Waiting for Godot Broken Conventions

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I’m going. He does not move. Much like the popular television show Seinfeld, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett seems to be a play about nothing. Although at first glance it may appear to be about nothing, surely it must be about something. Your job is to figure out that something. Once you have figured out the something, a meaning, you need to show what the play means through a specific lens. When introducing Theatre of the Absurd, we discussed its major characteristics. One of these characteristics will be the lens through which you discuss the meaning of Godot. Check your notes; below is a succinct synopsis of that introductory discussion: “Waiting for Conventions” In Waiting for Godot, Beckett implements broken conventions of traditional theatre in order to successfully satirize the detrimental nature of the human condition symbolized throughout this absurdist play (which seems to have no plot). A certain level of tension is created by this plays lack of plot which leaves the audience expecting something to happen that never comes. This lack of plot to some overshadows the reasoning behind why Beckett does this. Although these broken conventions can act as a looking glass into the true meaning of the play, they require the audience to do a certain amount of searching to crack the nut which is Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot, unlike many plays follows no specific plot, a concept in which most conventional plays ought to have in order to rope in an audience member to the contents and morals of the play. Waiting for Godot uses the absence of a plot to convey the plays meaning, which is something out of the ordinary for plays of this time. By creating a circular and symmetrical structure in the play, Beckett implies that if one does not break the mold of the human condition, then nothing will get accomplished in the persons life.

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