UNMASKING SAMUEL EKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT AS A …

Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal

Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)

Vol.7.Issue 1. 2019 (Jan-Mar)

355 SHABIR AHMAD MIR

ss

UNMASKING SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT AS A CANDID PARADIGM OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION

SHABIR AHMAD MIR

Student of English Language and Literature Islamic University of science and Technology, Awantipora, Pulwama

Jammu and Kashmir, India Email: [email protected]

doi: https://doi.org/10.33329/rjelal.7119.355 ABSTRACT Waiting for Godot, written by the most popular Irish writer, Samuel Beckett is

originally written in French and then translated into English in 1954. It is the most

notorious play in every corner of the world and considered to be the de jour in the

modernist movement of which Beckett was also a prominent figure. Therefore, this

play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with flabbergasting mega-hit

success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in post second world war era.

Martin Esslin, known for coining the term “theatre of Absurd” labels it “One of the

successes of the post-wartheatre(Esslin, Martin, 1980, p.3).The play concerns two

tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting anxiously and are agog to visit

Godot near a dwindled tree in the middle of nowhere. They are not acquainted

about his real name, whether he promises to visit them, or if, in fact, he actually

exists. However, they are still waiting and waiting for him. Nevertheless, he did

never appear. This futile waiting is the main concern of the play, the playwright

explicates. It has become a touchstone in explicating the philosophy of

existentialism. The inefficacious wait by the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon as a

ramification of the ‘Derridean Deconstructive’ modus operandi is the premier

corollary this paper is going to analyse. Derrida sternly scruples the logo-centric

Western tradition of the metaphysics of presence, which has been looked grandiose

from Plato’s “Phaedrus” until Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry” in Western

philosophy. The paperhowever purports to highlight the play with the ambit of

Derrideandeconstructive hermeneutics with the help of some key terms associated

with it (Deconstruction)

Keywords: de jour, Existentialism, Deconstruction, inefficacious, Jacques

Derrida,logo-centric, Samuel Beckett

.

Objectives of Research

I. To unravel Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting

for Godot” and make it applicable for

Deconstructive reading.

II. To bring out some of the vigorous

neologisms employed by Jacques Derrida

while putting forward the philosophy of

Deconstruction.

RESEARCH ARTICLE

SHABIR AHMAD MIR

mailto:[email protected]





III. To unbolt the tactics of meta-theatre

(pondering over the nature of its own

drama) which make the writer of the

“Waiting for Godot” much proficient to

move farther away from the terminus of

the ethnic stereotypes and ceremonial

sundries, grace and traditions of language,

theatre and the literary text, which

continuously gyrate around messianic

logocentrism or phonocentrism in the

history of philosophy from Plato to the

present times or in simple words we can

say to dethrone the authority of

logocentrismor phonocentrism.

Some vital Questionsassociated with the research

The study will predominantly focus on the questions

mentioned below:

I. How does the writer of “Waiting for Godot”

propagate the logos, an insignia of life in his

celebrated play “Waiting for Godot”?

II. What is in Beckett’s art that make him

convenient to deconstruction?

Research Methodology

The study is predominantly chorological

with descriptive and coherent method companion to

it. The paper will include some vital textual

references that serve as evidence and make the

study more concrete, the terms central to the

philosophy of deconstruction; transcendental

signified;aporia, logos, binary oppositions and time

are discussed in relation to the text in this research.

The list of the works cited in paper are however

mentioned at the end under the heading,

References.

Defining Deconstruction

Barbara Johnson in her famous critical book

‘The Critical Difference’ defines deconstruction as:

“Deconstruction is not synonymous with

‘destruction’. It is in fact much closer tothe original

meaning of the word ‘analysis’, which etymologically

means ‘toundo’…The deconstruction of a text does

not proceed by random doubt orarbitrary

subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring

forces of signification within the text”.(5)

Sharon Crowley opines that “Deconstruction

amounts to reading texts in order to rewrite them”

(qtd. In Theory into Practice 162).

Derrida once asked by a Japanese friend to

suggest an approximate definition of the term. He

replied;

All sentences of the type ‘Deconstruction is

X or Deconstruction isn’t X….”

J.A. Cuddon, in his Dictionary of Literary

Terms, says that in Deconstruction: A text can be

read as saying something quite different from what

it appears to be saying… It may be read as carrying a

plurality of significance, or as saying many different

things which are fundamentally at variance with,

contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen

by criticism as a single ‘stable’, meaning. Thus a text

may ‘betray’ itself. (129) to use the terms of Peter

Barry, we can say that deconstruction is a kind of

“textual harassment” or “oppositional reading”.

Deconstruction aims to show that the text is at war

with itself. Further, we can say that deconstruction is

a decentring of any philosophical school of thought,

any textual proposition etc. Jonathan Culler’s words

are apt to quote here. Culler says that, “to

deconstruct a discourse is to show how it

undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the

hierarchical oppositions on which it relies.”(On

Deconstruction 86). Deconstruction attempts to

make manifest that a text has no compact unity or

ground to present meanings, that the text is only a

series of conflicting significations. In nutshell, we can

say by using Paul Riceour’s term that deconstruction

is “hermeneutics of suspicion”. It looks at everything

with a critical and suspicious eye. Everything is a fish

that comes under the net of deconstruction.

Analysing “Waiting for Godot” in the light of

“Deconstruction”.

It is an uphill task to analyse waiting for

Godot without taking into consideration some of the

important notions put forth by Jacques Derrida

while disseminating and expounding the theory of

Deconstruction. The following terms of Derridean

deconstruction are simply relevant to the nature of

this research.





Metaphysics of presence

Jacques Derrida advocates that the

tradition of west European philosophy from Plato

until Edmund Husserl has been the metaphysics of

presence or logocentrism. Its persuasive impact and

ramifications on human thought have proved to be

the encumbering and fossilizing quandaries of aporia

of meaning and authoritative fossilized logocentric

structures of human thought to investigate new

vistas, stimulating it in the cohesive and pre-

determined meaning, origin or presence. We cannot

imagine the end of the metaphysics of the presence,

we can criticise it from within by identifying and

reversing the hierarchies it has established.

Jacques Derrida regards all Western

philosophic tradition logocentric because it spots at

the centerof our sagacity of the universe a concept

(logos), which charts and construes the universe for

us while remaining outside of the universe it charts

and construes. Jacques Derrida says that it is

Western philosophy’s greatest illusion. Each

grounding concept --- Plato’s notion of perfect

Forms, Rene Descartes’ cogito, structuralism’s

notion of innate structures of human consciousness-

--is itself a human concept and therefore, a product

of human language. In this way, he attacks the basic

metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophical

tradition since Plato. He also criticises that the

notion of innate structures of human consciousness

in structuralism has always presupposed a centre of

meaning of something, which governs the structure,

but is itself not subject to structural analysis (to find

the structure of the centre would be to find another

centre.)

For this reason, Jacques Derrida claims that

Western philosophy has always had a desire “to

search for a centre, a meaning, origin or a

“transcendental signified” (Derrida, Jacques, 1997,

p. 49). He calls this desire for centre “logocentrism

or phonocentrism (Derrida, Jacques, 1997, p. 11).

However, he opines that all Western philosophy

since Plato has tried to ground its basis on meaning,

“presence”, or “existence” (Derrida, Jacques, 2005,

p. 353).

However, when we probe into “Waiting for

Godot”, we get acquainted about the central theme

of the play, which revolves around the waiting for

Godot, who actually surface in the play.

Nevertheless, the two characters of the play,

Vladimir and Estragon, who are homeless vagrants,

appear to be ensnarled in the ambush of illusory

world of the metaphysics of presence. They are

cemented with messianic logocentrism or

phonocentrism of the term Godot. Messianic is one

of the forms of the metaphysics of presence, which

is evident in the concepts of theocentrism and

anthropocentrism. Any ideological, religious and

political system, which claims to be authorised

legitimacy, is messianic logocentrism or

phonocentrism. This messianism is dominant in

human thought. Jacques Derrida also calls this way

of thinking messianicity, according to which

Christian hope of a future to come.

Therefore, the word Godot in the play

connotes both theocentric as well as

anthropocentric messianic logocentrism, which may

be noted is, the appanage given to it as Jehovah of

“The Old Testament”, his wrath frightens, and like

Messiah (Jesus Christ) of “The New Testament”, his

Second Coming will redeem the humankind. He may

stand for salvation, donation, rebirth and promise,

which is able to be a link between these logi and the

two waiting tramps. However, the tramps are fallen

in the trap of illusory world of the metaphysics of

presence and messianism. Therefore, they are

mentally tied up with the logocentric messianic term

Godot. Nevertheless, they have taken it for granted

that it is a dominant source of redemption and

salvation. They attempt to discover the meaning,

origin and truth under the umbrella of the

presupposed messianic logos Godot.

Therefore, Godot can penalize them if the

tramps decamp, redeem, and reward them if they

keep waiting for him. The tramps have strong zeal to

turn Godot’s absence to presence. This desire is

identical to the longing of west European philosophy

for centre or the stable and fixed signified by the

metaphysics of presence. This messianic logocentric

metaphysical presence makes a concrete physical

anthropocentric entity for the tramps. For instance,

Vladimir’s yearning to perceive an exact image of

Godot’s appearance in an anthropomorphic manner,





bringing him on the level of human perception is an

attempt of this kind:

“Vladimir: (softly) Has he a beard, Mr Godot?

Boy: Yes sir.

Vladimir: Fair or… (He hesitates)… or black?

Boy: I think it’s white, sir” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956,

Act 2, p. 92).

In this locution, Vladimir can’t discern the

image ofGodot without what west European

philosophy’s tradition of the metaphysics of

presence and messianism has set for him as the

foundation of messianic logocentrism of his beliefs

and thoughts. A non-existent entity of Godot in the

play disavows definition, and at this point, it

becomes very close to Jacques Derrida’s definition

of differance than to the metaphysical notion of

messianic theocentric or anthropocentric logos.

Jacques Derrida explains that differance is

“formation of form” (Derrida, Jacques, 1976, p. 63)”

and the historical and epochal unfolding of Being”

(Derrida, Jacques, 1982, p. 22), something that

negates origin.

However, the absent Godot puts the notion

of the origin of legitimate meaning, into the radical

question, because it cannot be dexterously defined,

categorized or harmonized to an object outside the

text. It can denote multiple meanings of more things

concomitant and nonexistence or nothing at all. It is

in fact, an aporic being, which withstand

interpretation. As a result, the two tramps are

seeking for something to give meaning to their

existence. For them Mr Godot is a seedbed of

solution of their tribulations and gall, the logos that

may fill the meaning in their preposterous and

absurd existence. The disposition and identity of this

absent entity remains unbeknownst in the whole

text of the play. As Worton puts it:

“Much has been written about who or what

Godot is. My own view is that he is

simultaneously whatever we think he is and

not what we think he is, he is an absence,

who can be interpreted at moments as

God, death, the Lord of the manor, a

benefactor, even Pozzo. Nevertheless,

Godot has a function rather than a

meaning. He stands for what keeps us

chained- to and in-existence. He is the

unknowable that represents hope in an age

when there is no hope; he is whatever

fiction we want him to be- as long as he

justifies our life-as-waiting” (Worton,

Michael, 1995, p. 70-71).

The tramps’ throes to procure this nonentity or

unknown being in terms of the known messianic

logocentrism, by visiting him, are all in vain. Finally,

Godot did not appear and tramps turned

disappointed and flustered. Therefore, the nexus

between language and reality is decimated and

words falter and collapse in their enterprise of

corresponding feelings and thoughts:

“Vladimir: Say I am happy

Estragon: I am happy

Vladimir: So I am Estragon: So I am.

Estragon: We are happy. (Silence). What do we do

now, now that we’re happy?”

(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 2, p. 60).

Therefore, Godot’s final absence, however,

frustrates the hopes of the tramps and they have

become nervous. The following dialogue of the

tramps shows their hidden desire to set themselves

free from the tiresome act of waiting for an

unknown or non-existent messianic metaphysical

being:

“Estragon: (His mouthful, vacuously.) We are not

tied!

Vladimir: I don’t hear a word you’re saying.

Estragon: (chews, swallows.) I’m asking if we’re tied.

Vladimir: tied?

Estragon: ti-ed.

Vladimir: How do you mean tied?

Estragon: Down

Vladimir: But to whom? By whom?

Estragon: To your man





Vladimir: To Godot? Tied to Godot? What an idea!

No question of it. (Pause) For the moment”

(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 1, pp.20-21).

Finally, the tramps are unable to act, even to

commit suicide. For example, the following dialogue

makes the point clear:

“Vladimir: We will hang ourselves tomorrow.

(Pause.)Unless Godot comes. Estragon: And if he

comes?

Vladimir: We’ll be saved” s(Beckett, Samuel, 1956,

Act Two, p. 94).

We can mostly notice their incapability and

undecidability to do anything throughout the whole

play:

“Estragon: “Why don’t we hang ourselves? Vladimir:

With what?

Estragon: you haven’t got a bit of rope? Vladimir:

No.

Estragon: Then we can’t.

Vladimir: Let’s go.

Estragon: Oh wait, there is my belt.

Vladimir: It’s too short.

Estragon: You could hang on to my legs.

Vladimir: And who would hang onto mine?

Estragon: True” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act Two,

p.93).

Therefore, Samuel Beckett refutes the

certainty and stability of the Holy Scripture by

dismantling its authorised metaphysical meaning. He

uses Christian mythology without having to believe

in it. As he states, “Christianity is a mythology with

which I am perfectly familiar, and so I use it. But not

in this case” (Bair, Deirdre, 1995, p.386). For this

reason, he involves the tramps in serious religious

debates between the four Evangelists about the

saved thief. Vladimir, like the assiduous religious

scholar seems to search for truth and certainty in

the Holy text of “The New Testament”. However, he

finds that there is no certainty in this text. In fact, his

perplexity is the confusion of a layperson in

perceiving the philosophy of the metaphysics of

presence, presented to him as messianic

logocentrism. The following dialogue between the

tramps makes the point clear:

““Vladimir: And yet… (Pause.)… How is it-

this is not boring you I hope- how is it that of the

four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being

saved. The four of them were there- or thereabouts-

and only one speaks of a thief being saved. (Pause.)

Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can’t you, one in a

way?

Estragon: (with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this

most extraordinarily interesting.

Vladimir: One out of four. Of the other three, two

don’t mention any thieves at all and the third says

that both of them abused him.

Estragon: Who?

Vladimir: What?

Estragon: What’s all this about? Abused who?

Vladimir: The Saviour. Estragon: Why?

Vladimir: Because he wouldn’t save them. Estragon:

From Hell?

Vladimir: Imbecile! From death.

Estragon: I thought you said hell.

Vladimir: From death, from death.

Estragon: Well what of it?

Vladimir: Then the two of them must have been

damned.

Estragon: And why not?”(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act

1, p.13-14).

We find the characters of the play

entangled within an illusory web of logocentric

illusions of thought that they want to grasp the

ultimate truth of life and the universe in a way as

logocentric Western tradition of the metaphysics of

presence confines their mind to think about the

authoritative universal truth, meaning and origin.

Nevertheless, they are unable to find it and on the

contrary, they confront uncertainty and absurdity as

illustrated in the conversations between Estragon

and Vladimir about the Holy Scripture, the

memories of the past or identity of Godot.





Suspecting all the messianic logocentric authorities

of founding the texts of Western culture, Samuel

Beckett studs Godot and Endgame with references

to these very texts in order to make us “think and

participate in his anxious oscillation between

certainty about what is untrue and uncertainty

about what may be true” (Worton, Michael, 1995, p.

85).

However, Vladimir wants to find a proof for

existence. His desire for a centre, origin, or logos of

Godot is fully illustrated when he says the boy:

“Words, words.(Pause.) Speak” (Beckett, Samuel,

Act 1, p.50).

The tramps finally lose their hope for salvation and

redemption. Vladimir expresses doubt in the

following dialogue between Boy and Vladimir:

“Boy: What am I to say Mr Godot, sir?

Vladimir: Tell him... (He hesitates)...tell him you saw

us. (Pause.) You did see us, didn’t you?” (Beckett,

Samuel, Act 1, p.52).

In this way, Samuel Beckett deconstructs

messianic theocentrism and anthropocentricism of

the logocentric word of Godot and after

disseminating Godot and the

Holy Scripture, Samuel Beckett further goes

in Lucky’s speech to expand his deconstructive

techniques to undo Western philosophical tradition

of the metaphysics of presence.

Godot as the transcendental Signified

The character of Godot by its perpetual

suspension between presence and absence (words

coined by Derrida while expounding he theory of

Deconstruction) suggesting interesting parallels with

an idea in poststructural linguists, which is central to

the idea of deconstruction.

Derrida’s transcendental signified surpasses

the physical world. . It is the centre that is not

subjected to change, because it is fixed. God, truth,

essence etc. are usually thought of transcendental

signified. It is beyond or is independent of the play

of signifiers (any meaningful sound or written mark)

which produce other signifieds. Derrida negates the

existence of this transcendental signified. A signified

is not any independent identity but the product of

the interplay of a number of signifiers.so; the search

for the signified always leads to an infinite number

of signifiers. A transcendental signified as already

mentioned above would be however one that

escapes this play of signifiers and has a privileged

existence. Such a signified, as Derrida reveals is a

philosophical fiction. Analogically, we can think of

the play a complex set of signifiers in search of a

transcendental signified called Godot. This is the

most important component of the theory of

Deconstruction that makes the play eligible for a

deconstructive reading. It would then be clear that

like the dog-song at the beginning of Act 2, or a text

in the current sense of the term, it can never escape

from its endless chain of significations and arrive at

that signified- that is, Godot is a fiction and can

never arrive. Yet, just as the poststructuralist theory

of language has to presume the dubious presence of

some transcendental signified, simultaneously

generating and generated by the act of difference, to

explain the origin and functioning of meaning , the

text has to presume the presence of a Godot whose

arrival give it meaning.

Aporia

A Greek term denoting a logical

contradiction and Derrida used it to refer, what he

calls the “blind spots of any metaphysical

argument”. It is a kind of textual knot which is very

difficult to untie. According to M.H.Abrams “it is an

insuperable deadlock, or “double bind,” of

incompatible or contradictory meanings which are

“undecidable” in that we lack any sufficient ground

for choosing among them. (A Glossary of Literary

Terms 58) Aporia’s are the knots in a text and an

expression of real and feigned doubt or uncertainty,

especially for rhetorical effect, by which the speaker

appears uncertain as to what he/ she should do,

think or say. The speaker already is acquainted

about the answer, but he/she still asks

himself/herself or his/her audience, what the

appropriate manner, to grasp some matter is. The

ambiguity of the text forms an aporia, because “it is

impossible to decide by grammatical or other

linguistic devices, which of the two

meanings…prevails (De Man, Paul, 1979 p. 10).





In this view, Samuel Beckett’s strongly

objects the fossilized denotative process of

traditional theatre and adoption of the techniques

of meta-theatre lead him to anti-narrative structure

of the text, which creates an aporic effects on the

minds of the audience and readers that resist

interpretation of the text. Therefore, the structural

aporia of meaning happens in the text. The opposite

poles of meaning are so evident that messianic

logocentrism or phonocentrism cannot function

anymore. There occurred in the text many

“simultaneously eithers ors” in Derridean term

(Derrida, Jacques, 1978, p. 59).Therefore, the text of

the play resists be defining, interpreting, and

analysing in a closed system. In addition, the

semantic aporia renders Samuel Beckett’s dramatic

text into multi-dimensionality of meaning, and puts

it in opposition with the traditional dramatic texts.

The ontological impassivity or aporia of the text

prevails the fragmentary form of the play that

prevents the audience and readers from fixing a

meaning or putting the text in a closed system. For

this reason, one finds himself in an aporetic

situation in which he/she cannot decide if Samuel

Beckett is giving significance of absurdity or its

superficiality in comparison to human predicament.

In this sense, the open-endedness of the text of the

play always invites the audience and readers to

interpret it in a new and novel way. Therefore, the

readers and audience are prevented from falling in

the categorized perception or stereotyped

interpretation of the text.

Nonetheless, the common place

perception, assorted reception and traditional

interpretation of the text fall the readers and

audience in the uninhibited recognition, which is

situated by hipness, inconvenient by hackneyed

reception and stereotyped rubric interpretation of

the text. That is why Samuel Becket judiciously

employs the symbol of Godot in the play, to

delineate dubiety and foppery of human situation in

modern capitalist social formation, which makes the

text of the play arcane, exposing theextremity of

language and aporetic repercussions of it on the

minds of human beings.

The symbol “Godot” used by Samuel

Beckett recruits here and there other verbal tricks

when Vladimir and Estragon speak about him.

Therefore, aporia or impasse of meaning is evident

when they are defied with boy messenger’s message

that Godot will not come today but he will come

tomorrow. As a result, the tramps are stumbled in

aporetic posture in which they resolve to move but

they remain in the state of hesitation and fallow to

do so:

“Estragon: Well? Shall we go?

Vladimir: Pull on your trousers. Estragon: What?

Vladimir: Pull on your trousers.

Estragon: You want me to pull off my trousers?


Estragon: (realizing his trousers are down). True.

He pulls up his trousers.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 2,

p.94).

The word Godotemployed in the play is put

in a frame trained of more or miscellaneous

meanings and its instantaneous recognition are

delayed or deferred bydefamiliarization and

nebulosity. The nebulosity or ambiguity and

alienation discomfort thereferentiality between

Godot and its original entity, and its ideal or

symbolic presentation in the text, which brings

Samuel Beckett very close to Derridean disallowance

of the semantic eccentricity and fixity of meaning or

concealed transcendental meaning. The aporetic

effects on the minds of the tramps fathom

themselves in their following dialogue, in which they

are struck in deep anxieties and unable to enunciate

their pangs and jeopardy.

“Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I

don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you

had what I have.

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!”

(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 1, p.10).





Binary Oppositions

Forms of binarism have been present in

human thought from the earliest times. Human

discourse has always used binary oppositions to

mark differences in an otherwise random sequence

of features and thus give the shape to experience

and the universe. Duaisms in philosophy like

subject/object, God/man, temporal/eternal, are the

very foundation of entire world-views in literary

analysis, the discovery of thematic binary polarities

within the literary texts is one of the central

hermeneutic tools of interpretation of meaning of

the literary text. Jonathan Culler suggests, “Certain

oppositions are pertinent to larger thematic

structures, which encompass other antitheses

presented in the text” (Culler, Jonathan, 2002, p.

226).

Therefore, deconstruction operates from

the inside of the text in two ways. One is to point to

neglected portions in the text and to put them in

questioning and find their inconsistencies. The other

way is to deal with the binary oppositions in the

text. Jacques Derrida gives an analogy about the

neglected portions of the text, telling how to

deconstruct them. He compares the text to

architectonic structures and writes that in some

texts there are “neglected” or “defective” corner

stones, which need to be levered in order to be

deconstructed (Derrida, Jacques, 1989, p. 72).

Jacques Derrida claims that in Western

tradition of philosophy, there has always been an

opposition between the two concepts and in each

pair of concepts always “governs the other

(axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand”

(Derrida, Jacques, 1981, p. 41). These polarity

opposites have a certain tension between them. For

this reason, deconstruction is most simply defined

as a critique of the hierarchical oppositions that

have structured Western thought: inside -outside,

mind-body, literal- metaphorical, speech – writing,

presence –absence, nature- culture, form –meaning.

Deconstructing an opposition means to show that it

is not natural and inevitable but a construction,

produced by discourses that rely on it, showing that

it is a construction in a work of deconstruction that

seeks to dismantle it and reinscribe it –that is, not

destroy it but give it a different structure and

functioning (Derrida, Jacques, 1981, p. 120).

The notions of binary opposites like white

and black, light and darkness, smart and dull, virtue

and evil, ideal and physical, and man and woman,

beauty and ugliness may be noted in “Waiting for

Godot” that highlight the lack of stability and

coherence of the text. However, binary oppositions

between Vladimir and Estragon and Pozzo and Lucky

are also exist in their ways of thinking, feelings,

appearances, social statuses and even their levels of

intelligence. We come across the characters come in

pairs: Didi/Gogo, Pozzo/Lucky, Ham/Clov, Nagg/Nell

in “Waiting for Godot” and other plays of Samuel

Beckett.

Therefore, we find in the play “Waiting for

Godot”, the characters are entangled within the web

of binary oppositions. These polar opposites are

used in the text as highly applied line of

condemnation to the one, which is depreciated. The

characters of the play resort to contrast and

comparison, whenever they confront an aporetic

and manically offensive mode. This is the most

pertinent method to convince their addresses about

the justification of their claims. In this sense, Samuel

Beckett’s text is based on individual inferences and

linguistic experiences of the reader/ audience and

decentring logocentric binaries. In this manner, the

logocentric binaries lose their validity and

determination in the text, fulfilling Derridean

deconstructive aspiration. Therefore, the text

refrains the readers from determining only one fixed

meaning, and prepares more room for different and

deferral meaning and interpretations.

In this way, Samuel Beckett presents the

illusory logocentric metaphysical presence in the

aporetic form of Godot, which contradicts the

logocentric preference for presence, the futility of

binary signification and the non-rationality of the

logos Godot. Therefore, the text of the play refutes

the identity or the meaning of this absent being.

Godot’s absence in the play that invalidates the

characters’ presence, probe an insoluble ontological

problem, which challenges the conventional

interpretive assumptions of the literary text. In this

way, Samuel Beckett resists to fix one meaning for





Godot, asserting, “If I knew I’d have said so in the

play.’’(Bair, Deirdre, 1993, p. 382).The concept of

the word Godot is like Jacques Derrida’s differance,

escapes a one-to-one correspondence in the

signification system because it does not refer to

concrete real being in the objective world.

Conclusion

The current study endeavoured to

demonstrate Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for

Godot” from a very unprecedented and promethean

vantage through Derridean deconstruction. It

revealed how the metaphysics of presence and

messianic logocentrism imbue deterrent effects on

epistemic structure of human beings, and fall them

in theaporetic hazard of ubiquitous and pussiantlogi.

Therefore, they demuelt without a single grain of

resistance succumb to the authority of the messianic

theocentric and anthropocentric logi. The study tries

to validate that the strategies of meta-theatre

employedin Samuel Beckett’s play, castoff

thecustomary dramatic realism, make the text of the

play delogocentric text, and brings it very close to

Derridean deconstruction, which negate and

deconstructs the semantic singularity and fixity of

meaning or hidden transcendental meaning of the

text.

The study endeavoured to uncloak how the

nullifying collapsing aporic hodgepodge of

orchestrated and centralized structure of the minds

of characters make them incarcerated within the

illusory snare of the anthropocentric and

theocentric messianic logi. The study also

consumastes that man cannot anticipate and

decipher the text until and unless he knocks down

the messianic logocentrism of the surviving tradition

of the metaphysics of presence, which positions the

presupposed messianic logos in the centre of our

perception of the universe.

References

Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in

the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading.

Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1980.Print.

Beckett, Samuel. (1956).Waiting for Godot. London

and Boston, Great Britain: Faber and Faber.

Dobie, Anne.B. Theory into Practice: An Introduction

to Literary

Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary

Terms and Literary Theory. London:

Penguin, 2000.Print.

Worton, Michael. (1995). Intersexuality, Theories,

and Practices. Manchester: Manchester

University Press.

Criticism. Australia: Cengage Learning, 2012.Print.

Derrida, Jacques, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the

Discourse of the Human Sciences.”

Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London:

Routledge, 1978. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri

Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore & London:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 1995. Print.

Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and

Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, New

York Press, 1991.Print

Esslin, Martin. “Samuel Beckett: The Search for the

self .” The Theatre of the Absurd. United

States of America: Anchor Books, 1961.

Print.

Calderwood, james.L“ ways of waiting in waiting for

Godot” . Modern Drama, 29 (1986).print

Cullar, Jonathan.On Deconstruction.London:

Routledge and keegan paul,1987.print

Derrida, Jacques, Limited Inc.,Northwestern

university press,1988

Worton, Michael. (1995). Intersexuality, Theories,

and Practices. Manchester: Manchester

University Press.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926

http://ijhcschiefeditor.wix.com/ijhcs Page 42

Waiting for Godot: A Deconstructive Study

Javed Akhter

University of Balochistan Quetta Balochistan Pakistan

Abstract

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) is the most eminent French philosopher and literary theorist of

deconstruction. He challenges the logo-centric Western tradition of the metaphysics of

presence, which has been dominant from Plato’s “Phaedrus” until Edmund Husserl’s

“Origin of Geometry” in Western philosophy. His trend-breaking theory of deconstruction

attacks the metaphysical presuppositions of Western philosophy, ethics, culture, politics and

literature. It may give a new meaning and perspective to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for

Godot”, which has always been a focal point for the world’s literary critics. They have

applied various theories to it, but this paper tries to scrutinize the different facets of the play

from Derridean deconstructive theory.

Applying Derridean deconstructive hermeneutics to the text of the play under discussion, the

author of this paper introduces a new portrait of the personages of the play. The study will

retrace the pathways of Western tradition of the metaphysics of presence and its compelling

influences, which have proved to be the inhibiting and fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of

meaning and authoritative structures of human thought to explore the new horizons. In its

concluding mode, the study exposes preventive stumbling aporic blocks of centralized

structure of the minds of characters in the given play.

Keywords: Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, metaphysics of presence and messianic,

aporia, binary oppositions, delogocentrism

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



Introduction

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is the most eminent Irish based French playwright of

the theatre of the Absurd, who tries to depict human absurdity and uncertainty in the late

modernist bourgeois world of shattered beliefs and uncertainties through the medium of meta-

theatre. Meta-theatre, Lionel Able asserts that, “marks those frames and boundaries that

conventional dramatic realism would hide” (Able, Lionel, 2003, p. 133).

Samuel Beckett wrote “Waiting for Godot” in French in 1949 and then translated it

into English in 1954. “Waiting for Godot” is the most popular play in every corner of the

world. Therefore, this play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with astonishing

success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in post second world war era. For this

reason, Martin Esslin calls it, “One of the successes of the post-war theatre” (Esslin, Martin,

1980, p.3). The central theme of the play revolves around waiting. The two tramps, Vladimir

and Estragon, are waiting expectantly to visit Godot near a stunted tree in the middle of

nowhere. They do not even know his real name, whether he promises to visit them, or if, in

fact, he actually exists. However, they are still waiting and waiting for him. Nevertheless, he

did never appear.

The slave-owning Pozzo and his subservient slave, Lucky and the boy (the

messenger of Godot) whose name was not mentioned in the play, interrupted their waiting.

Godot has nothing significant to do with their lives. They do every possible thing; even

prepare to commit suicide, just to keep the dreadful silence. The play begins with waiting for

Godot and ends with waiting for Godot. Play does not end formally, when the boy, who is as

well messenger of Godot, reveals the fact to the tramps that Godot is not expected to come

this evening and he will come tomorrow. In fact, these characters are entrapped and entangled

in the illusory trap of the slavery of the metaphysics of presence. Therefore, they represent all

the human beings in the world, who are imprisoned in one way and the other in the blind alley

of different illusions of the logos of language, philosophy and religion. Therefore, the present

study tries to discuss the different facets of this famous play from Derridean deconstructive

perspective.

Research Objectives

The research objectives of this study are as follow:

To push Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” within Derridean

deconstructive perspective for investigating and scrutinizing the different facets of the text in

terms of Derridean deconstruction.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



To open up the techniques of meta-theatre, which enable Samuel Beckett to go beyond

the boundaries of the traditional stereotypes and fossilized notions, values and traditions of

language, theatre and the literary text, which revolve around messianic logocentrism or

phonocentrism in the history of philosophy from Plato to the present times.

To scrutinize the text from Derrida’s deconstructive hermeneutics for dismantling the

fixity, singularity and unified meaning of the text of the thought raging play under discussion.

To retrace the zigzag and complicated philosophical pathways of West European

tradition of the metaphysics of presence and its compelling influences and repercussions,

which have proved to be the inhibiting and fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of meaning and

authoritative centralized structures of human thought to explore the new horizons.

Research Questions

The study will concentrate on the following questions:

How does Samuel Beckett disseminate the logos of life in “Waiting for Godot”?

Which characteristics of his art do bring him close to deconstruction?

Research Methodology

The study is narrative research and follows descriptive-cum analytical method.

The textual references are given as evidence to support the argument of this research. The key

concepts of deconstruction, metaphysics of presence and messianic, aporia, logos, binary

oppositions and delogocentrism are discussed in relation to the text in this research. Derridean

deconstructive hermeneutics of studying and interpreting the text is an important ingredient of

this research. Therefore, the different facets of the text of the play are studied and analysed on

Derridean deconstructive bedrock. Relevant quotations, references and extracts have been

taken in APA (American Psychological Association) style from the primary and secondary

data on the subject of this research. The list of the cited sources is given in under the heading

of References at the end of this paper

Literature Review

The complex structure of “Waiting for Godot’’ is based upon symbols and

ideological content, in which the vertical repression and layering or sedimentation is dominant

structure of the text of the play. For this reason, it has been always a focal target for world’s

researchers. Most of the researchers interpreted its different elements from different angles.

Therefore, the complex and entangled structure of the play has drawn multifarious research

attentions. There are so many books and dissertations composed on this play. Harold Bloom

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



edited a book entitled “Samuel Beckett: Modern Critical Views” (1985), which is an

important criticism nearly on all the important works of Samuel Beckett, including “Waiting

for Godot”. The book consists of various critical commentaries by different scholars on the

author under analysis, from different angles. Ruby Cohn edited a book entitled “Beckett:

Waiting for Godot” (1987), which also presents different critical commentaries by different

critics on “Waiting for Godot”, from different angles.

Martin Esslin edited a book entitled “An Anatomy of Drama” (1976), which is a

thought provoking book. He also edited another book, entitled “Samuel Beckett: Twentieth

Century Views” (1980), which consists of various views on the author under discussion,

relating him to the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ and philosophy of existentialism. William S.

Haney in his essay,” Beckett out of His Mind: The Theatre of the Absurd” states that Samuel

Beckett crosses “the linguistic and cultural boundaries by dispensing with narrative sequence,

character development and psychology in conventional sense” (Haney, William S. 2001,

p.40). He further states that, Samuel Beckett goes beyond “the psychic structures that select,

organize, interpret, and limit our knowledge about the world around us” (Haney, William S.

2001, p.42). Gabriele Schwab also believes that Samuel Beckett’s plays go beyond the

“boundaries of our consciousness in two directions toward the unconscious and toward self-

reflection” (Schwab, Gabriele, 1992, 97).

Abhinaba Chatterjee wrote a research paper entitled “Camus’ Absurdity in

Beckett’s Plays: Waiting for Godot and Krapp’s Last Tape” (2013), which is very important

analysis of the two dramatic texts of Samuel Beckett, from Albert Camus’ existentialist point

of view. Darsha Jani wrote a research paper entitled “Futility, Hopelessness and

Meaninglessness: Central Forces Leading towards Absurdity in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot”

(2013), which is also an existentialist study of the play. Komal Rakwal wrote a research paper

entitled “Today’s Fear of Being in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot” in which she

explores existentialist themes in the text.

Noorbakhsh Hooti wrote a research paper entitled “Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for

Godot: A Post-modernist study” (2011), which is a Post-modernist analysis of the text. He

discussed it from postmodernist point of view in general. Elin Diamond wrote his research

paper entitled “Re: Blau, Butter, Beckett and the Politics of Seeing” (2000), which is a

political and ideological study of Samuel Beckett. Fereshteh Vaziri Nasab Kermany’s

dissertation entitled “A Study of the Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and

Caryl Churchill” (2008) is a research based on a general deconstructive look at the play,

discussing it along with the plays of Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill. This dissertation

tried to prove the overall deconstructive mood of delogocentrism of the play.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



These books and research papers are very interesting, informative and thought

provoking on the subject in many respects, but no one applied Post-Structuralist Derridean

deconstructive hermeneutics to it. The present study interprets the play on the bedrock of the

ground breaking Derridean deconstructive hermeneutics. Therefore, the present study would

be an analysis from a new and innovative perspective on “Waiting for Godot”; applying

Derridean deconstructive hermeneutics to the text of this highly debate raging play.

Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida is the most eminent Algerian-born French philosopher, who

originates the path breaking theory of deconstruction. He argues that the tradition of west

European philosophy since Plato has been the metaphysics of presence or logocentrism. Its

compelling influences and repercussions on human thought have proved to be the inhibiting

and fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of meaning and authoritative fossilized logocentric

structures of human thought to explore the new horizons, grounding it in the stable and pre-

determined meaning of the logos of the metaphysics of presence. We cannot imagine the end

of the metaphysics of presence, we can criticise it from within it by identifying and reversing

the hierarchies it has established.

However, Jacques Derrida originated the term deconstruction but he did not define

it anywhere in detail. However, defining the term deconstruction is by no means simple and

easy task but very complex one and not defined explicitly by its initiator Jacques Derrida.

Nevertheless, he gives some important signposts and clues about how to deconstruct a literary

text, which can help us to define the term. M.A.R. Habib writes that deconstruction is “a way

of reading, a mode of writing, and above all, a way of challenging interpretations of the texts

based upon conventional notions of stability of human self, the external world, and of

language and meaning” (Habib, M.A.R, 2005, p. 649). This theory revolutionised many

disciplines from philosophy and history, from film studies to law, architecture, politics,

anthropology and theory of aesthetics. Jacques Derrida writes about it:

“Deconstruction “is “destruction” and desedimentation of all the significations that

have their source in that of the logos” (Derrida, Jacques, 1997, p. 10).It is an attempt to

deconstruct this centre in “logos”. However, this does not mean to destroy as Derrida writes,

“Rather than destroying, it was also necessary to understand how a “whole” was constituted

and reconstruct it to the end” (Derrida, Jacques, 2007, p. 3). Therefore, deconstruction is an

attempt to reconstruct and “to dismantle” logocentrism or phonocentrism.

In this sense “….deconstruction is firstly this destabilization on the move in, if one

could speak thus, the things themselves”, but it is not negative destabilization is required for

“progress” as well as. In addition, the “de-“of deconstruction signifies not the demolition of

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



what is constructing itself, but rather what remains to be thought beyond the constructive or

deconstructionist scheme” (Derrida, Jacques, 1998, p. 147). When we deconstruct or

destabilise the text and logocentrism, our perception leads to progress. Derrida says, “The

movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not

possible and effective, nor can they accurate aim…” Deconstruction should “necessary”

operate “from the inside” (Derrida, Jacques, 1997, p. 24).

Deconstruction criticises the Western philosophical tradition of the metaphysics of

presence, which takes place the form of what Jacques Derrida calls logocentrism or

phonocentrism. The logo is a Greek word, which in a specific sense of pure meaning that

precedes language. The domain of pure meaning is also the domain of logic, which derives

from the logos. “In the beginning, was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos

was God” (Good News Bible, 1981, p. 118).Jacques Derrida opines that both logic and

logocentrism depend upon a covert linguistic operation that posits a realm of meaning prior to

language, and in turn, privileges thought over utterance, speech over writing, and origin over

copy. Derrida argues that Saussure’s theory of linguistics is both invested in and troubling the

project of logocentrism or phonocentrism. He finds counter-logic already in Ferdinand de

Saussure. Structuralist linguistics is just the supposedly whole first term –man, speech- but

also logos (self-identical meaning, God) in general.

For Jacques Derrida writing is not secondary copy of a whole, prior meaning

represented by speech. It is primary, in so much as meaning is itself afflicted by self-divisions

and deferrals, the endless slippages of signifiers, which constitute writing. That is why

Jacques Derrida says, “There is nothing outside the text” (Derrida, Jacques, 2003, 227). His

deconstruction is associated to the study of complexities of literature: Jean-Jacques

Rousseau’s “Confessions”, Stephane Mallarme’s “Mimique”, and James Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

He concludes that literature with its slippery language demonstrated the deferral of the logos.

Deconstructive Analysis of Waiting for Godot

The researcher tries to interpret Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” from

Derridean deconstructive perspective in terms of deconstruction. Therefore, the present study

tends to interpret the different facets of the text. The following terms of Derridean

deconstruction are simply relevant to the nature of this research.

Metaphysics of presence and Messianic

According to Jacques Derrida, the tradition of west European philosophy from Plato

until Edmund Husserl has been the metaphysics of presence or logocentrism. Its compelling

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



influences and repercussions on human thought have proved to be the inhibiting and

fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of meaning and authoritative fossilized logocentric structures

of human thought to explore new horizons, grounding it in the stable and pre-determined

meaning, origin or presence. We cannot imagine the end of the metaphysics of the presence,

we can criticise it from within by identifying and reversing the hierarchies it has established.

Jacques Derrida calls all Western philosophic tradition logocentric because it places

at the centre of our perception of the universe a concept (logos), which organises and explains

the universe for us while remaining outside of the universe it organises and explains. Jacques

Derrida says that it is Western philosophy’s greatest illusion. Each grounding concept---

Plato’s idea of perfect Forms, Rene Descartes’ cogito, structuralism’s notion of innate

structures of human consciousness---is itself a human concept and therefore, a product of

human language. In this way, he attacks the basic metaphysical assumptions of Western

philosophical tradition since Plato. He also criticises that the notion of innate structures of

human consciousness in structuralism has always presupposed a centre of meaning of

something, which governs the structure, but is itself not subject to structural analysis (to find

the structure of the centre would be to find another centre.)

For this reason, Jacques Derrida claims that Western philosophy has always had a

desire “to search for a centre, a meaning, origin or a “transcendental signified” (Derrida,

Jacques, 1997, p. 49). He calls this desire for centre “logocentrism or phonocentrism (Derrida,

Jacques, 1997, p. 11). However, he opines that all Western philosophy since Plato has tried to

ground its basis on meaning, “presence”, or “existence” (Derrida, Jacques, 2005, p. 353).

This tradition revolves around a central set of supposedly universal principles and

beliefs. He concludes that the different theories of philosophy since Plato are versions of a

single or authoritative system, and, though we cannot hope to escape this system, we can at

least identify the conditions of thought it imposes by attending to that which it seek to

impress.

Therefore, the tradition of Western philosophy of the metaphysics of presence

derives from and organised around one grounding principle from which we believe we can

figure out the meaning of existence. For some philosophers the ground of being is some

cosmic principle of order and harmony, as illustrated for example, by Plato’s idea of perfect

Forms that exist in an abstract, timeless dimension of thought. For others, the grounding

principle is rational thought engaged in the act of self-reflection, as illustrated by Rene

Descartes’ famous philosophical proposition: “I think therefore, I am” (cogito ergo sum).

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



For some other philosophers still, the grounding principle is some innate quality in

human beings as illustrated by structuralism’s belief that human language and experience are

generated by innate structures of human consciousness. For this reason, Jacques Derrida

opines that structuralism is a form of philosophical totalitarianism, a totality of phenomenon

by reduction of it to a formula that governs it totally. This Western tradition of philosophical

thought revolves around a central set of supposedly universal principles and beliefs. While

these grounding concepts produce our perception of the dynamic, evolving universe around

us---and of our dynamic, evolving selves as well---the concepts themselves remain stable.

Unlike everything, they explain they are not dynamic and evolving. They are “out of place” as

Jacques Derrida calls logocentric because it places at the centre of its perception of the

universe a concept (logos) that organise and explains the universe for us. Logocentrism would

thus support the determination of the being of the entity as presence (Derrida, Jacques, 1997,

p. 12).

When we study “Waiting for Godot”, we come across the central theme of the play,

which revolves around the waiting for Godot, who does not appear in the play. Nevertheless,

the two characters of the play, Vladimir and Estragon, who are homeless vagabonds, seem to

be entrapped in the trap of illusory world of the metaphysics of presence. They are tied up

with messianic logocentrism or phonocentrism of the term Godot. Messianic is one of the

forms of the metaphysics of presence, which is evident in the concepts of theocentrism and

anthropocentrism. Any ideological, religious and political system, which claims to be

authorised legitimacy, is messianic logocentrism or phonocentrism. This messianism is

dominant in human thought. Jacques Derrida also calls this way of thinking messianicity,

according to which Christian hope of a future to come.

Therefore, the word Godot in the play signifies both theocentric as well as

anthropocentric messianic logocentrism, which may be noted is, the privilege given to it as

Jehovah of “The Old Testament”, his wrath frightens, and like Messiah (Jesus Christ) of “The

New Testament”, his Second Coming will redeem the humankind. He may stand for

salvation, donation, rebirth and promise, which is able to be a link between these logi and the

two waiting tramps. However, the tramps are fallen in the trap of illusory world of the

metaphysics of presence and messianism. Therefore, they are mentally tied up with the

logocentric messianic term Godot. Nevertheless, they have taken it for granted that it is a

dominant source of redemption and salvation. They attempt to discover the meaning, origin

and truth under the umbrella of the presupposed messianic logos Godot.

Therefore, Godot can punish them if the tramps leave, redeem, and reward them if

they keep waiting for him. The tramps have strong desire to turn Godot’s absence to presence.

This desire is identical to the yearning of west European philosophy for centre or the stable

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



and fixed signified by the metaphysics of presence. This messianic logocentric metaphysical

presence makes a concrete physical anthropocentric entity for the tramps. For instance,

Vladimir’s yearning to perceive an exact image of Godot’s appearance in an anthropomorphic

manner, bringing him on the level of human perception is an attempt of this kind:

“Vladimir: (softly) Has he a beard, Mr Godot?

Boy: Yes sir.

Vladimir: Fair or… (He hesitates)… or black?

Boy: I think it’s white, sir” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 2, p. 92).

In this manner, Vladimir cannot perceive the image of Godot without what west

European philosophy’s tradition of the metaphysics of presence and messianism has set for

him as the foundation of messianic logocentrism of his beliefs and thoughts. An absent entity

of Godot in the play refutes definition, and at this point, it becomes very close to Jacques

Derrida’s definition of differance than to the metaphysical notion of messianic theocentric or

anthropocentric logos. Jacques Derrida explains that differance is “formation of form”

(Derrida, Jacques, 1976, p. 63)” and the historical and epochal unfolding of Being” (Derrida,

Jacques, 1982, p. 22), something that negates origin.

However, the absent Godot puts the idea of the origin of true meaning, into the

radical question, because it cannot be easily defined, categorized or adjusted to an object

outside the text. It can signify multiple meanings of more things simultaneously and non-

existence or nothing at all. It is in fact, an aporic being, which resist interpretation. As a result,

the two tramps are seeking for something to give meaning to their existence. For them Mr

Godot is a source of solution of their miseries, the logos that may fill the meaning in their

absurd existence. The identity of this absent entity remains unknown in the whole text of the

play. As Worton writes:

“Much has been written about who or what Godot is. My own view is that he is

simultaneously whatever we think he is and not what we think he is, he is an absence,

who can be interpreted at moments as God, death, the Lord of the manor, a benefactor,

even Pozzo. Nevertheless, Godot has a function rather than a meaning. He stands for

what keeps us chained- to and in-existence. He is the unknowable that represents hope in

an age when there is no hope; he is whatever fiction we want him to be- as long as he

justifies our life-as-waiting” (Worton, Michael, 1995, p. 70-71).

The tramps’ attempts to capture this non-entity or unknown being in terms of the

known messianic logocentrism, by visiting him, are all in vain. Finally, Godot did not appear

and tramps turned disappointed and frustrated. Therefore, the bond between language and

reality is shattered and words lose their vocation of communicating feelings and thoughts:

“Vladimir: Say I am happy

Estragon: I am happy

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



Vladimir: So I am

Estragon: So I am.

Estragon: We are happy. (Silence). What do we do now, now that we’re happy?”

(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 2, p. 60).

Therefore, Godot’s final absence, however, frustrates the hopes of the tramps and

they have become nervous. The following dialogue of the tramps shows their hidden desire to

set themselves free from the tiresome act of waiting for an unknown or non-existent messianic

metaphysical being:

“Estragon: (His mouthful, vacuously.) We are not tied!

Vladimir: I don’t hear a word you’re saying.

Estragon: (chews, swallows.) I’m asking if we’re tied.

Vladimir: tied?

Estragon: ti-ed.

Vladimir: How do you mean tied?

Estragon: Down

Vladimir: But to whom? By whom?

Estragon: To your man

Vladimir: To Godot? Tied to Godot? What an idea! No question of it. (Pause) For

the moment”

(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 1, pp.20-21).

Finally, the tramps are unable to act, even to commit suicide. For example, the

following dialogue makes the point clear:

“Vladimir: We will hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.

Estragon: And if he comes?

Vladimir: We’ll be saved” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act Two, p. 94).

We can mostly notice their incapability and undecidability to do anything throughout

the whole play:

“Estragon: “Why don’t we hang ourselves?

Vladimir: With what?

Estragon: you haven’t got a bit of rope?

Vladimir: No.

Estragon: Then we can’t.

Vladimir: Let’s go.

Estragon: Oh wait, there is my belt.

Vladimir: It’s too short.

Estragon: You could hang on to my legs.

Vladimir: And who would hang onto mine?

Estragon: True” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act Two, p.93).

Therefore, Samuel Beckett refutes the certainty and stability of the Holy Scripture

by dismantling its authorised metaphysical meaning. He uses Christian mythology without

having to believe in it. As he states, “Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



familiar, and so I use it. But not in this case” (Bair, Deirdre, 1995, p.386). For this reason, he

involves the tramps in serious religious debates between the four Evangelists about the saved

thief. Vladimir, like the assiduous religious scholar seems to search for truth and certainty in

the Holy text of “The New Testament”. However, he finds that there is no certainty in this

text. In fact, his perplexity is the confusion of a layperson in perceiving the philosophy of the

metaphysics of presence, presented to him as messianic logocentrism. The following dialogue

between the tramps makes the point clear:

“Vladimir: And yet… (pause.)… How is it-this is not boring you I hope- how is it that of

the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there-

or thereabouts-and only one speaks of a thief being saved. (Pause.)

Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can’t you, one in a way?

Estragon: (with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this most extraordinarily

interesting.

Vladimir: One out of four. Of the other three, two don’t mention any thieves at all

and the third says that both of them abused him.

Estragon: Who?

Vladimir: What?

Estragon: What’s all this about? Abused who?

Vladimir: The Saviour.

Estragon: Why?

Vladimir: Because he wouldn’t save them.

Estragon: From Hell?

Vladimir: Imbecile! From death.

Estragon: I thought you said hell.

Vladimir: From death, from death.

Estragon: Well what of it?

Vladimir: Then the two of them must have been damned.

Estragon: And why not?” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 1, p.13-14).

We find the characters of the play entangled within an illusory web of logocentric

illusions of thought that they want to grasp the ultimate truth of life and the universe in a way

as logocentric Western tradition of the metaphysics of presence confines their mind to think

about the authoritative universal truth, meaning and origin. Nevertheless, they are unable to

find it and on the contrary, they confront uncertainty and absurdity as illustrated in the

conversations between Estragon and Vladimir about the Holy Scripture, the memories of the

past or identity of Godot. Suspecting all the messianic logocentric authorities of founding the

texts of Western culture, Samuel Beckett studs Godot and Endgame with references to these

very texts in order to make us “think and participate in his anxious oscillation between

certainty about what is untrue and uncertainty about what may be true” (Worton, Michael,

1995, p. 85).

However, Vladimir wants to find a proof for existence. His desire for a centre,

origin, or logos of Godot is fully illustrated when he says the boy:

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



“Words, words. (Pause.) Speak” (Beckett, Samuel, Act 1, p.50).

The tramps finally lose their hope for salvation and redemption. Vladimir expresses

doubt in the following dialogue between Boy and Vladimir:

“Boy: What am I to say Mr Godot, sir?

Vladimir: Tell him... (he hesitates)...tell him you saw us. (Pause.) You did see us,

didn’t you?” (Beckett, Samuel, Act 1, p.52).

In this way, Samuel Beckett deconstructs messianic theocentrism and

anthropocentricism of the logocentric word of Godot and after disseminating Godot and the

Holy Scripture, Samuel Beckett further goes in Lucky’s speech to expand his deconstructive

techniques to undo Western philosophical tradition of the metaphysics of presence.

Describing the philosopher’s mental and physical slavery to bourgeois power system of

capitalism, he disseminates all philosophical inquiries for ultimate truth, origin or static

signified as well as deconstructs all logocentric Western tradition of the metaphysics of

presence.

Therefore, the rational philosopher is presented in the personage of Lucky as a mock

figure of philosopher in the play. His slave-owning master Pozzo dictates him by the power of

words and logi. His one-word commands dictate and handle Lucky. Therefore, like a puppet

or remote controlled robot, he obeys the orders of his master Pozzo. “Back”, “stop”, “turn”,

“stand”, “up”, “basket” are the one-word commands of his master, he obeys. In this way, he

behaves and reacts in accordance with the command-methods of his master. Here Pozzo

stands for the late modernist bourgeois power structure of capitalism and Lucky, the Lackey

of it. Jaffey Nealon writes as follows:

“Becket directs Lucky’s long monologue against the popular notion that philosophy’s

job is to restore unity to man’s learning, a job, which philosopher can only do by

recuperating some meta-narratives, which link together all moments in human history

within a single, continuous metaphysical system. Lucky’s think, though, is a narrative

that disrupts and deconstructs all notions of universal ahistorical meta-narrative- all

Godots” (Nealon, Jaffey 1992.44).

However, Samuel Beckett puts the power of reason in question by demonstrating the

dominance of non-rational bourgeois forces of capitalism, which contradict the traditional

anthropocentric notions and values of humanism. In his speech, Lucky fails to defend human

being as central subject of the anthropocentric Western philosophical thought. In this manner,

Samuel Beckett satirises the Cartesian philosophical proposition: “cogito ergo sum” in

Lucky’s speech. However, he dements thought/ discourse, which violates the limits of

logocentric Western European tradition of the metaphysics of presence. As Brewer states it:

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



“Drawn to the side of the signifier rather than the signified (though as immaterial

meaning), the hybrid “thought-performance” breaks down the distinction between words

and their meaning. The disjunction between characters’ actions and their speech is here,

repeated in the disjunction between discourse as performance and his cognitive content” (Brewer, Maria Minich, 1994, pp. 152-153).

Finally, Samuel Beckett attacks the metaphysics of presence and messianic

logocentrism. He does not only disseminates the theocentric text of Holy Scriptures, but also

dismantles the anthropocentric lines of Western philosophical thought, delogocentring the

theocentric authority of the Holy Scripture in the dialogue of the tramps cited above and the

anthropocentric authority of philosopher in the delogocentrized figure of Lucky.

Aporia

Aporia means a logical impassable, contradiction, doubt and a moment of

undecidability. It is the inherent contradiction in the import of the text or theory. Jacques

Derrida, for example, cites in his book “Of Grammatology” the inherent contradictions at

work in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s use of the words culture and nature by stating that Jean-

Jacques Rousseau’s sense of the self’s innocence (in nature) is already corrupted by the

concept of culture and existence. Aporia is in fact, a logical deadlock of relationship,

decision-making and interpretation, which makes one to undecidable to grasp logical

reasoning and justification. It is precisely a situation, which reflects the impossibility of

thought, language, meaning, ethics and justification.

Aporia also means debitio, which is an expression of real and feigned doubt or

uncertainty, especially for rhetorical effect, by which the speaker appears uncertain as to what

he/ she should do, think or say. The speaker already knows the answer, but he/she still asks

himself/herself or his/her audience, what the appropriate manner, to grasp some matter is. The

ambiguity of the text forms an aporia, because “it is impossible to decide by grammatical or

other linguistic devices, which of the two meanings…prevails (De Man, Paul, 1979 p. 10).

Discussing Stephane Mallarme’s “Mimique”, Jacques Derrida refers to the

symbiosis of grammar and rhetoric. Words like “hymen,” and “pharmakon”, he points out:

“have a double, contradictory, undecidable value that always derives from their syntax,

whether the latter is in a sense “internal,” articulating and combining under the same yoke,

huph’ hen, two incompatible meanings, or “external,” dependent on the code in which the

word is made to function (Derrida, Jacques, 2005, p. 221).

In this view, Samuel Beckett’s rejection of the fossilized signifying process of

traditional theatre and adoption of the techniques of meta-theatre lead him to anti-narrative

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



structure of the text, which creates an aporic effects on the minds of the audience and readers

that resist interpretation of the text. Therefore, the structural aporia of meaning happens in the

text. The opposite poles of meaning are so evident that messianic logocentrism or

phonocentrism cannot function anymore. There occurred in the text many “simultaneously

eithers ors” in Derridean term (Derrida, Jacques, 1978, p. 59).

Therefore, the text of the play resists be defining, interpreting, and analysing in a

closed system. In addition, the semantic aporia renders Samuel Beckett’s dramatic text into

multi-dimensionality of meaning, and puts it in opposition with the traditional dramatic texts.

The ontological impassivity or aporia of the text prevails the fragmentary form of the play that

prevents the audience and readers from fixing a meaning or putting the text in a closed

system. For this reason, one finds himself in an aporetic situation in which he/she cannot

decide if Samuel Beckett is giving significance of absurdity or its superficiality in comparison

to human predicament. In this sense, the open-endedness of the text of the play always invites

the audience and readers to interpret it in a new and novel way. Therefore, the readers and

audience are prevented from falling in the categorized perception or stereotyped interpretation

of the text.

However, the stereotyped perception, categorized reception and traditional

interpretation of the text fall the readers and audience in the straightforward recognition,

which is situated by novelty, inaccessible by stale reception and stereotyped traditional

interpretation of the text. That is why Samuel Beckett uses the symbol of Godot in the play, to

portray uncertainty and absurdity of human situation in modern capitalist social formation,

which makes the text of the play ambiguous, showing the limitations of language and aporetic

effects of it on the minds of human beings.

The symbol Godot sometimes employs other verbal tricks when Vladimir and

Estragon speak about him. Therefore, aporia or impasse of meaning is found when they are

confronted with boy messenger’s message that Godot will not come today but he will come

tomorrow. As a result, the tramps are fallen in aporetic situation in which they decide to move

but they remain undecidable and inactive to do so:

“Estragon: Well? Shall we go?


Estragon: What?


Estragon: You want me to pull off my trousers?


Estragon: (realizing his trousers are down). True.

He pulls up his trousers.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act 2, p.94).

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



The word Godot in the play is put in a structure capable of more or multiple

meanings and its immediate recognition are deferred or postponed by defamiliarization and

ambiguity. The ambiguity and estrangement perturb the referentiality between Godot and its

real entity, and its ideal or symbolic presentation in the text, which brings Samuel Beckett

very close to Derridean rejection of the semantic singularity and fixity of meaning or hidden

transcendental meaning. The aporetic effects on the minds of the tramps manifest themselves

in their following dialogue, in which they are unable to express their pains and sufferings:

“Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear

what you’d say if you had what I have.

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!” (Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act

1, p.10).

Binary Oppositions

According to structuralism, the concept of binarism is fundamental and

indispensable to human language, cognition and communication. Therefore, binary

oppositions help us to shape the entire world-view and to mark differences in an otherwise

unrecognized universe (Raman, Selden, 1989, 56). However, binarism underlies human

thought and action. Cultures and languages often function through binary polarities. In

philosophy and religion, paired oppositions (matter and idea, cause and effect, body and mind,

virtue and evil, content and form, subject and object, beauty and ugliness) serve as very

foundations of human thought. When we cast a glance at history of human thought, we find

logocentric binarism in it.

Even in literary analysis, the discovery of thematic binary polarities within the

literary texts is one of the central hermeneutic tools of interpretation of meaning of the literary

text. Jonathan Culler suggests, “certain oppositions are pertinent to larger thematic structures,

which encompass other antitheses presented in the text” (Culler, Jonathan, 2002, p. 226).

Therefore, deconstruction operates from the inside of the text in two ways. One is

to point to neglected portions in the text and to put them in questioning and find their

inconsistencies. The other way is to deal with the binary oppositions in the text. Jacques

Derrida gives an analogy about the neglected portions of the text, telling how to deconstruct

them. He compares the text to architectonic structures and writes that in some texts there are

“neglected” or “defective” corner stones, which need to be levered in order to be

deconstructed (Derrida, Jacques, 1989, p. 72).

Jacques Derrida claims that in Western tradition of philosophy, there has always

been an opposition between the two concepts and in each pair of concepts always “governs

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand” (Derrida, Jacques, 1981, p.

41). These polarity opposites have a certain tension between them. For this reason,

deconstruction is most simply defined as a critique of the hierarchical oppositions that have

structured Western thought: inside -outside, mind-body, literal- metaphorical, speech –

writing, presence –absence, nature- culture, form –meaning. Deconstructing an opposition

means to show that it is not natural and inevitable but a construction, produced by discourses

that rely on it, showing that it is a construction in a work of deconstruction that seeks to

dismantle it and reinscribe it –that is, not destroy it but give it a different structure and

functioning (Derrida, Jacques, 1981, p. 120).

That this reversal of the oppositions should not immediately pass to “neutralizing

the binary oppositions of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these

oppositions” (Derrida, Jacques, 1998, p 41). Reversing the oppositions and giving superiority

to the suppressed concept does not mean to deconstruct it because the suppressed concept

would have the upper hand and thus it would mean to stay “within the closed field of these

oppositions”. In order to get out of the closed fields of the binary oppositions, Derrida adds

that “it must, through a double gesture, a double science, a double writing {reading} – put

into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It

is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the

field of oppositions it criticizes …” (Derrida, Jacques, 1998, p. 21). This “displacement” and

intervention creates a new text and context. That is why Derrida states that “deconstruction” is

also a “reconceptualization” (Derrida, Jacques, 1998, p 136).

The reconceptualization produces new meanings and interpretations of the

original text. It suggests the possibilities and alternatives inherent in the original text.

Therefore, every text that repeats the original text in a new context produces a new text,

which is a new production. .This new production is different from the original text in some

points and shows the iteration of the literary text .Derrida claims that iteration ,the

characteristic of repetition of a text, alters the original text so that ‘’ “something new takes

place” ( Derrida, Jacques,1998, p 40).

Deconstruction stands against all predetermined, prescribed and fossilized norms

and values. The notions of binary opposites like white and black, light and darkness, smart

and dull, virtue and evil, ideal and physical, and man and woman, beauty and ugliness may

be noted in “Waiting for Godot” that highlight the lack of stability and coherence of the text.

However, binary oppositions between Vladimir and Estragon and Pozzo and Lucky are also

exist in their ways of thinking, feelings, appearances, social statuses and even their levels of

intelligence. We come across the characters come in pairs: Didi/Gogo, Pozzo/Lucky,

Ham/Clov, Nagg/Nell in “Waiting for Godot” and other plays of Samuel Beckett.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



Therefore, we find in the play “Waiting for Godot”, the characters are entangled

within the web of binary oppositions. These polar opposites are used in the text as highly

applied line of condemnation to the one, which is depreciated. The characters of the play

resort to contrast and comparison, whenever they confront an aporetic and manically

offensive mode. This is the most pertinent method to convince their addresses about the

justification of their claims. In this sense, Samuel Beckett’s text is based on individual

inferences and linguistic experiences of the reader/ audience and decentring logocentric

binaries. In this manner, the logocentric binaries lose their validity and determination in the

text, fulfilling Derridean deconstructive aspiration. Therefore, the text refrains the readers

from determining only one fixed meaning, and prepares more room for different and deferral

meaning and interpretations.

In this way, Samuel Beckett presents the illusory logocentric metaphysical

presence in the aporetic form of Godot, which contradicts the logocentric preference for

presence, the futility of binary signification and the non-rationality of the logos Godot.

Therefore, the text of the play refutes the identity or the meaning of this absent being. Godot’s

absence in the play that invalidates the characters’ presence, probe an insoluble ontological

problem, which challenges the conventional interpretive assumptions of the literary text. In

this way, Samuel Beckett resists to fix one meaning for Godot, asserting, “If I knew I’d have

said so in the play.’’(Bair, Deirdre, 1993, p. 382).The concept of the word Godot is like

Jacques Derrida’s differance, escapes a one-to-one correspondence in the signification system

because it does not refer to concrete real being in the objective world.

Delogocentrism

In “Waiting for Godot” Vladimir and Estragon are homeless tramps. Therefore,

homelessness is shown to be a gift of capitalism. In this way, Samuel Beckett deconstructs

sentimentalism of home and family by demythologization of sentimental concepts of home

and family in the play. For this reason, he demithifies the traditional concept of home and

family as a centre of shelter in the play to present his characters Vladimir and Estragon as

homeless and familyless tramps.

However, Vladimir and Estragon create the logos in the name of Godot, which is an ultimate

source of donation and salvation for them. Therefore, they are waiting for him. Nevertheless,

Godot did never come to visit them. In this way, Samuel Beckett protests against different

ontological problems. His interest in “the shapes as opposed to the validity of ideas”

(Dearlove, 1982, 3) brings him very close to Derrida’s deconstruction. His play is ambiguous

to define the word Godot and ambiguity and fluidity are the characteristics of non-relational

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



arts. His meta-dramatic text of the play refuses to fall in the order and strong sense of reality,

which prevails most the modernist literature. As Michael Warton mentions:

“What Beckett says in his plays is not totally new. However, what he does with his

sayings is radical and provocative; he uses his play-texts to remind (or tell) us that

there can be no certainty, no definitive knowledge, and that we need to learn to read in

a new way, in a way that gives us space to bring our contestations as well as our

knowledge to our reception to the text” (Warton, Michael, 1995, p. 81).

Samuel Beckett understands impasses and aporia to find definitions for his art and

has a sceptical attitude towards all definitions and categorizations. This characteristic makes

his art delogocentric. In this connection, he once asserted that, “I produce an object. What

people make of it is not my concern (Warton, Michael, 1995, p. 67). Moreover, some

characteristics of his art like self- reflectivity, repetition, and antimimetic theatricality,

displacing the authoritative central role of the author at the centre of the text, and

decentralizing the narrative bring him very close to Derridean deconstructive theory of

language and literature. However, Samuel Beckett postpones as well as differ the meaning

and origin of the word Godot as the logos, which is produced by inherent “difference” of

language, creating inaccessible domain in language, which both Samuel Beckett and Jacques

Derrida call “unnameable”. In this connection, Jacques Derrida writes:

“There is no essence of differance , it (is) that which only could never be appropriated

in the as such of its name or its appearing, but also that which threatens the authority of

the as such in general, of the presence of the thing itself in its essence. That there is not a

proper essence of differance at this point implies that there is neither a Being nor truth of

the play of writing such as it engages differance… ‘There is no name for it’- a

proposition to be read in this platitude. This unnameable is not an ineffable Being, which

no name could approach: God, for example. This unnameable is the play which make

possible nominal effects, the relatively unitary and atomic structures that are called

names, the chains of substitutions of names in which, the chain of substitutions of names

in which, for example, the nominal effects differance is itself enmeshed, carried off,

reinscribed, just as false entry or false exit is still part of the game, a function of the

system” (Derrida, Jacques, 1982, p. 27).

Therefore, the nameability is also one of the forms of Derridean delogocentrism

because nominalism is a logocentric phenomenon in language. We find in the play the boy

who is messenger of Godot is unnamed; Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky are unfamiliar

type of names and even Godot is no name of any person. The title of one of Samuel Beckett’s

plays is also “Unnameable” in which Unnameable is the central character. In this manner,

Samuel Beckett uses the infinite play of signifiers through a refusal of narrative closure, an

idea that often finds expression in its tendency to embrace contradictions instead of resolving

them. This is what Jacques Derrida says that, language is the ground of being, and the world

is an infinite text in which an infinite chain of signifiers is always in play. Though human

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



beings are constituted by language, they speak, so they, too, are the texts. In other words,

deconstructive theory of language has implication for subjectivity, for what it means to be a

human being.

Therefore, deconstruction in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is both

admitting this “unnameability” and parodying all efforts, especially of the characters, for

deciphering this domain. For instance, Vladimir gropes for meaning but fails in his

logocentric effort to overcome the differance of language and achieve meaning and origin.

However, he is unable to access the meaning, essence and origin of the self. At last, he

remains unable to move in as incoherent structure of the self. ” one of the fundamental

projects of the traditional theory” was to access a silent voice. (Kearney, Richard, 1987, p.

359). The possibility of such project, however, is “its very impossibility (Kearney, Richard,

1987, p. 359).

By depicting his characters’ defeat in their impossible understandings, Samuel

Beckett deconstructs the logi of this project. He does not only deconstruct his characters, but

also deconstructs himself, whose struggle for mastering language remains futile. For this

reason, his characters as well as he himself are ridiculed in his work. As Richard Kearney

observes:

“Beckett’s writing masterfully deconstructs itself by directing our attention to itself as

writing that is a system of sounding signifiers irretrievably at odds with the ideal of

corresponding silent signified. It is only by deconstructing the world’s pretention to

achieve self-adequation by means of silence, that we can uncover its hidden self-

alienation. That irony, which Beckett makes such great play of, is, of course, that one

obliged to use language to deconstruct language” (Kearney, Richard, 1987, p.

360).

Moreover, Samuel Beckett has a tendency towards playful treatment of subjects.

Treating the text of “Waiting for Godot” as literary game, he seeks to develop his playfulness

to everything, even to most philosophical concepts in his plot. He wants his audience or

readers to revise their position towards theatre and text by putting the concepts of God, truth,

origin, meaning and language in question in the inappropriate concepts of his language games.

However, the game playing in his text appears in two levels in Derridean deconstructive

manner: outside the text, either he plays game with the audience and readers, or he plays the

game between the characters or elements of performance.

However, Samuel Beckett’s characters seem perpetually playing with narration as

game. For instance, Estragon tries to recollect the fragments of his lost past in a narrative. In

this manner, the characters of the play change their tone from narrative to normal and

constantly amend the text that this voice produces. They reshape their narration every time

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



that they have their voices; and they seek to entrap their past voice in a framed narration.

They feel pleasure to construct and deconstruct their narration. It is a very interesting game

for them. As Gabriele Schwab suggests, “The game is a private use of language, which gives

one the freedom to play with the familiarity of old and empty rules” (Schwab, Gabriele, 1987,

p. 90).

Moreover, the characters of the play seem to gather all these fragments in a loose

performing strategy and technique of meta-theatre, which is very different from a

conventional theatrical performance. Samuel Beckett himself asserts that, his characters

unlike Kafka’s hero who “has a coherence purpose…..seem to be falling to bits” (Malkin,

Jeanette R., 2002, p. 40). However, the impressions of the fragmented suffering characters of

“Waiting for Godot” imprint vividly in the memory of the audience and readers, even if the

stories behind them are forgotten. In this manner, Samuel Beckett produces characters, images

and notions in language-by-language game in his play, which opens for us the window of

plural and variable meanings. As Gontarski comments, Samuel Beckett creates images (on the

stage and in language) that suggest the mutability and plurality of meaning (Gontarski, S.E.,

1985, p. 16).

Conclusion

The present study tried to interpret Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”

from a new and innovative perspective through Derridean deconstruction. It showed how the

metaphysics of presence and messianic logocentrism imprint preventive effects on mental

structure of human beings, and fall them in the aporetic trap of omnipresent and omnipotent

logi. Therefore, they slavishly accept the authority of the messianic theocentric and

anthropocentric logi. The study tries to prove that the techniques of meta-theatre used in

Samuel Beckett’s play, reject the conventional dramatic realism, make the text of the play

delogocentric text, and brings it very close to Derridean deconstruction, which rejects and

deconstructs the semantic singularity and fixity of meaning or hidden transcendental meaning

of the text.

The study attempted to unfold how the preventive stumbling aporic blocks of

centralized and fossilized structure of the minds of characters make them imprisoned within

the illusory web of the anthropocentric and theocentric messianic logi. The study also

concludes that man cannot perceive and interpret the text until and unless he dismantles the

messianic logocentrism of the prevailing tradition of the metaphysics of presence, which

positions the presupposed messianic logos in the centre of our perception of the universe.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



References

-Able, Lionel. (2003). Tragedy and Meta-theatre: Essays on Dramatic Form. New York:

Holmes and Meier Publishers.

-Bair, Deirdre. (1993). Samuel Beckett: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster.

-Beckett, Samuel. (1956).Waiting for Godot. London and Boston, Great Britain: Faber and

Faber.

-Brewer, Maria Minich. (1994). “A Semiotic of Waiting.” Beckett: Waiting for Godot: A

Case Book. Ed. Ruby Cohn. London: Macmillan. pp. 150-158.

-Cohn, Ruby. (Ed.), (1987). Beckett: Waiting for Godot. London, Great Britain: Casebook

Series Macmillan Education Ltd.

-Culler, Jonathan. (2002). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Poetics and the Study of

Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, (original work published in 1975).

-Dearlove, J.E. (1882). Accommodating the Chaos. USA: Duke University Press.

-De Man, Paul. (1979). Allegories of Reading: Figurative Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche,

Rilke and Proust. New Haven: Yale University Press.

-Derrida, Jacques. (1978).Writing and Difference. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press

---------------------. (1981). Dissemination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

---------------------. (1982). Margins of Philosophy. Hertfordshire: Harvester.

--------------------- . (1989). Memoires for Paul De Man. New York: Columbia University

Press.

--------------------- . (1997). Of Grammatology. Baltimore and London: the John Hopkins

University Press.

---------------------- . (1998). Limited Inc. Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

-------------------- -- . (2005). Positions. London: Continuum.

Volume 2

Issue 1 June 2015



----------------------- . (2007). Psyche, Inventions of the Other, Volume 1. Palo Alto, CA:

Stanford University Press.

-Esslin, Martin. (1980). the Theatre of the Absurd. New York, USA: The Penguin Books.

-Fereshteh Vaziri Nasab Kermany. (2008). Towards Delogocentrism: A Study of the

Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill. A Ph.D. Dissertation.

-Good News Bible. (1981). London: United Bible Society.

-Gontarski, S.E. (1985) The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts. USA:

Indiana University Press.

-Haney, William S. (2001). Beckett out of His Mind: The Theatre of the Absurd. Studies in

Literary Imagination. Georgia: Georgia State University. 34.2: pp. 39-53.

-Kearney, Richard. (1987). the Irish Mind. Dublin: Wolfhound Press.

-Kennedy, Andrew K. (1987). “Action and Theatricality in Waiting for Godot.” Beckett:

Waiting for Godot: A Case Book. Ed. Ruby Cohn. London: Macmillan.

-Malkin, Jeanette R. (2003). Memory, Theatre and Postmodern Drama. USA: The University

of Michigan Press.

-Nealon, Jaffey. (1992).Samuel Beckett and the Postmodern: Language Games, Play and

Waiting for Godot and Endgame Ed. Steven Connor. Great Britain: The Macmillan Press

Ltd.pp.44-54.

-Raman, Selden. (1989). Practising Theory and Reading Literature. Lexington: The

University Press of Kentucky.

-Schwab, Gabriele (1992) “On the Dialectic of Closing and Opening in Endgame”. In Waiting

for Godot & Endgame. Ed. Steven Connor. London: Macmillan.

-Worton, Michael. (1995). Intersexuality, Theories, and Practices. Manchester: Manchester

University Press.

Praxis: The Journal for Theatre, Performance Studies, and Criticism 2013 Issue

1

Deconstructing Consciousness: The Search for Meaning in Waiting for Godot Dan Ciba Samuel Beckett has long been recognized as a great playwright of the Theater of the Absurd, a theatrical genre identified by dramatic critic Martin Esslin. Early Absurdist playwrights were categorized by Esslin because of their use of narrative and character in order to expose the meaninglessness of a post-Nietzschean world. In his book the Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin states:

“'Absurd' originally means 'out of harmony', in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: 'out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical'[...] In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as follows: 'Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose... Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless” (Esslin 1973, p.5). Because Esslin used Beckett as his first example, an Absurdist reading of Waiting for Godot has already been well explored by scholars and practitioners. Another popular reading is deeply rooted in the existential struggle of humanity after World War II. A deconstruction of this play offers the potential to explore Beckett beyond the existential and Absurdist readings that critics and audiences typically use to understand Beckettian plays. This paper examines Godot through a post-structural lens. By integrating the theoretical concept of deconstruction suggested by Jacques Derrida with the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan's symbolic language, I seek to identify and interpret the symbols in this play as signifiers. The abundance and specificity of Beckett's symbols and their corresponding meanings can be further appreciated by a complete and thorough deconstruction of the text. This deconstruction opens up the potential to uncover a deeper understanding, illuminating the symbiosis which Beckett described when asked about the play's meaning. Waiting for Godot portrays the events of two consecutive days in the life of Beckett's non-heroes Estragon and Vladimir. As they wait for the ambiguous Godot to arrive, they pass the time by debating about whether to commit suicide. While they wait, the two friends occupy themselves with mundane tasks such as taking on and off a pair of boots; taking off a hat, adjusting it and then putting it back on again; and arguing about eating vegetables. On both days, they encounter a master Pozzo who drives his slave Lucky about the stage with a rope around his neck. On the first day, Pozzo is bringing Lucky to the fair to sell him. On the second day, Pozzo has gone blind and needs Lucky to lead him around the stage. Each day ends with a young boy sent as a messenger to say that Godot is not going to come. In The Theater of the Absurd, Esslin posits a working hypothesis that categorizes the works of the Absurdists as based upon the premise of senselessness. Esslin (1973, p.6) states “The Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.” In this context, Esslin uses senselessness to define Absurdism as a genre where characters intentionally try to


2

abandon meaning in words and actions in order to reveal how modern life lacks significance. Beckett's attitude toward plot is commonly equated with the manner in which the characters undermine action throughout the play: Estragon Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful. (Beckett 1994, p.43) Esslin's reason for defining Absurdism as such is that characters in Waiting for Godot do not function in the same manner as most theatrical archetypes.

Esslin's also seeks to identify a correlation between the senselessness of existence and the meaninglessness of words that Absurdist playwrights often use. Esslin states:

“The Theatre of the Absurd[...] tends toward a radical devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays an important part in this conception, but what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters” (Esslin 1973, p.7). Esslin centers Absurdism around the use of devalued language as a means of contradicting the action of the play. In the introduction to a collection of Absurd Drama, Esslin supports his opinion thus:

“Such a sense of loss of meaning must inevitably lead to a questioning of the recognized instrument for the communication of meaning: language. Consequently the Theatre of the Absurd is to a very considerable extent concerned with a critique of language, an attack above all on fossilized forms of language which have become devoid of meaning” (Esslin 1984, p. 5).

When Esslin categorizes Waiting for Godot as Absurdist he argues that Beckett's language is intentionally devoid of meaning in order to create a different kind of theatrical experience. There is also a clear connection to the existential struggle illuminated by this work. Throughout the play, the characters regularly pose the existential question seeking an explanation of why they are where they are. Although complex and conflicting viewpoints are presented by existential philosophers, in this context, Beckett's use of existentialism is to concisely question the reason for being. The characters perceive this existential struggle throughout the play:

Vladimir What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come-- Or for night to fall.”

(Beckett 1994, p.91) The fact that this question remains unanswered may be the reason that Waiting for Godot is often analyzed in terms of Kierkegaard's, Neitzche's and Sartre's reflections on the question of existence through the lens of the human condition. In Edith Kern's book, Existential Thought & Fictional Technique, she offers


3

parallels between Beckett and existentialism. She defines “the [existential] paradox that has permeated Beckett's entire work [which] has made it an affirmation and a negation of individuality” (Kern 1970, p.240). Although the question of individuality is relevant to the play, having existential characters and incorporating existential thought does not necessarily make Beckett an existential playwright. Kern admits:

“Beckett defies philosophical pigeonholing, for the simple reason that he neither developed a specific philosophical system of his own nor identified himself with that of another […] Beckett distanced himself from existentialism [because] he found the language of Hegel and Sartre too philosophical and differentiation between Being and Existence irrelevant to himself” (Kern 1970, p.167-170).

In revealing that Beckett both defied and distanced his work from existentialist thought, Kern presents an interesting contradiction to an existential reading of a prescribed meaning in Waiting for Godot. Correlating the Absurdist and existential interpretations of this play is problematic, because the theories actually define themselves as oppositional. Kern dismisses Absurdism as a way to understand Beckett. Kern (1970, p. 219) says, “In this atmosphere, all that identifies as individual in the eyes of the ‘they’ become absurd.” For Kern, Absurdism is a means to get to the existential reading. In response, Esslin comments on the vast differences between Beckett and an existentialist like Sartre. Esslin (1973, p.6) states, “If Sartre argues that existence comes before essence [...] he presents brilliantly drawn characters who remain wholly consistent and thus reflect the old convention that each human being has a core of immutable, unchanging essence- in fact, an immortal soul.” Esslin intentionally separates Beckett from existentialism to make his Absurdist reading stronger. This debate between Esslin and Kern presents a myriad of problems when trying to interpret Waiting for Godot. At the same time, both the existential and Absurdist readings gain support from the ambiguity of the text.

Estragon We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist? (Beckett 1994, p.77)

If these two popular theories of analysis for Godot both contradict and merge into each other, how can the actor, the director and the audience approach the process of understanding so central to the journey both inside and outside of this play? How should we search for meaning in Waiting in Godot? In his book Writing and Difference, Derrida (1978, p.8) identifies “The consciousness of having something to say as the consciousness of nothing [...] It is the consciousness of nothing, upon which all consciousness of something enriches itself, takes on meaning and shape.” For Derrida, deconstruction is the articulation of the consciousness of nothingness—a theory based upon exploring the difference between something and nothing—or in this case, meaning and no meaning. When Derrida searches for meaning in language, he attempts to understand ideas in relation to their opposites—by residing inside of oppositions and exploring what makes things different. Derrida (1981, p. 24) suggests, “It is necessary, from within semiology, to transform concepts, to displace them, to turn them against their presuppositions, to reinscribe them in other chains, and little by little to modify the terrain of our work and thereby produce new configurations.” Deconstruction may not


4

be a methodology, but applying this theory to Beckett's text allows the reader to transform Beckett's concepts, giving individual words new meanings which can be oppositional to their commonplace definitions. The application of Derrida's difference corresponds to Beckett's method of reinscribing ideas by their opposites. The play begins with our two conflicting characters struggling over the polarized nature of the thieves who were crucified with Christ:

Vladimir Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One-- Estragon Our what?

Vladimir Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved) … damned. Estragon Saved from what? Vladimir Hell. Estragon I'm going. (Beckett 1994, p.6) In a world where a turnip is not a carrot, Saturday is not Sunday, and staying is constantly compared with going, oppositional relationships take on greater meaning for the characters.

In fact, the action of Waiting for Godot revolves around inscribing deliberate meanings upon concepts. For example, the concept of time is continually dissected. Characters question the flow and importance of time:

Vladimir Will the night never come? (Beckett 1994, p.33) Vladimir Time has stopped. (Beckett 1994, p.37) Vladimir Let us not waste our time in idle discourse. (Beckett 1994, p.90) Pozzo What time is it?...Is it evening? (Beckett 1994, p.98)

As this continues, time is inscribed with different meanings as the characters question when Godot will come:

Vladimir It's always at nightfall. Estragon But night doesn't fall. Vladimir It'll fall all of sudden, like yesterday. Estragon Then it'll be night. Vladimir And we can go. Estragon Then it'll be day again. (Beckett 1994, p.80) Beckett presents the variety of opposites related to time: night/day, yesterday/tomorrow, dawn/dusk to create an atmosphere of waiting. Meta-theatrically, this atmosphere functions symbiotically with the relationship


5

of the audience waiting for something to happen, but the manner in which Beckett presents the differences of time allows for time to eventually transcend meaning. Towards the end, Pozzo says:

Pozzo I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune... Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too. (Beckett 1994, p.99) While watching the play, the audience subconsciously begins to transform the concept of time with meaning filled with the potency of Derrida's difference. Once a concept—such as time—begins to transcend meaning it becomes a signifier—any word or object which transcends meaning. Deconstruction, then, is the process of identifying and exploring the meaning of multiple signifiers in relationship to each other. Therefore, at the moment that the audience perceives that time signifies existence they start to interpret everything that happens in the play with the inscribed meaning of signification. Likewise, a simple object, such as the tree, cannot help but be amplified by the importance Beckett has his characters place upon it. At the beginning, the tree is merely there—the only scenery on the road, sadly suggesting a meeting place for the two tramps to wait: Vladimir He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.) Do you see any others? Estragon What is it? Vladimir I don't know. A willow. (Beckett 1994, p.8) In an interview with Julia Kristeva, Derrida (1981, p. 23) says “communication [...] implies a transmission charged with making pass, from one subject to another, the identity of a signified object, of a meaning or of a concept rightfully separable from the process of passage and from the signifying operation.” According to Derrida, the signifier is the actual word or object which signifies a meaning, which is called the signified. So when the tree grows four or five leaves during the act break, the meaning signified by the tree also grows: Vladimir Things have changed here since yesterday. Estragon Everything oozes. Vladimir Look at the tree. Estragon It's never the same pus from one second to the next. Vladimir The tree, look at the tree (Estragon looks at the tree) Estragon Was it not there yesterday? Vladimir Yes of course it was there. Do you not remember? We nearly hanged ourselves from it. But you wouldn't. Do you remember? (Beckett 1994, p.66) Derridean deconstruction emphasizes the intentional separation between object and meaning—the signifier and the signified meaning of the object. This process can transform a simple concept like the tree into something more metaphorical than its


6

everyday meaning. In the final moments, the tree takes on even greater meaning when they try, but ultimately cannot hang themselves: Vladimir Everything's dead but the tree Estragon What is it? Vladimir It's the tree. Estragon Yes, but what kind? Vladimir I don't know. A willow. (Estragon draws Vladimir towards the tree.) Estragon Why don't we hang ourselves? (Beckett 1994, p.107) Simultaneously, the tree means life, signified by the hope of spring suggested from the growth of the leaves, and means death, signified by the characters’ suicidal thoughts. The challenge in interpreting Godot is to understand the unique experience of simultaneously interpreting the literal and figurative meanings from the specific objects signified on stage. Throughout the play, Beckett creates repetitive sequences that are the daily rituals in which Vladimir and Estragon find themselves trapped. In his book The Forest of Symbols, Victor Turner frames the anthropological process of liminality in an attempt to describe rituals that act as transitional periods. During this period of ritual, which includes the theatrical experience of a play, people are in a state of transition. Turner states:

“The subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, 'invisible.'[...] The transitional-being or 'liminal persona' is defined by a name and by a set of symbols” (Turner 1976, p.95).

How does liminality help us search for meaning? The exploration of meaning through liminality begins by identifying how the transitional beings—in this case, the characters—define themselves by interaction with symbols. In fact, poststructuralism in general views theatre itself as a liminal experience which reveals the construction of meaning. Reconciling the fact that a simple tree can mean two oppositional things at the same time is a liminal operation. Yet, the idea of objects signifying more than their meaning is the purpose of Beckettian symbols. Derrida proposes signifiers for a specific purpose. He says, “to comprehend the structure of a becoming, the form of a force, is to lose meaning by finding it.” (Derrida 1978, p. 26). The loss of meaning by finding it is essentially to comprehending the experience of Godot. Lucky's three page monologue is a perfect example of how meaning has to fail to inspire the search for meaning: Lucky Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown [...] I resume alas alas abandoned left unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard tennis... the


7

stones... so calm... Cunard... unfinished... (Beckett 1994, p. 45-47) The inability of Lucky to express his thoughts through words does not mean that his words lack meaning. Derrida understands the difficulties of these problems in identifying the difference between signification and meaning. During an interview with Henri Ronse, Derrida said:

“I try to write the space in which is posed the question of speech and meaning. I try to write the questions: (what is) meaning to say? Therefore it is necessary in such a space, and guided by such a question, that writing literally mean nothing. To risk meaning nothing is to start to play” (Derrida 1981, p.14).

Why does Derrida’s difference provide a framework for transcending Absurdist

and existential interpretations? Using Derrida focuses the importance on Beckett’s use of language itself—to deconstruct the play by analyzing its parts independently. The preceding examples of deconstruction alone would result in a symbolist interpretation of Godot, also well explored by scholars. In his article “Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot': A reappraisal”, George Watson states:

“Looked at from this angle we may simply say that dramatists like Beckett complete the modern artistic revolution on and for the stage: they reject the play which tells a story in a sequential plot, they reject the Ibsenite subtleties of characterization and psychological motivation, and they make no attempt to sketch in a realistic social background. Instead, their plays are essentially symbolic pictures of the situation of man: they tell no story because there is no story to tell, but only a basic condition or situation to be represented, a bleak stasis where temporal notions like beginning, middle and end, inextricably linked with the concept of story, simply have no place” (Watson 1974, p.23). The backdrop of symbolism explains both Beckett's rejection of standard theatrical devices and why he imbues inane objects with important significance. Undoubtedly, Beckett received much inspiration from great symbolist playwrights like Maeterlinck and Strindberg, who encouraged exploration of symbolic meanings as the cornerstone of their genre, but deconstruction encourages the actor and the audience to search even deeper than symbolism. Tying a Derridean interpretation of Godot to the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan provides a way to encourage this search for meaning within a specific context. In Lacan's essay The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, he examines the function of analytic language by separating it into three distinct orders: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan (1968, p.36) states, “the problem of Language [...] is a road which leads from signal to symbol [...] and the return trip from the symbol to the signal is illustrated by no less imposing works of art.” Lacan metaphorically describes language as a road, placing the Symbolic between the Imaginary and Real. Lacan (1968, p.42) asserts that “Symbols in fact envelop the life of man in a network so total that they join together.” Symbolic language is not just a means of interpretation, but the pathway between the Imaginary and the Real—another invaluable framework for interpreting


8

Waiting for Godot. Godot is an illustration of a complete network of symbols, accounting for the psychically packed interaction of characters with objects in the play. Assigning each object a symbolic importance reveals how packed with meaning the objects in Waiting for Godot actually are: (Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off his boot. He peers inside it, feels about inside it, turns it upside down, shakes it, looks on the ground to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, feels inside it again, staring sightlessly before him.) Vladimir Well? Estragon Nothing. Vladimir Show. Estragon There's nothing to show. Vladimir Try and put it on again. Estragon I'll air it for a bit. Vladimir There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (Beckett 1994, p.4) On the surface, a boot is just a boot—an object of clothing used to cover the foot. However, Estragon's boots are simultaneously the Derridean signifier and the Lacanian symbol. If the boots are assigned a hidden symbolic meaning—for instance, the body as the earthly container of our being—then the characters can spend the play searching for this appropriate symbolic definition. The routine of questioning the actuality of meaning evolves into a symbolic debate allowing the objects to also symbolically mean much more than their definition: Vladimir Would you like a radish? Estragon Is that all there is? Vladimir There are radishes and turnips. Estragon Are there no carrots? Vladimir No. Anyway you overdo it with your carrots. Estragon Then give me a radish. It's black. Vladimir It's a radish. Estragon I only like the pink ones, you know that! (Beckett 1994, p.76) The difference between a carrot, radish or turnip is overemphasized in a world where the carrot could “symbolize” hope, the radish could “symbolize” despair and a turnip could “symbolize” reality. Pozzo's declarative manner of ordering for his “Coat! Whip! Stool! Basket!” (Beckett 1994, p.22) draws attention to the objects as more than just commands. Whenever a character references an object in this play, he is either defining it or seeking a definition of the object from another character.

In an entirely Symbolic world, signifiers become symbols by representing multiple and contradictory meanings without losing their identities as objects. Lacan (1968, p.48) states, “The Symbolic function presents itself as a double movement within


9

the subject [...] a function in which action and knowledge alternate.” When action and knowledge alternate, the analysis of a Symbolic order operates beyond the limitations of the scope of understanding of the characters. Throughout the course of the play the tramps offer astute observations given the circumstances:

Estragon “People are bloody ignorant apes” (Beckett 1994, p.7)

When the blind Pozzo is rolling around the ground and cannot get up, Estragon says: Estragon He's all humanity. (Beckett 1994, p.96) Throughout the play, the characters often alternate action and speech which results in a fully depicted representation of Lacan's symbolic network, making comparisons all the more important: Vladimir But you can't go barefoot! Estragon Christ did. Vladimir Christ! What has Christ got to do with it? You've not going to compare yourself to Christ! Estragon All my life I've compared myself to him. (Beckett 1994, p.57) Using Lacan's Symbolic language, the implications of a symbolic network achieve relevance towards a greater interpretation of the play also suggested by Lacan. In a later book of Lacan's The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, he presents an interesting theory about repetition. He states: “So there is no question of confusing with repetition either the return of the signs or reproduction or the modulation by the act of a sort of acted-out remembering. Repetition is something which, of its true nature, is always veiled in analysis” (Lacan 1977, p.54). Much of the action in Godot is rooted in fully symbolic repetition. Although critics often interpret these acts in terms of their differences, Lacan’s theory suggests it would be more fruitful to interpret them in terms of their similarities. For instance, the repetitive hat interactions build into a unique and important symbolic function: [Vladimir] takes off his hat, peers inside it, feels about inside it, shakes it, puts it on again... takes off his hat again, peers inside it. Funny. He knocks on the crown as though to dislodge a foreign body, peers into it again, puts it on again... takes off his hat again, peers inside it, feels about inside it, knocks on the crown, blows into it, puts it on again. (Beckett 1994, p.4-5) Action with hats continue to build throughout the course of the play resulting in a final triumphant moment where Vladimir and Estragon exchange three hats over the course of two pages of stage directions. When Vladimir wants Lucky to think, Pozzo says:


10

Pozzo He can't think without his hat. (Beckett 1994, p.43) Linking the hat symbolically with the mind repetitively over the course of the play illustrates the importance of repetition in the creation of the characters and the world. In answer to the question of when he went blind, Pozzo says: Pozzo 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? They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (Beckett 1994, p.103) Interpreting the statement that life and death occur within the same second should be unfathomable. Yet within Beckett's world, this nonsense makes complete sense and a Lacanian interpretation leads in a more fruitful direction.

Lacan concludes that the first fundamental concept is the unconsciousness, which is in fact another representation of the symbolic network. Lacan (1973, p.20) says “the unconsciousness is structured like a language... [where] signifiers organize human relationships in a creative way, providing them with structures and shaping them.” When the characters throw meanings back and forth, the process of language provides a way to shape meaning in the same manner that a psychiatrist evaluates patients by analyzing the unconscious.

Estragon All the dead voices. Vladimir They make a noise like wings. Estragon Like leaves. Vladimir Like sand. Estragon Like leaves. Silence. Vladimir They all speak at once. Estragon Each one to itself. Silence Vladimir Rather they whisper. Estragon They rustle. Vladimir They murmur. Estragon They rustle. Silence. (Beckett 1994, p.14) Lacan (1968, p.27) frames this by saying “the unconscious is the discourse of the other.” Dialogue which appears like bickering on the surface is actually the characters searching for meaning using the unconscious as a means of othering language. If language is a means of othering in this play, then the search for meaning should result in the audience exploring the concept of unconsciousness as it relates to the theatrical experience. When the characters question an object, they are separating it as a specific symbol different from any other. The tree cannot be a shrub or a bush,


11

because it must be a tree. Vladimir Where are your boots? Estragon I must have thrown them away. Vladimir There they are! At the very spot where you left them yesterday! Estragon They're not mine. Vladimir Not yours! Estragon Mine were black. These are brown. Vladimir You're sure yours were black? Estragon Well they were a kind of gray Vladimir And these are brown. Show. Estragon Well they're a kind of green. (Beckett 1994, p.74) In practice, the relationship of the unconsciousness to symbols heighten the process in which the audience questions what they see and what they hear just as psychoanalysts do with the unconscious. In this world, the unconsciousness manifests itself as the reason for the uncertainty of meaning: Estragon We weren't made for the same road. Vladimir It's not certain Estragon No, nothing is certain. (Beckett 1994, p.59) In fact, the uncertainty of unconsciousness allows the search for meaning to result in a deeper appreciation that comprehensive knowledge is always unattainable. Lacan ends the first section on The Function of Language in Psycho-Analysis with the phrase: “The omnipresence of the human discourse will perhaps one day be embraced under the open sky of an omnicommunication of its text” (Lacan 1968, 27). Interpreting Godot as a discursive omnicommunication blending self and other through symbolic signification would unlock more meaning for director, actor and audience, cherishing the search for meaning as a means of meta-theatrically explaining symbolism. What is perceived to be an expression of the Derridean consciousness of nothing is better explained by applying the Lacanian unconscious as a filter to interpret the difficult search for meaning in Waiting for Godot. CONCLUSION Pushing past the Absurdist, existential and symbolist readings of the play revealed the difficulties of searching for meaning in Godot. As Beckett plays with meaning, the characters’ search for meaning is both the action and thematic journey of the play. In fact, the characters use language as a connection to their understanding of their world. Disrupting this connection for the actors and the audience makes the process of watching Godot all the more difficult, because the humor and the drama rest in the use of language through the poetic tone of the dialogue. Esslin's suggestion that Beckett devalues language has dangerous implications, even though it is a means for Esslin to explain the aesthetic experience of this play.

Derrida’s use of difference was helpful to spin the way that Beckett uses dialogue


12

as a positive element of performance. Interpreting the script as a search for meaning allowed the questioning in the play to no longer be only a vaudevillian device. In the play, questioning becomes the action for the characters, making a liminal experience to encourage both the actors and audience to assign multiple and contradictory meanings to the symbols, which, on the surface, might be easily explained. Identifying how the process of meaning can function by a network of symbolic signifiers feels closer to how Beckett chose to work with the characters' interrelation to objects. Continuing to question the signification and symbolism of the many objects would allow greater meaning to be derived directly from the play, without imposing meaning from outside of the text.

Although the proposed method of deconstruction unlocked interesting ideas about the way symbols and meaning work in the play, the inexhaustible complexity of Beckett's text could not be entirely analyzed in the preceding paper. In fact, any macro-level discussion would take a compendium of research and speculation to fully achieve the deconstruction proposed. Perhaps that is why deconstruction has failed as a methodology—pushing against authoritative analysis is the only way deconstruction can function.

Because Beckett either was unable or just refused to explain Godot, the search for meaning in this play has always been complicated. Yet meaning is the process of experiencing this play. Connecting the Derrida to Lacan creates a lens through which Beckett's signifiers can be explored without the need to specifically define their meanings. Also, Derrida's consciousness of nothingness is a perfect counterbalance to Lacan’s understanding of the unconsciousness. Although these theories seem counterintuitive, the semiotic and psychoanalytic parallels enable deconstruction of the text and provide a framework to further explore its meaning. Works Cited Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Esslin, Martin. Absurd Drama. London: Penguin Books, 1984. Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Overlock Press, 1973. Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Kern, Edith. Existential Thought and Fictional Technique. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Ed. Jacques Alain Miller. Trans. Alan Sheriden. London: Karnac, 2004. Lacan, Jacques. The Language of Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis. Trans. Anthony Wilden. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1968. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1970. Watson, George. “Beckett's Waiting for Godot: A reappraisal.” The Maynooth Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jun., 1975), pp. 17-35.


13

Dan Ciba received his Master of Arts degree from Villanova University in Theater. In his second year as a graduate assistant in costume construction, he was a part of several Villanova Theatre performances and also was the production dramaturg for Woman and Scarecrow. In addition to presenting for PTRS Emerging scholars panel, he presented a paper on Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at Indiana's Graduate Theatre Symposium, represented the department at the O'Neill Critics Institute at the American College Theater Festival and was selected to join Phi Kappa Phi, Villanova's Honor Society. He is now looking towards pursuing a Ph.D. in either dramaturgy or theater history and continuing his work as a professional dramaturg.

Documents

UNMASKING SAMUEL EKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT AS A …