The most obvious characteristic of Waiting for Godot is its stasis. Nothing happens. However, is it still justified to call a play in which virtually no action takes place a "drama"? Aristotle in his “Poetics” defined the nature of plays. A definition that is still, at least partly, valid today. Since Aristotle wrote about drama, more than 2000 years have passed and times have changed. Our world seems to be a much faster one than that of the great Greek, thus it is a world in which much more happens. Nevertheless, in a modern play such as Waiting for Godot nothing happens. How can we solve this dramatic chiasmus? In order to answer this question I want to describe Beckett’s development towards a “minimal theatre. A comparison of dialogue, plot and characters in his works and the works of other contemporary authors will shed light on this issue.
Beckett’s tendency towards a minimal theatre can be shown by comparing Waiting for Godot with the works of his contemporaries. Considering the plays of Eliot, Christopher Fry and Thornton Wilder, of Anouilh and Giraudoux or of J.B. Priestley and Terence Rattings we find that Beckett is radically different and confronts the spectators with their denied expectations, thus creating a meta-theatrical effect. He was a precursor of what should become the “minimal art” within the plastic arts. He created aesthetics from reduction and concentration, thus realising what he predicted in his book about Proust (1930): “The artistic tendency is not expansive, but a contraction”1. This is best seen when looking at the later plays. Waiting for Godot was Beckett’s first drama that he had begun, as he said “as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time” and felt writing for the theatre to be “a marvellous, liberating diversion.”2 All his later dramas reveal his reductive tendencies. Whereas Waiting for Godot (1953/55) had two acts, five characters and was not significantly shorter than a “normal” play, Beckett’s next drama, Endgame (1957/58) had just two pairs of actors, one pair confined to waste bins, and one act. Act Without Words I and II (1957/59) are both mime plays, for one or two characters, respectively. Krapp ’ s Last Tape (1958) did with one actor, on the verge of extinction, and could easily be produced for the radio, because action there is reduced to changing spools and satisfying basic human needs, such as to eat and drink. Furthermore, it was inspired by a voice Beckett had heard on the BBC during his time in Paris and written especially for this “voice”. Happy Days (1961) features two actors, but Winnie, the female and the only speaking one in the play, is "embedded up to above her waist [...] in mound"3. In Play (1963) Beckett went one step further in eliminating human beings on the stage: only three human heads, combined with an urn each, can be seen; at least the author retained the dimension of speech, not like in Eh Joe (1966) where the only character is listening to his inner voice.4 This contractive tendency was further elaborated on in Breath (1970): rubbish dispersed on the stage, one birth cry at the beginning of the 30-second play and one at the end, combined with light and the sound of breathing. Heidegger had put the idea of this play into words: “As soon as a man is born, he is old enough to die.”5 Concluding, we can say that since his first play, Waiting for Godot, the tendency in Beckett’s plays has clearly been a contractive one with respect to characters, length of the plays and, more generally, in dramatic form.
Reduction in Waiting for Godot
Beckett, in Waiting for Godot, reduced most defining characteristics of the classic Aristotelian conception of theatre, resulting in concentration. This starts with the setting, whose temporal and spatial properties are more than vague. The characters are not well- introduced by an exposition and can only exist in pairs. Furthermore, their status is a lower one. As for the nature of this play a plot seems impossible, we can thus find no meaningful action. Dialogue or communication in Waiting for Godot are meaningless, because of the sole function to assert existence; language is presented to be deficient.
Action v. Stasis
In classic drama we expect something to happen. There, in general, the characters try to solve a conflict or, in the case of a tragedy, often “fall”, i.e. a hero is defeated in any sense, thus losing status, power, family or even his life. However, in Waiting for Godot during the two acts nothing is being really changed. Most of the characters’ incessant babble is as meaningless as all their actions, for instance the “game” with the hats. A second kind of action, fulfilling basic human needs, is aimed at showing the faulty conditio humana at the example of the characters. We can find no singular happening, only repetitive “actions” , e.g. Pozzo’s and Lucky’s visit. Furthermore, Act I and II do not differ from each other; there is no peripety that could distinguish Act II from Act I. Estragon’s mime with his boots at the beginning of Act I has as an equivalent at the beginning of Act II Vladimir’s solo-entrance and his song. The long dialogue d ’ ennui is in both acts interrupted, first by Pozzo and Lucky and then by the boy. Furthermore, both acts end with the same question “Well, shall we go? - Yes, let’s go. (They don ’ t move.)“. The only difference between both endings is that Vladimir and Estragon change the roles of asking and answering.
Thus, in respect to action, Waiting for Godot is anti-Aristotelian and minimal.
Dialogue
Reducing the action to the repetitive presentation of a static situation can be see as a reduction to zero action. As both Vladimir and Estragon have got no drive to do anything because of their paralysing situation they are forced to invent new games, or play the old ones again and again in order to, as Estragon remarks “give us the impression we exist.“6 Most of those games are „Sprachspiele“ (Wittgenstein), games of welcome and farewell, or insults and reconciliation. Here, as well, we find a reduced form of the dramatic: their dialogue has no longer, like in classic Greek drama, any power to change either a situation or the actions of a character, nor have the dialogues the function of a traditional exposition to introduce the characters in the first act. Their dialogue “happens“, because they are “incapable of keeping silent“, as Estragon says.7 Looking at Beckett’s next play, Endgame, we find a even more straight forward statement by Hamm on the characters’ dialogue in the play (p. 108):
HAMM: We’re not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! [ Brief laugh.] Ah that’s a good one!
In Krapp ’ s Last Tape, Beckett has done away with the precondition for communication between human beings, as we find only one single character, i.e. Krapp, an autobiographical character of Beckett. However, a kind of dialogue is possible with the tape recorder, that enables Krapp to listen to his recorded diary. It seems to be a dialogue with the past. Whereas this play retains the verbal aspect of drama, Breath is completely without words, like the two Acts Without Words I and II. Further deconstruction of language can be witnessed in Not I, Happy Days, and Play.Summing up, we can say that there is a clearly reductive tendency of language and dialogue in Beckett’s plays.
Characters
Analysing the characters, what we know about them, and considering their behaviour provides us with an explanation for the reduction in language, plot and action. It is because the characters themselves are “restricted“ in many aspects of life.
Considering Waiting for Godot, we are unable to find any female character. Looking at Endgame we find one female character, i.e. Nell, Hamm’s mother. However, she is confined to her waste-bin home and it is hard to identify her as a female character at all . Krapp ’ s Last Tape does with just one, male, actor and in Happy Days the female part of the couple is buried up to her waist. The stage directions for the two Act without Words don’t mention sex at all, just like in Breath, the play without any visible character, perhaps more a universal one, standing for mankind in general. The absence, or strong restriction of female characters implies an absence of sexuality. Love, in Beckett's plays, belongs always to the past (Krapp ’ s Last Tape), if treated at all.
Health
The physical conditions of Estragon, Vladimir and all the others in Waiting for Godot are poor. Estragon has problems with his feet and seems always hungry, a fact which underlines the aspect of physical needs. Vladimir needs to go off-stage quite often as he suffers from a deficient bladder and he has got bad breath. In Act II Pozzo has gone blind and Lucky dumb. The only character that seems to be healthy is the boy, but he reports (in Act I) that Mr. Godot beats his brother (another pair!). In Endgame, Clov states that Nell “has no pulse“ (p. 103) and during the play we learn that almost the entire human race “out there“ is on the verge of total extinction ("Outside of here it's death", p.96); this it underlined by the accounts on former acquaintances, that have all died long ago. Hamm is blind and paralysed, and even his toy dog has only three legs left. Clov is not much better off, as his legs and his sight, both, are deteriorating. Play combines heads with urns which could be interpreted as morbid. Krapp (Krapp's Last Tape) is an alcoholic and his tape recordings already say that perhaps his best years are gone.8 Furthermore, towards the end of the play he sings “Now the day is over, / Night is drawing nigh-igh, / Shadows-[ coughing, then almost inaudible ]- of the evening / Steal across the sky.“9 Considering this, we can assume that Krapp is expecting death. In Breath we find the strongest concentration and reduction: a cry of birth, one breath and death that coincides with the next birth cry, thus showing the circle of life.
Stumbling
All characters in Waiting for Godot tend to stumble and fall, a fact that should be seen in combination with the characters’ physical deficiencies. The ability to stand on two feet which distinguishes the “phitec anthropus erectus“ from animals can at no point of time in the play be taken for sure. Altogether the characters in Waiting for Godot lie on the ground 43 times during the performance. Nell and Nagg in Endgame certainly cannot fall, as they are confined to waste-bins. However, this habitat is not suitable for human beings and thus one distinguishing characteristic of the human being is neglected; Beckett lets them look less human.
Emotional Stability and Intellect
Restricted is Estragon’s and Vladimir’s ability to remember their own past or past events in general. No wonder, as for them, time is only something that has to be past. Neither is their emotional self-control nor are their intellectual capacities very powerful. Lucky’s speech in the first act, or the main characters’ reasoning can always be seen as nonsensible, absurd or paradox.
Thus, we can say that the characters' intellectual potentials, including memory, are reduced.
Biographic Past of the Characters
Vladimir's and Estragon's lack of personal memory leads to a situation in which not only the audience, but also the characters' themselves don't know much about their past. It is common to call them clochards, but strictly speaking not even this fact is for sure. All we learn are some veiled memories of a distant past, for instance grape picking in the Maçon Country, Estragon's being a poet and his suicide attempt in the Rhône, and the mourning about not being the first to jump from the then lately erected Eiffel Tower. All of Beckett's plays mentioned so far, lack of a classic exposition to introduce the dramatis personae.
Denying an exposition does not mean that the character's have got no past, for instance Krapp listens to his past, but the information is fragmentary and is not enough to evoke a comprehensive picture in the mind of the audience. Considering the expositions of more conventional dramas, their detailed and concrete way in which they introduce and motivate characters, it is clear that Waiting for Godot in this respect is clearly reductive.
Names and Pairs of Characters
Another aspect of a characterisation are the names. In all his plays, Beckett has chosen rather short names that are often mono-syllabic, for instance Hamm and Clov, Nagg and Nell in Endgame, or Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape. A further reduction, i.e. no names at all, took place in Play and Breath. As there is no visible character in the latter play, there is no need for a name, and in the former play the characters are distinguished by letters (W1, W2, M) only. Some names sound almost childish, like "Winnie" and "Willie" in Happy Days; in Waiting for Godot we find, what at first sight may look like, more conventional names: "Vladimir" and "Estragon". However, in the dialogues these names are not used10, but rather their short forms, i.e. Didi (Vladimir) and Gogo (Estragon). Thus, their names are reductions, too. The question, why exactly Lucky got this telling-name is an interesting one. Beckett himself suggested it was because Lucky had no more expectations.11 The supreme function of those names is to enable a pair-wise grouping of the characters. This is because Beckett's dramatis personae must be seen as complementary parts of contrastive pairs and not as individuals. The individuality and identity of each constituent of such a pair are unstable as for instance Vladimir, called Didi, responds to the name "Mister Albert" when the boy addresses him. Estragon, alias Gogo, calls himself Adam (p. 37) and both Didi and Gogo take Pozzo at their "first" encounter for Godot (p. 23). Nevertheless, what remains are the relations of contrast and complementary among them. The employed criteria are as schematised and mechanical as e.g. the contrastive characteristics of "minimal pairs" in phonology.
Consequently they have got no organically coherent individuality, but they just show the constructedness of human personality, a random mix of character traits. Personal dignity and honour, rooted in individuality and personality are reduced to grotesque, mechanical relations of contrast. Estragon, for instance, keeps playing with his boots, whereas Vladimir plays with his hat; the former one has got "stinking feet", the latter one "stinking breath" and when Estragon remarks "Funny, the more you eat the worse it gets", then Vladimir responds "With me it's the opposite" (p. 22). Pozzo and Lucky are similarly constructed. Pozzo enjoys life as Lucky's master, whereas the latter one is the servant and we may assume that he enjoys life less. Pozzo is of the same kind of human being as Estragon, who enjoys eating and sleeping, whereas Didi and Lucky are more the intellectuals. They prefer thinking and don't eat in the play. Pozzo and Lucky are inseparable in their relationship, tied together by the symbolic rope. This pair, and Didi and Gogo as a pair, together show the inadequacy and imperfection of the single individual and its need for reciprocal help. However, in the same moment we can see potential conflicts in their relationship and separatist tendencies. Together they constitute the universal human being: "all mankind is us, whether we like it or not" (p. 74). Certainly, they represent a mankind that has hardly any more individuality or subjectivity. Those attributes simply represent the lost personality. But were have the heroes of classic Greek drama or the anti-heroes of the realist or naturalistic drama gone? Beckett has done away with them, has "reduced" them. In a time where no more individualist personalities exist, there can be no more heroes.
Setting: no time and space given
So far, we have seen that action, dialogue, language, and characters are subject to reduction in Beckett's theatre. However, he goes a step further and reduces the setting, too. Time and space remain vague in the stage directions ("A country road. A tree."), and the stage props are few (a carrot, hats). A fact that is only slightly changed with Pozzo's entrance. Whenever the dialogue touches geographic location or time, it arouses more questions than it gives answers. What we learn is that Didi and Gogo have been together for approximately half a century and that they were "presentable" in the days when the Eiffel Tower had been lately erected (p. 13), that they were in the Maçon Country and near the Rhône. Apart from this, Beckett denies the audience any further information about time and space. Where the characters come from and where they go to, and at what time - we don't know. Act II starts with the stage directions "Next Day. Same Time. Same Place." and the barren tree in Act I has, according to the stage directions, changed: "The tree has four or five leaves." This may remind the reader of Dante's Divina Commedia, Purgatorio XXXII, 59+ , where the tree, whose branches had been barren, comes to life again. The same can be said for his later plays, where Beckett constantly denies to give us a clue about the setting. This, however, does not constitute a fulfilment of theatrical conventions, but merely an allusion to them. It is part of his reductive process.
However, for the characters this doesn't matter. Time is something that has to be past while waiting for... death? Considering Beckett's later plays, after Waiting for Godot, and the contraction that culminates in Breath (birth, breathing, i.e. life, and death, connected with a new-born life) it seems sensible to assume that in retrospect we may interpret Godot to have at least a connotation of death.
Carpe diem!
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London. 1986.
Secondary Sources:
Bair, D . Samuel Beckett. A Biography. New York. 1978.
Beckett, Samuel. Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit. London. 1965
Duckwoth, Collin. Angels of Darkness. London. 1972.
[...]
1 Beckett, Samuel. Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit. London. 1965. p. 47.
2 Taken from: Bair, D . Samuel Beckett. A Biography. New York. 1978. p. 323.
3 Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London. 1986. p.138
4 Loc. cit.
5 Taken from: Duckwoth, Collin. Angels of Darkness. London. 1972. p. 75.
6 Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London. 1986. p. 64
7 p. 58
8 p. 223
9 p. 222
10 There is just one exception what Vladimir uses "Estragon" on page 84.
Frequently asked questions
What is the central theme of the analysis regarding Waiting for Godot?
The central theme is the stasis and apparent lack of action in Waiting for Godot, questioning its status as a drama according to traditional Aristotelian definitions. The analysis explores Beckett's development towards a "minimal theatre" through a comparison of dialogue, plot, and characters with those of his contemporaries.
How does Beckett's work differ from that of his contemporaries?
Beckett's plays are radically different from those of Eliot, Christopher Fry, Thornton Wilder, Anouilh, Giraudoux, J.B. Priestley, and Terence Rattings. He confronts spectators with their denied expectations, creating a meta-theatrical effect and pioneering what became "minimal art" through reduction and concentration.
What is meant by Beckett's "minimal theatre"?
"Minimal theatre" refers to Beckett's tendency towards reduction in his plays, focusing on contraction rather than expansion. This is evidenced by a decrease in the number of acts, characters, length, and overall dramatic form in his later works compared to Waiting for Godot.
Can you provide examples of Beckett's reductive tendencies in his plays?
Examples include:
- Waiting for Godot (two acts, five characters).
- Endgame (one act, two pairs of actors).
- Act Without Words I and II (mime plays, one or two characters).
- Krapp's Last Tape (one actor).
- Happy Days (two actors, one buried up to her waist).
- Play (three heads in urns).
- Breath (rubbish on stage, birth cry, breathing sound).
How does Beckett reduce the characteristics of classic Aristotelian theatre in Waiting for Godot?
He reduces:
- Setting: Vague temporal and spatial properties.
- Characters: Limited exposition, existing only in pairs.
- Plot: Seems impossible; no meaningful action.
- Dialogue: Meaningless; serves only to assert existence; language is presented as deficient.
What is the relationship between action and stasis in Waiting for Godot?
In contrast to classic drama, where characters resolve conflicts or experience a "fall," Waiting for Godot features minimal change. Characters engage in repetitive, meaningless actions, and the structure lacks peripety (sudden change in fortune), making it anti-Aristotelian and minimal.
How is dialogue reduced in Waiting for Godot and other Beckett plays?
Dialogue in Waiting for Godot lacks the power to change situations or characters, nor does it serve as a traditional exposition. It primarily serves to fill the silence and assert existence. Later plays show further reduction, with Endgame questioning its meaning, Krapp's Last Tape featuring a dialogue with a tape recorder, and Breath being completely wordless.
How are the characters "restricted" in Beckett's plays?
Characters are restricted in various aspects:
- Absence/restriction of female characters implies an absence of sexuality.
- Poor physical health (e.g., Estragon's feet, Vladimir's bladder, Pozzo's blindness).
- Tendency to stumble and fall, highlighting physical deficiencies.
- Reduced emotional stability and intellectual capacities.
- Lack of personal memory and biographical past.
What is the significance of character names and pairings in Beckett's plays?
Beckett often uses short, mono-syllabic names (e.g., Hamm, Clov, Nagg, Nell, Krapp). Characters are presented in pairs, acting as complementary parts of contrastive units rather than individuals. This reduces individuality and personality to grotesque, mechanical relations of contrast.
How does Beckett reduce the setting in Waiting for Godot?
Time and space are vague ("A country road. A tree."). Stage props are few. Geographic location and time are ambiguous. The barren tree's slight change in Act II may allude to Dante, but the setting remains largely undefined.
What is the potential interpretation of Godot's symbolism?
In retrospect, considering Beckett's later plays, Godot may have a connotation of death, as suggested by the contraction in Breath (birth, breathing, death).
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- Martin Seitz (Author), 2000, Beckett's Theatre is pre-eminently a Theatre of Reduction, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/106602
