Final Exam Essay

1230 Words3 Pages

“Waiting For Godot” by Samuel Beckett in it's absurdity has managed to capture the human condition in all it's madness in a way that holds most true to our everyday lives. The Waiting in this play holds many purposes because we wait for so many things in our lives and as Estragon and Vladimir demonstrate, one of the most significant things we wait for is what is in store for us in all our hoping, wishing and faith in others. Faith we are both cling to and are cautious of. Never the less the faith holds strong and we'll continue to wait with the fear that if we stopped waiting and gave up hope we'd miss out on great, possibly life changing opportunities. We ponder the options available to us like death, our past and present condition. In his play we're introduced to the offspring of a Monty Python skit and the Three Stooges without Mo, in Vladimir and Estragon as our Carl and Larry in their witty half-witlessness. The aristocratic Pozzo and his slave Lucky represent many of the ties to authoritative persons in our lives. They manage to present us with life and people and show us how truly silly it can be in a unorthodox manner that takes a bit of thinking before you appreciate it for the accuracy it holds.
Vladimir and Estagon are our main characters. Vladimir calls Estagon Gogo and Estagon refers to Vladimir as Didi. These two represent for us the most basic of human needs, companionship. In their bickering they decide to part ways but, they always come back to one another. We learn in the play that they have been friends for fifty years. Humans are social creatures and always crave interaction with each other. We're introduced to a higher classed gentlemen named Pozzo who, admits that he is excited to come across Gogo and Didi...

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... our lives that we yearn for. That we've waited so long for and prayed for. We're not sure if it'll ever come but we're better off hoping it will than if we had no hope at all. The rewards for our patience being too good to pass up. Our life has meaning associated closely to the people who give us guidance and company in this world because the one thing people crave besides food and shelter are other people either in some leadership or companion capacity. We can leave many things unfinished like the ending to “Waiting for Godot” because in real life everything is not placed in one “happy ending” banner with a clear cut beginning, middle and end. In the absurd we see a bit of truth about the human condition. We face weird situations and years of uncertainty, the things we consider valuable and the hope we have in good things to come that can make it all worth while.

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