1. Discuss the idea of pairing throughout Waiting for Godot. Throughout Waiting for Godot Beckett utilizes pairing or doubling to emphasize his theme of human dependency. With the exception of Godot, all the characters in the play are paired. Indeed, the main characters Vladimir and Estragon, who are at times difficult to tell apart because of …
Samuel Beckett was born into a wealthy Dublin family in Ireland 1906. He attended Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he majored in French and Italian. In Paris, he wrote a dissertation on the famous French writer and philosopher Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who wrote about memory and imagination in his famous 1913, Remembrance …
“There’s nothing to be done.”P. 1 This, the opening sentence of the play, is uttered by Estragon who is having trouble with his boot. It sets a tone of despair that indeed there is nothing that can be done. “People are bloody ignorant apes.”P. 4 Estragon makes this response to Vladimir’s statement that one of …
InertiaAt the end of Act I the disconsolate Vladimir and Estragon agree that they must leave, yet when the curtain falls they are sitting as motionless as statues. Despite their best intentions to change and break out of their pattern of endlessly waiting for Godot, who never arrives, they are incapable of action of any …
WaitingThroughout the play, Vladimir and Estragon attempt to cheer each other in their never ending wait for the mysterious Godot whom they have never seen and who never arrives. Night after night, they meet, embrace, complain, argue, sleep in between visiting with Pozzo and Lucky, threatening to leave each other and contemplating suicide. However, they …
BoyKnown simply as “boy,” at the end of both acts this character appears with a message from Godot informing Vladimir and Estragon that once again he will not appear but he will surely come tomorrow. In Act I the boy is fearful because he saw Pozzo with a whip, and in Act II he says …
Act IIThe following evening Vladimir enters and feverishly begins to walk around the stage. It is the same time and the same place as the evening before in the opening of Act I except now the tree now has four or five leaves on it. Estragons boots and Luckys hat are also on stage. As …
Waiting for Godot begins with the tramp Estragon trying to remove his boot because it is too tight. Sitting on a mound of dirt trying to remove it, he declares “there’s nothing to be done.” His fellow tramp Vladimir enters and tells him that, indeed, he also is beginning to believe there is nothing that …
