The Underlying Message

I can honestly say that “Waiting for Godot” was the one of the most depressing literary works I’ve ever read. This play clearly uses all of the elements of absurdism. The main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, are painfully flat, the plot is a never-ending circle of repetition, and the dialogue is mostly meaningless nonsense. However, I did find some lines in the monologues of Pozzo and Vladimir in Act II that I found both meaningful and haunting.

Pozzo enters the scene again on page 1408. The dialogue is very confused and insignificant between the three characters until Beckett hits us with this dramatic monologue by Pozzo that really makes you question life. Pozzo says, “One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day…they give birth astride of a grave…” (Beckett 1407). Wow, these lines are powerful. I went along reading this entire play wondering why on earth Professor Darr assigned us to read this and then, out of nowhere, comes this horribly depressing and yet somehow debatable view of life. Pozzo is essentially saying that we were born to die. We have no chance of accomplishing anything and this helps explain the circular plot of “Waiting for Godot.” This is post modernism at it’s finest!

Vladimir has a few equally disturbing lines on page 1408. He suddenly starts to realize the meaningless repetition of his life. Vladimir says, “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps” (Beckett 1408). Here, Vladimir has essentially stated the same thing Pozzo did in his earlier monologue. He is saying that we might as well be born into a grave. The depressing era of post modernism and existentialism is clearly displayed here. This confusing and repetitive play turned out to have a disturbing underlying message.

Do you think that Godot was God?

What was the purpose of the character Pozzo and how he treated Lucky?

Would Estragon and Vladimir possibly have gotten to meet “Godot” if they would have helped Lucky?