BOOK REPORT: Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett

Title:            Waiting for Godot 
Author:        Samuel Beckett
Copyright Date:  1953

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars ( ok )

Back-Cover Description
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Back Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater.

The story line evolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone --or something-- named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness.  The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of out time. 

My Thoughts
If you want an example of a play in the 'Theater of the Absurd' style, look no further than Waiting for Godot.  It is a very simple play; just two guys hanging around a tree waiting for Godot to arrive.  Their conversations are playful, light, sometimes funny. But within the playfulness you can see the social commentary in between the lines.  The biggest problem I had with this play is that the characters were SO absurd that I couldn't care for them.  These men had absolutely no short term memory and their dialog was based on this instantaneous ignorance. They just kept going around in circles.  Every now and then, a few other characters would enter the scene to break the circle in their own weird way but even they don't remember events that occurred the previous day.  I couldn't take the absurdity and apply it to humanity and therefore the social commentary was lost on me.  

This isn't to say I wasn't entertained by the dialog, I just couldn't get everything Samuel Beckett wanted me to get out of it.  I saw it more as a literary Abbott and Costello routine.

It is obviously better to see a play acted out on stage with good actors; but if the play is good, reading it can be a somewhat adequate substitute. Shakespeare comes to mind.  I think Waiting for Godot needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.