Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett (1953)
“A play where nothing happens. Twice. And somehow it's the most important play of the twentieth century.”
Character Analysis
The philosophical half of the central pair. Vladimir initiates theological debates, insists on remembering, and experiences the full existential horror of their situation with intellectual clarity. He cannot make the horror stop — he can only articulate it. His relationship with Estragon is the play's only genuine tenderness: he covers Estragon with his coat when he sleeps, he is desperate when Estragon threatens to leave, he says 'I felt lonely' as his most complete confession. Beckett's notebooks suggest Vladimir and Estragon were conceived as two halves of one person — thinking and feeling, mind and body, remembering and forgetting.
More formal, longer sentences, initiates philosophical exchanges, uses proper names more than Estragon. His language has traces of education — references to the Gospels, philosophical speculation, awareness of abstract time.