Resumo de En Attendant Godot - Waiting For Godot

Nothing happens twice - that is how Beckett's two-act famous play has been often summarized. Lack of any substantial action as well as minimalistic plot are chief characteristics of Waiting for Godot. Generally speaking, Beckett strived for maximum minimalism in this play and the theatre effect of this kind of text differs considerably from more conventional plays. There are two main characters: Estragon and Vladimir (what kind of names are those? you might well ask, but be prepared for many more absurdities). There is nothing particularly outstanding about them and they spend their time trying to take off their shoes to air the feet or exchange their hats in a slapstick comedy style. Oh, I almost forgot, they are waiting for Godot. And who is he? Well, that's the point: no one knows who he is and one of few things we get to know about Godot is that he seems to have herds of sheep and goat and that he sometimes beats the boys who take care of his herds. Why are Didi and Gogo (their shortened names) waiting for Godot? Because it has been so arranged that they are to meet him on the road by the tree (the only element of decor in the play). It is difficult to make heads or tails of it but perhaps that is the point? As the play proceeds it becomes more and more absurd. In Act I Didi and Gogo meet Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is eating a chicken leg and Lucky, well, Lucky is not so lucky in fact as he is Pozzo's slave: what he does for him is thinking. And when Didi and Gogo ask Pozzo to make Lucky think, we witness Lucky delivering a hardly comprehensible almost nonsensical speech. In Act II Pozzo and Lucky appear again but one can see that things have changed. Pozzo is blind and Lucky is dumb. At the end of act I as well as at the end of act II a boy comes, and though it seems that it is the same boy in both acts yet when he comes for the second time he does not remember meeting Didi and Gogo the day before (Act I). He comes from Godot to tell them that Godot couldn't make it that day and that they should wait till the next day. At this point in the play one starts thinking: how many days have already elapsed like that? or perhaps it is all the time the same day? Beckett does not give answers and that seems to me to be the crucial point about the play: because there are no answers, only questions, repeated time and time again with absurd persistence as if they hadn't been asked a thousand times before.

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