Hope in Waiting for Godot and Wall E

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The individual and society living in the 20th Century has changed a great deal. This is shown in many texts such as animated film Wall E created by Pixar and Waiting for Godot written by Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. The major wars that happened in the 20th Century which were WWI, World War II and the Cold War affected many writers’ opinions and attitudes to everything in the world and all the mass murder and bombings had caused so much misery and torment. Waiting for Godot was written during the Cold War and World War II so this reflected on Samuel Beckett’s attitude on plain life. Samuel Beckett implied that there was no meaning to life and we were ‘Waiting for Godot’, our savior, who never comes. Conversely, the film Wall E, which was made in the modern period, does not portray a sadistic attitude instead a view of hope - that there is hope and that humans will return to Earth someday after the humans produced too much rubbish to clean up.

Waiting for Godot is a play, exploring man’s necessity to depend on a superior being. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon do many wild things while they pass the time and ‘wait for Godot’. They are two comic tramps who resemble Charlie Chaplin playing ‘The Tramp’. There are many themes including death, hope and the issue of absurdity which is the main theme. Estragon and Vladimir flirt with the idea of death but they are; meaning they exist and live. Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play providing that there is no meaning to life hence trying to formulate meaning is inadequate, yet that is all you can do. So this is why Estragon and Vladimir play, talk, joke, argue, make-up, eat, sleep, philosophize, think of killing themselves and do all the other thing...

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...ually boring and had echo as to feel a sort of emptiness and the joyful parts were mostly all the theme song of Hello Dolly.

The two texts that I chose, Wall E and Waiting for Godot are similar in context. The composers use the theme of hope in both texts and imply the same meaning. That human existence is pointless now that you can rely on technology (Wall E) and you can rely on a biblical illusion of God and in both there is hope. They both use bleak colours and have boring, dull scenery i.e. the tree and the skyscrapers of rubbish.

In conclusion, the individual and society; living in the 20th Century has changed from people thinking the world was over and that life was pointless and meaningless whereas now there is hope so people will not think the way they did before and have changed. That is why Wall E and Waiting for Godot are texts which prove my thesis.

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