What is the Play about? (I think I hit this one out of the park)

Geoffrey McQuilkin

          While reading Waiting for Godot, I was "waiting" for a climax or crux moment that would give me a better understanding of the play and facilitate the process of answering the first questions in the Longman analysis.  I waited and waited.  The leaves on the trees changed color and fell from their limbs as seasons came and went, but the plot never came.  In the winter of 2008, when the snow was gently falling on a brisk evening at the University of Richmond and I was warm in my dormitory, I began to uncover what Samuel Beckett had left for me to discover on my own.  Pondering the day's events in my head, it became clear that Waiting for Godot was a social commentary on the repetitive nature of the human experience.  The way that Beckett repeats the actions of Act I in Act II (with some inconsequential changes) is a metaphor for the monotony of our everyday lives.  Human lives consist of a myriad of repetitions of a daily routine that is essentially meaningless.

            The play builds towards a climax that never comes.  Godot never arrives and there is no reason to believe that he would if Beckett had added a third act.  It seems as though the entire play (and perhaps life sadly enough) is about wasting time.  The main characters find themselves "Waiting for…waiting" (50).  It is not a stretch to imagine that GODot represents God or death and the title of the play implies the futility of life.  Beckett seems to imply that life is meaningless as it consists of distracting ourselves with various tasks (and tensions) as we wait to die. Estrogen and Vladimir are the protagonists in the play, yet they both serve as representatives of mankind.  Beckett uses Vladimir to point out how man strives to find meaning in his existence in vein.  One could say that Vladimir is meant to point out the absurdity of religion in this sense.  However, to assign a meaning to anything or any character in this play would be considered an absurdity by Becket as the play is about meaninglessness.  The analysis for "what is this play about" should be left as a blank space in a tribute to meaninglessness.  But that would be too deep for most audiences.

            And just a side note: the word "Meaninglessness" contains far too many letters for what the word actually means.  It should be a one or two letter word or an invisible word such as            .  Thinking about what the meaningless play is about is hurting my brain and I apologize if what I wrote was ridiculous.  I am only human so it doesn't matter anyway (according to Beckett of course, I love blog posting). I suppose this blog post is just one more repetition in the endless cycle of pointless waiting.  And that is what the play is about.