The document discusses Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. It explores the central themes of waiting, passing time, and the absurdity of the human condition. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend the play in an endless cycle of waiting for someone named Godot to arrive, with no explanation of who Godot is or if he will actually come. Their waiting highlights the inevitability of time's passage and the futility of human existence.

2.  Samuel Beckett,
French, and English
playwright
 Born-1905, Dublin
 Died-1989,Paris,France
 ‘En attendant Godot’-
1948 In French
 ‘Waiting For Godot’-
1954 in English
 Play belongs to theater
of Absurd

3.  The theatre of the Absurd is the
dramatic movement in 1950s.
 Martin Esslin first used the phrase
“theatre of the absurd” in a 1961.
 French thinkers such as Albert
Camus and jean-Paul Sartre used the
term absurd to described what they
understood as the fundamentally
meaningless situation of humans in a
confusing hostileff, and indifferent
world.
 “Absurd in these play takes the from
of man’s reaction to the world
apparently without meaning and man
as controlled or menaced by invisible
outside forces.”Essline Martin

5.  The play is the waiting of the two tramps Vladimir
and Estragon.
 waiting for Godot does not tell a story ; It explores
a Static situation.
 The very title of the play suggested its central
theme as martin Esslin has pointed out.
 “The subject of the play is not Godot but waiting
as an essential and characteristic aspect of human
condition.”
 Throughout our lives we always wait for something
… … an event, a person, death. It can be a thing of
one’s desire.

6.  “ If we are active, we tend to Forgot the passage of time,
we pass the time but if we are merely passively waiting
,we action of time itself.”
 This central theme, waiting, will be a recurrent reality
within the play one that it seems to remind Vladimir and
Estragon why they are where they are : in no man’s land.
 Throughout the play Vladimir keeps on repeating that they
are “waiting for Godot.” Actually, Vladimir repeats it for
eight times and ninth was by estragon.
 And “passed the time “or” will pass the time” is repeated
five times.
 “Nothing to be done” repeated four times, two times by
each.

7.  Estragon : Let’s go. Vladimir : we can’t. Estragon :
why not ? Vladimir : we are waiting for Godot “ (8)
 “ Vladimir : Let’s wait and see what he says.
Estragon : who? Vladimir : Godot” (13)
 “Estragon : simply wait . Vladimir : we’re used to it”
(39)
 “Estragon : Let’s go. Vladimir : we can’t. Estragon :
why not ? Vladimir : we are waiting for Godot.” (76)
 “ Estragon : what do we do now? Vladimir : while
waiting . Estragon : while waiting .” (86)

8.  “ Estragon : Let’s go. Vladimir : we can’t.
Estragon : why not ? Vladimir : we’re waiting
for Godot.” (88)
 “Vladimir : yes, in this immense confusion
one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for
Godot to come.”(91)
 “Estragon : Let’s go. Vladimir: we can’t.
Estragon why not? Vladimir : we are waiting
for Godot.” (100)

9. Waiting for
godot?
Salvation
Death?
A reason for
dying?
An impetus
for living?
Meaning
and
direction?
Someone or
something?

10.  what becomes evident is that both of them are
‘tied to Godot ,they cannot do anything except
to wait for him endlessly.
 Godot, them becomes the only hope for
survival.
 He is the one that controls their lives and the
only possible of redemption.
 They can only be saved by Godot and
therefore waiting until his arrival is a fate.
 Estragon and Vladimir aretied to each other by
an abstract bonds and by their common act of
waiting for Godot……

11.  Waiting as the central theme of the play leads the two
characters to avoid time and make the waiting bearable by filling
in time with futile actions.
 They are aware that there is ‘nothing to done’ while waiting, and
this becomes and obsessive statement throughout the play.
 First, is the awareness that there is nothing that can help them
in their waiting, and the void and anxiety have to be confronted,
and this is restated time and again, throughout the text.
 But It is critical for them to fill in time, which will also becomes
the third, most importance theme of the play.
 It will travel throughout the entire text, becoming an obsession
for the two of them.

12.  But it is critical for them to fill in time, which will
also becomes the third, most importance theme of
the play.
 It will travel throughout the entire text, becoming
and obsession for two of them.
 “Vladimir : Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you
remember the story. Estragon : No. Vladimir : It’ll
pass the time.” (6)
 “Vladimir : what do we do no ? Estragon : what
about hanging ourselves?” (12)
 “Vladimir : That passed the time. Estragon : It
would have passed in any case. Vladimir : yes, but
no so rapidly.” (51)

13.  “Vladimir : we could play at Pozzo and lucky.” (82)
 “Vladimir : How time flies when one has fun.” (86)
 Passing the time filling in time avoids thinking about their
present, absurd condition :
 “Vladimir : we’re in no danger of ever thinking any more.”
 Vladimir : What is terrible is to have thought” (71)
 “Estragon : Nothing to be done “(2)
 “Vladimir : Nothing to be done” (4)
 “Vladimir : Nothing to be done” (17)
 “Estragon : Nothing to be done” (17)

14.  We really don’t know even after reading/ watching
a play, it still remain confusion that who actually is
waiting and for what? Vladimir, Estragon, or we as
reader or audience waiting for Godot or end of the
play.
 As time passes waiting becomes habit.
 Moreover, it is in the act of waiting that we
experience the flow of time in its purest, most
evident from : If we are active, we tend to forget the
passage of time, we pass the time, if we are merely
passively waiting we are confronted with the action
of time itself.

15.  “But if we are merely passively waiting, we are
confronted with the action of time itself.”
 The more things change, the more they are the
same. ‘The tears of the world are a constant
quantity. For each one who begins to weep,
some where else another stops’ says Pozzo.
(32)
 Waiting is to experience the action of time,
which is constant change: pozzo is blind, Lucky
is dumb. And yet, as nothing real ever happens,
that change is in itself an illusion.