"Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett

                                                                               

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, 1952 by Grove Press. The play was first written in French, and translated later by the author himself.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot remains one of the most highly regarded and powerful plays ever written. Not at all like a traditional play that features a comprehensible linear plot, realistic characters and predictable dialogue, this play is very difficult to comprehend. Indeed, it can be downright frustrating. Readers, and viewers for that matter, need to put their expectations on hold and attempt to experience the play for what it metaphorically represents to each personally instead of endeavoring to understand the “real” meaning.  After all, even while the events for which we wait continually change, waiting is something common to every human begin during our time on earth. Some would even claim we spend our lives waiting for death. 

Being an absurdist play, the dialogues in the play do not make much sense on the surface. But in such drama, dialogues are the most important tool in the hands of the playwright, since the sets or the costumes are used minimally. In this play, through the dialogues, we can sense the frustration that Vladimir and Estragon feel. They are waiting for someone about whose existence they are not even sure. They ask existential questions, and getting no answers, are driven to despair and thoughts of suicide. The incoherence of the dialogues points to the fact that there is little sense to our existence as humans.

"Absurdist Theatre" discards traditional plot, characters, and action to assault its audience with a disorienting experience. Characters often engage in seemingly meaningless dialogue or activities, and, as a result, the audience senses what it is like to live in a universe that doesn't "make sense." Beckett and others who adopted this style felt that this disoriented feeling was a more honest response to the post World War n world than the traditional belief in a rationally ordered universe. Waiting for Godot remains the most famous example of this form of drama.