Uncertain Truth in 'Waiting for Godot'

Anurag Sharma writes in "'Waiting for Godot: A Beckettian Counterfoil to Kierkegaardian Existentialism" that for Beckett, "truth is subjectivity" (276). But Sharma does not take Beckett's portrayal of truth far enough. Beckett's truth is more than subjective; it is inherently uncertain. Godot either exists or he does not. If, as Sharma says, Vladimir and Estragon created Godot "through their objective reflection on him," Godot's existence is not just subjective. They cannot ever really know if he is or not. A reality dependent on human perception, which Beckett portrays in 'Godot', is certainly subjective, but Beckett challenges whether truth itself even exists. To say that something is subjective is to grant it existence, but Beckett asks whether truth can ever be known, and if it can be known, how does one know that one knows it?

Godot shows the uncertainty of universal truth through its uncertain time and setting. These two elements ground one's existence in relation to the world, but in playing with the ambiguity and precision of the stage directions, as well as the relationship between the empirical time and physical location of performance, and the world of the play, Beckett undermines the concreteness of time and space. Also, Vladimir and Estragon search for proof of their own existence through memory and their relationship to other characters, but neither method gives them confidence as to who they are within the world around them.

The ambiguity of 'Godot' invites an archetypal reading. Certainly the setting lends itself to this reading, as the stage directions offer nothing more specific than a country road and a tree. It is evening. But Charles Lyons argues that Beckett "has not eliminated the detail that would ground 'Godot' in conventions of realism" (Lee 73). Textual evidence leaves this function of the play-its operation as an archetype or as a realistic drama-unsettled. The setting is vague, but it also places the characters in a real, precise place, beside a road next to a tree, out in the country. There is a ditch nearby because Estragon sleeps in it, but Vladimir leaves and returns, as do Pozzo and Lucky, from places unknown. A world outside the immediate setting seems to exist, but the starkness of the stage and the closeness of the setting do not create a full world surrounding the characters, instead leaving the world of the play on the threshold between place and non place. The setting is generic, but not generic enough to confidently call it generic, which means that the location could be a certain tree on a certain spot on the earth as easily as it could be any tree anywhere. At the same time that the world of the play sits on this uncertain threshold, the play as a performance does have a physical location on the stage. This physical location, juxtaposed with the fictive world of drama, adds another layer of vacillation to the characters' existence. Beyond their immediate setting, their location is both on a stage and in the created world of drama, and both anywhere in the world and at that specific tree.

The time is vague as there is no era or time period in which to ground the setting, but at the same time it is specifically evening. Vladimir and Estragon pass their time by waiting, an act in which the person waiting is distinctly aware of time and its passage, but the end of their wait lies in shadows as they do not know when or if Godot will come. In the first act, Estragon asks where the leaves are on the tree, implying that the tree has none. The second act begins the next day, according to the text, but now there are four or five leaves on the same tree, also according to the text. The text even remains unsettled about the number of leaves: four or five. This is a small detail, but in a world resting on details that come sparingly, such indeterminacy speaks loudly. Later Vladimir and Estragon wonder about this same point when Vladimir says, "But yesterday evening it was all black and bare. And now it's covered with leaves. . . . In a single night." Estragon seems unconcerned, but then Vladimir reiterates, "But in a single night!" (42). He tells Estragon they could not have been there the night before, but Estragon has no answer, and neither character can say with confidence what they were doing the night before or if they spent it at the same place they are now. They do not know whether a day has passed or not. One cannot even trust for certain the text itself, which says that a single day has passed. Stage directions are silent about the leaves in the first act, leaving that choice to the director. If the production chooses not to put leaves on the tree, in accordance with Estragon's observation, then the audience is in the same uncertain place about the passage of time in the second act when the leaves suddenly appear. If the production puts leaves on, then when Estragon says there are no leaves, the audience has to judge whether he is right or wrong in disagreeing with what the audience sees, which is just as uncertain as the first option. As a performance, time passes outside the world of the play differently than it does inside, so while the characters wonder about the passage of time, the time that they wonder about is inherently unreal to the audience watching the play, which additionally undermines time as a stable element.

In a world where time and location are unstable and undetermined, the characters in the play strive for something to certify their own existence. But, fittingly, they come upon nothing that gives them any confidence. Repeatedly throughout, memory fails the characters, and shows itself to be a faulty mechanism for determining where one is in relation to other people and to the world. Vladimir and Estragon both ask each other what they did yesterday. Estragon answers, "In my opinion, we were here" (10). He cannot know for sure whether they were there and can offer only his opinion, which may be of no value at all. Estragon asks Vladimir if he is sure this is where they are to meet Godot, and Vladimir answers, "He said Saturday. I think" (10). To this Estragon replies, "But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? Or Monday? Or Friday?" (11). At the beginning of the second act, Estragon cannot remember the tree being there before; he cannot remember why he was beaten; and he cannot remember where he is. Memory as a tool to ground the characters in reality fails them.

Just as memory repeatedly fails Vladimir and Estragon, their status in relation to the other people around them remains unsettled. In each other they have some identity, but outside that narrow partnership, no one else offers anything to help them. Estragon ostensibly has been beaten by a group of people, but he cannot remember why or how or supply any details that explain the context. Pozzo and Lucky return in act 2, and though Estragon has possibly seen them as recently as yesterday, he mistakes Pozzo for Godot just as he does the first time he meets them in act 1. Estragon does not remember them, and Pozzo does not remember Vladimir and Estragon, asking them twice, "Who are you?" (54). Then Pozzo wonders if they are his friends. Vladimir recognizes Pozzo right away because he cries out "Poor Pozzo!" (50) upon Pozzo's entrance, but he still asks him later, "And you are Pozzo?" (56). Vladimir is surprised that Pozzo does not remember meeting them yesterday, but Pozzo says, "I don't remember having met anyone yesterday. But tomorrow I won't remember having met anyone today. So don't count on me to enlighten you" (56-57). One of the only people outside themselves who can say that he has seen them cannot even do that.

Near the end of each act a boy comes to tell Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will not be coming that day. Each time, he heightens the confusion surrounding their existence because he gives them nothing to reassure them that they are who they think they are, or that they are real to him. In act 1, Vladimir tells the boy he thinks that he has seen him somewhere before, but the boy does not know. Vladimir asks him, "You don't know me?" (33). The boy does not, even though Vladimir thinks he saw the boy yesterday. When the boy leaves Vladimir asks him to tell Godot that he saw them. "You did see us, didn't you?" Vladimir asks him, and the boy says that he has seen them. This small consolation, that someone has seen them and can affirm it, disappears the next time the boy comes, at the end of act 2. According to the cast list, it is the same boy. He does not remember Vladimir, which is a sobering thought for Vladimir about his lack of impact on the people he meets. Again, Vladimir tells the boy to tell Godot that he saw Vladimir. As the boy leaves Vladimir says violently, "You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!" (59). The boy runs out. Vladimir wants some confirmation about who he is and what he is doing in waiting for Godot, but no one gives him anything concrete.

The repeated void of anything concrete wherever one expects something concrete speaks of "a certain futility at the core of human existence" (Sharma 278). The setting is equally vague and exact, and time, at the center of the characters' thoughts and actions, passes with certainty and uncertainty. During the performance of the play, time passes differently inside and outside the world of the play, and location is at once on the stage and in a world that imagines the real world. Time and location do not ground the characters in a physical place; they undermine all certainty about the physical world. Vladimir and Estragon also cannot depend on memory to offer them clues about who they are or to ground their existence, nor can they look to those around them for reassurance about what they are doing. Beckett has created a world where truth itself does not exist with certainty. The play drifts somewhere between realism and allegory, such that its function remains unclear. At the same time, this lack of clarity is the function of the play. Anything that might give a glimpse of truth or stability, from the outside world to an inner sense of self, offers no assurance as to the existence of the concrete or the real. Truth is uncertain, and even if it does exist, one cannot know of this existence with any confidence, which makes

Vladimir and Estragon have each other to reassure themselves of themselves, and they have their immediate surroundings, but without a larger context, without anything universal and stable, they cannot know what is the value or meaning of their existence, nor can they know if there even is value or meaning to their existence. Human existence, then, is futile.