Q: WHAT ARE THE MAJOR THEMES IN "WAITING FOR GODOT"? GIVE A COMPREHENSIVE OVER-VIEW.

Q:      WHAT ARE   THE MAJOR THEMES IN "WAITING FOR GODOT"? GIVE A

COMPREHENSIVE OVER-VIEW.

Q:       "WAITING  FOR GODOT" IS DRAMATIZATION OF MODERN ENIGMAS IN

A COMICAL WAY. AGREE OR DISAGREE IN CONVINCING WAY.

Q:      WHAT IS  SIGNIFICANCE  OF TIME IN THE PLAY "WAITING FOR GODOT"?

Ans:

"Waiting for Godot" appears as depthless play, "Nothing happens, no one comes, no one goes, it is awful". However beneath its surface absurdity, there lie layer of meanings, presenting a coarse picture of human life. The play is composed of multiple themes. It has become a classic and provides the critics much to speculate on, when Beckett was asked who is Godot,? he replied, "If I knew, I would have said so in the play".

"Waiting for Godot", concerned with the hope of salvation through the working of grace has been considered as Christian or religious play. G.S. Erase is of the opinion that this is a modern morality play on permanent Christian theme; he mentions the play in the same breath as every man and the Pilgrim's progress. The tramps wait for Godot who may represent God and their persistence in waiting for Godot shows their faith in God. The mutual attachment of two tramps and Vladimir's protective attitude towards his friend has been interpreted as Christian virtue. When Beckett was asked about the theme of Waiting for Godot, he sometimes referred to a passage in the writing of St. Augustine, "Do not despair-one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume — one of the thieves was damned".

However the theme of two thieves on the cross, the theme of uncertainty of hope of salvation and the fortuitousness of the bestowal of grace do indeed seems to be an insignificant observation. Godot is nothing but a name for the fact that the life which goes on pointlessly is wrongly interpreted to mean "Waiting for Godot".

Disintegration and regression of man is another depressing interpretation of the play. The play represents the disintegration of human beings, the climax in the play occurs when all the four characters fall to the ground upon one another, creating of formless mass from which Vladimir's voice emerges, saying, "we are men". Nothing escapes the destructive force of this regression neither speech-torn to piece in the rhetoric of Pozzo's monologue on twilight—nor thought—which is undetermined and destroyed by a whole series of absurd reasoning as well as by such passages as the incoherent speech delivered by Lucky. Lucky's speech effectively represents the regression of man's thinking intelligence.

According to yet another view, the world represented in this play resembles France occupied by German during World War II, when Beckett lived first in the occupied zone and then escaped to the unoccupied region. The play reminds us of the French Resistance organized by underground workers. How much waiting have gone in that bleak world. How many times must Resistance organizers have kept appointments with many who did not turn up? We can imagine why the arrival of Pozzo would have an unnerving effect on those who waited. Pozzo could be a Gestapo official clumsily disguised. The German occupation of France pervades the whole play. Godot himself is unpredictable on bestowing kindness and punishment. The parallel to Lane and Abel is evident. The fortuitous bestowal of grace, which passes human, understanding, divides mankind into those that will be saved and those that will be damned.

But these interpretations, says Martin Esslin seem to over look a number of essential features of the play — its constant stress on the essential uncertainty and the repeated demonstration of the futility of hopes pinned on him. According to this, whether Godot is meant to suggest his intervention as supernatural or whether he stands for a mythical human being, his exact nature is of secondary importance, So "the subject

of the play is not Godot but waiting... and Godot simply represents the objectives of our, waiting—and event, a thing, a person death". The play is a picture of the antics of man as he tries to distract himself until Godot comes. The two tramps, thus, while away their time in a succession of never ending games. In the very opening of the play, Estragon and Vladimir agree "Nothing to be alone". The only alternative left is, therefore, to wait for Godot Estragon, as time and again to be reminded of this fact:

"Let's go

We can't

Why not

We, re waiting for Godot

Ah!"

Having nothing to do they childishly engage in playing games? Both of them take off shake and peer inside their boot and hat.

Waiting is to experience the action of time, which is constant change. Yet the ceaseless activity of time is self-defeating, purposeless and therefore null and void. The more things change, the more they are the same. Pozzo exclaims in his final great outburst, "Have you not done formatting me with your accursed time?" They give birth astride to grave, the light gleams an instant, then its night once again.

Still Vladimir and Estragon live in hope and wait for Godot whose coming will bring the flow of time to a stop. Towards the end of the play when Vladimir is about to realize, he has been dreaming and must wake up and face the world as it is, Godot's messenger arrives, kinds his hopes and plunges him back into the passivity to waiting.

The play is also considered to be a fable about a kind of life that has no longer any hope that is the meaninglessness of life. The way by, the two tramps pass time is indicative of the boredom and triviality of human activities. The lack of significance in life and the constant suffering which existence is, the two tramps are dimly aware of the want of action in their lives but they still want to go on. Majority of people in today's world do not give up living when their life becomes pointless. The tramps are waiting for nothing in particular. They have even to remind each other of the fact that they are waiting and of what they are waiting for. Thus actually they are not waiting for anything. It should not of course be regarded as the "Key to the play".

Another theme is that, suffering is an inseparable part of human condition. Vladimir cannot even laugh without suffering. Estragon's feet make life a long torture for him. They have nowhere to rest their heads. This suffering pervades the episode of Lucky and Pozzo too. Lucky gives expression to the human condition by dancing what he styles the "Dance of the Net". In Act-II both Lucky and Pozzo have suffered great physical affliction. The most is that suffering is both purposeless and without the consolation of hope for the end.

The theme of exploitation is only implicit in the main story but it is explicit in the episode of Pozzo and Lucky. The Net, in which Lucky believes himself to be caught, is an economic one. The exploited become so demoralized that are unable to offer any resistance to the exploiters. Pozzo states that it was just once that Lucky failed to obey his command. Even when Pozzo has become blinded, Lucky does not have the gusts to free himself from his enslavement.

Into this wonderfully suggestive and subtle play Beckett incorporates such minor themes as the inadequacy of human language as a mean of communication and the illusory nature of such concepts as part and future.

It is thus peculiar richness of a play like "Waiting for Godot" that it opens vistas to so many perspectives. It is an existentialist play at the same time, it also mocks at the attitudes of existentialism. It seems to have some religious implications even though it seems to question profoundly the Christian conception of salvation and grace. It is open

to philosophical religious and psychological interpretation, yet about all, it is a poem on time, and the mysteries of existence. It is the paradox of change and stability.