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A review by dyno8426
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
5.0
I think all of us have heard of this thing where if we take any word and keep repeating it over and over again, it starts sounding weird at first and devoid of meaning when you have exercised it enough. That pretty much is the underlying approach that this brilliant play (a critic called it "where nothing happens, twice!") takes to convey its existential message of meaninglessness in human lives and an equally existent desperate and interminable pursuit towards a meaning.
Through the unnecessary routine actions and time-filler conversations, we see our two samples from humanity waiting for someone named Godot. It soon becomes evident upon reading that the dialogues and interactions are allusions to the lives that we lead as part of our insignificant survival. We see how painfully boring this wait becomes at times and how desperately the hopes of the two are tethered to the arrival of somebody (spoiler alert!) who never comes. It conveys a distressing psychological necessity that humans assign to acquire a sense of purpose towards whatever they are either pursuing, or waiting for. This passive symbology acquires its form through inaction and moping around with zests of the much awaited and just impending meeting with Godot, and equally sprinkled realisations of hopelessness attached with the unknown. The dark humour in it finds it funny to say that the escape from such an uneventful existence is not far away from those who participate in such a rigamarole - a tree with a well endowed branch. What the characters seem to lack is just a rope in both the acts, and a courage to try it out. Even darker allusions to violence and cruelty that humans inflict on each other comes through other characters - one affluent person and his voice-commanded slave. It doesn't get more depressing than seeing these two caricatures of civilisation's persistent and repetitive success in finding ways to make lives of certain sections more painful and miserable in the process. Consequences of a false sense of purpose is never more frightening when it starts justifying the existence of both the enslavers and the enslaved. This play was also written after the Second World War when the survivors had had enough time to recuperate and start getting back on their feet; to begin thinking again on what they should do next. Naturally, it also has a subtle yet important critique on war.
Although, according to me, the most compelling statement that it makes through such a mad-hatter type discourse which seems to be unreal (in the sense of being figments of two possibly crazy persons talking to each other) is the imperfections of human consciousness, particularly in the form of forgetfulness which results as an inevitable consequence of routine and a natural tendency for developing habit. The two acts in the play stretch over two different days and the characters' lapses of memory are just exaggerations of how repetitively going on with our days and seeking the refuge of regularity acts a catalyst for an agreeable form of amnesia (both collective and individual). Like Gogo and Didi, all we are left with is a phantom sense of calling to meet somebody (God? Destiny? Epiphany of some real Meaning to our lives?) and pass our time - either waiting and fidgeting, or roaming around doing something. There's no guarantee that somebody will show up. But the hope that this feeling of having an "appointment" is comforting and numbing for the time being. Until the next day...
An often seen attribute of works that acquire a stature of genius is the form or appearance of being simple and effortless. This play gives that same feeling where in its external but consciously deceitful simplicity of hardly-having-any-substance, it has a philosophical weight and an assertive force that is hard to forget or ignore. To look at it working in a meta-manner: by laying itself as barely haphazardly and randomly seeming fashion, it brings out the same desire to find a hidden meaning or some sort of inherent purpose which could justify the existence of this play itself; hence, it sort of uses itself to prove its point. Loved it.
Through the unnecessary routine actions and time-filler conversations, we see our two samples from humanity waiting for someone named Godot. It soon becomes evident upon reading that the dialogues and interactions are allusions to the lives that we lead as part of our insignificant survival. We see how painfully boring this wait becomes at times and how desperately the hopes of the two are tethered to the arrival of somebody (spoiler alert!) who never comes. It conveys a distressing psychological necessity that humans assign to acquire a sense of purpose towards whatever they are either pursuing, or waiting for. This passive symbology acquires its form through inaction and moping around with zests of the much awaited and just impending meeting with Godot, and equally sprinkled realisations of hopelessness attached with the unknown. The dark humour in it finds it funny to say that the escape from such an uneventful existence is not far away from those who participate in such a rigamarole - a tree with a well endowed branch. What the characters seem to lack is just a rope in both the acts, and a courage to try it out. Even darker allusions to violence and cruelty that humans inflict on each other comes through other characters - one affluent person and his voice-commanded slave. It doesn't get more depressing than seeing these two caricatures of civilisation's persistent and repetitive success in finding ways to make lives of certain sections more painful and miserable in the process. Consequences of a false sense of purpose is never more frightening when it starts justifying the existence of both the enslavers and the enslaved. This play was also written after the Second World War when the survivors had had enough time to recuperate and start getting back on their feet; to begin thinking again on what they should do next. Naturally, it also has a subtle yet important critique on war.
Although, according to me, the most compelling statement that it makes through such a mad-hatter type discourse which seems to be unreal (in the sense of being figments of two possibly crazy persons talking to each other) is the imperfections of human consciousness, particularly in the form of forgetfulness which results as an inevitable consequence of routine and a natural tendency for developing habit. The two acts in the play stretch over two different days and the characters' lapses of memory are just exaggerations of how repetitively going on with our days and seeking the refuge of regularity acts a catalyst for an agreeable form of amnesia (both collective and individual). Like Gogo and Didi, all we are left with is a phantom sense of calling to meet somebody (God? Destiny? Epiphany of some real Meaning to our lives?) and pass our time - either waiting and fidgeting, or roaming around doing something. There's no guarantee that somebody will show up. But the hope that this feeling of having an "appointment" is comforting and numbing for the time being. Until the next day...
An often seen attribute of works that acquire a stature of genius is the form or appearance of being simple and effortless. This play gives that same feeling where in its external but consciously deceitful simplicity of hardly-having-any-substance, it has a philosophical weight and an assertive force that is hard to forget or ignore. To look at it working in a meta-manner: by laying itself as barely haphazardly and randomly seeming fashion, it brings out the same desire to find a hidden meaning or some sort of inherent purpose which could justify the existence of this play itself; hence, it sort of uses itself to prove its point. Loved it.