Waiting for Godot: Simply Absurd

What happened in the play? Nothing. Did the protagonists do anything in particular? No. What was my overall reaction? Ugh.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett seemed to be about nothing. Two characters who did nothing but wait for Godot (who in the end didn't even appear in the story). One thing that did seem to appear throughout the play was repetition -- repetition of words, repetition of actions, repetition of events.

ESTRAGON: The circus.

VLADIMIR: The music hall.

ESTRAGON: The circus.

(page 35).

“Estragon takes Vladimir's hat, Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Vladimir’s hat in place of his own chi he hands to Vladimir…” (page 80). 

These repetitions not only made this play extremely boring, but confusing. What was the meaning of this? Attempting to find some kind of symbol or hidden message, I reread through each passage at least twice. Yet, I couldn't find anything. I started getting angrier at how confusing and absurd this play was. Then, I realized what idea this novel was heading towards: the meaningless of life.

First thing that came to my mind was "oh no," second, The Strangers. Yes, this play seems to have the same underlying theme as The Strangers by Albert Camus. It's about existentialism and the human struggle to discover purpose in the meaningless life. The two protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon try so hard to find some kind of meaning in life. They wait around for Godot, as if meeting him will lead them to take some kind of action and to some kind of meaning. They are constantly waiting, and yet Godot never comes. Just like that, the readers, or me in particular, tried so hard to find some kind of meaning behind the dialogues between the characters or Lucky's ridiculous speech. We read on and on, expecting something to happen and nothing happens. Similarly, we tried to find some kind of hidden message behind the words of Meursault who in reality, was saying nothing but what he meant. This represents one of the topics existentialists criticize about: we, humans, constantly try to find purpose/meaning in life when life is meaningless.

In addition, the concept of death is also demonstrated the same way in both works. Death is not a negative thing; it’s something that’s bound to happen. Both Vladimir and Estragon wonder whether they should kill themselves. They see death as something completely normal, like reading a book. The only thing keeping them killing themselves is that they don’t have a rope. Simple as that. Meursault also took Mamam’s death as something completely unsurprising and typical. Death is nothing of a big deal for these existentialists.

Obviously, there are some differences in that Waiting for Godot takes a more extreme manner in showing the absurdity of life. Beckett presents us with a life where actions are completely meaningless, communication fails miserably, and the characters are simply senseless. If Beckett is trying to convey the message about how absurd life really is, shouldn’t he make Vladimir and Estragon’s situation a little more realistic? Who honestly lives their lives like that? How is it even close to the way WE live our lives? The Stranger seems to have a more reality depth, where at the end, I actually began to wonder if my existence really mattered. This book? Not at all. This book I did not like. It was so absurd that I felt like I wasted my time reading it. Maybe that was the author’s intention. Either way, this book did not lead me to thinking life is absurd but how this book in particular was completely absurd and ridiculous.