In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the playwright gives his work the veneer of comedy, but invests its heart with the "absurd", the tragic. He uses gags and routines, circus comedy and "lowbrow" arts songs, to emphasize and sometimes detract from the many themes and ideas that are so evident throughout. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are obviously clearly derived from music-hall comedy pairs, indeed resembling clowns more than tramps. Their dialogue has the particularly repetitive quality of the comedian's crosstalk, masking the profound ideas within the "idle talk." Beckett uses this comic format to better explore the bleak world of Waiting for Godot. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To begin with, the world of Christianity is something that Beckett explores throughout the play. In fact, the Christian tradition is one of the tragedies of the characters. Their imaginations and thoughts abound with half-remembered images, stories and role models from the Bible: the blue Dead Sea ("I said that's where we'll go on our honeymoon"), the two thieves, John the Baptist, precursor of Christ ("I leave my boots there. Another will come, the same... like... like me, but with smaller feet, and they will make him happy"), Christ himself ("Everyone in my life I compared myself to him"). Beckett lays out this theme of God and Christianity at the beginning of the first act. Vladimir offers Estragon the story of the two thieves at Christ's crucifixion, one supposedly saved and the other damned. That's a "reasonable percentage," he thinks, and suggests having some fun with repentance. However, Estragon responds to this suggestion by pointing out that they have nothing to regret, other than the possible "Our Born Being". Beckett is suggesting here through Estragon that it is living that produces pain and suffering, not sin. This rather sophisticated philosophical exchange ends with a typically crude comic outburst from Estragon: "The people are damned ignorant monkeys." This conversation occurs just before the first mention of Godot. Beckett at this early stage implies that there is a connection in Vladimir's mind between what Christianity offers and what his "God fantasy" entails, what he desperately wants from Godot: an authority who will assume his moral responsibilities . a condition of resurrection that has become an instrument of death." Although this notion was advanced by Beckett in his writings on Proust, the same fundamental idea about time applies to Waiting for Godot. In the absurd universe of the work, time does not exist: it is just another human and subjective method of trying to impose meaning on what makes no sense. In the first act, a series of grotesque entertainments occur, "all worse than a pantomime", including Estragon's amusement at watching Pozzo's panic when he finds his pipe missing, and Estragon and Pozzo's fascination at the sight of Vladimir who pees painfully. off stage. Each of the characters has their own particular way of relating to time and, in this "lowbrow" comedy, Beckett explores this idea. Pozzo in this scene, the professional, clings to his watch. If he wants to conduct his affairs efficiently, he must "claim to control and regulate time" - that of others, as well as his own. When Vladimir proclaims that "Time has stopped," Pozzo holds his watch to his ear, responding with "Don't believe it, sir, don't believe it. Whatever you want, but not that." In the second act, the great tragedy of Pozzo's blindness is that it leaves him completelydependent on others for the time of day. Vladimir's equivalent of Pozzo's clock, the instrument that symbolizes his relationship with time, are his memories. He tries to convince himself and Estragon of their veracity. Estragon in both acts must accept Vladimir's version of "yesterday" in order for Vladimir to set "today" into his "habitual patterns." Beckett wrote in his essay on Proust: "There is no escape from yesterday because yesterday deformed us, or was deformed by us... Yesterday is irremediably a part of us." So is Beckett simply saying that the past shapes the future? In Waiting for Godot, Beckett struggles to free himself from this notion of Vladimir through attempts to find purpose and reality in the present while struggling to remember the past. Estragon, however, has no interest in remembering: "I am not a historian"2E It is Vladimir who forces Estragon to remember the past Estragon begins his day relatively happy. However, when Vladimir has finished "gathering his precise memories", Estragon may protest that he has had enough and wants to leave, but it is too late. The couple is now determined and governed by a vague memory of what mattered in the past: "We are waiting for Godot." Beckett's exploration of the theme of death in Waiting for Godot takes place in two main parts, one in each act. The first occurs through Lucky's speech, and connects the theme of death with that of time. In his invective, Lucky evokes the "death and decomposition of matter" and the inability of the human mind to maintain control over it. Places that take their names from man, both cities and countryside ("Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham") give way to indefinite plains, mountains, seas and rivers, which in turn break down into the fundamental elements (water, fire, air, earth). In his conclusion, the "stories", the "cold", the "skull", the "grave" death are the "obsessive images". Dying and death, Beckett argues, are a fundamental and inevitable part of life. Lucky's speech also explores the death of language and logic. Words and phrases in speech such as "given", "whereas", "as a result of", "is established", "beyond a doubt" all imply the ability to order and discuss. However, through the rambling and chaotic nature of the speech, they are shown as empty and helpless. The second key moment of the play in which Beckett explores death is once again masked by a comic element. At the beginning of the second act, Vladimir sings a song that could have come straight out of a music hall production. Significantly for the show, the pivot of this song is death. However, he does not simply say, as Lucky did, that dying is a part of life. Rather, it describes death as something that humans are responsible for. In the song, the masters of the world and its resources (the cook), and all their dispossessed, "all the dogs" who "came running", join forces to eliminate anyone who ruins the way things are, to how great their need to steal is. a "bread crust". The cook kills the thief and the other dogs "bury him deep and use him as a warning to bind future generations." What is striking is that Vladimir hums the story to himself, warning himself against any kind of rebellion. He "closes the doors of his own prison more tightly." So far Vladimir and Estragon have escaped death, the "grave", just like in the song. Vladimir comes to the conclusion that maintaining the same routine day after day is what saved them from the darkness. Beckett is here exposing the folly of this philosophy, that forever succumbing to the trap of habitual routine to avoid the inevitable is a cause without hope or purpose., 1992.