Spirituality in Waiting for Godot Mazhar 1
Maria Mazhar
MA Final (Evening)
Research Methodology (641)
English Literature
23 December 2010 Spirituality in Waiting for Godot
Abstract
This paper argues that Waiting for Godot portrays the spiritual condition of the modern man. In this modern and scientific era, our life style is repetitive of which we are ignorant. Our souls are lifeless; we are physically immobile and this world becomes “hell” for all of us. Even the religion cannot help and perhaps “death” will release us from this spiritual anguish. When one realizes his own “absurd” condition that how unimportant he is in this huge cosmos despite his miseries, his pain comes out in “laughter”. Beckett has raised the question of human identity and his ultimate destiny. By creating these “spiritually dead” characters, Beckett has showed the mirror to our “spirits.”
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How strange the movie in the lonesome cave, Whereat the helpless, unprovided man, Lying as dead, does nothing on his own Yet is responsible for all that's done,
Inventing the action as he goes along, Author, director, playing all the parts; Forbidden to applaud or fall asleep, He is sole audience to the moving scene
He cannot interrupt, revise, control, But must endure until catastrophe Raises the curtains on the other world, Removing what he like as not forgets. (Nemerov 75)
Waiting for Godot is famously known as a nihilistic play, but it is evident that Samuel Beckett has used certain Biblical allusions, such as the four Gospels, story of the two thieves, Abel and Cain, salvation and saviour, goats and sheep, to explain the spiritual condition and attitude of the modern man towards religion. According to Martin Esslin, Beckett has successfully created the “dianoetic insight” without any “props . . . of myth and ritual . . . [which is] . . . a very important contribution towards the laying of the foundation for a new kind of spirituality” [emphasis added] (Quest 29). Dianoetic is from Dianoia, Aristotle’s Poetics, the insight when a protagonist realizes his hopeless situation and is ready to face it with courage. This “dianoetic insight” is “the foundation of every true religious experience” and also “the essence of sense of humor” (Esslin, Quest 28-29). Waiting for Godot is the play about dead spirits of modern men, who are forced to pass their time in this world (hell), because there is no other way to get rid of the torture. This is the “absurdity” of life. Audience watch their spirits and conscience in front of them and laughs upon their own “absurd” condition; Esslin declares it “the dianoetic laugh [which is] about human unhappiness” (Quest 28) and Normand Berlin entitles it as “tragic pleasure” (63). This tragi[c]omedy is designed in two acts that are mirror-images of one another. Vladimir (Didi), Estragon (Gogo), Pozzo, Lucky and an ambiguous Boy come on the stage and do nothing. Vivan Mercier famously said that “this is a play in which, ‘nothing happens twice’” (McDonald 33). But every individual who is spending his whole life on this earth, whose every day starts and ends in the same manner, is there anything new that happens once in his entire life that brings some change for him? The entire landscape of the play is a roadside mound, a tree and a
Spirituality in Waiting for Godot Mazhar 3 gloomy evening of life. It is that bareness, which one can feel inside. It is on the stage in front of spectators, they experience this scene everyday, going to or coming from their daily routines; even they can find it out-side the theatre hall. These two acts can be any two consecutive days, or may be alternate days of any week, any month or any year. They are our own daily repetitive lives of which we are ignorant. In this indescribable setting two men are waiting for an abstract person Godot, who may be a symbol of “death”. They have never seen him nor known him but believe that there is a Godot who will come one day. They don’t know since how long they are waiting and for how long they will have to wait. David Bradby says that Beckett has made waiting “ . . . his dominant metaphor for existence” (Patkovszky 3). Play starts with a dialogue: “Nothing to be done”, which is the essence of the whole drama of life. Man travels around the world, explores the heights of mountains; and discovers the supreme depths of oceans; infinities of skies, but his spirit remains thirsty. By the end of the day he just says, “Nothing to be done” and the next day resumes his effort again like Estragon, who struggles daily with his boots. Vladimir describes this whole long mess of life:
VLADIMIR: I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. So there you are again. (32; I)
This is the modern existential state of mankind; his life is stagnant, mechanized, depressed and conservative. According to Esslin, Beckett had never used the word tramps for his characters, “they are merely two human beings in the most basic human situation of being in the world and not knowing what they are there for” (Samuel). They are “us”, Adam, Abel, Cain, all mankind, whole humanity. “Life” for all of us is like the street with rushing people, where everyone is in hurry but we are standing alone. It is our daily routine; life becomes stagnant and meaningless for us. Our spirit experiences a void like Beckett’s men. All of them don’t know the time, even the day. Events are recurring continuously that is why they forget their past; it is the same as their future will be. Estragon: “Recognize! What is there to recognize?” (85; II).
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Religion is a chronicle or a fairy tale for those who do not have even a small piece of bread to eat. Estragon and Lucky fight over a bone and Lucky stares at Estragon so long, that Beckett says: “ . . .[he] can’t explain in few words. There is a lot in that look. . . . a confrontation, a meeting of two very poor people” (Asmus 19). Generally Godot is confused as God. Beckett clearly said, “If by Godot I meant God, I would say God and not Godot.” He further explains Godot is derived from, “ . . . godittots (masculine) and godasses (feminine), French colloquial words for boot. Could God be a boot?” (Betsalel 189). But he did not know the ultimate meaning of Godot: “If I knew, I would have said so in the play” (McDonald 29). Vladimir is confused within the four Gospels and for Estragon Bible is like a fairy tale. He says: “I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue” (35; I). People who believe in religion blindly are “bloody ignorant apes” (37; I). Because they are leading their lives in self-denial and do not know that how much educated (like Vladimir and Lucky) or wealthy (like Pozzo) they are, it is just “physical death” for which their spirits are waiting. When the suffering of life increases, a person is unable to communicate well and his depression makes him inactive. People talk just to fill the silence of their souls, words are full of action and the moments of silence have a significant meaning. Didi and Gogo hear some “dead voices”, may be coming from their inside.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices. VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings. ESTRAGON: Like leaves. VLADIMIR: Like sand. ESTRAGON: Like leaves. Silence. VLADIMIR: They all speak at once. ESTRAGON: Each one to itself. Silence. VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper. ESTRAGON: They rustle. VLADIMIR: They murmur. ESTRAGON: They rustle. Silence. VLADIMIR: What do they say? ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives. VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it. VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient. Silence. VLADIMIR: They make a noise like feathers. ESTRAGON: Like leaves. VLADIMIR: Likes ashes.
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ESTRAGON: Like leaves. Long silence. VLADIMIR: Say something! ESTRAGON: I'm trying. Long silence. VLADIMIR: (in anguish). Say anything at all! ESTRAGON: What do we do now? VLADIMIR: Wait for Godot. ESTRAGON: Ah! Silence. (87; II)
These short and quick dialogues create a resonance that have some magical magnitude which hits strings of the spirit; watcher listens them in his ears, feels them, as well as imagines it on the screen of his mind. The silences after every short conversation give us time to think that perhaps these words are uttered by our dead souls. Mostly critics relate these “dead voices” with the dead souls of Danté’s Inferno. The Divine Commedia was Beckett’s lifetime love, his frequent use of “death and hell” and “waiting” in the play were the allusions from Inferno. Besides Danté, Descartes also influenced Beckett’s thoughts. His famous saying, “I think therefore I am,” reflected in the confused “self” of Didi and Gogo. Further Michel Foucault, Esslin and other critics say that the play reflects Heidegger’s philosophy of Dasein, that is, “being-in-the-world” who is conscious of his ultimate end. Didi and Gogo have made several attempts to commit suicide, which is their “authentic way” of living in Heidegger’s sense. The doubtful self (Descartes) of Dasein (Heidegger) who is spiritually dead, waiting in “limbo” (Dante’s Inferno) for his physical departure is the underlying theme of Godot’s mysterious world. It reflects our spiritual dilemma; emptiness of the soul of the modern man. Estragon: “The best thing would be to kill me, . . .” (86; II). This futile “waiting” is eating them up. Life seems to be a linear movement but it is moving in a circular motion and its exit is only in the graveyard. We are repeating our actions daily, which continue till the Resurrection Day. Life means constant waiting, it is a “habit”, which “is a great deadener” (116; II). Pozzo: “For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true for the life”(58; I). This repetition of life echoes from Vladimir circular-song. According to Penelope Merritt, it has the clear expression of death with never-ending extension, which is repetitious in vocabulary and a closed plot from which there is no exit.
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VLADIMIR: A dog came in the kitchen And stole a crust of bread. Then cook up with a ladle And beat him till he was dead. . . . Then all the dogs came running And dug the dog a tomb And wrote upon the tombstone For the eyes of dogs to come: … A dog came in the kitchen . . . (81-82; II)
Like Didi and Gogo all of us are in state of despair and confused about our identities. We are in search of our blind fortunes. How long we have to wait for our salvation or whether we get it or not, we do not know. There is a very interesting saying: “Do you know how the devil tortures the souls in hell? . . . He keeps them [in] waiting” (Merritt). They are even unaware of whether they are happy or not. Didi thinks that perhaps Godot releases them from their despair but for Estragon it is just “the wind in the reeds”(44; I). For Beckett, “Life and Death [are] extensions of the same state . . .” (Cuddy 52). They try to commit suicide so that it may give them the impression of their existence but they are unable to hang themselves. Death, void, nothingness, meaninglessness of life are with them from how long, they do not know. Pozzo and Lucky portray the slave-master relationship; a command that grips an intellectual weak soul. Pozzo has property, food and a slave whom he has tied with a rope like a mule. He describes how night falls upon a person’s life, who is born on an enlightened earth and unaware of his future. He depicts his own future and as well as the spectators’:
POZZO: The night. . . . Qua sky. It is pale and luminous like any sky at this hour of the day. In these latitudes. When the weather is fine. An hour ago roughly after having poured forth ever since say ten o'clock in the morning tirelessly torrents of red and white light it begins to lose its effulgence, to grow pale, pale, ever a little paler, a little paler until pppfff! finished! it comes to rest. But------but behind this veil of gentleness and peace night is charging
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and will burst upon pop! like that! just when we least expect it. That's how it is on this bitch of an earth. (63-64; I)
And the light is completely extinguished from his life. He appears completely in reverse condition in second act. Pozzo is blind altogether and depends upon his dumb slave. But he gets an insight-vision, Estragon: “Perhaps he can see into the future” (110; II). When Pozzo and Lucky fall down, Pozzo calls for “help” but no help comes. After a long delay when Didi and Gogo come, they fall as well. Blind power, dumb intellect and luck, friendship, even the whole humanity with dead spirits fall down. Vladimir describes himself, “We are men” (107; II); the modern man who does not listen because of his own helpless condition. Beckett calls it, “ . . . an imitation of reality . . . a game in order to survive” (Asmus 20). We can see these miserable figures around us daily, which are once powerful but now dependent upon their slaves. “Beckett’s dramatic dialogue creates still moments that have a spiritual force,” Andrew Kennedy writes, “. . . the significant utterance of the speakers may emerge . . . from moments of dying as much as from ‘moments of being’” (408). Pozzo delivers a thought-provoking speech and expresses how the past and future mingle; and the birth and death are fusing into each other.
POZZO: It's abominable! …, one day like any other day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, … They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, and then it's night once more. (He jerks the rope.) On! (114-115; II)
And on and on, life goes . . . Time seems static; it is difficult to pass or it does not pass altogether. “Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly” (74; II). Lucky is no doubt a modern intelligent man; Pozzo: “Guess who taught me all these beautiful things. My Lucky!” (58; I), but he is shunned by the whole world. He is symbolically “lucky” who is suffering from true spiritual miseries; his neck has a running sore but still tied hard. If the society throw out an individual despite his great capabilities, tied up his neck, so that he never complains and always works like a puppet, then one day he will become Lucky. Many critics say that Lucky is suffering from Schizophrenia. His “think(ing)” shows his oppressed soul, a kind of self-
Spirituality in Waiting for Godot Mazhar 8 liberation. All other three do not let him complete and his “think[ing]” finishes at “unfinished”. Lois Gordon states, “Pozzo’s chicken bones, . . . become the skulls, skeletons, corpses, and charnel houses that punctuate the play, haunting reminders of human destiny” (112). There is a certain ambiguity about the “Boy”. Perhaps he is an angel or a messenger of death. But Beckett never claimed that the Boy was the messenger of God. According to Betsalel, Beckett wanted the boy acted like an angel (angelos a Greek word means messenger), to give an “ethereal quality” to the play (189). Every day he comes and says: “Godot will come tomorrow.” He doesn’t remember whether he comes the day before or not; not even “sure” about Godot’s “white beard” who beats him daily but his presence has proved Godot’s “existence.” Didi and Gogo start their new day and wait for the night and Godot, who might liberate their souls, which are detained in their bodies. Vladimir: “Tell him . . . (he hesitates) . . . tell him you saw me and that . . . (he hesitates) . . . that you saw me. You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!” (117-118; II). Didi, Gogo are frightened from the Boy but still want to deliver the message to death that they are waiting for it. All of us are Didi, Gogo, Pozzo, or Lucky who are leading the life as before, do not know when it ends and when we get our ultimate destiny. Thus, “Theater of the Absurd can actually coincide with the highest degree of realism”
(Esslin, Absurd Drama). Beckett has given a metaphysical form to his play, which is full of terror, uncertainty and death. According to Cuddy, Beckett has ignored spirituality (58) but Vladimir’s last soliloquy, which concludes the whole play, shakes our inner-selves. He mingles his thoughts with Pozzo’s. Its theme is in Heidegger’s saying: “As soon as a man is born, he is old enough to die” (Merritt). This is a combination of birth and death; grave and bed, forceps and spade, cries of happiness and miseries; because they anticipate each other, his “epiphany, . . . [is] an exploration of the levels of reality in this world” (Burkman 43).
VLADIMIR: Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly the gravedigger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. ( He listens .) . . . (116; II)
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What is the worth of a person? If he is hungry he may gnaw half-eaten bones or have a rotten carrot and becomes satisfied like Estragon; or one day a wealthy master turns blind and cannot recognize his valuables; or he can be treated as a mule like Lucky? Our ultimate end is death. Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let's go. They do not move. (Curtain) (120; II). And nor the spectators move. But the drama of life continues day after day, in a repetitive manner even if you want to hide and draw a curtain but it continues. The play is devoid of any plot, even it seems that there is no script, all the characters are waiting and doing some non-sense activities on bare stage. But when we watch the play, we are also experiencing that endless futile waiting. We are confused but also in state of self-realization, “ . . . the ultimate effect of seeing or reading Beckett is one of cathartic release, an objective as old as theatre itself” (Esslin, Samuel). The circular way of time passing has created spiritual void in modern man that is why life becomes worthless and fake. This “habit” (life) makes us physically motionless and has deadened our spirits. We do not know our destiny, nor our religion can help us and we are waiting for our Godots. This is the “dead spirituality” of the modern man. Perhaps “one fine day” we wake up and become “blind as fortune” with a dumb luck(y). “The world is being shown as complex, harsh, and absurd and as difficult to interpret as reality itself, the audience . . . wonder what it is all about” (Esslin, Theatre 13). For Beckett comedy lies within the tragedy because when internal torment reaches infinity, ultimately it comes out in a “dianoetic laugh” because it “raises the curtains [of] the . . .[inner] world”. Beckett’s abstract painting about the absolute reality of life looks absurd but to understand its essence audience are convinced to stick to their seats to find some underlying meaning in meaninglessness and some spirituality in this stupidity, that actors ask them: “Why do you stare at us so hard, as if in a mirror?”(Elam, 145; Dante, Inferno; XXXII). (Word Count: 3,213)
Works Cited
Asmus, Walter D. “Beckett Directs ‘Godot’.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Waiting for Godot—New Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. 15-24. Print. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Ed. Ira Hasan. Karachi: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
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Berlin, Normand. “The Tragic Pleasure of Waiting for Godot.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Waiting for Godot—New Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. 55-69. Print. Betsalel, Ken. “Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett).” Bloom’s Literary Themes Alienation. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. 183-91. Print. Burkman, Katherine H. “The Nonarrival of Godot: Initiation into the Sacred Void.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Waiting for Godot—New Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. 33-53. Print. Cuddy, Lois A. “Beckett's ‘Dead Voices’ in ‘Waiting for Godot’: New Inhabitants of Dante's ‘Inferno’.” Modern Language Studies 12.2 (1982): 48-60. Print. Elam, Keir. “Dead heads: damnation-narration in the 'dramaticules'.” The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Ed. John Pilling. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. 145-66. Print. Esslin, Martin. “Beckett and the Quest for Meaning.” Samuel Beckett Today Samuel Beckett: Endlessness in the Year 2000. Ed. Moorjani, Angela B., Veit, Carola. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2001. 27-30. Print. ---. “Introduction to ‘Absurd Drama’.” Absurd Drama. Penguin Books. (1965): Web. 20 Oct 2010. http://www.samuel-beckett.net/AbsurdEsslin.html ---. “The Theatre of the Absurd.” The Tulane Drama Review 4.4 (1960): 3-15. Print. ---. Samuel Beckett Dublin Ireland. (2006): Web. 10 Oct 2010.