Seeing Myself in Waiting for Godot :: Waiting for Godot Essays

Seeing Myself in Waiting for Godot Some people wondered why in high school my favorite book was Waiting for Godot, a drama described on the title page as â€Å"a two-act play in which nothing happens twice.† In fact, my liking a play that does not portray a series of connected incidents telling a story but instead presents a pattern of images showing bewildered people in an incomprehensible universe initially baffled me too, as my partiality was more felt than thought. But then I read a piece by the critic Martin Esslin, who articulated my feelings. He wrote in â€Å"The Search for the Self† that throughout our lives we always wait for something, and Godot simply represents the objective of our waiting—an event, a thing, a person, death. It is in the act of waiting that we experience the flow of time in its purest most evident form. (31) I realized that I was seventeen in high school passively waiting for something amazing to happen to me just like Vladimir and Estragon. I also realized that experiencing time flowing by unproductively was not for me regardless of how â€Å"pure† that experience might be. At several points in the play, Estragon states that he wants to leave, but Vladimir always responds, â€Å"We can’t . . . we’re waiting for Godot† (8). Neither one knows why the wait nor who Godot is or looks like, and they both admit, when asked by Pozzo why they mistook him for Godot, that â€Å"we hardly know him at all† (20). Yet, they wait for him instead of looking within themselves for meaning in their lives. They even turn to close-at-hand sources about them to provide reasons for their wait: from inside a hat or a boot (8). But, as Lucky points out, the â€Å"reasons [are] unknown† and always will be (28). Therefore, their external search is pointless to give life me aning. Or put another way, Vladimir and Estragon wait endlessly for life to begin. As simple as it is, I see myself in them, waiting for someone or something to bring me meaning, to guide me, to spark my life. The existentialist ideas behind much of Waiting for Godot cut to the quick, as I, too, struggle through life trying to achieve some sort of purposeful meaning (Bryce). Like everyone else, I am a victim of waiting and going nowhere fast. As embarrassing as it is to me now, in high school, I ached as I searched to fill an empty part of me with love or true friendship, and at last I found him! But rather than acting on what I felt for him, I sat there and waited, hoping that he would notice me, the perfect soul mate.