Waiting for Waiting

            Samuel Beckett’s two-act tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot” is portrayed in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s film version in a subtle and minimalist form, complementing the stream of complex and abstract metaphors that exists between the characters, and whatever they occupy their time with.  Vladimir and Estragon are waiting at this barren landscape on the side of the road for a Mr. Godot, whose arrival is uncertain.  They wait, both with a sense of longing, impatience, hopelessness and doom.  Godot is never openly compared to any concept in particular, although the character’s dialogue and actions are bluntly and thematically related to the passing of time.  The question of Godot’s identity and any symbolisms behind it are therefore best seen in terms of a larger question:  Whoever Godot may be, why must we spend time waiting for him?
            During all of Act 1 and Act 2, whenever Estragon and Vladimir are not asking themselves whether Godot will actually come, they are trying to find ways to spend their time on the side of this road.  Mostly they end up caught in senseless arguments, childish games, and strange encounters, specifically with Pozzo and Lucky.  “We always find something to give us the impression that we exist,” they say to each other, and that is precisely what they are doing.  Beckett may be commenting on the human inability to experience time without actually occupying it with some action or interaction, to desperately attribute meaning to something that does not attribute meaning to itself.  Nevertheless, during one of their arguments, they realize their efforts are achieving the exact opposite:  “This is becoming really insignificant…”
            All of this confusion and desperation is heightened by a continual sense of timelessness, which is a paradoxical feature of the piece.  Time is constantly moving on, yet they can barely attest to its existence, recalling almost nothing that happens, or finding little distinction between one day and the next.  “What was I saying this morning?” one says, and the other replies, “I’m not a historian!”  Beckett is characterizing and exaggerating the fleeting nature of our memories, our sense of recalling time, our limited ability to make permanent that which is passing.  In that sense, Waiting for Godot is quite existential, asking questions about our temporary presence in the sensory world.  The characters wait in the middle of nowhere and constantly forget why; a metaphor for human existence, perfectly phrased through their dialogue:  “What are we doing here, that is the question.”  Their answer only deepens the universal nature of that question, bringing up our relationships with each other.  “We are no longer alone,” they say, “waiting for tomorrow, waiting for Godot, waiting for waiting.”
            With the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky, the theme is complicated, and expressed more desperately.  Lucky spews out a barely comprehensible rant that ultimately says something to the extent of:  “intellectuals have found that despite our efforts to explain this and that, man will waste and pine”.  Vladimir and Estragon continue at this pace, regularly making statements like:  “It will be night, then it will be day, then it will be night, then it will be day again, what do we do? What do we do?” or, even more literally:  “Have you done tormenting me with your accursed time? … One day we are born, one day we will die.  The same day, the same second.  Is that not enough for you?”  Here, aging and time are not only unavoidable, but also relativistic.  In a place where the days pass almost unnoticed, where nothing is accomplished and efforts are meaningless, life and death might as well arrive in the “same day, same second,” if the days are indistinguishable, and human life is short in relation to everything else.  Yet they do occasionally attempt to make the most of it:  “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse, let us do something if we have the chance.”
            The ultimate mood of the film is that of frustration with something:  either this long wait for the inevitable, or a slightly more hopeful yet inevitably frustrating wait for the unattainable.  Godot always promises to arrive the following day, as the Boy tells them he will.  Whether Godot is a symbol for the arrival of Death, or perhaps a better future, they still have no choice but to wait for him.  They wait for something indefinite, something that has not identified itself, or even offered proof of its existence.  In many ways, the biblical themes of the play suggest that Godot may represent the figure of God.  A God who is at the same time the bringer of death and the bringer of meaning.  Estragon and Vladimir must still wait, one way or another, because they can never be sure:  “we are waiting for Godot to come, or for night to fall”.  And in order to finally discover the truth behind all their speculations, the only way to truly escape time, besides waiting, is to end that which so firmly attaches them to time:  Life.  “We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow,” they decide, “unless Godot comes.”  They could wait to find out if God actually exists, or they could find out right away – by escaping their troubling and lingering, yet somehow all-too-brief, moment of waiting.

 

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