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**Angel** · 08-18-2010, 11:27 PM

Waiting for Godot Study Guide

It’s almost impossible to provide a conventional plot summary of Waiting for Godot, which has often been described as a play in which nothing happens. Two tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), are waiting by a tree on a country road for Godot, whom they have never met and who may not even exist. They argue, make up, contemplate suicide, discuss passages from the Bible, and encounter Pozzo and Lucky, a master and slave. Near the end of the first act, a young boy comes with a message from Mr. Godot that he will not come today but will come tomorrow. In the second act, the action of the first act is essentially repeated, with a few changes: the tree now has leaves, Pozzo is blind and has Lucky on a shorter leash. Once again the boy comes and tells them Mr. Godot will not come today; he insists he has never met them before. The play concludes with a famous exchange:

Vladimir: Well, shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

This superficial summary doesn’t do justice to the play’s impact. Waiting for Godot is widely considered one of the most important works of 20th-century drama. It revolutionized theatre in the 20th century and had a profound influence on generations of succeeding dramatists, including such renowned contemporary playwrights as Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. After the appearance of Waiting for Godot, theatre was opened to possibilities that playwrights and audiences had never before imagined.
The play’s simple (some might say non-existent) plot provides a framework for great thematic riches. Alfonso Sastre describes the play as “a death certificate for hope.” He goes on: “This is precisely what is so fascinating about Waiting for Godot: that nothing happens. It is a lucid testimony of nothingness… (But) These men who are bored cast us out of our own boredom; their boredom produces our catharsis, and we follow their adventure breathlessly, for they have suddenly placed before us the ‘nothing happens’ of our lives.”
Though often described as tramps, Vladimir and Estragon are never explicitly called tramps in the script. They wear bowler hats, and many of their comic exchanges draw from vaudevillian routines. Ruby Cohn describes them as “a variant of the vaudeville pair of astute and obtuse comedian—a variant because Vladimir is not always astute, nor Estragon obtuse. As in vaudeville, one friend often echoes the other’s words, changing the tone.” She and other critics have identified Estragon as representing the body and Vladimir the mind. “Thus, Gogo eats, sleeps and fears beating while onstage, whereas Didi ponders spiritual salvation. Didi is the more eloquent of the two, with Gogo sitting, leaning, limping, falling, i.e. seaking nearness to the ground. Gogo’s stage business bears on his boots, and Didi’s on his hat. Gogo wants Lucky to dance, but Didi desires him to think. Gogo stinks from his feet, and Didi from his mouth. Gogo is given to pantomine, while Didi leans towards rhetoric. Their very nicknames—go go and dis dis (from French dire)—summarize the polarity...”3
The two men contrast each other in numerous ways: Estragon is pessimistic, Vladimir more hopeful; Estragon is forgetful, Vladimir mindful; Estragon suspicious, Vladimir conciliatory. Their relationship has been described as a type of marriage (albeit a very dysfunctional one), and the two men can’t seem to function alone; any attempt to part ways proves short-lived. Certainly they have known each other long enough to develop regular habits. A. Alvarez says, “The subject of the play is how to pass the time, given the fact that the situation is hopeless,” and characterizes passing the time as Vladimir and Estragon’s “mutual obsession.” Consider the following exchange, which immediately follows Pozzo and Lucky’s exit in Act One:

Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

The two men explicitly acknowledge the rituals by which they combat boredom and silence throughout the second act. “The idea of Godot as a play in which ‘nothing happens, twice’ is understood by no one as sharply as the tramps,” Alvarez writes. “Nothingness is what they are fighting against and why they talk… The talk is kept going by simple device—instant forgetfulness… It is as though a great fog of boredom enveloped every event and every word the instant it occurs or is uttered. …But perhaps Estragon’s forgetfulness is the cement binding their relationship together. He continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time.”
Estragon is so forgetful that Vladimir must remind him no less than six times during the course of the play that they are waiting for Godot. Each time the exchange is virtually identical:

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: Ah!

And who is Godot? A common critical assumption is that Godot is God, an uncaring deity who may or may not exist. Some critics point to the resemblance between the words “God” and “Godot,” although this does not exist in the French (where God translates as “Dieu”), the language in which Beckett originally wrote Godot. However, given that Beckett’s first language was English, he would certainly have been aware of the name’s suggestiveness.
Beckett rejected any symbolic interpretations of the play. “If I knew who Godot was,” said Beckett, “I would have said so in the play.” Still, the play is rife with references to God and to Christian stories and imagery. And consider the following passage:

Vladimir: I’m curious to hear what he [Godot] has to offer. Then we’ll take it or leave it.
Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for?
Vladimir: Were you not there?
Estragon: I can’t have been listening.
Vladimir: Oh… nothing very definite.
Estragon: A kind of prayer.
Vladimir: Precisely.
Estragon: A vague supplication.
Vladimir: Exactly.
Estragon: And what did he reply?
Vladimir: That he’d see.
Estragon: That he couldn’t promise anything.
Vladimir: That he’d have to think it over.

They then go on to refer to the people and things Godot plans to consult before making a decision, which include “his friends, his agents, his correspondents, his books, his bank account.” For every suggestion that Godot is divine, there is another detail that calls that interpretation into question.
Whoever Godot may be, Vladimir and Estragon seem eternally at his mercy, as they fill the days of waiting for his arrival. Alvarez characterizes the play as “the fullest statement of the problem that bedeviled Beckett, as it bedevils nearly everyone else: how do you get through life? His answer is simple and not encouraging: by force of habit, by going on despite boredom and pain, by talking, by not listening to the silence, absurdly and without hope.” It’s a bleak but brilliant outlook that has fascinated theatregoers for decades.

source: Artsclub Theatre Company (Teacher Resource Guide 2005/06 season)

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درانتظار گودو (Waiting for Godot)

درانتظار گودو (Waiting for Godot)

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