Waiting For Godot Tragedy Analysis

“Tragicomedy is, simply, the combination of tragic and comic elements in one text to create an effect which is “deeper and grimmer than tragedy” (George Bernard-Shaw). Desperation, pain, fear etc are presented in a way which makes them comical.” This idea of a tragicomedy can be applied to Waiting for Godot as comedy is used to alleviate the hard hitting tragic elements of the play; such as when, at the end of the play, Vladimir and Estragon discuss the logistics of and then go on to attempt to hang themselves. Comedy is found within this to relieve the audience as “[Estragon loosens the cord that holds up his trousers which, much too big for him, fall about his ankles.]” Estragon then proceeds to go about the rest of the scene not realising

However, this although fairly amusing, would be funnier if read in the original language in which the play was written as the word for ‘off’ in French is ‘relève’ and the word for ‘on’ is ‘enlève’ both which sound very similar and so would be easily miscommunicated by the characters. This misunderstanding and miscommunication reflects Lacan’s theory about how “post modernism comes in and doubts everything, it doubts language and its ability to communicate” which suggests that language cannot be trusted to communicate ideas because everyone perceives and interprets differently as shown through both Estragon’s misunderstanding and/or Vladimir’s

Beckett mixes Irishisms, French and English together in a combination with extremely specific stage directions that depict exactly how he wants something said or an action acted for example “[he rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hand screening his eyes, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance.]” and he also used specifically chosen words often littered throughout the dialogue to depict exactly how he wants a character to react or emote such as “[angrily]”, “[distinctly]” and “[grotesquely rigid]” as if to indicate that Beckett himself does not trust the language alone to communicate exactly what he wants it to. The absurdist idea that “What happens on stage transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters…means that the audience has to pay attention-to consider what lies in the gaps between word and action” can also be applied to Waiting For Godot because at the end of the play Vladimir and Estragon agree to “go” vocally yet the stage direction after saying “[they do not move]” contradicts their agreement and so creates comedy from the contradiction as it is absurd that they agree outwardly to do something and then completely ignore what they both said.

The structure in Waiting