Stephanie Gamarra January 9, 2006

Group: A

The Play

“Waiting for Godot”

“Waiting for Godot” is a tragicomedy in two acts. This play was written by the famous playwright Samuel Beckett. This play was first published by Faber in Faber 1956, London.

The two main characters in this play are Vladimir and Estragon. They both have special nicknames for each other, Vladimir calls Estragon ‘Gogo’ and Estragon calls Vladimir ‘Didi’. Vladimir is the strongest out of two and the more intelligent. He feels really responsible for Estragon and to make it up to him he tries to help him. Estragon in the other hand is the weaker one. He is very ignorant, naïve and to top it all he has bad memory. Other characters appear in the play, Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is the master of Lucky, and Lucky is his slave.

The play starts off with Vladimir and Estragon who meet near a tree and wait for Godot to arrive who they’ve never met. During their wait they have a long conversation where they talk about the bible and many other things. While they are waiting for Godot two new characters appear, Pozzo and his servant Lucky who wears a rope tied to him, because Pozzo wants to sell him in the market. Both Vladimir and Estragon feel sorry for Lucky, but later on Estragon hand him a handkerchief, but gets kicked by Lucky. Later on, Lucky starts entertaining them by dancing and talking. When Lucky and Pozzo leave, a boy appears and tells Vladimir and Estragon that he has a message from Godot who says he will arrive the next day. In the second act Vladimir has to explain to Estragon what they were to there. Then Pozzo and Lucky arrive and they discover that Pozzo is blind and that Lucky is dumb. Later, they find themselves with the boy who tells them that Godot would be coming tomorrow. That’s when Estragon comes up with the idea of hanging themselves, although they can’t do it because there is no rope, so they decide leaving and coming back tomorrow with a rope just in case if Godot doesn’t come.

The play takes place in an outside, opened space where a tree can be found and an auditorium can be found, which makes the setting very simple. The time in which the play takes place, is in the present and the events occur in a chronological order. Only two days go by.

This play is written in verse. The language is very simple and at times colloquial. A peculiar aspect that we can find is when Pozzo orders Lucky around. Pozzo treats as if Lucky was a dog, “POZZO: Stop! (Lucky stops.) Back! (Lucky moves back.) Stop! (Lucky stops) Turn! ” Other aspects that we can point out are the economical and technical aspects that seem to be very low and easy. This production must’ve been easy to produce, due to the fact that the scenery didn’t need any objects or any type of furniture, but a tree.

In my opinion, this play was rather confusing and very hard to understand. The theatre of the absurd made it difficult to understand because nothing is real, it’s all fiction. During the whole play the only thing that I liked was the subject of “life”. Beckett really makes us think about the absurd life that we live in, which makes the reader think and reflect about this. Another aspect that we can point out is that there were a lot of repetitive dialogues which made it very boring, like when Vladimir had to remind Estragon of things that he would forget.