‘But habit is a great deadner’ as Vladimir says, and a few moments later: “I can’t go on! ’ (83). Didi and Gogo are stuck in between the usage of the language as a habit filling the silence and the real process of symbolizing which can touch or move. These are assaults against the grounding, the stability of language itself. The words lose their initial meaningful purpose, becoming mere sounds in an empty space, or simply just printed marks. Another example is the play with homophonic names: ‘Estragon: Bozzo….Bozzo… The split and redundancy reveal the materiality of the words, and thus violate the unity of signifier and signified. They repeat some words and split them into syllables: ‘Vladimir: Tied?Įstragon: Ti-ed’ (13) Production photograph of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1953 premiere at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris), directed by Roger Blin, who also played Pozzo (in the center), the production starred Lucien Raimbourg as Vladimir (on the left), Pierre Latour as Estragon (on the right) and Jean Martin as Lucky (not in the Foto). Their usage of language implies a strangeness to the intended meaning. There are many pauses between the mostly short utterances of the characters. Their plaintive parlando style conveys a mood of uncertainty and meaninglessness. Vladimir and Estragon have problems understanding each other: ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying’ (13) but continue speaking. Vladimir and Estragon are talking the whole time and there are methods with which Beckett problematizes language itself. I argue that the play, in which obviously somehow ‘Something’ happens, surrounds the topic of langue. The first sentence of the play “Nothing to be done” uttered by Estragon, introduces the paradigm of the following.īut what are the protagonists doing on the edge to nothingness? Beckett presents with his play a realm in between, difficult to define or to locate, and in which “nothing happens twice” as famously described by Irish critic Vivian Mercier.
Instead, they are meeting Pozzo and Lucky and a Boy who brings the message of the delay of Godot. Vladimir (‘Didi’) and Estragon (‘Gogo’) are waiting for Godot in two Acts, but he never comes. The play ‘En attendant Godot’ (‘Waiting for Godot’) written by Samuel Beckett was firstly staged in Paris in the year 1953. Samuel Beckett was born in 1906, in Foxrock, Ireland and died in 1989.
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