Samuel

Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland
• Hanging out with fellow Irish writer James Joyce early in his career. He helped him research and
transcribe Finnegan's Wake. Beckett was basically his secretary, taking transcription, essentially, of
Finnegan's Wake.
• When World II ends, some important things happen for Beckett. The first is that he starts writing in
French. His native language is English, but he knew French pretty well and he was able to write in
it

MODERNISM & POSTMODERNISM

• Written in 1953, Waiting for Godot was a somewhat late successor to the vibrant experimentation
in art and literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries known as Modernism. Modernist
writers saw themselves as dramatically breaking with the past and innovating in all aspects of art,
literature, and culture.
• However, the play can also be seen as somewhat Postmodern, belonging to the literary and artistic
period following Modernism.
• One of these is an alienation from tradition and a questioning of the grand narratives that were
previously seen to have some kind of authority. This includes grand narratives of historical
progress—that history is the story of human life continually getting better—as well as religious
narratives like the Bible. There are some biblical and classical references in the play, but they are
only used ironically. Estragon compares himself to Christ in act one
• Another Postmodern feature of the play is a pervasive sense of entrapment or enslavement, but a
lack of any central authority. Characters are often unable to move or get up from the ground for no
apparent reason. Vladimir and Estragon are, in a sense, trapped in their place of waiting, even
though no one is forcing them to stay.
• Finally, some of Beckett's characters feel a separation from reality. Both Vladimir and Pozzo
question, in act two, whether they are actually awake or are simply dreaming. This confusion of
reality with a dream or a false representation is a central, common feature of Postmodernism.


Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

ABOUT THE TEXT

• Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French play, En attendant Godot, and
is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts"
• Beckett often focused on the idea of "the suffering of being." Most of the play deals with the fact
that Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for something to alleviate their boredom. Godot can be
understood as one of the many things in life that people wait for.
• There is also a split between the intellect and the body within the work. Thus Vladimir represents
the intellect and Estragon the body, both of whom cannot exist without the other.

CRITICAL RECEPTION
• In a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1990 it was voted the "most significant
English language play of the 20th century"

WORKS BY SAME AUTHOR
• He also writes Happy Days, which premieres in 1961. This play has the characters Winnie and Willie.
Winnie is buried in the ground and Willie is asleep. Winnie, buried to her waist, follows her daily
routine and prattles to her husband, Willie, who is largely hidden and taciturn. Her frequent refrain
is “Oh this is a happy day.” Later, in Act II she is buried up to her neck, but continues to talk and
remember happier days.
• Endgame premieres in 1957. That has a character in it called Hamm, who's blind, and his parents,
Nell and Nagg, who live in trashcans. Likewise, the opening words of Endgame: "Finished, it's
finished . . ." set the theme for this drama. These are the last words that Christ murmured on the
cross: "It is finished." It is the end of the game. Beckett himself once described Endgame as being
"rather difficult and elliptic" and as "more inhuman than Godot."
• They're known retroactively as 'The Trilogy'. They are Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable.
Molloy is just the internal monologues of a bum named Molloy and a detective named Moran, who's
trying to track him down and might turn into Molloy at the end. He starts to go crazy and we don't
know what's going on. In Malone Dies, Malone is in an asylum or maybe a hospital He's telling his

Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

story but he's also telling another story. In The Unnameable, you can't tell what's going on. It's
entirely in monologue, but it's not really representative of anything. It's just kind of words.
• He also wrote several even more experimental plays, like Breath (1969), a thirty-second play.

INTER TEXTUAL REFERNCE

• In Tom Stoppard's 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (a well-known Absurdist
revision of William Shakespeare's Hamlet), the constant coin-tossing game between the two friends
represents the idea that all things in life are a matter of chance. Here Rosencrantz's speech uses
humor to mask the fear of the inevitability of death as an end to one's feelings, thoughts, and actions,
and to one's conscious awareness of self and one's existence and identity. There are also plot
parallels, the act of waiting as a significant element of the play, during the waiting, the characters
pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, at times repeatedly interrupting
each other while at other times remaining silent for long periods
Life in a box is better than no life at all…You could lie there thinking - well, at least I'm not dead!
• In this work, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who lives with and helps support his parents,
wakes up transformed into an insect. Despite his drastically changed physical state, he retains his
human mental faculties and emotions. Samsa's family treats the situation with a detached
resignation, as one might treat a common ailment or illness. Because Kafka does not provide any
insight into or rationale for Gregor's transformation, we begin the story with an absurd situation,
one that is also devoid of any moral implications, which is a hallmark of existentialism.
• Caretaker- These include "Pinterland" (the claustrophobic, enclosed spaces where the action takes
place), "Pinter pause" (his reliance on what is NOT said), and "Pinteresque" (his comedy/tragedy
blends with their absurdity and lack of conclusion). You make too much noise.-Aston
• Other influences on the absurdist playwrights include the work of Sigmund Freud, and the Surrealist
movement of the 1920s and 1930s, which introduced the avant-garde to mainstream media.


Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

QUOTES
• Nothing to be done.
• But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or
Friday?
• I was asleep! (Despairingly.) Why will you never let me sleep?
I felt lonely.
• What about hanging ourselves?
• Do I look like a man that can be made to suffer?
• Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!
• Christ! What has Christ got to do with it. You're not going to compare yourself to Christ!

THEATRE OF ABSURD
• Theater of the Absurd refers to a literary movement in drama popular throughout European
countries from the 1940s to approximately 1989.
• Absurdist playwrights adhered to the theories of French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, in
particular his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1942. In this essay, Camus introduced his
Philosophy of the Absurd, in which he argues that man's quest for meaning and truth is a futile
endeavor; he compares man's struggle to understand the world and the meaning of life to Sisyphus,
a famous figure in Greek Mythology condemned to an existence of rolling a heavy stone up a
mountain only to watch it roll to the bottom.
• Critics believe that Theater of the Absurd arose as a movement from the doubts and fears
surrounding World War II and what many people saw as the degeneration of traditional moral and
political values.
• The playwrights most often associated with the movement are Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco,
Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. The early plays of Edward Albee and Harold Pinter fit into this
classification, but these dramatists have also written plays that move far away from the Theater of
the Absurd's basic elements.
• Their work focused on humans trying to control the events in their lives, and the resultant chaos.
• Many of the characters are clowns or completely helpless and bereft of rationality.
• They also tend to be of the lower social classes.

Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

• Communication between characters is difficult, if not impossible; language is unable to create

human connections.
• Some characters try to fight back against the stultifying incomprehensibility of their world, but are
unsuccessful in their efforts.
• Absurd theater does away with the concepts of drama, chronological plot, logical language, themes,
and recognizable settings.
• The key element to an absurdist play is that the main characters are out of sync with the world
around them.
• The drama of the absurdist theater is dreamlike, almost lyrical. Like the Surrealists before them, the
absurdist playwrights use imagery, subtext, mythology, and allegory to express a deeper meaning
which is often never fully explained.
• The thin line between truth and lies is perhaps the defining characteristic of the Theater of the
Absurd.
• Estragon refers to "billions of others," who have been killed, and describes being beaten by an
anonymous "they." Lucky (whose ill-fitting name is itself darkly comic) is treated horribly and
physically abused on-stage. And Vladimir and Estragon talk nonchalantly and pleasantly about
suicide.

ESTRAGON
• In the beginning of the play, he struggles just to take off his boots, for example.
• Unlike Vladimir, he has no grasp of time, and is confused as to whether it is evening or morning in
act two.
• Along similar lines, he has a poor grasp of people's identities. He doesn't
recognize Lucky and Pozzo in act two, and at one point thinks Pozzo's name is Abel.
• He cannot even remember his own past, and tells Pozzo his name is Adam.
• Estragon repeatedly wants to leave, but each time Vladimir reminds him that they must stay and
wait for Godot.
• While he often forms the dull-minded counterpoint to the more cerebral Vladimir, Estragon is still
able to match Vladimir's verbal wit and once claims that he used to be a poet.


Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

VLADMIR
• Vladimir often seems to be more rational than his more nonsensical companion, Estragon.
• Unlike the other characters in the play, he has a sense of linear time and realizes that the events of
act two essentially repeat those of act one.
• He is also able to remember people's identities, unlike Estragon and Pozzo, who forget each other
in act two.
• He seems to be the only one who is really outraged at Pozzo's horrible treatment of Lucky in act
one, but he doesn't actually do anything to help him.
• Vladimir is the one who often sees religious or philosophical implications in their discussions of
events, and he interprets their actions in religious terms; for example, he is concerned about the
religious implications in such stories as the two thieves (two tramps) who were crucified on either
side of Jesus. He is troubled about the fate of the thief who wasn't saved and is concerned that "only
one of the four evangelists" speaks of a thief being saved.
• Vladimir relies upon Estragon's company as much as Estragon relies upon Vladimir: whenever
Estragon leaves the stage for a brief moment, Vladimir panics out of his intense fear of loneliness
and abandonment.
• Both are tramps dressed in costumes which could be interchanged. They both wear big boots which
don't necessarily fit, and both have big bowler hats. Their suits are baggy and ill-fitting. (In Act II,
when Estragon removes the cord he uses for a belt, his trousers are so baggy that they fall about his
feet.) Their costumes recall the type found in burlesque or vaudeville houses, the type often
associated with the character of the "Little Tramp," portrayed by Charlie Chaplin.

TRAGIC COMEDY
• The entire play is pervaded by a sense of despair and tragedy. The tragic elements are seen in the
circumstances of the characters, their physical disabilities, their lost sense of time and utmost
futility, their doomed existence where “Nothing happens and nothing can be done,” and the empty
stage. The comic elements revolve around the games the characters invent, their interactions with
each other, and the vaudevillian routines.
• The audience burst out in laughter when they see Estragon putting off and on his boots. Vladimir’s
game with his hat appears as if this is happening in a circus. Vladimir is suffering from prostrate
problem. Vladimir's way of walking with stiff and short strides is as funny as Estragon’s limping on

Samuel Beckett’s

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

the stage. Estragon’s gestures of encouraging Vladimir to urinate off-stage are

farcical. Uncontrollable laughter possesses the audience when Lucky’s hat is passed back and forth
between Estragon and Vladimir, and to add to the mayhem their own hats are also added to this
absurd version of the game “passing the parcel” and the resulting scene is insanely funny as the two
keep interchanging the hats on their heads.
• The eternal attitude to “Nothing to be done” conveys a feeling of helplessness and utter desperation
on the part of the protagonists. Vladimir faces a problem with his bladder while Estragon struggles
with his stinking feet, troubled sleep, nightmares and seems to the center of physical abuse by
persons he cannot remember. The enslaved condition of Lucky presents to the audience a heart
wrenching scene and his loss of speech added to Pozzo’s loss of sight causes the audience to be
captured in a whirlpool of melancholy emotions. The scene depicts the constantly deteriorating
state of mankind and a sense of futility engulfs the audience as all the characters continue to suffer
through their physical disabilities, all hope of recovery shattered as Vladimir and Estragon
contemplate suicide as a means of escaping their pointless existence.

THEMES
• As Beckett's title indicates, the central act of the play is waiting, and one of the most salient aspects
of the play is that nothing really seems to happen. Vladimir and Estragon spend the entire play
waiting for Godot, who never comes. Estragon repeatedly wants to leave, but Vladimir insists that
they stay, in case Godot actually shows up. As a result of this endless waiting, both Vladimir and
Estragon are "bored to death," as Vladimir himself puts it.
• All of this waiting for nothing, talking about nothing, atmosphere of nihilism in the play. Broadly
defined, nihilism is a denial of any significance or meaning in the world. Deriving from the Latin
word for "nothing" (nihil), it is a worldview centered around negation, claiming that there is no
truth, morality, value, or—in an extreme form—even reality.
• Beckett's play is filled with a great deal of physical, mental, and emotional
suffering. Vladimir and Estragon are starved for food, in physical pain, and "bored to death."
• Vladimir and Estragon desperately seek two things: recognition and companionship.
• Nonetheless, they are remarkably indifferent to the suffering of others. Vladimir is at first outraged
at Pozzo's treatment of Lucky, but soon gets used to it and even encourages Estragon to kick him.
Vladimir and Estragon converse nonchalantly while Pozzo is stuck on the ground and crying for
help in act two. Vladimir and Estragon fail to sympathize with Pozzo and Lucky. Beckett suggests
that this kind of indifference to the pain of others is what allows the vicious cycle of suffering to
continue on indefinitely, as it does in the play.