Waiting for Godot is a 1953 play by Samuel Beckett that has become one of the most important and enigmatic plays of the 20th century. The story revolves around two men waiting for someone – or something – named Godot. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.
Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and commended for having “transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation”. Waiting for Godot belongs to "The Theatre of the Absurd”, focusing on absurdist fiction. It shares the existentialist condition that there is no God or superior knowledge we can depend on.
However, a major difference from existentialism that it does not share that we can create our own meaning. It is better described as an absurdist play. This stems from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus, who describes the Absurd in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”, as the human incapacity of finding meaning in a meaningless world. The characters are doomed to be faced with the Absurd, and all they can do is try to pass the time.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌛ Timestamps (0:00) Introduction (2:10) Act I (6:28) Act II (8:23) Analysis