Waiting for Godot [review]
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Pozzo: I don't seem to be able . . . (long hesitation) to depart.
Full Title:
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
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Shockingly cynical, even for well-worn existentialists like myself. Two tramps spend the entire play languishing under a tree, awaiting an unknown figure named Godot (a gawky pun on God?), whom they believe will improve their condition, but who never materializes. The tableau is lush with possible symbolism of the farcical nature of existence: life stripped down to its ultimate absurdity of waiting. To die? to be saved? to progress? Godot is never explained; for the tramps, and analogously for the rest of us, life is a theatrical farce of filling time without any foreseeable reason. Yet, as the excerpt above demonstrates, we've an uncanny affinity to this life, to living. And Waiting for Godot contributes nothing to understanding why this is; only that we do.
A remarkable read, if tedious at times.