II. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is considered as a masterpiece and a hallmark in the history of modern drama. It has been premiered for the first time in Paris, and then performed nearly 300 times in the major cities around the world. Starting with the title of the play waiting for Godot and its subtitle “a tragicomedy in two acts”. The title involves the action of waiting for the god ; the protagonists were waiting for some change for their life, but unfortunately, they were waiting in vain ; nobody comes nor Godot arrives. The subtitle indicates the genre of the play, so basically , this play is a mixture of three genres :tragedy , comedy , and theatre of absurd. Harlod Bloom in
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Beckett feigned these conversations to reflect his point of view about the ridiculousness of life, and also to indicate that life is just a big lie and illogical. Alongside with those genres , comes the theatre of absurd ; it is a new trend in the modern theatre , the main purpose of it is to show their anger from society , life, and destiny. They wanted to define their existence in life but they did not find any suitable answer for it. Absurdity means that everything is ridiculous and free of purpose. This play is a full application of this trend. It intentionally represents the human actions as senseless, absurd, and useless (Bloom 29). Concerning the setting of this play, it takes place in a country road near a tree and this is the only place in the play. During the two acts the characters do not shift to another place. In his book casebook on waiting for Godot Ruby Cohn analyzes the significance of that setting. This place with no evidence nor any identity , it also does not have any specific name or any remarkable signs. This could help the audience to focus clearly in the dialogues between the characters. Also the emptiness of the road refers to the world with its isolation and strangeness (Cohn …show more content…
Audience would be entertained and amused with the characters’ sense of humor, but eventually it would be very difficult to understand the mail purpose or the themes of the play. Lois Gordon in her book Reading Godot sheds the lights upon the major and the minor themes in this play. The major are named as (waiting, Christianity, and freedom) , while the minor ones are named as (Time , and suffering). Waiting is the predominant theme of this play, it could also be named as Boredom or Nihilism. As it is quite clear from the title of the drama, waiting is the main action done by the characters, they spend most of their time waiting for someone who will never come. It is a clear indication of their bad need to salvation from the world and its hardships. They also seek for a transformation for their absurd and ridiculous life. Eventually, as a result of the non arrival of Godot, a sense of boredom overtakes both characters (Gordon 22). Moreover, nihilism is repeated man times throughout the play as in “nothing to be done” ( I. 11). Both characters try to spend their time in a good way but they fail. Finally, nobody comes, no change happens in their life, and the mode of nihilism is still henpecking the characters (Gordon
Beckett feigned these conversations to reflect his point of view about the ridiculousness of life, and also to indicate that life is just a big lie and illogical. Alongside with those genres , comes the theatre of absurd ; it is a new trend in the modern theatre , the main purpose of it is to show their anger from society , life, and destiny. They wanted to define their existence in life but they did not find any suitable answer for it. Absurdity means that everything is ridiculous and free of purpose. This play is a full application of this trend. It intentionally represents the human actions as senseless, absurd, and useless (Bloom 29). Concerning the setting of this play, it takes place in a country road near a tree and this is the only place in the play. During the two acts the characters do not shift to another place. In his book casebook on waiting for Godot Ruby Cohn analyzes the significance of that setting. This place with no evidence nor any identity , it also does not have any specific name or any remarkable signs. This could help the audience to focus clearly in the dialogues between the characters. Also the emptiness of the road refers to the world with its isolation and strangeness (Cohn …show more content…
Audience would be entertained and amused with the characters’ sense of humor, but eventually it would be very difficult to understand the mail purpose or the themes of the play. Lois Gordon in her book Reading Godot sheds the lights upon the major and the minor themes in this play. The major are named as (waiting, Christianity, and freedom) , while the minor ones are named as (Time , and suffering). Waiting is the predominant theme of this play, it could also be named as Boredom or Nihilism. As it is quite clear from the title of the drama, waiting is the main action done by the characters, they spend most of their time waiting for someone who will never come. It is a clear indication of their bad need to salvation from the world and its hardships. They also seek for a transformation for their absurd and ridiculous life. Eventually, as a result of the non arrival of Godot, a sense of boredom overtakes both characters (Gordon 22). Moreover, nihilism is repeated man times throughout the play as in “nothing to be done” ( I. 11). Both characters try to spend their time in a good way but they fail. Finally, nobody comes, no change happens in their life, and the mode of nihilism is still henpecking the characters (Gordon