Waiting for Nothing: Examining Existential Crisis in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

When do people start believing that they cannot do anything to change the situation of their life? Does faith help one recover what one has lost? Reading Waiting for Godot creates such questions in a reader’s mind. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot does not provide direct answers to these questions; however, we see the agony and angst of human beings of postmodern era in Waiting for Godot. The life of helpless human beings have been portrayed and the absence of an idea has been shown through the character of Godot. The people who have everything may not understand how it feels to lose everything and wait to recover. People who have nothing tend to wait to revive what they have lost. Nothing will seem important to that person and mortality will force him to wait for some miracle. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a play where the characters have nothing and they wait for that revival. The wait seems meaningless because the characters do not know what they are waiting for. The post Second World War society saw so much horror that they started to see meaninglessness in everything. The nothingness became a true phenomenon in everyday activities. The shock of the war turned society into believing that there is no guarantee of life in the coming hour. The existential crisis destroyed the believe system of the greater part of the society. The interpretation of the play varies from critic to critic but the play has been accepted as a masterpiece by the modern audience