riddhi28bhatt@gmail.com
PG year:2020-2022
PG Enrollment No.:3069206420200004
Paper Name:107 (The Twentieth Century Literature:From World War II to the End of the Century)
Topic Name:Waiting For Godot: Silence and Death
Submitted to:Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English
Waiting For Godot: Silence and Death
✅Introduction :
Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting Godot, who never arrive.A play by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett about two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a third man, Godot, who never comes. The play is a typical example of the Theatre of the Absurd, and people use the phrase ‘waiting for Godot’ to describe a situation where they are waiting for something to happen, but it probably never will.
t's now a commonplace to see Waiting for Godot described as one of the most important plays of the 20th Century - with its reputation gathering momentum rather than fading away. The kind of movie actors who would have reached the career point of wanting to be in King Lear now want to shuffle across the stage in Godot.
✅Samuel Beckett and Waiting For Godot :
“Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.”
Irish playwright, novelist, and poet Samuel Beckett was a literary legend of the 20th century. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1906, he was educated at Trinity College. During the 1930s and 1940s he wrote his first novels and short stories. During World War II, Samuel Beckett’s Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris as a citizen of a neutral country. He fought in the resistance movement until 1942 when members of his group were arrested by the Gestapo. He and his wife fled to the unoccupied zone until the end of the war. After the war, Samuel Beckett was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery during his time in the French resistance.He wrote a trilogy of novels in the 1950s as well as famous plays like Waiting for Godot. In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His later works included poetry and short story collections and novellas.
Critical responses to Beckett's work often invoked somewhat colorful prose. Melvin Maddocks wrote of Beckett, “He wanders among misty bogs turned surreal, he talks to the wee folk of his own bad dreams, he files reports on introspected black visions with a kind of blarney eloquence.Like an actress cradling a doll for her stage baby, his language keens and croons about tales that are not quite there.” “It is neither night nor morning. A man must find himself without the support of groups, or labels, or slogans,” writes R.D. Smith. And Beckett, by removing his characters from nearly all recognizable contexts, Smith continues, is “engaged in finding or saving” himself.
Some critics believe that Beckett’s theater is most meaningful when considered within the context of a recognizable literary tradition. Kenneth Allsop writes: “His harsh, desolate, denuded style is entirely and unmistakably his own, but his literary ‘form,’ the stream-of-consciousness device which most young British writers wouldn’t dream of using nowadays for fear of being thought quaint, derives from his years.The problem of analyzing and interpreting Beckett’s work has been met with a somewhat surprising amount of scholarship and erudition.
“Waiting for Godot, of all of Beckett’s dramatic works, expresses most clearly and explicitly the fundamental tension—to wait or not to wait—which is found to a lesser degree in his other writings. The human predicament described in Beckett’s first [major, staged] play is that of man living on the Saturday after the Friday of the crucifixion, and not really knowing if all hope is dead or if the next day will bring the new life which has been promised.”
Waiting for Godot are significant not only in themselves, but for all of contemporary theater.A special virtue attaches to plays which remind the drama of how much it can do without and still exist. By all known criteria, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a dramatic vacuum. Pity the critic who seeks a chink in its armour, for it is all chink. It has no plot, no climax, no denouement; no beginning, no middle, and no end. Unavoidably, it has a situation, and it might be accused of having suspense.
✅What was Samuel Beckett's philosophy?
Beckett's answer to philosophy is to refuse it, give it a 'kick in the arse'. His use of ideas is always accompanied by reticence, ambiguity, and humorous deflation- ary counterpoint. Ideas are presented somehow as magnificent edifices that stand apart from the miserable small-mindedness of the human condition.Despite their differences, Beckett's prosaic and dramatic styles do share some aspects that are unique to Beckett. One such aspect is the use of repetition. Often times in Molloy, Beckett repeats words or phrases two or even three times in close proximity in order to make an idea apparent.
✅Theme Of Silence In Waiting For Godot :
Despite their differences, Beckett's prosaic and dramatic styles do share some aspects that are unique to Beckett. One such aspect is the use of repetition. Often times in Molloy, Beckett repeats words or phrases two or even three times in close proximity in order to make an idea apparent.The silence is contributed to the play by the pauses mentioned in the stage directions. In fact there is no logical thought process in the play as it is interrupted by the pauses. The pauses and silences in the play create a sterile and tragic atmosphere that the characters seem to fear.
Typically, silence is used to convey an abstinence or forbearance from speech/utterance. In other words, silence is the intentional or imposed state of muteness. Silence denotes an inaudible condition or moment of complete stillness.
✅Waiting For Godot: Silence and Death:
The main themes in Waiting for Godot include the human condition, absurdism and nihilism, and friendship. The human condition: The hopelessness in Vladimir and Estragon's lives demonstrates the extent to which humans rely on illusions—such as religion, according to Beckett—to give hope to a meaningless existence.
Postmodern literature depicts the degradation of human psyche and the struggle of the man to find his identity after destruction that the World War II caused to the humanity. The war ruined the human values and every human being had lost the sense of moral and immoral. Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot belong to the postmodern literary category that showcase in the most comic and tragic way the pessimistic vision of humanity struggling vainly to find a purpose in their existence. Vladimir and Estragon, Ben and Gus are the hopeless and anxious victims of the war who are controlled from unknown authorities. In this context, the ability to communicate with each other, to take decisions for themselves and to The periods of silence in Waiting for Godot are moments in which the characters realize where there is no certainty, there can be no definite meanings and words are just futile nonsense. No matter how much they use language, how long they talk to each other or what they talk about, silence will eventually fall on them like a haunting cloud, reminding them that they are no more than two tramps who are waiting for someone to redeem them.
✅Human Condition in Waiting For Godot :
Early in his life Beckett dismissed the Christian concept of God and based his concept of the human condition on the assumption that human existence ends in the grave, that our most monumental achievements are insignificant measured by the cosmic scales of time and space, and that human life without illusions is generally difficult and sad. Vladimir and Estragon live in a world without comforting illusions about human dignity, the importance of work and achievement, the inevitability of justice, or the promise of an afterlife of eternal bliss. They live in a world where almost nothing is certain, where simply getting your boots off or sleeping through the night without having to urinate is a pretty significant achievement. They live in a world where violence and brutality can appear at any time, often victimizing them directly. They live without amenities, find joy in the smallest of victories, and are ultimately quite serious about their vague responsibility to wait for this mysterious figure who may or may not come and who may or may not reward them for their loyalty. It is a life lived on the razor's edge of hope and sadness.
Strangely enough, Pozzo often voices most clearly what Beckett might have called the reality of this world. In Act I, for example, Estragon feels pity for the abused and weeping Lucky, who is sobbing because Pozzo has said aloud that he wants to "get rid of him." As Lucky sobs, Pozzo brutally says, "old dogs have more dignity." But when Estragon goes with a handkerchief to wipe his tears, Lucky kicks him violently in the shins and it is now Estragon in pain. Pozzo then offers this observation: "he's stopped crying. [To Estragon.] You have replaced him as it were. [Lyrically.] The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. [He laughs.] Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. [Pause.] Let us not speak well of it either. [Pause.] Let us not speak of it at all."
In this richly evocative "story" about two men who wait for another who never comes there are so many possible themes it is difficult to enumerate them. Those that are readily apparent include the issues of absurdity, alienation and loneliness, appearance and reality, death, doubt and ambiguity, time, the meaning of life, language and meaning, and the search for self. But one theme that encompasses many of these at once is the question of the human condition—who are we as humans and what is our short life on this planet really like?We appear to be born without much awareness of our selves or our environment and as we mature to gradually acquire from the world around us a sense of identity and a concept of the universe. However, the concept of human life that we generally acquire may be fraught with illusions.
- Stempel, Daniel. “History Electrified into Anagogy: A Reading of ‘Waiting for Godot.’” Contemporary Literature, vol. 17, no. 2, 1976, pp. 263–278. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1207668. Accessed 6 June 2021.
- Weagel, Deborah, and JOHN CAGE. “SILENCE IN JOHN CAGE AND SAMUEL BECKETT: 4' 33’ and ‘Waiting for Godot.’” Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, vol. 12, 2002, pp. 249–262. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25781422. Accessed 6 June 2021.
- "Waiting for Godot voted best modern play in English" by David Lister, The Independent, 18 October 1998
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