Instructions
- Write an essay (at least 2 pages MLA format) on Waiting for Godot by Beckett. Your essay should be your interpretation of the play based on your own ideas and opinions or perhaps what we learned/discussed in class. Support your arguments by citing different parts of the dialogue or …. from different parts of the play.
- Here are two examples to give you an idea.
- A. Do you think that WAITING FOR GODOT could be considered a Christian or an Anti-Christian play?
- Include the following as you are writing your essay, if relevant:
- What are the Christian themes in this play?
- Waiting is one of the central themes of the play. What do you think it means?
- Godot is, of course, the great “absent presence” in the play. What is his role? What does it represent?
- What roles do Lucky and Pozzo play?
- Who are Vladimir and Estragon? What roles each one of them plays?
- Is HOPE present or absent in the lives of the main characters? Why or why not?
- How is time presented in this play?
- Why did Beckett choose to have his characters on a bare stage with one tree?
- What does the boy represent in WAITING FOR GODOT?
- What is the condition of man in this world in WAITING FOR GODOT?
- If Godot is indeed GOD, what kind of God is Beckett portraying?
- B. Is this an existentialist play or not? If so does it fit the ideas of Sartre or the ideas of Camus?
- Show evidence proving that “WAITING FOR GODOT” is an existentialist play:
- Include the following as you are writing your essay, if relevant:
- 1. In his essay on Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre characterizes the human condition with three terms: anguish, abandonment, and despair. Do you see these components present in this play? Show how:
- 2. Could the characters in the play be considered absurd hero according to the existentialist definition of the word.
- 3. Show signs of Alienation in this play:
- 4. Do Vladimir and Estragon have Bad Faith?
- 5. Mankind has free will. Is this true when it comes to the characters of this play:
- 6. Do any of the characters represent the Absurd Hero as Camus describes it in the Myth of Sisyphus?
- 7. “Existence precedes essence“.