Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

and
the search for identity and meaning

PhD lecturer Andreia Irina Suciu

“Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău,
Romania

I. Introduction
Samuel Beckett‟s most known and appreciated play was first published in French (En
attendant Godot) in 1952 (written between October 1948 and January 1949), staged in French in
Paris in 1953, in English (bearing also the subtitle A Tragicomedy in Two Acts) in 1955 at the Arts
Theatre in London, after having been translated by the author himself. It was seen from the
beginning as a rule-breaking play and yet it was appreciated for the message beyond its surface.
The beauty with Waiting for Godot consists in the variety of interpretations (or rather
speculations) that have been offered, in the almost inexhaustible possibilities of finding new ones
and being perfectly entitled in doing so as long as Samuel Beckett himself said that “The key word
in my plays is „perhaps‟”.1
Some of the innovations included the handling of form and subject matter, the exploitation
of space and characters‟ movement. The two-act play employs first and foremost the idea of
circularity and similarity, creating the impression of almost perfectly repetitious structures. The
acts happen in the same place, at the same time in consecutive days, thrusting the characters in the
mechanisms of a very exact machine that never fails to repeat a cycle (of the characters‟
existence). Beckett stated clearly that “the task of the artist is to find a form that accommodates
the mess.”2

II. Subject matter

In what the subject matter is concerned, the generally accepted idea is that it presents the
tedium and meaningless of life and the way in which people are, more or less consciously, caught

1
Worton, Michael, ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Endgame’: Theatre as Text, in Pilling, John (ed.) (1994): The
Cambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge University Press, p. 67.
2
Apud Worton, Michael, op.cit., p. 74.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

within this trap. The technique for achieving such a frame is the elimination of plot and the
creation of a timeless universe in which decades, years, seasons seem not to have a meaning, the
human memory almost fails to remember them, in which life moves in a permanent present day, in
a succession of permanent nows. This fact is not obvious necessarily from the beginning, but only
when the reader/ spectator witnesses no change in act II as compared to act I does he become
aware of the loop in which he is trapped. Only then do we understand that some circumstances
presented at the beginning of act I are echoes of a potential act 0 in which the characters seem to
have performed the exact same actions and we might as easily imagine a third act which is similar
to whatever had happened in the previous acts.
The play was seen as an extended metaphor for the human life and a “modern morality
play”, whose characters stand for the human unhappiness and contemplative life projected against
the background of the fallen state of man (Vladimir and Estragon) or errors of a practical life
(Pozzo and Lucky)3. The human condition is pictured as one of ignorance (of their own position
and role), delusion (their fixed false belief into the coming of Godot) and self-delusion (the
disguising of their purposelessness in life behind the illusion of having a goal which might bring a
clarification of their condition or even the awaiting for one‟s pills as in Endgame which would be
synonymous to a benumbing of the senses), paralysis (their inability to come out of their
monotonous existence despite repeated attempts and mutual urgings), and intermittent surprisingly
coherent and profound flashes of wit (see the surprising aphoristic observations of one or other of
the characters in the very middle of incoherent flow of line and speech) as well as traces of human
sympathy (see Vladimir‟s and Estragon‟s inconstant compassion towards Lucky‟s condition) – a
complete transition from fear to hope, from despair to renewed expectancy. It is exactly this state
of paralysis and self-inducement into such a state which gives meaning to Beckett‟s characters; the
“deadening habit” (“Habit is a great deadener”, p. 84) into which they toss and turn is the only one
which keeps them alive. Samuel Beckett himself presented such a philosophy as a key note in
one‟s life:
Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, […] the guarantee of a
dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence. […] Breathing is habit. Life is habit. Or
rather life is a succession of habits, since the individual is a succession of individuals […] The
4
creation of the universe did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.
Paradoxically they have in this way the impression of endlessness of their lives because though
they feel the passing of time in their decrepit appearance, habit brings the perspective of a
continuity which pushes away the end indeterminately.

3
Graver, Lawrence (1989/ 2004): Samuel Beckett: ‘Waiting for Godot’, Cambridge University Press, p. 14.
4
Apud Worton, Michael, op.cit., pp. 72–73.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

Because the play seems to explain the devices that it uses (Vladimir and Estragon argue
whether the events of the evening can be circumscribed to the techniques of pantomime, circus or
music-hall, pp. 34–35; some of the themes are clearly stated; the philosophy used is many times
put plainly in the open and in the mouths of the characters) the play becomes a “comment upon
theatre”5, a metatheatre. It is for this reason that the reader/ spectator looks not for an
identification with the characters and their situation, but he looks for an understanding of the laws
of theatre.
There were many interpretations that identified a wide gamut of religious issues being
debated in the play: sin – the sin of having been born from which they can never expiate,
repentance, salvation and damnation, hell, bearing one‟s cross, reading the Bible as literature not
as dogma, the use of the symbol of the tree reminding of the Tree of Knowledge, the relationship
between characters resemblant to that of Cain and Abel who are even mentioned in the play. The
waiting for Godot was associated with the waiting of God as a presence to fill our souls or our
empty lives, but in the spirit of complete absurd drama, when being asked what Godot stands for,
Beckett answered: “If I knew, I would have said so in the play.”6
The play was also interpreted as bringing political issues on stage, the context brought in
front of the audience being that of the post-war political state whose actors in various circles have
been stripped of their identities:
The concept of the „state‟ is an abstract one, even though it exists in terms of political reality, as a
result of a democratic process in which we have all participated. Somewhere between the sense of
democratic process which belongs to us all, the procedure of voting and the setting up of the
bureaucratic apparatus, the „men‟ who run it have become faceless, anonymous, and in the course of
7
this process, the rest of us are mere ciphers, bewildered and dislocated.
The use of blindness towards the outside world (Hamm from Endgame, Pozzo from
Waiting for Godot) may suggest to the reader that such a privation could allow them to redirect
their alternate senses of perception and feel the world differently. When he uses silence (Film) and
pantomime (Act without Words II) the author urges his audience to investigate the possibilities of
new sensorial and physical abilities or, ultimately, he urges his characters to relate to one another
in a different manner and to build bridges at more than one level.
Other various issues from whose perspective the play can be read include: the problem of
sacrifice, suicide, repentance, hope of salvation, questioning ontological/ religious/ philosophical
issues in life, death vs. living (living a dead life), complementary living, coping with an ageless
age in a meaningless existence, the practicality of life vs. the dream, etc.

5
Idem, p. 74.
6
Apud Worton, Michael, op.cit., p. 67.
7
Wandor, Michelene, op. cit., p. 49.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

III. Characters in search of… (a) Godot

The characters are presented in a variety of activities – they eat, sleep, talk, argue, play
games, exercise, swap hats, contemplate suicide or comically and vainly try to perform it – as a
defence towards the paralysis that we were explaining earlier. They are most of the time presented
in couples or pairs, a device whose main function is that of presenting at work the principles of
power, domination and exploitation and only too rarely friendship and mutual help or
compelementarity, the last three emerging especially out of the need for integration or the need for
protection.
That is how we encounter in the plays couples of the sort: the practical (Vladimir, Clov)
and the dreamer (Estragon, Hamm), the persistent and the volatile, the servant and the master
(Lucky and Pozzo, Clov and Hamm), reminder of the past and a denier of the past or of the utility
of remembering, the physical and the mental, the pragmatic and the spiritual, they (re)present
different aspects of the psyche or drives of the id. The playwright‟s main intention is that of
presenting them in their essence manifest in one circumstance of their life without connecting it
either with past events or future plans, but projecting everything in a dilated present moment.
The interpretations of one of the most important characters (paradoxically, one who does
not even appear in the play) have multiplied discussions on the play and have always given rise to
renewals of the subject. Thus, Godot was interpreted as God, death (the German word “tod”
means “death”), a benefactor, but he has rather a function than a meaning. He is a waited-for
presence (of an event, a thing, a person or death itself) that keeps the characters chained in and to
existence, he is hope, he is achievement, he is eternity, he is whatever makes us see the life-as-
waiting meaning of our existence.
The main interpretation of Godot as God seems to have been built on false grounds for two
reasons at least – Beckett had written the play in French, therefore an English echo would have
probably existed only subconsciously in his mind (as he himself admitted); another reason would
be the British pronunciation of the word, with the stress on the first syllable (as Beckett himself
suggested it should be done), a pronunciation which again drives the name from away any divine
explanation.
Other interpretations have dealt with linguistic explanations. Thus, the French slang
“godillot”, meaning “boot”, transmits probably the message that the characters are waiting for the
right pair of boots (Beckett emphasized the importance of feet in the play), or at least one, to take
them far away. Otherwise they cannot move, they are trapped and, humorously putting it, they will
always long for blisters on their feet.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

Another interpretation considered the Irish etymology leading to exploiting the

possibilities of “go deo”, “eternity”, which would probably be associated with the type of absurd
(pseudo)eternity the characters are caught in because of their impossibility to feel temporal
coordinates and because of the inability to act in a human conventional temporal span. Their day
seems or their days seem universal and with no end as long the cycle never reaches and end. Other
translations of the same Irish syntagm as “for ever”, “indefinitely” stress the characters‟ act of
waiting as the only meaningful act in their lives or so as to show their entrapment in a dimension
of time which is not measured anymore by the clock, but by their endurance.
Fundamentally, all of Beckett‟s characters seem to be waiting for something to happen or for
someone to come into their lives so as wake them up into living. Otherwise it will seem to them
that it was not a midwife who helped their delivery into this world but a gravedigger who
delivered them from a state of Shandyan consciousness straight into a state of Beckettian dead
living:
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the
forceps. (Act II, p. 84)

IV. Idiosyncratic time and space

Another very important aspect in the play is that of time and the characters‟ perception of
it. The characters either feel a very wide gap between the present moment and the past (signalling
at the fact that their existence seems to have been lived up to a present moment at which it stopped
into an ever repetitious spiral which does not give them the possibility to distinguish differences
anymore, but instead they get swallowed in routine animateness which restricts them to the life of
the body) and they feel a regret for what it had been (reason for which they try to re-enact what
had once brought them joy and gave meaning to their lives), or they do not remember it. The only
choice in life so as to fill their time (”It‟ll pass the time”, p. 14, says Vladimir at his justifying
telling stories of the past or about the meanings of some things) is to give expression to a series of
incongruous and yet harmless speech and to repeat activities and find comfort and defence in the
certainty that they brought. This back and forth game (forth to wherever they seem to want to be
moving and back to their location and current state) is meant to give the characters the illusion of
an active waiting, the impression that they surpass passivity and move towards a some kind of
activity which creates for them the false impression of mastering reality.
In what space is concerned, it seems that Beckett moved from writing novels to writing
fiction because he felt the need to create a narrower space in which he could control better both
the location and movement of the characters as well as other devices which contribute to the
building of the space (light, the possibility to foreground a character and background another,
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

exploiting low or up positions, etc.). But it is not the narrowness of the space in the play that
creates the feeling of oppression upon the characters for it is an open space – it is their inability to
move beyond the imaginary limits of such a space that leads to their helplessness.
One important element of this space is the presence of the tree. Subject to multiple
interpretations8, this symbol seems to be in the end paradoxically devoid of any meaning since
various interpretations annul one another. The tree was interpreted as a means of measuring time
optimistically because of the appearance of four or five leaves in act two. But then again the
message of the entire play is the denying of any movement towards the future. Another
interpretation was that of the tree standing for knowledge as a revival of the archetypal tree from
the Garden of Eden which would only mean the bringing of mortality. But the tree is also regarded
less allegorically as a gallows-tree (perfect for hanging), a paradoxical mutual exclusive symbol
for both change and stability, the Cross or Judas‟s tree, a false hiding place (contributing to the
characters‟ self-delusion of finding a solution to escape their plight), the name of a yoga balancing
exercise, or a symbol of sorrow. The ambiguity of the use of such a symbol is wonderfully
presented by the paradoxical, absurd perception that the characters express at one time by saying
that they are not even sure it is a bush or shrub (p. 16).
Another symbol which is somehow connected to the building of space as an absorbing
whole is that of the rope. It could have (as other symbols or metaphors in Beckett) more than one
function. First and foremost it is a means of controlling and subduing humans (in the relationship
between Pozzo and Lucky). The reader/ spectator is appalled by such a relationship but he
interprets it through the mask of bitter laughter because he cannot admit that he can be identified
with such types of characters. Another interpretation is the one suggesting the idea of the
characters being tied to a spatial dimension or to a temporal axis (or better said to temporal dot on
the time axis) suggesting the idea of entrapment. Or we could understand that the author signals to
the reader/ spectator the characters‟ need to be tied to an idea so as to give them the illusion that
they have a purpose, that they have stability and something to cling on, but, at the same time, it is
the rope that can also bring their death – and of course in the typical Beckettian style they do not
have a palpable rope and they use, comically enough, the cord from Estragon‟s pants.
The time and space in which they are inertly stuck represent for the characters an odd
mixture of freedom infringement and purpose giving. They seem to be entities which have an
existence outside the human perception which both entrap the characters and anchor them in a
more or less false mission:
Let us not waste time in idle discourse! […] at this place, at this moment of time, all
mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it before it is too late! Let us

8
See Michael Worton‟s interpretations, op.cit., pp. 76–78.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! […] But that is not the
questions. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen
to know the answer. (Act II, p. 74)
says Vladimir in what seems to be a fully lucid moment in which he performs a meta-theatrical
function speaking with the voice of the author and offering a glimpse of one of the main directions
of interpreting the meanings of the play.

V. Experimenting with language

One of the most important issues in the play is the handling of language. It is the device
which both admiringly amazes and puzzlingly infuriates the reader/ spectator. Exchanging lines in
the play is like passing the ball in a game. One is quickly being given the ball and he passes it
back more out of reflex than after a process of thinking. Thus, language abounds in word-play,
rounds of repartee/ retorts and that is why it seems dislocated, disjointed, fragmented. The
dialogues or monologues of the characters seem “a collage of fragments of reality and splinters of
experience”9. They signal perfectly at the transition from the reflexive type of modernist writing
towards the writing of postmodernism with its turning to parody, pastiche and fragmentation.

Niklaus Gessner10 identified ten different modes of disintegration of language:

 misunderstandings;
 double-meaning answers;
 monologues as an indication of the inability to communicate;
 clichés;
 repetitions of synonyms;
 inability to find the right words;
 chaotic nonsense;
 telegraphic style of shouted commands;
 the loss of grammatical structure and the use of elliptical structures
 the dropping of marks of punctuation.
The purpose of creating such an eclectic type of discourse is to signal at the impossibility
of language to bear valid, unidirectional meanings. The author wants to make the reader resort to
the decoding of other means of communication because of the apparently failed verbal
communication as well as because he wants to open the universe towards other possibilities of the

9
Klotz, H. (ed.) (1985): Post-modern Visions, New York, apud Harvey, David (1990/ 2007): The Condition of
Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Blackwell, Cambridge MA & Oxford UKp. 82.
10
Gessner, Niklaus, The Inadequacy of Language, apud Martin Esslin, 1977, op.cit., p. 86.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

human being of manifesting into the world. This is what critics have appreciated mostly in
Beckett‟s work:
Language is no longer presented as a vehicle for direct communication or as a screen through which
one can see darkly the psychic movements of a character. Rather it is used in all its grammatical,
syntactical and – especially – intertextual force to make the reader/ spectator aware of how much we
depend on language and of how much we need to be wary of the codifications that language
11
imposes upon us.
This is the reason for which he looked for a greater freedom in achieving communication
through silence. Michael Worton12 makes a classification of different types of silence and pauses
and the functions that they have. Thus, he identified:
 silences of inadequacies (characters cannot find their words);
 silences of repression (characters are verbally benumbed by the attitude of their interlocutor or
by the incapacity of breaking a social taboo);
 silences of anticipation (characters await the response of the other);
 silences in which the reader/ spectator can intervene creatively and speculate upon meanings
and continuations. All these lead to a fragmentation of the text into speeches and episodes that
eschew to present a central, dominant idea.
The problem of naming is also very important in the play as it gives definition to the
characters or it encodes some of the important issues of the play. Thus, the names of the four
characters have been interpreted as representatives of the great four powers of the world in the
immediate context following World War II. Vladimir (a Slavic name, probably Russian), Estragon
(with French origins), Pozzo (bearing an Italian musicality), Lucky (a typical English name) seem
to render the absurd relationships in which these four great nations were engaged at the times the
play was written.
Estragon‟s and Vladimir names have been interpreted as marking even better the
complementarity between them: Estragon may be a perversion of the term “estrogen” (the
feminine); Vladimir means etymologically “to rule over, to be strong” (the masculine).
Their nicknames – Gogo and Didi – could be a reference to their childishness or they could
direct the reader towards a humorous/ parodic interpretation of the two clown-like names and
characters all together. Clown-like appearances seem to be from a certain perspective even Lucky
and Pozzo (especially the musicality of their names would lead to such an interpretation).
According to Bernard Dukore13 in Didi, Gogo and the Absent Godot, another interpretation
for their names is that Gogo stands for the incomplete ego ([e]go[e]go), the "missing pleasure

11
Pilling, John, op.cit, p. 68.
12
Worton, Michael, op.cit., p. 75.
13
Apud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

principle", while Didi (id id) is the instinctual and irrational part or the subversion of the rational
principle. Godot would have in this interpretation the role of the superego.
Other characters who are quoted in the play as exponents of the new generation are
“Fartov” and “Belcher” in Lucky's monologue – names which add more evidently to the parody
that the playwright builds against very pretentious, exaggerated scholars and their manner of
speaking in academic speeches. Such scholars perform their analyses in the “Acacacacademy of
Anthropopopometry” – the assonance is only meant to deride at the world of academia.
“Steinweg” and “Peterman” (German “stein”=stone; Greek “peter”=stone) are other characters
appearing in Lucky‟s monologue showing the dryness of speech (“dry stone/ stone dry”) and its
impossibility of producing meaning anymore.
Other more daringly constructed names show the author‟s revolt against the contemporary
individual whose debased personality is rendered by cognomens which deny the existence of the
mind and situate them in the bowels of the physical existence. Thus, the higher or lower circles of
society are populated with characters named “Testew” (“testes”), “Cunard” (“cunt”), Possy”
(“pussy”), Feckham” (“fuck him”) driving us towards the condemning of the overwhelming
instinctuality of the individual.
Functioning at the level of paradigms, at the level of the syntagm or at the level at the
discourse of the character, the experimenting with language is more daring then ever in Beckett‟s
absurd plays and it wants to attention towards the meaningless verbal message people exchange
most of the times as a consequence of the minimal implication of the individual in the life of the
other and because of the state of general apathy in which we live our lives.

VI. Conclusions
Incomprehensible or subtle meaningful, humorous or ironic, lethargic or inciting, Samuel
Beckett‟s plays have brought a new trend in the world of drama which may even have laid the
foundations of postmodern fragmented type of writing. The new individual feels more pressingly
than ever the loss and entrapment in a world in which relationships are less and less strongly built
and more and more exploitive. Language has no meaning anymore for its argumentative powers.
In this absurd situation, man has as only possibility to continue living the bitter smile and the
tangibility of the present moment.
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

TEXTS FOR ANALYSIS

TEXT 1
Samuel Beckett‟s Waiting for Godot – Lucky‟s monologue (act I, pp. 42–43)

LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a
personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who
from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some
exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those
who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames
if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so
blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not
so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the
Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established
beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the
labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons
unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all
doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of
Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew
and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of
alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently
simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the
practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding
conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter
winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline and succedanea in a word I resume and
concurrently simultaneously for reasons unknown to shrink and dwindle in spite of the tennis I
resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons
unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more
for reasons unknown but time will tell to shrink and dwindle I resume Fulham Clapham in a word
the dead loss per caput since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce
per caput approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round
figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter
what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the
labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the
light the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the
seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and than the earth namely the air and
then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold
alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode
of stones in the great deeps the great cold an sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons
unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short
in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull to shrink
 Beckett’s search for identity and meaning – PhD lecturer Andreia Suciu

and waste and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis
on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the
skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labours abandoned left unfinished graver still
abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara
in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) tennis... the
stones... so calm... Cunard... unfinished...

Questions:
1. What is the style imitated and eventually parodied that is anticipated in the beginning of
the speech? What are the linguistic traits that support your opinion?
2. Make an analysis of all the proper names mentioned and mention to what they allude.
3. What recurrent refrain does Lucky use – an aspect also constituting one of the main issues
of the entire play?
4. What kind of character do the three concepts – “apathies”, “aphasia”, “athambia” –
introduce?
5. What are the literary, religious and social issues alluded to in Lucky‟s speech?
6. How does the employment of synonymic series of words function?
7. To what general characteristic of the human being do the sexual references allude?
8. How is the idea of man acquiring knowledge being presented and related to the past?
9. Can you identify elements of satire in the speech?
10. Can the fragment be regarded as a manifesto against oppression or as an example of
experiment with language?