Waiting and Hoping——A Brief Analysis of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot is not only a masterpiece by Samuel Beckett, but also a representative of the western absurd theater. The author demonstrates the absurdity of the world with absurdness. People express their hope in their absurdity and it is shown that hope is only cherished in the absurd behavior of waiting. At the same time, it is also reflected that people carry a line of hope for the absurd world, because it is the only hope to wait.
The process of waiting is painful. In a long time, two ragged vagrants named Estragon and Vladimir have been waiting for Godot, which was their ultimate goal of their lives. In the process of waiting, they had incoherent speech, repeated boring actions in order to change their hopeless waiting of every day life. All these behaviors shown the pain in this process and recorded postwar people’s anxiety, desire, panic.
The reason of waiting is hope. The two haggard vagrants lived for Godot’s coming to change everything. The messenger of Godot, a little boy’s emergence cheered them up and gave them hope that Godot might come the next day. In the process of waiting, they constantly recalled nice things to make them full of confidence for the future, such as Eiffel Tower, the Bible and so forth. To spend the dull time, they did ridiculous games one after another except hanging themselves just because they kept Godot and hope in their mind and looked forward to a new life.
From the Waiting for Godot , we can find that the human beings just look for the evidence and meaning of life through the painful waiting. As long as people wait, they can have hope. This is exactly what this drama offers us—— enlightment and fascination that make it an ever- lasting drama.。