Waiting For Godot
i finished reading 'waiting for godot'. it was entirely different from anything i've ever read. i highly recommend it, especially for people who love drama (besides, it's less than 100 pages long...i read it in a day. so it's not a huge investment of time.). in this play, nothing happens....nothing. it's bizarre, stark, absurd, and totally poignant. beckett embeds bits of wicked irony and humor into the play, which i really appreciate. i found a quote in the play that really represents what i'm feeling as i live in europe, away from my beloveds:
''VLADIMIR. i missed you...and at the same time i was happy. Isn't that a queer thing?''
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i don't know how to really explain a play about nothing. here goes. 5 characters, a country road, a tree, evening. and godot, godot who never arrives. the characters are waiting for godot (it's just as simple as that). for unexplained reasons, they cannot go on with their lives, they cannot leave the tree on the country road, until godot arrives for their meeting. but godot never arrives, and the days melt into one another until half a century has passed.... but the other 4 characters don't realize that the days repeat themselves, for them each day is the beginning of the wait for godot. only vladimir has the curse of knowing that half a century has passed; he alone remembers the day before, and can foresee the next day, as all being exactly alike. after finishing the play, i concluded that the entire work was an extended metaphor for mankind's foolish waiting for god, for jesus, for a savior, to arrive and so begin to really live. but then i did some research and found:
' ' Many readers of this play have understood the character "Godot" as a symbolic representation of God. They see Godot's persistent failure to appear and Vladimir and Estragon's aimless waiting as representations of the masses hoping for a being who will never appear. This is a common interpretation of the play, but one that Beckett himself vehemently denied all his life, saying "If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot"....Waiting for Godot originally received widely varied reactions from critics, and was seen as deliberately obscure, with Beckett himself resolutely refusing to add interpretation by saying, "It means what it says" ' ' (wikipedia.com).
so who knows what godot represents, or the tyrannical pozzo and his abused slave lucky, or the eternal wait, the eternal nothingness. in essence, i think, the point is that life is absurd, infused with a resounding and hollow nothingness.... i don't think this is necessarily pessimistic though (as some critics say).
so here is a little monologue that i think hits the central nerve of the play perfectly:
"VLADIMIR. let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (pause. vehemently). Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not everyday that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing). It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come..."