Discuss Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a Representative Work of the Theatre of the Absurd

11.        Discuss Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a representative work of the Theatre of the Absurd.

The appearance of the theatre of absurd can be viewed as a kind of satire to the world at that time. After getting through the world war one and world war two, people who had faced those cruel and bloody sights started to suspect the existence of god and truth that they used to believe, keep reflecting on the meaning of existence. Beckett in the beginning of Waiting for Godot said “we are unable to do things well”, which seems to predict the ending of this story. But the main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, are still waiting for the appearance of Godot. However, this seems to imply that we often spend a large amount of time waiting in our life, even though there is nothing for us to wait, we’re probably still there. During the process of waiting, the two main characters both hold a boring attitude with nothing to do, keep talking with each other trivially and take a movement from dawn to dusk. Not until a child show up and tells them” Godot won’t come, but maybe tomorrow” did they say” Let’s go!”, but actually they don’t leave and repeat this monotonous action again and again. Although Godot in drama has never shown up, he has become an absolutely crucial role for Estragon and Vladimir. Like our life, we may not clearly understand what we are waiting for, but we would still believe the answer will come in no time. Some people would regard this kind of situation as a sense of desolation since there is no definite target or particular person for them to pursue and wait, like a stone rolling down from mountain without destination, its meaningless roll is viewed as ridiculous existence. Waiting for Godot started from waiting and ended with wait and also use the same boy as informer, this correspond to the feature in the theatre of absurd. The appearance of theatre of absurd represent the injustice of society. Despite the fact that there is no real war as large as world war one or world war two nowadays, the theatre of absurd leave us many question to reflect on and relate the meaning of wait to life.