Language, Action and Time in Waiting for Godot
Twenty-two hundred years before the emergence of the Theater of the Absurd, the Greek philosopher Artistotle stumbled upon one of the themes developed in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot; that is, that Thought (Dianoia) is expressed through Diction and that Thought (Theoria) is in itself a form of Action (Energeia). Intellectual action is thus measured equally in comparison to physical action. Over the centuries, theories regarding thought, action and language have evolved considerably, but certain underlying themes in Beckett's unconventional work can trace their origins back to Aristotle's original concepts concerning drama, namely the relationships between language, thought and the action involved in contemplation.
Aristotle proposes that Thought and Diction imitate Action. In Beckett's Waiting for Godot, it is possible to see a similar pattern (that when taken a step further is no longer linear but circular), in which Language permits the existence of Thought which in turn becomes vicarious Action. (Ironically, this whole process which is portrayed by Beckett on-stage is equivalent to the art of theater itself which, manifested through language, permits the audience offstage, whose witnessing of a play replaces imagining it, to undergo the same process in acting vicariously through the characters.) The first and more interesting part of the process is best illustrated by the ending of both acts when Vladimir, and then Estragon, says "Yes, let's go" and the stage directions indicate "They do not move". It suffices simply to say and subsequently to think of leaving, for there is no more meaning in the vicarious action than in its actual physical manifestation.
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... Vladimir who comments about the condition of Estragon's feet: "There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet." The boots represent god, for each is an external object that man contrives to protect himself. Beckett is saying that man should not blame the devices that he creates when they fail to protect him from himself, but should rather accept the responsibility for their failure as he is the creator of those devices. If god does not fill man's existential void, instead of hopelessly waiting for that unreliable god to come and rescue him, he should consider looking to himself to resolve the problem of the meaninglessness of his life.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Poetics. Tr. S.H. Butler. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1954
Durozoi, Gérald. Beckett. Paris: Bordas, 1972
This was the start of major social change. Before the war, women had been content to stay at home to bring up the family and do domestic work. It was considered unbecoming for a woman to work. During the war it was considered unpatriotic not to.
This was the start of a new age in the history for women. Before the war a woman’s main job was taking care of her household more like a maid, wife and mother. The men thought that women should not have to work and they should be sheltered and protected. Society also did not like the idea of women working and having positions of power in the workforce but all that change...
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
---. “Structure in Beckett’s theatre.” Yale French Studies. Vol. 46. Yale University Press, 1971. 17-27. JSTOR. 20 Mar. 2004.
World War 1 had a massive effect on women in society. Their lives drastically changed in a short amount of time. In fact with this change came plenty of responsibility, and a great deal of both physically and psychologically demanding work. This responsibility is what made women more confident and self-satisfied, which later on led them to fight harder for their rights.
abandoned the conventions of the classical play to concentrate on his important message to humanity. Using his pathetic characters, Estragon and Vladimir, Beckett illustrates the importance of human free will in a land ruled by science and technology. He understood the terrors of progress as he witnessed first hand the destruction caused by technologically-improved weapons working as a spy during WWII. In his tragicomedy, Estragon and Vladimir spend the entire time futilely waiting for Godot to arrive. They believe that this mysterious Godot will help them solve their problems and merely sit and wait for their solution to arrive. Beckett utilizes these characters to warn the reader of the dangers of depending on fate and others to improve one's existence. He supports this idea when Estragon blames his boots and not himself for the pain in his feet, and Vladimir responds, "There'...
...h other or from their situation in general. The optimistic view of the play shows a range of human emotion and the need to share experiences alongside the suffering of finite existence; governed by the past, acting in the present and uncertain of the future.
...and never-ending inaction that occurs in the play. In Act II however, Vladimir sings a song that represents the cycle of life; speaking about how life’s cycle is one journey to death. This is significant because Beckett’s use of the theatre of the absurd was based on non-continuous timelines and never-ending cycles. It is due to this that repetition is key in showing how Beckett expresses the idea of the human’s cyclical life.
Efforts to improve the standard of living for humans--through the control of nature and the development of new products--have also resulted in the pollution, or contamination, of the environment. Much of the world's air, water, and land is now partially poisoned by chemical wastes. Some places have become uninhabitable. This pollution exposes people all around the globe to new risks from disease. Many species of plants and animals have become endangered or are now extinct. As a result of these developments, governments have passed laws to limit or reverse the threat of environmental pollution.
Humans spend their lives searching and creating meaning to their lives, Beckett, however, takes a stand against this way of living in his novel ‘Waiting for Godot’. He questions this ideal of wasting our lives by searching for a reason for our existence when there is not one to find. In his play, he showcases this ideology through a simplistic and absence of setting and repetitious dialogue. Beckett’s ability to use these key features are imperative to his ability of conveying his message of human entrapment and existence.
The theme of futility is further reflected in the cyclical nature of the dialogue in the sense that nothing appears to change and everything is simply repeated, their conversation never reached a definitive conclusion they are ultimately still ‘waiting for Godot’ and longing for answers. The concept of time is used very successfully by Beckett in order to highlight and develop the theme of futility in ‘Waiting for Godot.’ Time can be seen as a very fluid concept in the sense that the audience is never made aware of how l...
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot has been said by many people to be a long book about nothing. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend all their time sitting by a tree waiting for someone named Godot, whose identity is never revealed to the audience. It may sound pretty dull at first but by looking closely at the book, it becomes apparent that there is more than originally meets the eye. Waiting for Godot was written to be a critical allegory of religious faith, relaying that it is a natural necessity for people to have faith, but faiths such as Catholicism are misleading and corrupt.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: tragicomedy in 2 acts. New York: Grove Press, 1982. Print.
We live on a planet revolving around the sun, while there are at least about one septillion other stars in this universe. What is the significance of our existence in this infinite cosmos? What is the purpose of our lives? With the explosion of scientific knowledge and the WWII bombs in the modernity epoch, the insignificance of our lives was realized; Samuel Becket staged the futility of human existence in the play Waiting for Godot. He portrayed nothingness through the use of structure, language, dialogue, and setting. He further demonstrated that the lives of the two characters Vladimir and Estragon takes meaning when they wait for the ambiguous Godot. In order to be relieved from the crippling question of existence, they occupy themselves with meaningless activities. Due to the lack of a plot in Waiting for Godot, one can deduce that perhaps Beckett is referring to the futility of human existence in general.
Although Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot, has no definite meaning or interpretation, the play acts as a statement of hopelessness regarding human existence. Debate surrounds the play because, due to its simplicity, almost any interpretation is valid. The main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are aging men who must wait for a person, being, or object named Godot, but this entity never appears to grace the men with this presence. Both characters essentially demonstrate how one must go through life when hope is nonexistent as they pointlessly attempt to entertain themselves with glum conversation in front of a solitary tree. The Theater of the Absurd, a prevalent movement associated with Waiting for Godot, serves as the basis for the message of hopelessness in his main characters. Samuel Beckett's iconic Waiting for Godot and his perception of the characteristics and influence of the Theater of the Absurd illustrate the pointlessness and hopelessness regarding existence. In the play, boredom is mistaken for hopelessness because the men have nothing to do, as they attempt to occupy themselves as, for some reason, they need to wait for Godot. No hope is present throughout the two-act play with little for Estragon and Vladimir to occupy their time while they, as the title indicates, wait for Godot.