The purpose of human life is an unanswerable question. It seemsimpossible to find an answer because we don’t know where to begin lookingor whom to ask. Existence, to us, seems to be something imposed upon us byan unknown force.
There is no apparent meaning to it, and yet we sufferas a result of it. The world seems utterly chaotic. We therefore try toimpose meaning on it through pattern and fabricated purposes to distractourselves from the fact that our situation is hopelessly unfathomable. “Waiting for Godot” is a play that captures this feeling and view of theworld, and characterizes it with archetypes that symbolize humanity and itsbehaviour when faced with this knowledge.
According to the play, a humanbeing’s life is totally dependant on chance, and, by extension, time ismeaningless; therefore, a human+s life is also meaningless, and therealization of this drives humans to rely on nebulous, outside forces,which may be real or not, for order and direction. The basic premise of the play is that chance is the underlying factorbehind existence. Therefore human life is determined by chance. This isestablished very early on, when Vladimir mentions the parable of the twothieves from the Bible.
“One of the thieves was saved. It’s a reasonablepercentage” (Beckett, 8). The idea of “percentage” is important becausethis represents how the fate of humanity is determined; it is random, andthere is a percentage chance that a person will be saved or damned. Vladimir continues by citing the disconcordance of the Gospels on the storyof the two thieves.
“And yet. . . how is it – this is not boring you I hope- how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief beingsaved. The four of them were there – or thereabouts – and only one speaksof a thief being saved” (Beckett, 9).
Beckett makes an important pointwith this example of how chance is woven into even the most sacred of textsthat is supposed to hold ultimate truth for humanity. All four disciplesof Chirst are supposed to have been present during his crucifixion andwitnessed the two thieves, crucified with Jesus, being saved or damneddepending on their treatment of him in these final hours. Of the four,only two report anything peculiar happening with the thieves. Of the twothat report it, only one says that a thief was saved while the other saysthat both were damned. Thus, the percentages go from 100%, to 50%, to a25% chance for salvation. This whole matter of percentages symbolizes howchance is the determining factor of existence, and Beckett used the Bibleto prove this because that is the text that humanity has looked to formeaning for millenia.
Even the Bible reduces human life to a matter ofchance. On any given day there is a certain percent chance that one willbe saved as opposed to damned, and that person is powerless to affect thedecision. “The fate of the thieves, one of whom was saved and the otherdamned according to the one of the four accounts that everybody believes,becomes as the play progresses a symbol of the condition of man in anunpredictable and arbitrary universe” (Webb, 32). God, if he exists, contributes to the chaos by his silence. The veryfact that God allows such an arbitrary system to continue makes him anaccomplice.
The French philosopher Pascal noted the arbitrariness of lifeand that the universe worked on the basis of percentages. He advocatedusing such arbitrariness to one’s advantage, including believing in Godbecause, if he doesn’t exist, nobody would care in the end, but if he does,one was on the safe side all along, so one can’t lose. It is the samereasoning that Vladimir uses in his remark quoted above, “It’s a reasonablepercentage. ” But it is God’s silence throughout all this that causes thereal hopelessness, and this is what makes “Waiting for Godot” a tragedyamidst all the comical actions of its characters: the silent plea to Godfor meaning, for answers, which symbolizes the plea of all humanity, andGod’s silence in response. “The recourse to bookkeeping by the philosopherPascal no less than the clownish tramp shows how helpless we are withrespect to God+s silence” (Astro, 121).
Either God does not exist, or hedoes not care. Whichever is the case, chance and arbitrariness determinehuman life in the absence of divine involvement. The world of “Waiting for Godot” is one without any meaningfulpattern, which symbolizes chaos as the dominating force in the world. There is no orderly sequence of events.
A tree which was barren one dayis covered with leaves the next. The two tramps return to the same placeevery day to wait for Godot. No one can remember exactly what happened theday before. Night falls instantly, and Godot never comes. The entiresetting of the play is meant to demonstrate that time is based on chance,and therefore human life is based on chance. Time is meaningless as a direct result of chance being the underlyingfactor of existence.
Hence there is a cyclic, albeit indefinite, patternto events in “Waiting for Godot. ” Vladimir and Estragon return to the sameplace each day to wait for Godot and experience the same general eventswith variations each time. It is not known for how long in the past theyhave been doing this, or for how long they will continue to do it, butsince time is meaningless in this play, it is assumed that past, present,and future mean nothing. Time, essentially is a mess.
“One of theseemingly most stable of the patterns that give shape to experience, andone of the most disturbing to see crumble, is that of time” (Webb, 34-35). The ramifications of this on human existence are symbolized by thedifference between Pozzo and Lucky in Act I and in Act II. Because timeis based on chance and is therefore meaningless, human life is treatedarbitrarily and in an almost ruthless manner, and is also meaningless. InAct I Pozzo is travelling to the market to sell Lucky, his slave.
Pozzois healthy as can be, and there seems to be nothing wrong. Lucky used tobe such a pleasant slave to have around, but he Bibliography:
