Exploring a Static Situation:
Waiting for Godot does not tell a story. It explores a static situation. Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful. On a country road, by a tree two old tramps, Vladimir and Estragon are waiting. That is opening situation at the beginning of Act 1. At the end of Act II they are informed that Mr. Godot, with whom they believe they have an appointment cannot come, but that he will surely come tomorrow. Act II repeats precisely the same pattern. The same boy arrives and delivers the same message.
Variations of Events and the Dialogue:
The sequence of events and the dialogue in each act are different. Each time the tramps encounter another pair of characters Pozzo and Lucky, master and slave, under differing circumstances. In each act Vladimir and Estragon attempt suicide and fail, for differing reasons. But these variations merely serve to emphasise the essential sameness of the situation.
Godot Representing the Objective of Waiting:
The subject of the play is not Godot but Waiting, the act of waiting as an essential and characteristic aspect of the human condition. Throughout our lives we always wait for something, and Godot simply represents the objective of our waiting - an event, a thing, a person, death. Moreover, it is in the act of waiting that we experience the flow of time in its purest, most evident form. If we are active, we tend to forget the passage of time, we pass the time, but if we are merely passively waiting, we are confronted with the action of time itself.
The play, a Direct Presentation of Waiting, Ignorance, Impotence, Boredom:
At first sight this play does not appear to have any particular relationship with the human predicament. For instance, we feel hardly any inclination to identify ourselves with the two garrulous tramps who are indifferent to all the concerns of civilized life. Godot sounds as if he might have some significance; but he does not even appear on the stage. However, soon we are made to realise that Vladimir and Estragon are waiting and that their waiting is of particular kind. Although they may say that they are waiting for Godot, they cannot say who or what Godot is, nor can they be sure that they are waiting at the right place or on the right day, or what would happen when Godot comes, or what would happen if they stopped waiting. They have no watches, no time - tables, and there is no one from whom they can get much information. They cannot get the essential knowledge, and they are ignorant. Without the essential knowledge they cannot act, and so they are impotent. They produce in us a sense of baffled helplessness which we experience. When forced to remain in a situation which we do not understand and over which we have no control. All that they do is to seek ways to pass the time in the situation in which they find themselves. They tell stories, sing songs, play verbal games, pretend to be Pozzo and Lucky, do physical exercises. Here we have the essence of boredom - actions repeated long after the reason for them has been forgotten, and talk purposeless in itself but valuable as a way to kill time.
Mechanical Waiting:
The two tramps are in a place and in a mental state in which nothing happened and time stands still. Their main preoccupation is to pass the time as well as they can until night comes and they can go. They realise the futility of their exercises and that they are merely filling up the hours with pointless activity. In this sense their waiting is mechanical; it is the same thing as not moving.
Moral Obligation:
In another sense, it is an obligation. They have to remain where they are, though they resent doing so and would like to leave. This might be called a moral obligation, since it involves the possibilities of punishment and reward. If Godot comes, a new factor may be introduced into their existence, whereas if they leave they will certainly miss him. Their waiting, therefore, contains a certain element of hope, no matter how cynical they may be about it.
Godot Himself is Unpredictable in Bestowing Kindness and Punishment:
Godot treats his boy messenger who minds the goats well but he beats the boy's brother who minds the sheep. The parallel to Cain and Abel here is evident: there too the Lord's grace fell on one rather than on the other without any rational explanation - only that Godot beats the minder of the sheep and cherishes the minder of the goats. Here Godot also act contrary to the son of man at the last judgement. But Godot's kindness is bestowed fortuitously, his coming is not a source of pure joy; it can also mean damnation.
A Representative of Stagnant Life:
This fable does not relate an action because the action it relates is life without action. The characters in the play have been pulled out of the world, and they no longer have anything to do with it. The world has become empty for them. The two heroes, or anti - heroes, are merely alive, but no longer living in a world. The two tramps, in spite of their inaction and the pointlessness of their existence, still want to go on. The tramps are waiting for nothing in particular. They even have to remind each other of the very fact that they are waiting and of what they are waiting for. Thus, actually they are not waiting for anything.
Wrongly Interpretation of Waiting:
It is meaningless to ask who or what the expected Godot is. Godot is nothing but the name for the fact that life which goes on pointlessly is wrongly interpreted to mean waiting, or as waiting for something. What appears to be a positive attitude of the two tramps amounts to a double negation: their existence is pointless and they are incapable of recognizing the pointlessness of their existence.
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