful; the universe is totally meaningless, tragic:
“Estragon. Nothing to be done” (Becket, 1954: 11), but it would be even more tragic to take this lack
of meaning too seriously. The appeal to the mocking and the comic is a means of demystification and
release. It allows for the necessary distance to take a look at the world's absurdity. Parents of the
absurd theater are already classed, especially in playwrights of very diverse origi ns: an Irishman,
Samuel Beckett; an Armenian Russian, Arthur Adamov; a Frenchman, Jean Genêt; and a Romanian,
Eugène Ionesco.
Often criticized for his pessimism and his irrationalism, the absurd theater is, h owever, at a
closer look precisely a plea for humanity, a tragic introspection on the human condition. Playwrights
chose to express “ the modern man's efforts to adapt to the world in which he lives. They try to make
the individual confront the condition as it really is, to free him from the illusions that inevitably make
him f eel inadequate and disappointed” ( Esslin , 1961: 425 ). Somewhere at the intersec tion of the
cultural heritage, linguistic freedom, traditions, artifacts, identity of absurd playmakers i s being built
and re -built in correlation with the challenges of destiny. Thus, their identity construction is the result
of the mélange of an incalculable number of factors.

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CONCLUSIONS

My thesis Waiting for Godo t – A philosophical play aimed to provide an analysis of Samuel
Beckett’s play in which one can find different interpretations and meanings. Taking into account some
other writers, the problems they are presenting in their works are being solved eventually , and after
we finish reading them, we can expect a happy ending, while in Samuel Beckett’s case, after the reader
passed throughout the two acts of the play, hoping eventually that Godot will came, the author leaves
us with a gap, a filling space that is never completely filled, nor left without clues for better
expectations or possible resolutions: the play starts with a problem and ends with the same problem,
which is left to us readers to resolve. And exactly like in the case of Sisyphus, we have to thi nk about
our beloved characters, Vladimir and Estragon, that they will eventually meet Godot and receive what
they are expecting, because as Estragon stated we always have to find something that gives us the
impression that we exist and that we keep living .
As described in the introductory part, the principal goal of this paper was to demonstrate that
Waiting for Godot is a play which pertains to modernism and to the Theatre of the Absurd, and to
support all the ideas and directions that I mentioned and d escribed over the pages of the thesis I
proposed a hermeneutical method by which I explored and examined every chapter. The first chapter
called A Theoretical Approach dealt with problems such as the context and background in which
Samuel Beckett created t he masterpiece Waiting for Godot , and then continued with a significant
description of the author’s life and struggles because I believed that the most important aspects from
Beckett’s life had an important impact on his writing, lastly the chapter conclud ed with the author’s
development as a playwright and the process in which his works became popular and had such an
impact on the readers and spectators worldwide.
Exploring Waiting for Godot was the name of the second chapter in which I gave a proper
analysis of the structure and the theme of the play, I made a description of the characters and the
relationship between them, pointed out the fact that they cannot live one without the other, and I tried
to explain the entity of Godot and his importance for t he other two characters, Vladimir and Estragon.
The relationship between Pozzo and Lucky is similar to that of Vladimir and Estragon to the point
that these two characters complement each other, almost becoming a single entity: in the first act
Lucky depen ds on Pozzo by being a great slave and who somehow fulfills his destiny, and in Act II,
Pozzo becomes entirely dependent on Lucky because he needs his guidance for he got blind “Pozzo.

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One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other day, one da y he went dumb, one day I
went blind (…)” (Becket, 1954: 66). This chapter completed with the criticism and popularity of the
play, because as I stated during the paper, this masterpiece always had problems of interpretation and
probably because it raised such problems it has become such popular over time.
The most important aspects of Absurdism and the presentation of the characteristics of The
Theatre of the Absurd were being gently introduced in the third and final chapter which was called
Samuel Becket t and The Theatre of The Absurd , this chapter being the main object of this study. The
last chapter started with the presentation of the defining elements of Absurdism and the roots of The
Theatre of the Absurd. I showed the place in which this beautiful p henomenon started and how it
spread from France to England, Germany and even Romania. The chapter proceeded with the
relationship between the author and the elements of Absurdism throughout his most important and
popular works such as Endgame , Krapp’s Last Tape and concluded with the portrayal of the author’s
belief in this concept as reflected in Waiting for Godot , concept which addresses specific themes that
can be found in the play, themes like alienation, solitude, despair, or the inability of knowing o r the
incapacity to communicate.
The conclusions can not be clear after reading an absurd text. More important than the
conclusions are the sensations that the writing offers to readers: almost unrelated to the text, as if
beyond it, there is a certain fo rm of suffocation, specific to Beckett, behind all of the writing. However,
each text, every story that we read, hear, or see sometimes carries the conclusions d rawn from the
experience of one’ s own life. Reading is not an activity of ourselves, even when we appeal to it for
that very reason. The prison of beliefs or moods will highlight those meanings with which our minds
have become accustomed, comfortable and ask for confirmation. But our beliefs do not have the same
autonomy applied to a logical thread, because in those cases, the author runs the whole story.
Waiting for Godot is a different kind of text. At Beckett, if you want, you can find a meaning
for each scene. We can find in Godot the personification of our salvation from the null, or the lack o f
salvat ion as an existential situation , and here we can make numerous speculations according to our
aspirations in relation to it. The very nature of man is prone to seek en crypted meanings, hidden tales,
and the unique explanation that reveals everything . The charm of the play also exists in the fact that
it fits perfectly on the human desire to decipher enigmas and to intellectually solve a problem. From
this point of view, from a certain level of nuances, Beckett allows us to be meaningful.

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BIBLIOGRAP HY

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Publishers, 2003.
Ackerl ey, C.J. and Gontarski S.E., The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett. A Reader’s Guide to His
Works, Life and Thought . London: Faber & Faber, 2006.
Bair, D. Samuel Beckett. A Biography . New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Barter, Enoch. Beyond Minimalism: Beckett's Late Style in the Theatre . New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987.
Barnard, G. C. Samuel Beckett: A New Approach . London, 1970.
Beckett, S ., Proust and Three Dialogs w ith Georges Duthuit . London: Chatto and Windus Ltd, 1931 .
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Beckett, S., Krapp’s Last Tape . London: Penguin Books, 1958.
Beckett, S. , Happy Days . London : Penguin Books , 1961.
Bloom, H., SAMUEL BECKETT . USA: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2011.
Bloom, H., ALIENATION . USA: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009.
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Burkman, Katherine H., The Nonarrival of Godot: Initiation into the Sacred Void . London and
Toronto, Associat ed University Presses, 1986.
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43

REZUMAT

“Așteptându -l pe Godot ” este una dintre lucrările clasice ale teatrului absurdului. Această
lucrare oferă o imagine generală despre termenul Absurdism ș i despre Teatrul Absurdului, despre
integrarea sa în lumea literaturii pentru a o feri o analiză corectă a piesei “Așteptându -l pe Godot ”, de
Samuel B eckett. Această lucrare prezintă , de asemenea, o interpretare a piesei, concentrându -se pe
rutina personajelor principale, pe cei doi vagabonzi Vladimir și Estragon, care așteaptă un om pe n ume
Godot, care în cele din urmă nu vine, o comedie tragică în care nu se întâmplă nimic de două ori.
Interpretările piesei sunt extrem de variate și toate depind de punctul de vedere al cititorului.
Cred că oricine a citit acest text dramatic a încercat s ă-i dea o explicație satisfăcătoare despre
evenimentele prezentate și s -a confruntat cu o adevărată provocare . Trăsătura principală a acestei
lucrări este că piesa este una filosofică aparținând Teatrului Absurdului și acest lucru este demonstra t
de faptul că în piesă se pot găsi diferite metode de interpretare care pot fi atât compatibile, cât și
incompatibile cu acest text, sensuri la care nici măcar autorul nu s -a gândit vreodată.
Subiectul lucrării “Așteptându -l pe Godot – O piesă filosofică ” este, așa cum și titlul sugerează ,
o analiză puternică a piesei din punct de vedere filosofic, concentrându -se în principal asupra modului
în care autorul a folosit elemente ale absurdismului și modul în care a angajat filosofia Teatrului
Absurd ului pentru a cre ea această capodoperă care i -a adus notorietate în lumea întreagă.
Obiectivele acestei lucrări sunt acelea de a vă purta în lumea tragicomedie i și a Teatrul ui
Absurdului, dar și să vă permiteți să apreciați modul în care această piesă magnifică este diferită din
toate punct ele de vedere de celelalte piese. Scopul principal al lucrării mele este să mă concentrez pe
toate elementele care l -au ajutat pe Samuel Beckett să creeze o lucrare atât de complexă, o piesă care
a adus notorietate autorului, care a intrigat, a încântat și a amuzat cumva cititorii și spectatorii din
întreaga lume. Având în vedere actualitatea temei și nivelul ei de cercetare, lucrarea propune
aprofundarea studiului stilului autorului, prin urmare nota principală de originalitate și prospețime
constă într -o cercetare cu caracter analitic asupra lucrării acestui scriitor, cercetări legate de o
bibliografie, semnificativă și actualizată.
Dorința inițială a evoluat într -o ambiție de a face o sinteză a numeroaselor studii și volume ,
într-o lucrare care se poate constitui într -un instrument eficient pentru cei interesați de geniul pe care
îl are Samuel Beckett. Această orientare a dictat în mo d natural metodologia restrânsă a cercetării

44
mele și, prin aceasta, am încercat să reunesc analiza și sinteza adăugând forța demonstrativă de
exemplu și urmând claritatea și concisul ideilor folosin d metoda hermeneutică bazată mai ales pe
interpretarea tex telor fără a fol osi prea multe date statistice.
Lucrarea este structurată în trei capitole, fiecare capitol fiind organizat în subcapitole. “O
abordare teoretică ” este numele primului capitol care prezintă contextul și fundalul teatrului
absurdului, și care oferă o explicație adecvată a modernismului și postmodernismului. Este prezentat
faptul că în teatrul mode rn nu există un model simplu de la începutul anului 1900, ci mai degrabă o
tensiune, un dialect continuu. Este o astfel de interacțiune, nu numai în teatrul modern, ci și între
piesele contemporane și clasicele din trecut, care face ca teatrul din a doua jumătate a secolului XX
în general, iar exponentul său principal, B eckett, în mod deosebit, un fascinant obiect de studiu.
Capitolul continuă să prezinte pe scurt cele mai importante evenimente din viața autorului, deoarece
lucrarea lui Beckett își are originea în experiența și viața sa individuală, care este cheia pentru
interpretarea scrierilor sale, iar în ultima parte a capitolului este descrisă dezvoltarea au torului ca un
dramaturg important și notoriu, cu o scurtă analiză a romanelor sale, a piese lor de radio și de
televi ziune.
Al doilea capitol este numit “Explorarea piesei Așteptându -l pe Godot ” și, după cum sugerează
titlul, oferă o descriere piesei, luând în considerare , mai întâi structura și tema, ceea ce duce , evident,
la analiza personajelor și la relația dintre ele . Întreaga ac țiune se concentrează pe cei doi protagoniști
și pe cei care așteaptă p ersonajul misterios numit Godot, demonstrând de ce este o figură importantă
pentru personajele principale, de ce nu ap are și de ce așteaptă, acest capitol încheindu -se cu critica și
popularitatea piesei “Așteptându -l pe Godot ”.
Aceste capitole stau la baz a capitolului final , car e se cheamă “Samuel Beckett și Teatrul
Absurdului ”, și care este, de fapt, obiectul acestei lucrări. Acest capitol explorează elementele
Absurdului ca un concept general , și Teatrul Absurdului și va continua cu legătura dintre autor și
conceptul de abs urd în toate piesele sale . Acest capitol explorează , de asemene a, tema așteptării,
speranței, și modul în care Beckett folosește absurditatea pentru a se juca în jurul conceptelor de timp
și spațiu.
Toate acest e aspecte importante care sunt discutate în capitolele prezentate vor dov edi faptul
că “Așteptându -l pe Godot ” este o piesă filosofică și că aparține Teatrului Absurdului deoarece
Samuel Becket t este un autor care nu prezintă piese care presupun că știu răsp unsul. Trebuie citite, și
să încercați să le oferiți o interpretare personală, deoarece o piesă a lui Samuel Beckett, care are o mie
de cititori, înseamnă că are o mie de interpretăr i diferite.