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If it is true that nothing or less than nothing happens in Waiting for Godot, how is it that we manage to be entertained as the audience? If...

I believe that most people would agree that the play is intended to illustrate the author's vision that there is no meaning or purpose in life. It might be called existentialistic, but existentialism goes beyond asserting that there is no external or supernatural meaning to human existence. Existentialism seems to encourage people to create their own meaning in their lives. I don't believe Beckett cared whether his audiences did that or not. He seems utterly nihilistic. He does not seem to want to suggest any solution to the human dilemma. Life is meaningless. Period. There is a barely discernible humor running throughout the play. It can be regarded as a comedy. The fact that life is a bad joke on all of us can be seen as funny. The two tramps are funny. When the play was first produced in America, one of the tramps was played by the comedian Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the famous movie The Wizard of Oz. Lahr understood the play as a comedy. It is also easy to see the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo as comical. 


Some people can't stand the play because, as you say, "nothing or less than nothing happens." It is not like most plays, like those of Ibsen for instance, in which the author holds the audience with some big social problem to which he offers a solution. If life is meaningless, then there really is no problem, and there can be no solution and no reasonable motivation. People who like the play appreciate its comic, or ironic, picture of the meaninglessness of existence. This seems like a sophisticated attitude. Life has no meaning, but still we go on living. The alternative is to hang ourselves--but why do that? That wouldn't have any meaning either. So we all go on waiting for something to happen, like Vladimir and Estragon. They are just tramps and we laugh at them--but at least they know what they are waiting for. They are waiting for a man named Godot because they obviously expect him to give them a handout. There must really be a man named Godot and he must know they are waiting for him. Twice he sends a boy to tell them he can't come today but will come tomorrow. Part of what is laughable about the situation is that these two tramps should expect anyone to care about them. Godot may care a little, but not very much.


The play was first produced in French in 1953. That was about sixty-three years ago, and it is still being staged all over the world, still being talked about and debated over, still being assigned reading in college courses. It has become a classic--and yet, "nothing or less than nothing happens." If life is meaningless, then it is quite appropriate that a play should be meaningless. That is what makes it "absurd." Since it is absurd, it is funny, in an unsettling sort of way. It doesn't tell audiences to find their own meaning, or to create their own (perhaps arbitrary and contrived) meaning. It leaves them wondering what it's all about, just as they are wondering whether Godot will ever show up.


I feel I have just added more words to the millions that have already been expended trying to explain the "meaning" of this annoying but fascinating play.

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