We recently re-read Samuel Beckett’s singularly exotic play, “Waiting for Godot,” and were induced to see meaning not quite perceived by us when we read the play many years ago, in college.
As is known by the literati, Beckett was a “minimalist.” Accordingly, reading and appreciating his esoteric works requires sensitive insight and subtle perception. In “Godot,” two tramps exclusively occupy the stage during the entire play in their unfulfilled expectation of the arrival of a personage named “Godot.” Of course, “Godot” never makes an appearance, and the classic play requires considerable afterthought and analysis. We can recall some remarks of contemporaries, who were disappointed and puzzled by the lack of dramatic action in the plot (its minimalism) and seriously questioned the basis for the play’s recognized worth
When we first read and then saw the play, we ourselves were stricken by its total passivity and frustrated at the complete lack of action; Godot never makes the scene, and we are left with the somewhat comic, mundane remarks of the two protagonist-tramps. We concluded, at the time, that Beckett, in his singular minimalist outlook on life, was communicating the thought that Man waits futilely to discover some nonexistent meaning to his life.
Notably, after many decades of contemplative living, in the re-reading of the play, we were able to attain a more useful and instructive esoteric interpretation.
“Life,” per se, as a personal dynamic has no independent meaning; the meaningfulness in life is the character that the living person gives it; waiting for purpose and significance is indeed, empirically futile, without personally seeking and discovering its existence. The unique franchise of life is the freedom of the living to grow in understanding and live in meaningful significance.
Our nuanced message from Samuel Beckett is the existential need to see the precious grant of life as a franchise to the purposeful attainment of fulfillment; the latter, a product of individual efforts towards advancement and the attained arrival of (Godot), viz., mature understanding, and human fulfillment.
-p.
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