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... Together the decide to fill the emptiness and silence with cheap entertainment. Itll pass the time, explains Vladimir when he offers to tell the story of the Crucifixion. That passed the time, he says after the first departure of Pozzo and Lucky. Life becomes a game to them, passing back ideas in order to stop themselves from thinking or contemplating too deeply and escaping the pain of waiting. Thats the idea, lets make a little conversation, suggests Estragon.
Beckett deliberately employs the repetition of themes, speech and action to highlight the futility and habit of life. In the second act, they admit we are unable of keeping silent. Throughout the play the characters all seem to not recognize the past, as they constantly ask questions such as, What did we do yesterday? Their world is fragmented, submerged with vague recollections of culture and the past.
For example, Estragon remembers the Bible with uncertainly. I remember the maps with of the Holy Land. Colored they were. The lack of knowledge and dull conversation shows the breakdown of culture and tradition in the twentieth century. The tradition of the West has been shattered and the culture destroyed. The effects of political reforms, such as communism, Marxism, and science has obliterated society's belief in the church.
Nietzsche declared the death of God, as he felt that religion no longer offered a suitable framework of living. Either God does not exist, or he does not care. Whichever is the case, chance and luck determines human life in the absence of divine involvement. Estragon and Vladimir's uncertainty mirrors the uncertainty of living in the modern world. Estragons constant inquiring of, Youre sure it was here? ... Youre sure it was this evening?
Out of the uncertainty of waiting, Vladimir becomes aware with certainty that they are waiting, thinking with clarity, ... what do we do now that were happy... go on waiting... waiting...
let me think... its coming... go on waiting. Estragon and Vladimir talk to each other and share ideas, but its they regularly interrupt one another wit their own thoughts. Estragon admits, I cant have been listening, and Vladimir says, I dont understand, this displays the failures of communication. Conversations do exists but the arrangement of words, and the silences seem to punctuate conversations that represent the void, emptiness between people.
Lucky's breakdown speech and final collapse into silence represents the ultimate response to the chaos, randomness and meaningless of the universe: silence. Time is meaningless in Waiting for Godot, there is a cyclic, albeit indefinite pattern where the past, present and future mean nothing. Time, essentially is a mess. Estragon may have been a poet before, but he is not content to quote scripture in his own rendition saying, Hope deferred maketh the something sick, the something being the heart. Time erodes the memory, and deteriorates into a cycle of events that do not aspire but simply stand still.
The pattern of time appears to be this way as opposed to linear. Linear time seems to have broken down, as events do not develop with inevitable climaxes historically. The boy returns with the same message, Godot never comes and tomorrow never seems to arrive. Vladimir mentions that, Time has stopped. Estragon and Vladimir ad moving relentlessly towards a presumably unobtainable event, withing their finite existence, with a continually receding end. Estragon sums it up saying, Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, its awful!
Time is equivalent to what is announced in the title: the act of waiting. Yet, it mysteriously starts up again each day as it returns to the beginning. Nothing is completed because nothing can be completed. The inherent meaninglessness of a world based on chance degenerates human life into something that is worthless and can be toyed by fortune. Pozzo becomes blind and has no recollection of the day before, and even claims that Lucky has always been mute, even though Lucky at the previous meeting, gave a long philosophical discourse when commanded to think. The disregard for human life is a result of not having any values.
One who does not sanctify the lives of others cannot possibly make something of their own. We sink down to the low, and become slaves to ourselves. Human life is treated arbitrarily and in an almost ruthless manner, meaningless. Jean Paul Sartre declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one, and thus human life is a futile passion. Vladimir rests with the notion that life is futile, or nothing to be done. All human endeavor is futile due to the collapse of values.
Mankind achieves nothing, life will finish as it began in nothingness and reduce achievement to nothing. Vladimir states, One is what one is... the essential doesnt change. The best lack all conviction. The worse are full of passionate intensity. Time feeds the individual of today with the lie that they progress while destroying them.
To the end, they have made no progression: they are still waiting for Godot. When Waiting for Godot opened in London in 1955, Kenneth Tynan remarked, It has no plot, no climax, no denouement; no beginning, no middle and no end. In essence, this is the description of the modern world. Time has no meaning, life has no climax, no beginning and no end.
Sophocles spoke of No greater evil than anarchy. Innocence in the world no longer exists, it is drowned in a sea of the masses, held down by the blood-dimmed tide. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Beckett illustrated the terrible predicament of the modern world. A world without values, and without a God.
We are left with characters who are paralyzed in motion, meaningless in conversation, and who slave away as time stands still. Wait. That is all to be done in a world with destroyed values, the eyes of this generation is like sunlight on a broken column. And this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Help.
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Research essay sample on Waiting For Godot Human Life
