Waiting for Godot, Act II

     In its second half, the central themes of Godot spin together to form a cohesive structure that simultaneously critiques western religion, challenges the importance of possession, and addresses the problem of human monotony and methods of escapism with which to counter it. Act II, even more so than its predecessor, offers the honest light that casts the unfortunate shadows humanity possesses at its core.

     The scene starts with an image of Didi's panicked boredom, manifest in his frantic actions and repetition of a single verse regarding the life and death of a dog. There is much to read into here, but the base of this single compositional passage is to summarize the human condition of parallel loneliness and a lack of the profound. Didi is seen trying to remember his song (pg. 37), to which only the one repeated verse comes of his efforts. It could also be interpreted, seeing as no mention of memory is actually made, that Didi's "brood[ing]" over the mysterious excerpt is an attempt to strike a well of meaning somewhere within its words. This meta-analysis, of and within the character, is a fascinating structural and thematic possibility to consider. 

     The composition here goes deeper still, with the symbol of the dog as mankind interacting with the symbols of labor and/or sin (stealing the bread crust), as well as death (the tombstone and epitaph). Didi's passage exists structurally as a loop, which also serves to accent the themes of repetition in life, thus perhaps he is brooding over the merits and futilities of escapism. 

    Upon Gogo's arrival to the stage, it is edified that the cause of Didi's behavior is that of loneliness. 

The encounter is initially a negative one, however, as Estragon mimics the physical timidity and social cold-shouldering he offered Estragon in the previous act. Vladimir's attitude has only changed, if not subtly, from pondering to downright unsure. In this discrepancy, Beckett seems to ask "what makes a good day, and what makes a bad one?" Beyond the obvious answers, the themes of the text – Escapism, suffering, the search for profundity – seem to offer that days are determined by outlook more than actual events. Whether or not one's outlook is determined by the days events is of personal condition and consequence, upholding this statement's trueness is general.
     With respect to the equal trueness of personal outlook being muddled by perception of events, Gogo's statement that he has been beaten again is put forth as an explanation for his current disposition. This is a cry to the classic working-man's theme of being beaten down at the end of the day, harking back to the dynamic between Lucky and Pozzo in act I.
   As collective thought shifts from the situational, in which there is much similarity – i.e. monotony – to be found, the two settle on pondering thought itself. Page 41 witnesses a call and response session of base rhetoric as the duo attempts to get back to a sort of intellectual balance within themselves.With this scene and its content, Beckett gestures in the direction of age-old philosophical answers to these existential questions of monotony; That the ability to think and to perceive situations as deeper things brings freedom to the thinker. A specific excerpt illustrates this best, and the two agree to re-start their dialogue with Vladimir's inference that "When you seek, you hear . . . And that prevents you from finding", which is highly applicable seeing as the two are searching for meaning within the act of searching itself.
     The higher thought process at hand is soon distracted by the dynamic of egos that the duo possess, and discussion turns, repetitively, to Gogo's uncomfortable feet. After some banter regarding possible solutions, he jibes "we always find something, eh Didi? To give us the impression we exist?" (pg. 45). In this humor, there lie dark explorations of the simultaneous methodology and universality of escapism, and the urgent motives behind distracting oneself from the larger picture. Surely, to present these themes in such levity speaks to the modernity of the text.
     After the dark humor recesses, leaving only the true sentiment behind it, the two find themselves cold, and again, waiting. That their waiting for Godot and waiting for nightfall to meet Godot align closely in the dialogue on page forty six is no accident. The symbolism here, obvious yet potent in context, is that each man is stuck in his place, waiting to die – "[night] will fall all of a sudden, like yesterday" – and that each man is searching for profundity in either consideration of death, or an assumed afterlife. Especially given the subtext in the prior pages regarding said universality, this poisonously comic euphemism of life hits its audience hard.
     As the urgent pace of the play proceeds, the two work into a frenzy of mock human drama, further critiquing and pondering, in this way, the concepts of interaction most find arbitrary and par-for-the-course. In one moment, for example, they are seen hurling insults to and fro with vigor, and in the next handful of lines they are witnessed reconciling with a comic deliberation, poking fun at the routine chronology of such interactions; Estragon ends their volley of dated discourtesies by calling Didi a critic (meta-applicable terminology in this case), and he replies to his companion's resultant dismay with an artificially swift "Now let's make it up." (pg. 49). They return quickly from this exchange to methods of distraction.
     It is during an acute exclamation of "God have pity on me!" that Lucky and Pozzo enter, this time with roles and dispositions changed. This time, it is Pozzo crying for help, a far cry from the generous image-frenzied man from before. Historically, the dichotomy between Lucky and Pozzo might represent an extreme version of the laborer and the bourgeois elite, respectively. It seems clear to the audience that Pozzo's state is not quite as deserving of pity as, say, Lucky's, despite Pozzo's recent blinding. This would also seem to reflect a mockery of the well know personality type known in modern vernacular as the "attention whore". In the classist sense, it is very much similar to the way larger economics tends to make big bad news out of minor fluctuations in circumstance, while the burdens of the laborer go unaddressed, if not unnoticed, in this blindness.
     In Pozzo's shift of circumstance, from storied and affluent center of attention to axis of pity, Didi and Gogo also hold a new position. Much like the revolutionary spirit that exists in individuals beyond that of the most passive drone, the two use their perceived station to take advantage of this demoralized hierarch by demanding first for food before helping him to his feet (pg. 51).  This is exactly the basic system of relationships present in a worker's strike, in other words.
     Following consideration of more straightforward and honest solutions to Pozzo's incessant cries, and stressing additional themes of choice and the universal, Vladimir monologues – briefly – of duty. He says of the cries "To all mankind they were addressed . . . but at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us." (Pg. 51)
     When the two finally go to help, they find themselves on the ground in similar fashion as quickly as they have arrived. They, like Pozzo, seem unable to rise. Or, the negativity in Pozzo's intentions has brought them down and keeps them down. They call now at Pozzo, frantically crawling away, but receive no response. Gogo casts doubt on whether or not they have tied the correct moniker to the correct man. In a brief wordplay, wracked with Absurdism, Estragon offers "We might try him with other names." Didi: "I'm afraid he's dying." Gogo: "It'd be amusing." Didi: "What'd be amusing?" Gogo: "to try him with other names..."(pg. 54). This early modification of existential philosophy ties humor to the concept of death in artful literary form.
     Distractions aside, the two shortly make the decision to stand. "Child's play", says Estragon. They wonder at Pozzo; Didi and then Gogo: "He wants to get up."/"then why doesn't he?", reflecting another point of Absurdism; that the choice to live, itself, gives meaning and control to one's life.
-   -   -   -   -
     Bypassing the second interaction with Pozzo due to heavy repetition of themes, the wake of the interaction sees a familiar errand boy appear out of nowhere. He carries the message that the audience most anticipates at this point, that Godot will not be making an appearance. Didi asks: "But he'll come tomorrow . . . without fail?" to which the boy responds dutifully, "yes sir"(pg. 59). The blind faith in this statement sets the tone for their interaction with the boy.
     They question him of Godot's appearance, and his habits ("he does nothing, sir") and in Didi's frustration, the boy is scared off. In desperate longing for validity, they entertain the idea of suicide, yet again. They resolve to commence the joint hanging the following day, should Godot fail to arrive. As the two make farewell statements to each other, appearing to part, they do not move and the curtain draws; The punctuality here matching the pace for the entire text's incessant wordplay, social critiques, and philosophical questionings. The composition as airtight as the ideology it contains, one is left only with the feeling that one has been laughed at, only to find, as a study of the absurd and the larger picture in general, that simply everything is a laughable matter. 

Faith and Vanity.

Anxiet, spigoted honesty.
Unfortunate Anxietee,
Forgot their solemn place.

Of seldom name,
Of no appliance,
This forthwith zest
Of zephyr cloth:

Unwound by moths,
Soon tossed in violence
Upon crags of mindless shore,

Thoughts abhorred,
That canceled the logic
In simple beauties of silence,
Towards.

Graceful Ratio

One thousand mirrors,
  Straight planed, made of ample grace.
    One image reflects.

Misconstrued.

Headwinds trade seeds, songs,
  Along cindered shore it moans.
    Baffled ears heard wrong.

Soriah Sleeps

Framed by timely rest,
 Her face austere with day's work,
   Unknown thoughts upheld.

Who are you?

Be it queried,
What develops in time
Through monastics,
Scholastic achievement?
Only in lieu of
Honest hues of love,
Personas,
Made, stifled,
Minor trifles.
Seared in the room of the boiler.
Soiled in the boom,
And reared or uncoiled
By cereal box ciphers.

Shoes

Worn with importance,
  Subconscious solace in sole,
    Punctured by the real.

My city.

The shrouds of the city stood shackled

By the dew spackled avenue

In sheer honest awe of the new.

Who toddled 'cross cobbled rooms,

Held onto greased wheel wells,

In hopes to be propelled, 

But were dragged under.

The spell was an old one, 

That the new ones knew none of.

So now some would be be models,

And some would just rue:

The imagined demons 

Of unrighteous actions

Enacted even before birth.

Whilst whirlwinds of doubting,

Higher pitched than the shouting

Of the shrouds who stood by 

As it spiraled out into the blue

Though soon the firmament corrupted 

By rising ashes of rent checks,

Of firecans and

Infant hopes ascending

In search of some heaven, 

Which nstead made the threat of ghosts

Much more likely.

The key to the obscene

Not revealed so easy,

As to say that perspective

Might liberate the needful.

Indeed it could be helpful

To see night as a blessing

In which the dressings of a spiritual salad

May be lifted, inconspicuous,

Prepared in poor dress 

Under free dressers, 

Under freeways.

Is it easy to believe 

That such masses of sleaze,

Have time to conceive of condiments?

Hardship, 

A relative threat to self management.

Privilege, 

Concerned with the threat,

Of foreign ghosts

Brewed so domestic, 

Obscuring the disconnect.

Waiting For Godot Act. I

Waiting For Godot is surely a text of prominence in the timeline of Absurdist and early Post-Modern thought. The comedy is sharp and modern in both reference and style, but the obscurity of plot and events are arguably on the cusp of early Postmodernism, if not directly within such territory of nomenclature. The characters are introduced in a somewhat nondescript manner, as the audience is given no real mention of past or present circumstance. All that is known is that these men are waiting for another; Godot. 
   The characters are not neglected in the slightest, however, as Beckett carefully characterizes each man almost entirely separate from their situational context.  We see in Gogo a distracted man with little means and a corresponding complex of sarcastic pessimism, who remains nonetheless involved intellectually in the spectacle of living. 
     Didi is more stern, somewhat commanding of Gogo and the direction of their conversations VIA a comical sense of grandiose reasoning towards life and history, as exhibited on page seven, lines 7-18, where his musings of "the struggle" (a humorous hark to existentialism) override Gogo's parallel and present struggle with his uncomfortable boots. Here Beckett makes an early and brilliant statement on the universality and combined relativity of human suffering, in the comic light of the absurd. This tone and theme will dominate the rest of the text.
     Soon after some brief comparison of such discomfort in the characters' dialogue, Didi makes the statement that is the basis of Absurd philosophy in its answer to existentialism's pondering of life as meaningless: "Never neglect the little things"(Pg.8 lines 1-2), which is to say that one finds meaning in life on a personal level and not a pre-prepared one as society and indeed religion may have us believe. 
     This statement may be viewed as a sort of foreshadowed solution to the problem of the text; a solution that the characters arrive at in brief but never actually apply. The mission of the characters, in brief, is that they are waiting for a man named Godot. 
     In the context of the text, viewed as a microcosm of life examples poised in a specific and fictional world (as per the analytical philosophy proposed by Nabokov), this is the sole mission of these two, and thus the only provider of profound meaning besides that of reflection. That should be noted in the attitudes of each as the text progresses.
     Godot is quite simply and entirely viewable as the figure of God, no doubt reenforced by the constant religious meandering of Vladimir's words and references, such as his recounting of the tale of the two thieves on page nine, an easy parallel to Gogo and Didi respectively. As Didi says, one was saved and another was damned, but only one of the four evangelists say that one of the two thieves were saved. Estragon offers much sarcasm during Vladmimir's biblical recounting, casting him as the damned thief perhaps. 
     Didi also notes, and ponders, that of the four evangelists' tales from the day of crucifixion, only the one which mentions the saving of the thief is common knowledge. While his pondering goes unanswered in dialogue, it can be assessed from the themes of the text that the reason for this is human endurance towards hope in the face of vast uncertainty of meaning, but that is to be revisited later.
     As the the characters move from their biblical musings of hope and faith, they arrive in the territory of uncertainty. They begin to wonder if maybe they hadn't misinterpreted Godot's instructions; as easy to misinterpret as, say, the bible's instructions for salvation. 
     On page ten, for instance, the characters begin to doubt the place they have determined as the point of meeting. They note that perhaps the tree they are near is not the one Godot intended to use as a landmark. They look at the tree, and Didi states: "Do you see any others?"(Line 17). 
     After some time, Gogo inquires: "Where are the leaves?" To which Didi offers the obvious: "It must be dead". Estragon, in solemn jest, replies "No more weeping". This last statement could be viewed simply as a play on their deduction of the tree as a willow, but removed from that context it offers a pointed example of existentialism in that often such philosophy queries that if life is meaningless and painful, why should one not take one's life and skip to the point? It is also prompt foreshadowing to the characters' resultant actions. 
     After some further doubt pertaining to the date and time, the characters dissolve into a primal boredom. After trying sleep and humor as reprieves, the differences within the two hinder these approaches as solutions to such a void. At a certain point, the idea of hanging is presented in such a manner that we cannot quite tell if it is a serious consideration of the characters and the play simply providing such comic context as to make light of suicide, or if the characters themselves are making fun of the idea. 
     In either case, the text's earlier foreshadowing pertaining to death's providing a stop to life's weeping is given a greater example in action and dialogue than a simple passing pun. The characters are soon dissuaded from this approach by the logic that one or the other may survive while one or the other dies, insisting on the very human fear, inherent in all, of dying alone.
They resolve to wait for Godot. 


---

     The text reaches is peak of hilarity and conceptual thickness at the time that one Pozo and his enslaved companion Lucky make their entree to the stage (Pg. 15). Pozo is a man of impossible flair and egocentrism, speaking loud and grand as a ringmaster would, and all the while shouting vicious orders at the silent Lucky to do this and that . He is depicted as well dressed and well fed, exhibited in Estragon regarding Pozzo's food scraps as delicacy (Pg. 18). 
     Gogo finally reaches his point of tolerance and shamelessly asks the man for his chicken bones, only to shamefully discover that they are intended for the servant. He is still given the option, however, to ask Lucky for the privilege of the bones. Lucky remains silent as he is asked timidly by Gogo, and forcefully by Pozzo, who in turn offers the bones to him in disregard of the lack of response. Herein lies the dynamic found in modern labor. 
     After Vladimir, in his moral nature, is fed up with the unwarranted and indeed unexplained manner in which Lucky is treated, despite the fact that Pozzo regards him as an old friend,  the question of why Lucky never puts down his bags or relieves himself of burden is put forth. After a long bout of diversion and lack of conversational concentration, Pozzo states: "Has he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he want to? ... He wants to impress me so that I will keep him!" (Pg. 21-lines 9-11, 14). 
     This is an exaggerated symbol of the burden of labor and the corruption inherent in higher offices. If this concept were then viewed as a metaphor for life, one might conclude that we ourselves are the makers of our own misery VIA the ugly tool of misguided perception, and again, the fear of being alone. 
     After some deliberation concerning Pozzo's wish to be free of Lucky, reflecting guilt, the degradation of love, and the implication that such mortal flaws reside in all men, the characters arrive at a point reflective of similar flaws and depicting a change in perception regarding Lucky, who is less now to be pitied (after harming Gogo in mid attempt at consolation), and more regarded with cautious fascination. The men wish to see lucky dance, or to hear him think. After a halfhearted attempt at dance, the men provide Lucky with the hat that apparently facilitates Lucky's reported capacity for intellectual thought.
     What follows is hard to analyze. There is little progressive sense to make of Lucky's strain of gibberish, though the small motifs within the monologue could, I suppose, be broken down and made subjective sense of. In an effort to preserve my endurance here, I will simply reflect that this moment in its generality symbolizes the irrelevance of specific logical order in making sense of life on a level of personal meaning. 
     All one has left, with that notion subtracted, is personal perception and how one chooses to interact within' that realm. In asking Lucky to think, the characters are presented with the regurgitated and orderless concepts that are assumedly commonplace within the constituents of the intended audience, but the historical specifics are irrelevant. As far as the general concept is concerned, such things as mass opinions are meaningful only to the extent that they bring meaning to the individual, a thought which works nicely with the themes of the text. 
     After a drawn out goodbye to the flustered Lucky and Pozzo (Pozzo: "I can't seem to depart"/Estragon: "Such is life"), the two ponder, for the umpteenth time, leaving the tree themselves. They decide that they cannot depart until they have met Godot, much as one cannot depart life comfortably without first finding profundity. 
     After a short time, a messenger boy approaches and informs the men that Godot will not be meeting them this eve, much to the anger of the two. The anger recedes, and the two are left alone again; night has suddenly fallen. Gogo questions whether or not their paths would be walked better separate, as many must wonder if the plight of life is best tackled alone. Absurdism, most people, and the text – in which neither leave and decide "It's not worth while now [to part]"(Pg. 35)– all seem to answer that life is a ride best enjoyed in company, despite inevitable differences in both character and perception. I tend to agree.