Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket is an absurd play in the light of Martin Esslin’s concepts
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket is
an absurd play in the light of Martin Esslin’s concepts.
The world had witnessed the great economic depression and
destruction of the Second World War, and the devastation of the time remains
lasted up till now, people still gather at the place where the atomic bomb was
used. Unspeakable scenes, people still remind them. In such a situation every
person feels insecure and helpless. In such circumstances, Samuel Becket wrote
a masterpiece Waiting for Godot which reflects the true story of the day. It
contains the theme of Absurdity, Nothingness. The play has no plot, no story,
no beginning, and no end, and same it has unexplained themes also.
‘Nothingness’ constitutes the major concern for Samuel Becket.
According to Martin Esslin, “Nothingness is related to a space with no spur to
look forward. The play Waiting for Godot is only active in gestural energy.
Martin Esslin in his book The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) claims that Waiting
for Godot does not tell a story. It explores a static situation: “Everything is
dead but the tree.” The play is based on the theme of “nothing to
be done”. The gestural energy of the tramps waiting for the sake of waiting for
ends in “They do not move.”
En-attendant-Godot, the original French play, and its subsequent
translation in English impress us in the manner of James Joyce’s Ulysses, where
the readers experience the same feeling of waiting for something to happen. In
the play, Estragon and Vladimir wait for Godot who can be
interpreted variously as diminutive of God, Love, Hope, Death, Silence, and
Waiting. The different nationalities e.g. Estragon from France; Vladimir
Russian; Pozzo Italian; Lucky English constitute a parameter of absurdity in
the general development of the play. The play projects
a basic nullity of human life.
The innovative formal design in Waiting for Godot adds to the
main theme of absurdity to a great extent. By all established canons of drama,
a good play must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The entire play in the
two acts is knit with repetition, Act II is the repetition of Act I. In each
act we were offered the same sequence: the tramps reunite, contrive, pass time,
encounter Pozzo and Lucky, receive Godot’s disappointing message, gestural
decide to leave but physically do not move “Nothing to be done”.
Waiting for Godot depicts time as a circular reality. Time is
related to the tramps’ hope and despair. Viewers have the impression that the
beggars are nothing but instruments of killing time. Time is a “Double-headed
giant of damnation and salvation.” Everything in the normal human experience is
subjected to time flies. Nonetheless, time as recorded in this drama is
continuously present, with no past and future“They all change, only we can’t.”
The lack of characterization is the hallmark of any absurd
drama. In Waiting for Godot, Estragon, Vladimir, Lucky, Pozzo, and the
non-existence Godot do not grow during the play. They cannot be treated as a
proper characters. Their cross-talks reflect the very idea of nothingness as
they have nothing to communicate just to be in a static position perpetually.
“Here form is content and content is form.” At the end of the play, we are in
the same position as we were at the beginning. The trajectory of nothingness
develops in between.
n an absurd play, speech is reduced to a minimum, In the theatre
of the absurd, rules are broken, and conventions are flouted. Esslin states,
“If a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often
consist of incoherent babblings”. Here the language is used
just as a mere game to pass time as they have nothing to do. Most of the time,
the appropriate discourse is being broken. The legalism of conversation is not
been maintained.
Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let’s go.
(They do not move)
We may conclude in the voice of Esslin, “It is the peculiar
richness of a play like Waiting for Godot that it opens vistas on so many
different perspectives. It is open to philosophical, religious, and
psychological interpretations, however, above all it is a poem on time,
evanescence, the paradox of change and stability, necessity and absurdity”.
#Samuel-Becketartin
#Esslin’s concepts
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