Princeton University Library

Playing the Spectator While Waiting for Godot

Author(s): Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja
Source: The Princeton University Library Chronicle , Vol. 68, No. 1-2 (Winter 2007), pp.
465-487
Published by: Princeton University Library
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.25290/prinunivlibrchro.68.1-2.0465

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 Playing the Spectator While
Waiting for Godot
kimberly bohman-kalaja
I know of no other way of coping with great tasks, than play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

A N understanding of the structural games that characterize Wait-

ing for Godot (1952) is a necessary interpretive tool for any seri-
ous reader or spectator of Samuel Beckett’s work. However, analyses
of the game theories and strategies used by Beckett to construct his
masterwork are scarce. Perhaps the philosophical nature of Beckett’s
work generally, and of Godot in particular, encourages critics to con-
tinue to construct meaning in terms of the philosophies the author
incorporates into his plays through allusion. Unfortunately, readings
of Godot that adhere to any single critical or philosophical approach—
be it reader-response theory, Cartesian rationalism, deconstruction,
absurdism, existentialism, empiricism, or mathematical analyses—
provide only a partial glimpse of the complex structures at work in
Beckett’s play. To fully appreciate Waiting for Godot, readers must
learn to grasp it as an integrated totality of the ideas it contains. To
do this, one must first understand the game structures Beckett used
to balance and negotiate among these ideas. Once readers learn the
rules of Beckettian play, meaning emerges from his work in infinite
permutations.
When readers and spectators enter the world of Waiting for Godot,
they are, to borrow Hugh Kenner’s phrase, “in terra Samuelis.” A
lover of the theories and strategies of games, Beckett transforms his
stage into a literal game board, diligently crafted. Waiting for Godot is
an ideal example of what I call the Beckettian Play-text. Games are ev-
erywhere in Godot. Guessing games, rhyming games, slapstick gags,
games of imitation, and games of narration and of recitation serve
as the basis for much of the stage dialogue. More important, these
literal games, which appear deceptively simplistic at times, serve a
vital metatextual function. At the most basic level, the games onstage
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 function as metaphors for all types of social and language games
played in society at large. The play’s principal characters, Vladi-
mir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), capture the sometimes cooperative,
often antagonistic, defensive, competitive, and uncertain elements of
social dialogue in the “real” world, while enabling Beckett to explore
the ethical import of the social rules that guide such dialogues. Godot
creates a space in which the rules that define real-world dialogues and
those that define literary dialogues overlap.
To speak of dialogue in Beckett may appear to be a precarious
project, a dramatic departure from traditional readings of this play.
Beckett aficionados may wonder how dialogue exists between noto-
riously solipsistic characters who sprang from the imagination of an
author for whom failures of communication are a consciously articu-
lated artistic objective. Beckett once described art as “[t]he expression
that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, noth-
ing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express,
together with the obligation to express.” 1 This claim becomes less
enigmatic when we examine the games behind the dialogues in Beck-
ett’s play. Dialogues are central to Beckettian Play, because Beckett-
ian dialogues go far beyond simple expression or communication.
Beckettian dialogues acknowledge an attempted engagement, even
if the expression or communication fails. In Godot, Beckett shuns soli-
taires and promotes mutually interactive engagement of ideas and
characters, and it is precisely this ethical privileging of dialogic inter-
actions that makes Godot a Play-text.
To clarify, the term ethical is used here to describe the particular
sense of Play-ethics that characterizes the dialogue in Godot. The text
does not attempt to define or impose moral claims per se, but it does
instigate an ethical inquiry about the processes of textual production
and consumption. A Beckettian ethics of reading is not prescriptive ; it
is phenomenological. It initiates a dialogue about dialogue. Such eth-
ical concerns are inevitable in any discussion of a Play-text because
its gamelike structures reflect the strict rules, codes, and ethics inherit
to all forms of Play. In any text that appeals to game structures, ques-
tions of cheating, fairness, and abstention become significant textual
concerns. Dialogues can fail. They can be meaningless. Or, if they

1
Samuel Beckett, “Three Dialogues,” in Disjecta : Miscellaneous Writings and a Dra-
matic Fragment, ed. Ruby Cohn (New York : Grove Press, 1984), 142.

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 adhere to rules as delineated by Beckett, they can be ethical. So, what
constitutes Beckettian Play ? Although the terms play and games have
recurred endlessly in discussions of Godot, they have been used so fre-
quently and so ambiguously that the real relevance of Play in the text
has been obscured. Therefore, a brief foray into the theory of games
and play will help to clarify these terms.
Generally speaking, game theories, in their economic and mili-
tary applications, presuppose the real-world conditions of limited re-
sources and multiple consumers. Typically, the conflicts that result
from limited resources desired by multiple consumers are the reason
for the application of game theory in many academic disciplines.
In literature, on the other hand, real-world scarcity is not an issue ;
the resources of literary texts are unlimited. In fact, both the author
and the reader want to gain as much as possible from the literary ex-
perience. So, when applying game theory to a literary text we must
first acknowledge a variation on the competitive models of play. The
model I propose for Godot is one of cooperative antagonism—which might
be considered a form of non-zero-sum competition. Though Beckett
is certainly antagonistic (if not downright hostile at times) toward his
readers, Godot is based on neither pure conflict nor pure cooperation.
The “game” involves multiple and varied strategies on the part of
the author to compel readers and spectators to overcome the limit-
ing forces of habit, expectation, and even education in order to gain
as much as possible from the text. So, authors challenge readers with
competitive strategies, but authors and readers play with converging
interests. For this reason, the metaphor of competitive non-zero-sum game
playing is an ideal context in which to read Godot.
Beckett’s familiarity with such strategies should not be surpris-
ing. In the era surrounding the writing (1947–1948) and publication
(1952) of Godot, studies of games as models of human behavior were
becoming increasingly popular. In the years leading up to the pub-
lication of Les Jeux et les hommes (Man, Play, and Games, 1958), social
play theorist Roger Caillois attempted to shift previous studies of Play
into a moral and aesthetic realm.2 His topology is useful, because his
2
Roger Caillois, Les Jeux et les hommes : Le Masque et le vertige (Paris : Gallimard,
1958). By the time this work was published, Caillois’s ideas and essays on Play were
already well known. He was building primarily on the landmark work of social play
theory, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens : A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston :
Beacon Press, 1950).

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 classification of the types of authentic and ethical games that define
all human Play correspond to Beckett’s notion of Play-dialogue :
1. Play is free (players play willingly and without obligation).
2. Play is separate (takes place in a space with visible and clear bound-
aries).
3. Play is uncertain (there is some risk of failure).
4. Play is nonproductive (when the game ends, there is nothing left
  over).
5. Play is rule-guided.
6. Play is not reality.3
The notion of “ethical” play that Beckett establishes in Godot cor-
responds to Caillois’s rules with uncanny accuracy. Vladimir and Es-
tragon transform the stage into a literal and figurative game board
in a distinct time and space. Although each expresses a desire to be
alone, both discover that solitary games are impossible. Their dia-
logue functions as a language game, and through it Beckett inter-
rogates language and tests its viability as a means of genuine mutual
engagement. Didi and Gogo use language to negotiate the distance
between them, to move ceaselessly toward the unbridgeable gulf that
separates all individuals into separate and unknowable worlds. But
can these worlds meet ? Coexist ? Or is language an illusion, an empty
social form that only simulates spiritual connection ? Whether or not
language proves a sufficient tool for communication becomes a sec-
ondary ethical concern in Godot. It is subjugated to the true ethical
heart of all game playing : the desire to pursue dialogue at the risk of
failure.
Beckettian ethics are characterized by a willingness or refusal to
engage in play. Characters either embrace Play-dialogues or choose
to abstain from playing by withdrawing into solipsism. This empha-
sis on process rather than effect, a fundamental element of Play, is
characteristic of Godot. The ethical justification for such game play-
ing on stage is that a failed experiment is preferable to silence. Games
are a potential means of coping with failure, a means of bridging the
gaps between contraries. Playing and failing are twin forces that sus-
tain life. Dialogue may be a precarious and intricate undertaking,
rife with risk. But for Beckett, intention and suspension are valued
3
Caillois, Les Jeux et les hommes, 42–43.

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 more than withdrawal or retreat. Characters are painfully isolated,
but they survive through their unceasing efforts to establish contact
in the void.
Throughout Godot, Beckett positions characters, ideas, philosophies,
and even the author and reader into what I will call dialogic proximity. I
use this term to describe the fusion of form and theme that typifies the
author’s particular notion of dialogue as an interaction between two
opposing voices (ideas, concepts, players) that, even if never synthe-
sized, must coexist. With this concept in mind, we can visualize the
structure of Godot as an intersecting series of ideological continuums,
at the poles of which exist distinct voices in competition with one an-
other. At the center of all these continuums is the stage, where Didi
and Gogo play. At this center, ideas are constantly brought into prox-
imity, a move toward the dialogue necessary for ethical play. How-
ever, Didi and Gogo do not always play ethically. They fear a genu-
ine dialogue of ideas and the potential for self-knowledge that might
ensue. Whenever “thinking” becomes a threat, Didi and Gogo retreat
into an unethical and corrupt play. The philosophical potential of
their stage dialogue is then thwarted, as they paradoxically use lan-
guage games to evade the very ideas they bring into language. Ironi-
cally then, although philosophical allusion is vital to the play’s mean-
ing and structure, it is not the ideas invoked by allusion that are the
source of meaning in this text. Meaning in the play must be grasped
through an understanding of how the text’s game structures place
these ideas into dialogic proximity.
A sense of the play’s overarching structure can be gained by exam-
ining three principal dialogic continuums :
Social Dialogue (Wittgenstein)——Cartesian Interiority
Existentialism (Desire for meaning)——Slapstick (Meaninglessness)
Empiricism (Berkeley)——Mysticism and Faith

By constructing Godot around these continuums, Beckett creates a

system conducive to dialogic interaction between ideas. The play’s
structure facilitates a literal Play-space that encourages dialogic prox-
imity. However, almost as quickly as ideas are positioned to enter
into dialogue, the very games that should facilitate a play between
ideas become an impediment. The audience witnesses the tragedy of
players who choose not to play, as Didi and Gogo refuse to confront
the ideas that motivate the continuums. Using language games to
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 inscribe themselves in a circle of repetition, aposiopesis, and chronic
misunderstanding, they transform the stage into a purgatorial void of
inaction and evasion, where games serve a paradoxical function. In-
stead of facilitating dialogic proximity, these games lead to an impen-
etrable vortex in which Didi and Gogo retreat from life, segregating
themselves from the ideas that continuously bombard the boundaries
of their Play-space. The stage represents a static retreat from ideas :

Existentialism Dialogue in Language

(Engagement) (Wittgenstein)

Empirical Evidence Faith

(Berkeley) (Christianity)

Interiority Slapstick
(Descartes) (Meaningless Action)

D
The conflict between Cartesian interiority and Wittgensteinian ut-
terance begins as soon as the curtain rises on a classic example of
miscommunication. Frustrated because he is unable to remove one
of his boots, Estragon complains, “Nothing to be done.” Not com-
prehending the extraordinarily practical nature of Estragon’s com-
plaint, Vladimir interprets the phrase philosophically and responds
accordingly : “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 tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.” 4 The struggle
of which he speaks is literally embodied in this exchange—the strug-
gle to speak and to be understood. The moment Didi and Gogo begin
to speak, a principal Wittgensteinian argument is invoked. According

4
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York : Grove Press, 1954). Further refer-
ences to this edition of the play will be cited by page number in the text.

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 to Wittgenstein, the meaning of language is contained not in words
themselves, but in the context of their expression.5 Utterance is part
of experience itself, not a response to it.
Utterance as experience is one element of Wittgensteinian thought that
Beckett draws on to build this dialogic continuum. Throughout the
play, events must be spoken to be real. Saying trumps doing. In this way,
reality in Godot has an inescapably social dimension. This social con-
text for Didi and Gogo’s language games corresponds to the types of
language games Wittgenstein enumerates in Philosophical Investigations  :
giving orders and obeying them (think of Pozzo and Lucky’s relation-
ship), speculating about an event (the arrival of Godot), play-acting,
singing catches, guessing riddles, making a joke and telling it, request-
ing, thanking, cursing, greeting, and praying.6 Consequently, when
language games cease, isolation and a sense of non-existence over-
whelm the characters. Their repartee staves off the interiority that is
likely to result from their silence, their pauses, or their falling asleep,
when they are vulnerable to the dialogue of ideas that may emerge in
private dreams and reflections.
Interiority, then, is not exclusively represented in terms of Car-
tesian introspection, but more generally as silence. Didi and Gogo
rarely cease to speak ; yet their constant babble ironically reinforces
their isolation. Even Estragon’s dreams are, by virtue of their inte-
riority, nightmares. The interior dialogues of the unconscious mind
threaten to disrupt the stability of a social reality based on predictable
routines. To render his dreams less threatening, Estragon longs to cir-
cumscribe them with language, to tell them as stories. However, Didi
anticipates the danger of actualizing thoughts in speech—the danger
of introducing ideas into their tenuous common reality. Desperate
to maintain the integrity of their habitual communal existence, he
rejects the unknown realm of Estragon’s private universe. Language
games exist precisely to avoid such interiority. Thinking requires the
solitude of one’s own mind. So, the two men speak in order not to
think :
estragon. We are incapable of keeping silent.
vladimir. You’re right, we’re inexhaustible.
5
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 2001),
§43.
6
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §23.

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 estragon. It’s so we won’t think. [. . .]
vladimir. We’re in no danger of ever thinking any more. (68, 71)
In this way, Wittgenstein’s ideas have significant implications for
readings of Godot. As the “father of language-game theory” 7 and a
proponent of existence through social context, Wittgenstein rejects
the primacy of subjective experience. His writings thus offer a per-
spective other than that of the dominant association of Beckett with
Cartesian theory. Throughout Godot, Cartesian interiority is presented
as a threat to the external reality established through language. Car-
tesian ethics emerge occasionally when characters demonstrate a ca-
pacity for, and a desire for, a private and internally defined universe.
Yet, rather than balance these two contrary ideals, Didi and Gogo
attempt to be neither social nor alone. Even though the reciprocity of
their language games has the appearance of dialogue, reciprocity is
not necessarily indicative of interaction ; interaction is not necessarily
communication ; communication is not always dialogue. In fact, Didi
and Gogo’s stage dialogue is scarcely dialogue at all. It is more akin
to a phatically motivated repartee. Each man’s speech confirms the
presence of an interlocutor, but nothing more. Within the corrupted
context of their language games, Didi and Gogo are not even com-
plementary figures. At times, they are virtually interchangeable, as in
this characteristic exchange :
vladimir. It hurts ?
estragon (angrily). Hurts ! He wants to know if it hurts !
vladimir (angrily). No one ever suffers but you . . .
estragon. It hurts ?
vladimir (angrily). Hurts ! He wants to know if it hurts ! (3)
This speech, which seems to go nowhere, serves an important pur-
pose. In Godot, nothing exists until it is spoken. Inversely, things exist
because they are spoken. Though Godot never appears, he is irrefut-
ably present throughout the play because he is continuously the sub-
ject of dialogue. All the characters of Godot exist in language, both
literally, at the level of narrative, and figuratively, as players of their
language games. The characters are so dependent on a framework of
7
Jeffrey Nealon uses this phrase in “Samuel Beckett and the Postmodern : Lan-
guage Games, Play and Waiting for Godot,” Modern Drama 31, no. 4 (1988), 520.

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 social language to define their reality that, in what seems like a ridic-
ulous excess of Wittgensteinian principles, Pozzo requires the rheto-
ric of social formality to guide him through the simple act of sitting
down :
pozzo. I’d very much like to sit down, but I don’t quite know how to
go about it.
estragon. Could I be of any help ?
pozzo. If you asked me perhaps . . .
estragon. Would that be a help ?
pozzo. I fancy so.
estragon. Here we go. Be seated Sir, I beg of you.
pozzo. No no, I wouldn’t think of it ! (Pause. Aside.) Ask me again.
estragon. Come come, take a seat I beseech you, you’ll get pneu-
monia . . .
pozzo. No doubt you are right. (He sits down.) Done it again ! (36–37)

While the verbal invitation to sit aids in the accomplishment of

this small task, the pre-scripted formality of the language renders the
interaction artificial. This excessively formal language of social eti-
quette parodies authentic dialogue. Characters in Godot frequently
seek to eliminate spontaneity and unpredictability from their inter-
actions by resorting to pre-scripted social formalities—what Caillois
might call games of pure mimicry. For example, before the arrival
of Pozzo and Lucky in act 2, Didi and Gogo, alone onstage, are left
to entertain themselves. Vladimir suggests a game of role-playing in
which they might imitate Pozzo and Lucky’s behavior on the previous
day. In the same way that their speech distracts them from thinking,
sleeping, or dreaming, the intellectual passivity required for games of
mimicry similarly inhibits thinking. However, the mere act of recon-
structing the rules of this game seems too demanding :
vladimir. Will you not play ?
estragon. Play at what ?
vladimir. We could play at Pozzo and Lucky.
estragon. Never heard of it. (82)

Another language game that undermines dialogue is monologue.

The character most associated with monologue is, of course, Pozzo.
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 He does not seek a partner or interlocutor, but simply an audience.
During his two appearances onstage, he is virtually impervious to
Vladimir and Estragon’s attempts to communicate with him ; and his
partner, Lucky, for the most part remains silent. Not surprisingly,
Didi and Gogo eagerly surrender the burden of speech to another
speaker. When not required to speak, they can be intellectually pas-
sive and still be distracted from their interior worlds.
Ironically, Pozzo’s monologues do little to disrupt the status quo of
Godot’s stage. Pozzo’s easy assimilation into Didi and Gogo’s language
game is indicative of how their stage dialogues are equally as per-
formative, and often as one-sided and meaningless, as Pozzo’s solos.
Although Didi and Gogo are united by a mutual necessity to engage
in social language, language does not lead to dialogue. Even as they
strive to affirm their existence, they go to extremes of language to

D
avoid genuine social engagement.

The continuum juxtaposing existential thought and meaningless slap-

stick gags is equally important to the game-based structure of Godot. It
is important to note that Didi and Gogo’s stage dialogue is dominated
by fundamental existential concerns : isolation, their purpose in life,
and the threat of non-being. Not surprisingly, existential readings of
the play are common.8 Nevertheless, one obvious shortcoming of the
existentialist paradigm is that existentialism demands meaningful ac-
tion—and throughout Godot, nothing happens. This is no accident. It
requires strategy on the part of the playwright to ensure that nothing
happens for the duration of a two-act play. One of Beckett’s strate-
gies is to introduce slapstick elements whenever his characters’ con-
versation risks broaching existential concerns. This interface charac-
terizes the dialogue-that-is-not-dialogue of Vladimir and Estragon’s
interactions.
As a means of counteracting the serious existential concerns that
haunt Didi and Gogo, slapstick humor serves a very serious purpose
in the play. The presence of vaudeville conventions in the play is un-
8
For a critique of existential ideas in Godot, see Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the
Absurd, rev. ed. (Woodstock, N.Y. : Overlook Press, 1973), and William Hutchings,
“Waiting for Godot and the Principle of Uncertainty,” in Approaches to Teaching Beckett’s
“Waiting for Godot,” ed. June Schlueter and Enoch Brater (New York : Modern Lan-
guage Association, 1991).

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 deniable. In his stage directions, Beckett states that all four characters
wear bowlers (46), and there is a litany of classic vaudeville gags, from
rapid-fire cross-talk, to classic pants-dropping, to a variety of physical
gags, including the dialogue-free scene of ridiculous hat exchanges.
Clearly, Vladimir and Estragon may be preoccupied with questions
concerning the meaning of life, but they are eager to avoid answering
them at all costs.
One of Vladimir and Estragon’s avoidance strategies is to under-
mine their own dialogues with slapstick banter at the first sign that
they may become meaningful interrogations into their situation or
lead to a dialogic interplay of ideas of substantive existential con-
cerns—such as bodily decay and the inevitability of death. For ex-
ample, when neither Didi nor Gogo is able to recognize the landscape
or determine where they are, they avoid lingering over the implica-
tions of their failing faculties by distracting themselves with a debate
over whether the leafless entity center stage is a tree or a bush. Cross-
talk and gags distract them from their failing prostates and aching
feet. When the debate over the accuracy of the Gospels in report-
ing Christ’s death threatens to confront them with their own mortal-
ity, they quickly exchange the debate for a discussion concerning the
probability of obtaining an erection if they were to hang themselves.
When Pozzo and Lucky enter the scene, Didi and Gogo are re-
lieved to have such a tangible distraction. However, midway through
the first act, Pozzo begins a long speech about nightfall. Though his
pontification borders on the ridiculous, his catechism of clichés in-
vokes the very subject Didi and Gogo have been holding at bay—the
possibility of their own deaths :
pozzo. The night . . . Look . . . It is pale and luminous like any sky at
this hour of the day . . . it begins to lose its effulgence, to grow pale
. . . pale, ever a little paler, a little paler until . . . pppfff ! Finished !
It comes to rest . . . behind this veil of gentleness and peace night is
charging and will burst upon us pop ! Just when we least expect it.
That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth. (39)

Pozzo’s speech produces a long silence in which Didi and Gogo re-
treat into their respective interior worlds. When the dialogue recom-
mences, the tone has changed dramatically, from meaningless cross-
talk to serious reflection. In response, Vladimir and Estragon almost
immediately resort to physical distraction. Throughout the play,
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 whenever the dialogue comes too close to engaging with ideas, Vladi-
mir becomes bothered by a nagging irritation in his hat. At a moment
when death and waiting have been linked in Pozzo’s speech, Vladimir
alleviates the tension by resorting to this vaudeville gag. Though his
hat becomes increasingly uncomfortable as the play progresses, and
he repeatedly removes it to search for the cause, he refuses to speak the
phenomenon.
Pozzo, unconcerned with (and probably unaware of ) the ideas con-
tained in his speech, is merely interested in gaining approval. When
he asks Didi and Gogo how they would rate his monologue, Estragon
replies, “Oh tray bong, tray, tray, tray bong” (39). This ambiguous
response may be more than Beckett’s corruption of the French origi-
nal in his English version of his play.9 “Tray Bong ” is also the title
of a music hall act performed by Charlie Chaplin Sr.10 When spoken
by a man wearing a bowler and baggy pants, this double entendre
reinforces Beckett’s slapstick stance. The humorous focus shifts from
thoughts of confronting death to mock admiration, relayed through
the teasing repartee with which Vladimir and Estragon critique Poz-
zo’s performance.
When another important moment of existential questioning arises
in act 2, slapstick is again employed to dispel the tension. Vladimir
questions the purpose of his and Gogo’s decision to wait for Godot
rather than do something—anything—else with their time :
vladimir. Let us not waste our time in idle discourse . . . Let us do
something while we have the chance . . . at this place, at this mo-
ment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not . . . The
tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflex-
ion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that
is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question.
(90–91)11
Here, Vladimir confronts the principal concern at stake in the play :
why do Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot ? Though his speech
9
This allusion works only in the English version. In En attendant Godot the line reads
“très bon.” Phonetically, “tray” is the anglicized pronunciation of “très” (very).
10
See Fred Miller Robinson, “Tray Bong ! Godot and Music Hall,” in Approaches
to Teaching Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” ed. June Schlueter and Enoch Brater (New
York : Modern Language Association, 1991).
11
This allusion to Shakespeare is not as clear in the original (French) version of the
play, and may have been added to the English version.

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 contains some of the most poetic stage dialogue of the play, the seri-
ousness is offset by the simultaneous physical antics in which all four
characters take part. Pozzo and Lucky, now blind and mute, respec-
tively, have fallen down and are unable to stand. It is against a back-
drop of Pozzo’s comical writhing and pleading for help that Vladi-
mir is reciting his most meaningful monologue. Didi’s interrogation
of his place in the world is punctuated by repeated interjections of
“Help !” “I’ll pay you !” “Where am I ? ” “Who farted ?” “Go to hell,”
and “Pity !” The juxtaposition of the existential and the slapstick un-
dermines the seriousness of the one and tempers the vulgarity of the
other.
What prevents these clichéd vaudeville routines from undermining
the serious undercurrents of Beckett’s play is the meaning invested
in them by the skilled playwright. These desperate verbal and physi-
cal efforts to avoid thinking explicitly and paradoxically underscore
the existentialist concerns present throughout. Though the antics pro-
duce a comic effect, Beckett strategically employs the gags in a new
context. For Didi and Gogo, slapstick is a means of maintaining the
circularity of their existence. They seek a nonprogressive action. True
to form, while trying to rescue Pozzo, Vladimir and Estragon find
themselves writhing with him on the stage floor after a pratfall. This
incursion into slapstick serves a vital purpose. Once absorbed in the
gag, Vladimir loses his train of thought, and his stage dialogue is re-
stored to its habitual meaninglessness. This devaluation of existential
thought through comic gags becomes a recognizable pattern within
the play. It is through meaningless talk and meaningless action that
ideas are kept at bay. Instead of being a means of engaging with ideas
through Play-dialogues, the stage of Godot is an insular system that

D
perpetuates stasis.

The final philosophical continuum examined here presents empiri-

cism and faith at its respective poles, as two mutually exclusive alter-
natives for verifying existence. By far, Vladimir and Estragon’s great-
est existential concern is a fear of non-being—that is, a fear of death
and, more generally, a fear of the unknown. As a means of coping
with and assuaging these fears, they transform their two main activi-
ties—storytelling and waiting—into language games. Both games are
played out along the empiricism-faith continuum and are intended
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 to supply verification and reassurance, respectively. However, just
as Didi and Gogo used slapstick humor to distract themselves from
their existential plight, they allow empiricism and faith to neutralize
one another. The two feign desire for an agonistic debate of ideas,
but work cooperatively to prevent these ideas from entering dialogic
proximity. Together they seek empirical verification of unverifiable
events, or conversely rely exclusively on faith when all evidence con-
firms that faith alone is insufficient. As a result, both empiricism and
faith ultimately fail to confirm their existence or temper their fears.
However, this failure is not an inadvertent consequence of their lan-
guage games ; rather, it demonstrates how these language games are a
calculated strategy for evading the unknown.
The characters’ very existence is repeatedly called into question.
As the play opens, Vladimir and Estragon are reunited after having
separated for the night. Vladimir states, “So there you are again.”
Estragon replies, “Am I ?” (2). For both, Being is entirely tied up in
the act of being perceived. It is not surprising, then, that allusions to
the Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley pervade Godot, and his
adage esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) prefigures the persistent
pairings found in the play. Didi and Gogo do not function as indi-
viduals onstage. They exist as a pair, and their co-dependence is im-
mediately perceptible. When they separate (or are separated) during
the night between acts 1 and 2, they are compelled to return to each
other as soon as they are awake ; without being perceived from mo-
ment to moment, Vladimir and Estragon have little else to substanti-
ate their existence.
In The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), Berkeley states, “If we
have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, in-
ferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.” 12
One inescapable reality of Godot is that nothing is certain. Characters’
perceptive senses fail miserably : Vladimir’s sight betrays him, and he
cannot distinguish between carrots and turnips. Estragon’s hearing
seems impaired when he cannot distinguish the name “Pozzo” from
“Godot.” And both Didi and Gogo not only are unsure of whether
they are waiting by the exact tree where Godot has arranged to meet
them, they also cannot tell if it is really a tree at all. Tacitly, they agree

12
George Berkeley, A Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Empiricists :
Locke, Berkeley, Hume (New York : Doubleday, 1961), 157.

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 to accept on faith what should be empirically verifiable and seek evi-
dence for things that require faith.
This inverted logic is introduced early in the first act, when Vladi-
mir attempts to provoke a debate with Estragon over the accuracy of
stories related in the Bible. Vladimir’s point of contention is the dis-
crepancy between the versions of Christ’s death as reported by Luke,
Matthew, Mark, and John. Of the four accounts, only Luke’s refers to
the other men crucified as “thieves,” and only Luke asserts that Christ
intervened to save one, while the other was damned.13 Vladimir be-
moans the fact that the majority of historical accounts are ignored
in favor of the one witness whose story is unique. Alluding to one of
Saint Augustine’s famous declarations, “Do not despair, one of the
thieves was saved. Do not assume, one of the thieves was damned,”
Vladimir introduces a paradox as premise for a theological debate.
However, it is critical to acknowledge that Vladimir is not so much
concerned with ideas themselves as with his effort to lure Estragon
into a language game. He implores, “Of the four Evangelists only one
speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there . . . and
only one speaks of a thief being saved. Come on Gogo, return the
ball, can’t you, once in a way ?” (6)
The critical significance of such Christian imagery and allusion is
best understood in terms of their dialogic proximity to empiricism.
When Vladimir questions an accepted tenet of Christian faith by
challenging the accuracy of the Gospels, Estragon, instead of debat-
ing issues of textual integrity, appeals to his sensory memories of the
Bible. He remembers the pictures, how the colors affected him, how a
particular shade of blue made him thirsty, or how illustrations of the
seas made him dream of swimming. Gogo’s sensual distractions are
overkill, just as Didi’s argument is already philosophically circular.
His question concerns the most mystical and supernatural phenom-
enon of Christian doctrine—resurrection after death—a tenet that
can be accepted only as a matter of faith. It is ironic that Vladimir
does not want to accept Luke’s version of the event without corrobo-
ration. He seeks empirical grounding on an issue where empiricism
is doomed to fail.
Additionally, Vladimir’s epistemological inquiry threatens to place

13
For these accounts, see Luke 23 :39–43, Matthew 27 :31–50, and Mark 15 :19–37.
Other men are not mentioned at all in John’s account, John 19 :16–30.

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 faith and empiricism into dialogic proximity. Estragon realizes that
in his hermeneutical examination of the Gospels, Vladimir initiates a
dialogue not simply with him, but also with ideas. To avoid this peril,
Estragon begs Vladimir to repeat the story of “The Englishman in
the Brothel,” a gag that relies on bodily humor instead of ideas and
whose title anticipates a story entirely devoid of ambiguity. So, story-
telling is, literally, a waiting game. Unwilling to question their own
faith in Godot, they engage in ceaseless conversations that sublimate
their anxiety concerning his arrival into games in which empiricism
and faith are initially embraced and then mutually undermined.
One such pastime humorously invokes the ghost of Bishop Berke-
ley himself. When Didi and Gogo contemplate hanging themselves,
they allude to Berkeley’s accidental near-death by hanging. Berkeley
wanted to describe the physical sensations of death to prove that no
experience is beyond empirical analysis, and so, with the assistance of
a less than observant companion, had himself hanged briefly.14 Didi
and Gogo abandon the idea of hanging themselves when they are un-
able to determine which one of them is heavier. Realizing that one
of them would be left alone if the first were to succeed but the branch
of the tree were to break, they quickly decide that waiting for Godot
would be a safer pastime. However, something more than the logis-
tical difficulties deters them from their plan. Much like their aban-
doned debate over the Gospel of Luke, the hanging experiment risks
placing empiricism and faith into dialogic proximity. Berkeley’s ex-
periment did just that. In attempting to record scientifically the sen-
sations associated with death, Berkeley co-opted an experience that
Christians accept on faith and recontextualized it within the realm of
empirical data. Berkeley sought to confront fears usually assuaged by
faith in order to test them scientifically. Didi and Gogo engage in lan-
guage games with the opposite goal. They are unsure about the out-
come of hanging themselves, and their greatest fear is the unknown.
Therefore, to maintain their limited and circular Play-space, they ul-
timately concur, “Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer” (13).
As the play progresses, however, even storytelling turns out to be a
dangerous game. Narration happens in time, and the passing of time
is something Didi and Gogo want desperately to ignore. The near-
verbatim repetition of stage dialogue in acts 1 and 2 creates an im-
14
David Berman, Berkeley (New York : Routledge, 1999), 38.

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 perturbable present that dominates the stage. It is clear that in their
petrified world, they avoid talk of the future (represented by Godot)
or the past (represented by memory). They seek a stagnant meaning-
lessness where routine replaces memory. When asked in act 2 to recall
the specifics of the previous night, Estragon reiterates all the subjects
of discourse discussed in act 1. But it is unclear if this recitation is a
veritable memory or simply an extrapolation based on the premise
that their conversations never vary.
Even waiting for Godot produces anxiety, as he too, though the
object of their faith, represents an uncertain future. His impending
arrival is perceived as a violation of their self-inscribed circle of the
familiar. They fear his approach as much as they long for it. Godot,
of course, does not appear. In his place, a boy arrives, claiming to
be Godot’s messenger. The repetition of the boy’s arrival in acts 1
and 2 leads the audience to believe that this event, too, is merely a
habitual performance reenacted in due course. Again, Vladimir and
Estragon’s faith is undermined by the failure of Godot to appear, and
not surprisingly, they attempt to gain empirical verification of his ex-
istence by questioning the messenger.
Ultimately, both faith and empiricism fail them. Ironically, their
search for empirical validation is what perpetuates their misery. For
Didi and Gogo, Being is painful, but their actions are calculated to
maintain timeless circularity. They put on and take off boots and hats,
they leave thoughts unfinished, stories untold, dialogues discarded,
memories forgotten, dreams unrecounted, and suicide attempts
abandoned.
In this way, Didi and Gogo are free. Although they transform what
should be a Play-space into a kind of prison, there is no indication
that they do not have choices concerning their condition or alterna-
tives to waiting for Godot. On the contrary, their brief separation and
existence offstage demonstrate that they have chosen to stay together.
Maintaining the integrity of the margins of their Play-space is a cen-
tral concern for characters whose dreams, stories, doubts, and private
thoughts constantly threaten to lend meaning to their utterances. It is
only through the sheer force of habit—of reliance on dependable and
well-rehearsed routines and repeated scenarios—that their fragile
world is sustained. But this security comes at a price. In this interim
world of repetition and stasis, they are excluded from participation in
life. By postponing death, they have suspended Being.
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 D
In addition to conforming to the Cailloisian criterion that play be
“free,” the games that Vladimir and Estragon pursue are absolutely
unproductive. Cross-talk, slapstick gags, and habitual routines frus-
trate understanding and negate meaning ; chronic amnesia counter-
acts the accumulation of memory. Didi and Gogo’s retreat from the
world is a conscious act of destruction. Even if their strict adherence
to habit is at times oppressive, it is willingly embraced. When Es-
tragon inquires, “We’ve lost our rights ?” Vladimir responds, “We got
rid of them” (15). Most significant, their language games establish a
distinct time and space. The barren landscape of the stage is devoid
of clues indicating time, location, season, temperature, or any of the
signifiers that would render their world more realistic. They wander a
landscape that, with its ambiguous road and abstract tree, resembles
a game board. In his English version of Godot, Beckett even capital-
izes on the colloquial theater expression that refers to the stage itself
as “the boards” in order to make more explicit the metaphor of the
stage as a game board :
pozzo. Where are we ?
vladimir. I couldn’t tell you.
pozzo. It isn’t by any chance the place known as the Board ?
vladimir. Never heard of it.
pozzo. What is it like ?
vladimir. It’s indescribable. It’s like nothing. There’s nothing.
There’s a tree.
pozzo. Then it’s not the Board. (99)15
Godot’s stage as a Play-space does violate one important ethical cri-
terion of Beckettian play. According to Caillois, games must remain
separate and distinct from reality. And, I believe, Beckett concurs.
Therefore, Didi and Gogo’s conflation of games with reality renders
their dialogue unethical in Beckettian terms. For them, real life and
language games are inseparable. For the life of the play, the stage of
Godot is their reality, and the reality of the play connects Vladimir and
Estragon to the play’s spectators. Like us, Didi and Gogo are specta-
15
This pun works in the English version only.

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 tors. At times they directly address the audience, as if to indicate that
our presence in the theater is for their entertainment.
The ambiguous status between performer and spectator allows for
an unusual degree of audience identification with the characters on-
stage. Just as Vladimir and Estragon approach spectatorship through
literal games played at the level of metatext, Beckett draws his au-
dience onto the stage. As a result, many of the literal games played
there are reenacted between playwright and spectator at the level of
metatext. One such example is Beckett’s game with intertextual al-
lusion. Quotations from Shakespeare, Sophocles, the Bible, Joyce,
Berkeley, Wittgenstein, and Descartes, among others, are woven into
the text, but they are often altered or so quickly abandoned that the
audience never has enough time to engage with or even consciously
acknowledge them. After a time, the accumulation of these familiar
echoes begins to prey on the spectator’s consciousness, but these allu-
sions fail to provide any useful context for interpretation. The brevity
of these intertextual allusions mirrors the habitual distraction and in-
terruption that characterize Didi and Gogo’s stage dialogue.
Audience members are also made to feel the oppression of habit.
The brutality of endless repetitions weighs on them as they sit through
a plotless act 1, only to discover that in act 2, the same things will hap-
pen all over again. The repetitions and habitual routines that render
the world bearable to Didi and Gogo are excruciating for audiences,
who can viscerally concur with Beckett’s claim that “[h]abit is the
ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.” 16 In fact, when Godot was
first performed, it ran so contrary to audience expectation that spec-
tators walked out.17 In the intervening fifty years of performance and
exegesis, Godot has become an intellectual institution ; audience mem-
bers know what to expect and would never admit to being . . . well . . .
bored. But there will always be new audiences to share the frustration
and oppression felt by characters onstage. In fact, innovation is one

16
Samuel Beckett, Proust (New York : Grove Press, 1957), 7–8.
17
H. Porter Abbott, “Reading as Theatre : Understanding Defamiliarization in
Beckett’s Art,” Modern Drama 34, no. 1 (March 1991), 7. This well-known anecdote is
part of established Beckettian lore. However, as John P. Harrington points out, there
is no documentation for it ; the story may have been a rumor started by the director
of this unacclaimed premiere. John P. Harrington, “Beckett and America” (paper
delivered at the Samuel Beckett Centenary Symposium, Princeton University, April
14, 2006).

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 of the formal aspects of the play that has thematic consequences. De-
familiarization is a game Beckett plays with his spectators. He chal-
lenges their habitual modes of interpretation by making Godot ’s stage
strange.
In this way, habit functions as a comedic and tragic element of the
play. It is what damns Vladimir and Estragon to a paltry and timeless
existence, but it is also what facilitates the audience’s transformation.
Repetition and echo transform the stage into a provisional realm in
which time has virtually stopped. This suspension of chronological
time is, for Beckett, a crime against life : “Yesterday is . . . irremediably
part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more
weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were be-
fore the calamity of yesterday.” 18 To be, for Beckett, is to be in time.
But there is no yesterday for Didi or Gogo, and likewise, no to-
morrow. As the curtain falls, the audience is left with an unshakable
intuition that if the play continued, it would repeat itself endlessly.
The world Vladimir and Estragon have created is a world of lifeless-
ness—a world in which they view the destruction of others, while
they remain eternal. Their rejection of play distinguishes them even
from Pozzo and Lucky, who do, in some ways, engage with the world
outside the borders of this corrupted Play-space. Pozzo and Lucky’s
master-slave relationship is judged harshly by Didi and Gogo. Yet, in
their embracing of an ideology—even one as fundamentally unjust
as sadomasochism—Pozzo and Lucky embody a dialogic proximity.
They have entered into a political and ethical debate greater than
themselves. However unpleasant or unsatisfying this relationship, it
is, nonetheless, an engagement with ideas and with each other. It rep-
resents participation in an authentic dialogue, and it connects them to
the world offstage. This engagement is why Didi and Gogo find Pozzo
and Lucky’s way of life so appalling, and why, unlike Didi and Gogo,
Pozzo and Lucky suffer the effects of time and decay.
Ironically, Lucky’s impromptu monologue (45–47) is the closest
thing to dialogue in the play. His enigmatic speech is not, as one critic
claims, a “farrago of chaotic nonsense . . . an indication that language
has lost its function as a means for communication.” 19 Nor is it simply
a parody of academe. It is the ethical climax of the play. In Jeffrey

18
Beckett, Proust, 2–3.
19
Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd, 63.

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 Nealon’s estimation, “Lucky’s ‘think’ . . . can be seen as a transgres-
sion and disruption of the limits of the ultimate metagame—West-
ern metaphysics, the language game of truth. The text of Lucky’s
speech is akin to the product of taking all the great works of Western
thought, putting them through a paper shredder, and pasting them
back together at random.” 20
Lucky’s “think” is far from random, however. Rather than disrupt-
ing the metagame played by Beckett with his audience, the speech
mirrors that game. Lucky’s monologue threatens the invisible mar-
gins that circumscribe the world in which Vladimir and Estragon
wait for Godot and provides a space for genuine dialogic proximity
between playwright and audience. His think is the unique moment
when all the ideas held at bay by the various language games of the
stage dialogues burst forth into language. Lucky’s speech gives voice
to the breadth and number of idea continuums contained in the play
and brings them forcefully into dialogic proximity. Berkeley is men-
tioned by name for the first time in the play. Wittgenstein is invoked
by Lucky’s academic tick of placing his ideas in the context of others
as he begins his speech : “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public
works of Puncher and Wattman” (emphasis added). Descartes is ever
present in the concept of monologue and directly engaged in the rep-
etition of the phrase “the skull, the skull.” Existentialism and slapstick
are humorously paired by the assertion that research into “doubt”
done in an academy located in “Essy-in-Possy” (being in potential ac-
tion)21 is in dialogue with the work of thinkers “Fartov and Belcher.”
Slowly, Estragon and Vladimir recognize that Lucky’s speech is
a critique of their existence. The isolated island of retreat from dia-
logue is a purgatorial nightmare that only Lucky is brave enough to
actualize in language. Lucky’s transgression of the tacit rules of their
language games poses a serious and immediate threat to the stabil-
ity of their reality. His monologue, which takes up three full pages
of text, deprives his listeners of the opportunity to interrupt. Unlike
cross-talk and repartee, monologue does not depend on reciprocation,
so there is no way to cut off the speech. Lucky is likely to continue
until someone has really heard him—until he has forced ideas into a
dialogic proximity that they all experience.
20
Nealon, “Beckett and the Postmodern,” 523.
21
The homonymic pun is on “Esse” and “Posse,” the present infinitive forms of
the Latin verbs “Sum” (to be) and “Possum” (to be able to), respectively.

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 Naturally, as Lucky’s think progresses, Vladimir, Estragon, and
even Pozzo become increasingly agitated and disgusted. Ultimately,
his listeners are provoked into action, and in a slapstick conclusion,
they silence Lucky by physically attacking him, beating him, and
stealing his hat. This desperate act of violence is, perhaps, the only
meaningful action in the play. Ironically, it is used to undermine the
potentially meaningful dialogue Lucky has started. Lucky’s think
reveals the heart of Beckettian ethics. The defamiliarization of lan-
guage—breaking rules of established language games and bringing
ideas into dialogic proximity—is a compelling necessity of Beckett’s
art. And Lucky is transformed by his speech, unable at first to return
to his role as Pozzo’s porter. Pozzo must retrain him to hold his bag

D
and basket.

As Michael Wood states, “It is in play that words find their simplest,
most immediate form of liberty and life.” 22 An engagement with the
world—with ideas, and with other beings—a dialogue with others
outside the self, however flawed or insufficient it may prove to be, is
the mark of the Beckettian Play-text. The various games played by
Vladimir and Estragon do not constitute ethical Play-dialogues ac-
cording to Beckett’s criteria. Their corrupted Play places Didi and
Gogo in a state of unconsciousness that renders their minds as bank-
rupt as the landscape that surrounds them. Their games confine them
to the interstices of ideas, and this corrupted Play-space ruins mem-
ory, stifles experience, and obliterates Being. Their failure neverthe-
less facilitates an artistic achievement.
What distinguishes Godot as Play-text is the remarkable ethical
force of dialogue as a life-sustaining necessity. For Beckett, Play is,
as Schiller claimed, a humanizing force. Game structures are Play
forms that require and reinforce human connections. Beckett gestures
toward his audiences, inviting them onto his stage and into his game
as willing and cooperative opponents. The efforts and failures of Didi
and Gogo mirror our own futile efforts to engage in genuine Play
while inscribed within our own limited frameworks for understand-

22
Michael Wood, Children of Silence : On Contemporary Fiction (New York : Columbia
University Press, 1998), 11.

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 ing. Beckett’s Godot reminds readers that dialogues may fail, and when
they fail, the only ethical options for readers, writers, and spectators
alike is to Play again. Joining Beckett’s game is challenging, but it is
worth the effort and the risk.

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