Subject: # 14227 Teatro Inglés Siglos XIX y XX Grupo A

Author: Samuel Beckett

Play: Waiting for Godot

Subtitle: A tragicomedy in two acts

Publisher: Faber and faber

Second edition: 1965, London

The most important feature of this play is its main characters: Estragon and Vladimir. Although they both share physical and social characteristics, they are quite different and opposite in psychological terms. Their age is over 60, they are poor and homeless. Another thing they share is their lives: they have known each other for years and both of them had a better life than the current one when they were young men.

However, their minds are completely different: Vladimir is the philosopher, the one who likes thinking and telling what he thinks to pass the time, when he starts talking about the moment Jesus was about to die in the cross and only two of the evangelists talk about the thieves. He is who wishes the most to keep waiting for Godot, whereas Estragon is more down-to-earth, he wants to give up his waiting and continue with his life, but he can’t go away alone, he needs Vladimir to get rid of his problems, Estragon is the stubborn character of this couple, as when he insists in not taking off his boots for days.

The plot of this play consists of the waiting of the two main characters for a person who never appears: Godot. Vladimir and Estragon need him to improve their lives, but he or she always sends a boy telling them he or she will appear the next day. During the waiting, minor events happen conveying their own little meanings. An important event is the appearances of Lucky and Pozzo in both acts and the difference between both appearances. In the first act, Pozzo is the governing one and Lucky the slave and the former seems to hide his real feelings, because when he realises he has been talking about how he felt, he said all that was false and asked them to forget it. In the second act, Pozzo appears blind and gives a talk about the relativity of time for a blind person.

On the other hand, we do not find important features related to space and time, because they do not affect the main plot, they are only used to create mere anecdotes along the play (as with the tree and their wanting to hang themselves).

Finally, we can find many metaphors all over the play, like the aforementioned event and the evolution of Pozzo and Lucky, the waiting for Godot, the relationship between the speech Vladimir gives about the two thieves when Jesuchrist was about to be crucified and the fact that one was saved and the other was damned, the importance that is given to the hats, to just mention some.

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr. Vicente Forés López
© Pablo Cristóbal Borillo
pacrisbo@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press