May 1

Casey May
Paul Haney
LIB112A
Paper II
The Realities of Existentialism and the Relevance of Social Media in Waiting For Godot
Why are we alive? What happens when we die? Is there an afterlife? And if there
isnt, what are we doing here? These are the kinds of questions that rack the minds of
readers of one of Samuel Becketts most famous works, Waiting For Godot. This mindtwister of a play brings up a multitude of questions interlaced with traces of advanced
topics such as morality, Christianity, and most of all, existentialism. The play is centered
around a pair of stagnant characters, both at odds with their strange task of waiting for an
unknown figure called Godot. Neither one of these men has ever seen Godot, nor do
they know what message he will deliver when he arrives. Throughout the two acts,
Estragon and Vladimir endure their waiting and attempt to entertain themselves through
meaningless activities and run-on conversations. At the close of each act, Didi and Gogo
receive word that Godot is not coming, but will surely be there tomorrow. At surface
value, there is nothing holding these two men to their duty of waiting for someone they
dont even know. The question of their free will comes into question: do Estragon and
Vladimir have the free will to leave? Didi and Gogos free will is available to them in
terms of existentialism. But because the nature of their existence is only applicable in
terms of the world of play, which includes their driving force to claim their existence
which is staying and waiting for Godot, if they exercised their free will to leave
abandoning their purpose, they would cease to exist.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, existentialism can be defined as:

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A chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse
doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an
unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume
ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge
of what is right or wrong or good or bad. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Def., Existentialism)
Existentialism as a way of thinking focuses on the nature of existence and the idea that
nothing exists past our own consciousness. It encourages people to define their own
meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational
universe (Mastin, 2008). In the world of Waiting for Godot, Didi and Gogo without a
doubt live in an irrational universe. But for the pair to define their own meaning in life
and try to make rational decisions seems to be outside the realms of expectancy for these
two tramps.
Looking through existential lenses, any human being has the power to choose
what their own life means because life itself has no meaning. In terms of their
responsibilities (or lack thereof) to the universe, Estragon and Vladimir could have
absolutely said forget this Godot guy, lets go get some fresh carrots. Then again, if
they did abandon their waiting, the entirety of their purpose in the world of the play
(since the world of a play is the only place that character exists) would be abandoned. As
Nick Mount says in Godot Without Existentialism, In Beckett's plays, the phenomenon is
all there is. To insist on anything else is to install a noumenal world in which neither he
nor his plays believed (Mount, 31).

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A characters purpose and driving force for their behavior and choices lies in the
pen of the author. Beckett created a world for Estragon and Vladimir that challenges the
idea that there is anything outside of the world on the stage of which they stand. If they
were to leave, not only would the play abandon its purpose, but the characters would be
faced without a purpose in their own lives. The entirety of Waiting For Godot surrounds
the central question of whether Godot will ever arrive. It becomes apparent by the end of
the play that he will not, but we can infer from the final lines of the play that Didi and
Gogo feel stuck in their waiting for him due to external existential forces.
Existential thinking proposes the idea that the only time that human beings
actually exist is when they are conscious. When a human being is conscious, they are
constantly shaping and creating the world that they live in through the choices that they
make for themselves. If Estragon and Vladimir can leave because the unstructured
universe gives them the free will to carve their own paths, why wouldnt they? When
Godot doesnt come in the final act, the pair has a final exchange. Vladimir asks, Well?
Shall we go? to which Estragon replies, Yes, lets go. They do not move (Act II).
The pair is trapped between two paths they could take.
When Estragon and Vladimir are faced with the decision to wait for Godot or not,
they are given two options: First, they could keep waiting for Godot and continue to exist
in the world of the play for the duration of time. Or, they could abandon their waiting and
move on. But their entire purpose in the world of the play is to wait for Godot. With that
being said, if the two characters abandoned their waiting, they would be left without a
purpose. So, they do not move. The fear of what would happen instead of waiting for
Godot is too great for them to change what they are doing.

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Waiting gives them a purpose to live; it is at the core of what drives these
characters. Without that driving force that creates who they are, they would no longer
exist. This conundrum is equivocal to mortality, and what happens to a person when they
die. When an individual dies, they are no longer a conscious being. If consciousness were
the only source human beings have to exist, then after death would be...nothing. This
relates to the problem Didi and Gogo face if they wait, they are alive and driven. But if
they lose that drive and purpose then they would be...nothing. So of course, Estragon and
Vladimir choose not to move. We can infer that this involves continuing on the path they
were on during the play, and finding new mindless and meaningless activities in order to
fill their time.
So what happens now to us? If existentialism is right and nothing exists after we
die, why live at all? And if all we have is this life right now, how do we fill our time
while we wait for death? In the world today, human beings ask these questions about their
own existence how do we fill the time we have in life? Something that our world has
presented us in the recent years is a new way of life called social media. Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and countless other portals of communication fall under the
social media umbrella. All of it is accessible right at our fingertips on our laptops,
tablets, and smartphones. Facebook in particular is extremely comparable to the story of
Waiting For Godot. People spend incredible amounts of time every day scrolling through
Facebook, trying to pass the time. There is no end to Facebook; it just goes on and on.
This limitless system of communication has no meaning of life. Although it was
designed to be a mode of communication, nowadays people seem to be so addicted to it
that it has become a way to mindlessly pass the time, while the user waits for something

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to happen (whether that is on social media itself or in their own life outside of
technology), that will spark their interest.
This kind of behavior is exactly what Didi and Gogo were doing while they were
waiting for Godot. In Act I, the pair participates in meaningless banter until something
interesting comes along. Pozzo and Lucky, two characters who ignite curiosity in the
tramps enter the scene and add strange and entertaining moments in Estragon and
Vladimirs lives. Pozzo even offers Lucky up as a source of their entertainment, saying,
What do you prefer? Shall we have him dance, or sing, or recite, or think, or (Act I).
This kind of mindless and random entertainment is the exact thing that Facebook users
crave. In Nick Mounts essay Waiting For Godot without Existentialism, he says of
Estragon and Vladimir that, all they do is suffer, and play games to fill the void
(Mount, 33). In the same way, that is what human beings do in our world with our
reliance on social media. In a recent study reported by ABC News, the average person
checks their smartphone 150 times a day (ABC News, 2013). Another source claims that
number is closer to 221 times a day, putting the average person at about 1,500 times that
they check their phone per week (BetaNews, 2014). This is just to check on social media
sites! This addiction to social media as a means to pass the time is a way for people in our
world today to cope with their own suffering and fill the void in their lives.
Estragon and Vladimir faced the conundrum of sitting around and continuing to
wait for Godot, or to give up and move on into the unknown. Within this struggle is the
question of what to do in either of these scenarios, and how to fill up their seemingly
meaningless time while coping with their suffering. Human beings who utilize social
media are faced with a similar existential crisis, in how to use it to distract them from

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their own personal suffering while waiting for what comes next. The mindless activities
that the tramps engage in and peoples dependencies on social media are crutches used to
avoid lifes existential crisis at hand.

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Works Cited
Allan, Darren. "How Many times a Day Does the Average Person Check Their Phone?
221, Apparently." BetaNews. September 2014. Web.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove, 1954. Print.
"Cellphone Users Check Phones 150x/Day and Other Internet Fun Facts." ABC News.
ABC News Network, 29 May 2013. Web.
Existentialism. Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2015. Web.
Mastin, Luke. "Existentialism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of
Philosophy."Existentialism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy.
Web.
Mount, Nick. "Waiting For Godot without Existentialism." Course Handout. MCPHSU,
LIB112: Spring 2015. Instructor: Paul Haney.