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An analytical study to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. [12]
3-Setting in
Waiting for GodotThanks for reading and correctionsBeckett avoids entrapment in clock time and physical space by blurring specifics in the background of action. Beckett do so to pass the idea that both the time and the place where and when to meet Godot is uncertain.
The characters jump from present to past then to present again. The actions take place in very limited place next to the tree. The characters stick to that place and never want to move.
In waiting for Godot, there isn't the kind of time and place we know in our daily life. Waiting for Godot's characters have no clear history and there are few relations among them. the homeless people " have simply been thrown into a strange land without any preliminary explanation about their situation". They don't know where are they, where to go and what to do with their time.
3-1- Time
One scene is there to be seen throughout both acts. Two bumps are waiting in a country rooad, waiting for someone called Godot.
Beckett does not seem very much interested in either future or past. Time is meaningless to the author. Eugene finds out that " one of the seemingly most stable of the patterns that give shape to experience, and one of the most disturbing to see crumbe, is that of time"3 Past, prtesent and future seem to be the same for the major characters. For Vladimir and Estragon, there is no difference between first day (the first act) and the second because they are doing the same thing in both acts. (They are waiting). The second act ends exactly in the same way as the first.
Concerning the boy, he carries the same message in both acts. Lucky also is still living under the orders of his cruel master and still suffering. Time doesn't lead anywhere other than to the central awareness with which the play begins, "Nothing to be done" now and later. The time in Waiting for Godot is useless if not a source of troubles and pain.
Let us consider this sample scene in the second Act, when Vladimir tries to convince Pozzo that they meet yesterday.
Vladimir: And you are Pozzo?
Pozzo: Certainly I am Pozzo.
Vladimir: The same as yesterday?
Pozzo: Yesterday?
Vladimir: We met yesterday.(silence.)Do you not remember?
Pozzo: I don't remeber having met anyone yesterday. But tomorrow I won't remember having met anyone today. So don't count on me to enlighten you.5 Pozzo can not remember what happened yesterday and he is sure he will not remember what is happening now in the near future! This is very clear when he says, «Don't question me! The blind has no notion of time." He seems to be indifferent about the notion of time. He becomes angry with Vladimir and shouts at him: "When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, 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, is that not enough for you?(calmer). They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
4 - Webb, Eugene. The plays of samuel Beckett. Seattle: University of Washington Press,1972.p34-35
5( waitinf for Godot. Samuel, Beckett. New york;1954.)
Now it is obvious that the notion of time for Pozzo is very different from ours. For him, the present, past and the future are one. Day and night are different only in terms of colours and for him the action is more important than the time and place in which it takes place. ONE DAY for him is very enough to express time." One day conveys past, present and future".
3-2- Place
Beckett deals with the place in a similar method. Though the scenery of the play is very simple and isolated, consisting only of a tree and a bog, it is very complicated at the same time because the exact location is unknown.
The place is empty except from a tree and a bog. It has no historical relationships with any other place, people or events in this world. The road, next the tree where events take place, has no geographical name. Hence, it could be anywhere in this world.
As we have already mentioned, the second act is identical to the first. The same place, same objects (the boots and a hat) with a small change, the tree has few leaves on it. In fact, though the road and the tree express the idea that the characters are in an open space.
It is clear from what we have discussed that the place in Waiting for Godot is rather a closed space and the characters are prisoners there. Prisoners of themselves and more precisely jailed by the idea of waiting some one to come to free them from their invisible jail.
The fact that Vladimir and Estragon one day are waiting some one somewhere to save them can be seen as a "man's struggle to find a distant place or existence full of meaning and sense"
6 - orgonazations.onenta.edu/philosc/papers09/hotaling.pdf
For all the characters in the play the sense of time and place is unstable because of the interruption of another genre of time and place. Time as a unit that can not be divided in terms of years, hours and days and the same order that we live with in our world: Monday follows Sunday and after Tuesday there is Wednesday.
This is clear from Estragon's phylosophy when he asks insidiously: But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) On Monday? (pause.) Or Friday?