Review of the book 'Waiting for Godot', by Samuel Beckett (1952)

Title: Waiting for Godot – A tragicomedy in two acts
Publisher: Cideb Editrice, Genoa
Introduction by Paolo Bertinetti
Activities and notes by Brian Hodgkiss
Front cover illustration by Giannie De Conno
Book design by Nadia Maestri
Photographs reproduced courtesy of Les Éditions de Minuit – Archives Samuel Beckett.

The play Waiting for Godot happens on a single scenario, a country road, by a tree.  The protagonists are a pair of tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, who live on the vegetables they find and struggle every evening to find cover for the night.  They are outsiders, to which farmers are hostile.  Even though they are free, being banned from human company makes them prison-less inmates - the slow passage of the empty hours becomes unbearable to them.  But they have found something to look up for – someone named Godot has made a promise to them, so they are waiting for him.  Being with one another for so long has led to take the other for granted, so their chatting is more of intertwined monologues than actual conversation, and most of their mutual questions and requests go unanswered.  This emptiness is what has caused the play to be summed up as 'a play in which nothing happens, twice'.

There's no doubt the play offers little when it comes to action – what makes it interesting, and should I say, the only way to enjoy it, is the philosophical reading.  The meaninglessness of the action, fully intended, is taken to represent life's lack of purpose, the non-threatening threat that is set to devour existence.  And of course, you can take Godot for God.  The text of the play leaves space for creation, specially when it comes to mimic routines which are not described, and are to be created by the players for each performance.

Estragon and Vladimir come across an even odder couple, Pozzo and Lucky, which have a master and servant relationship that resembles slavery.  Their behaviour, in which Lucky carries out immediately all of Pozzo's orders, contrasts vividly against Estragon and Vladimir's ever-discontinuing actions.  This is the only kind of society Estragon and Vladimir can relate to, but not be a part of, and wouldn't choose to anyway as they have emptiness for fatherland.  The contrast serves the purpose of showing that hierarchy, social classes, etc, is a way for people to organize how to live but never a solution to the question of why to live.

On the other hand, the play never bothers to explore the allures of life as feasts, sex, love, family, etc, which would be discarded anyway as meaningless, but aren't spent a minute on as this is  intellectual theatre, and ascetically British from all cultures.  That is, no doubt, the reason the play has tramps as protagonists – it saves the author the need to detoxify the characters from life before they can reflect on it.

The end of play is not really an end but rather a loop, conveying the idea that the wait can be infinite, that the play can be life-long, and therefore Life itself.  A notorious milestone in playwriting.

The 40-page introduction by Paolo Bertinetti gives good insight, complete with photographs, as to what were the circumstances in which Becket wrote the play, and the first performance of it.  As for the notes, they are a much needed help as there is a lot of jargon in the language.  There are also 33 pages for activities which I am not reviewing,