SAMUEL BECKETT
Samuel Beckett was born in 1906 in a Dublin suburb, into a Protestant middle-class family and he was educated at a
boarding school.
He moved to Paris, where he had been appointed as a lecturer in English and came under the influence of
Existentialism; so, he settled permanently in Paris and wrote most of his works first in French, then translated them
into English.
Beckett began his literary career as a short-story writer and a novelist, and he was one of a group of dramatists who
developed the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd”.
They were based on the concept that man's life appears to be without meaningless and aimless and that human
beings cannot communicate and understand each other.
The first tragedy that this style represents is: “Waiting for Godot”, which has achieved immense success, infact it was
regarded as the most original influential play of the time and its protagonists became emblems of the Absurd.
Beckett later wrote: Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, Happy Days and Breath.
He died in France in December 1989.
WAITING FOR GODOT
Plot
Waiting for Godot consists of conversations between two homeless men, Vladimir and Estragon, or Didi and Gogo,
who are waiting; they argue, get bored, repeat themselves, contemplate suicide and wait and they never live in the
present but think about what has happened before and about a non-existent future.
As opposed to the two protagonists, Pozzo and Lucky, who are physically linked to each other by a rope as well as by
the tyrannical relationship of master and servant, make continuous purposeless journeys to fill their existence.
At the end the tramps are waiting for a mysterious character called Godot, who will never come.
Absence of a traditional structure
The play has no development in time, since there seems to be no past or future, just a repetitive present.
It has no setting but a country road and a bare tree. In fact, on the stage there is just a tree, from the very beginning
to the end. In the first act it is bare and in the second one it has just two or three leaves.
The tree says the difference between the two acts. It has no plot, because events do not mean anything in the course
of time. It has no characters in the traditional sense, as they don’t have personalities. It has no action, since the static
situation of waiting is described. It has no dialogue in the conventional sense, because they talk about nothing.
The symmetrical structure
The two acts are symmetrically built. The play unit effect is, in fact, its symmetry:
othe stage is divided into two halves by the tree;
othe human race is divided into two, Didi and Gogo, then into four, Didi-Gogo and PozzoLucky. Then, with the
boy's arrival, into two again, mankind and Godot;
othe characters' actions throughout the play Estragon tries to take off one of his boots, while Vladimir takes
off his hat and peers into it. Both tramps need to take off their hat to think, whereas Lucky and Pozzo need to
do the opposite.
