Absurdism In Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot
II .Waiting for Godot (1953) by Samuel Beckett
In waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett presents the human kind through a dark vision on the stage. Waiting for Godot is a twentieth-century play which introduces a searching for a meaning to life and “ questioning not the existence of God but the existence of existence” (Sternlicht 50). The play, waiting for Godot faces a big challenge in that time. After all, how in the 1950s – the time of O’Neill’s realistic play, long Day’s journey into night and John Osborne’s kitchen sink Dram, look back in Anger- should audiences receive his strange play that its main action is waiting?
Waiting for Godot considers an unusual play according to its Elements of plot and developing narration. It represents
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The literature of the Absurd usually focus on ‘man’s inability to make sense of things’ (Esslin 26). Waiting for Godot is about the loss of identity and the need for it. The two ‘tamps’, Vladimir and Estragon seem like a survivors of a calamity, a nuclear war, a meteor strike or extermination and they seek for help. Beckett wants humans to think of the smallness of their live to discover the pain of existence ( Sternlicht 49). Beckett employs many themes in waiting Godot such as choices, absurdity, truth, time, religion, friendship, freedom, and morality. Beckett highlights the theme of choices in Waiting for Godot. Both Estragon and Vladimir unable to move, act, or think in rational way while they waste time waiting for an ambitious man, Godot. They do not realize that waiting is a choice; instead they believe it is an essential part of their daily life. Even when they manage to make a decision to leave, they could not put this choice into a physical act. Such inaction illustrates the endless cycle of their lives. (Sternlicht 54).” Estragon: well! Shall we go?. Vladimir: yes, lets go. (They do not move)” (I
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