Waiting for Godot:
Philosophical Contexts
• When considered in terms of twentieth-century secular
philosophy, Waiting for Godot seems particularly
congruent with the tenets of existentialism, which gained
popularity (and notoriety) in the decades following World
War II.
• Although origins can be traced back at least to the midnineteenth century in the writings of philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche and the fiction for Fyodor
Doestoyevsky, its foremost twentieth century proponent
was Jean Paul Sartre, whose major work Being and
Nothingness was published in 1943 in France and
translated into English in 1956.
• Controversial because it was perceived as undermining
the basis of Western philosophy since Plato and
subverting virtually all traditional religions, existentialism
asserted that human existence precedes any form of
“essence”.
• There is, therefore, no preexistent spiritual realm, no
soul, no god (Christian or otherwise), no cosmic
compassion for or interest in human life, no afterlife, no
eternal life, no heaven, no hell, no everlasting rewards or
punishment for earthly deeds, no transcendence of
worldly existence, no cosmic metanarrative, no angels
and devils vying for human allegiance, no divine will, no
salvation, no redemption (and no agency to perform it),
no preset destiny, no inevitable fate, no revealed truth,
• And no immutable commandments or other permanent
but externally imposed rules. All of that is simply human
invention or, as Nietzsche termed it, ‘superstition’, a
culturally determined and socially enforced fiction that, in
its effectiveness, fundamentally constricts human
freedom and allows human beings to evade their own
responsibility for the conditions of existence throughout
the world.
• The best concise introductory explanation of Sartre’s
doctrine is his essay now titled “The Humanism of
Existentialism”. Although he briefly acknowledges the
existence of Christian existentialism, he insists that the
first principle of (his own atheistic) existentialism is that
“there is no human nature since there is no God to
• Conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself
to be, but…man is nothing else but what he makes of
himself.” Because each individual must bear full
responsibility for whatever he or she becomes and
whoever he or she is (since it is not predetermined,
shaped by God’s will, or otherwise from outside oneself,
a constant state of anxiety is a defining human
characteristic – the first of three that Sartre identifies.
Many people, however, seek desperately to avoid taking
such responsibility for themselves, palliating (however
dishonestly) their anxiety and trying to place
responsibility on anyone or anything but themselves- an
institution, a religion, even a Godot.
• Yet such an evasion is itself an act of self-definition,a
free choice for which they remain responsible, even if
they consider it an obligation by which they are bound or
a worldview not of their own design (or indeed, of their
own liking.) The second of Sartre’s defining
characteristics is forlornness, a term that he traces
particularly to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, by
which he “means only that God does not exist and we
have to face the consequences of this”.
• Among the foremost of these is that there are no
transcendent or a priori standards of goodness, virtue, or
justice, just as there is no God to conceive or sanction
them, “as a result, man is forlorn, for neither within him
now without does he find anything to cling to”.
• Neither is there any core ‘human nature’ or other form of
determinism, instead “man is free, man is freedom”. In
an empty universe that is devoid of meaning, purpose,
design or care – the ‘existential void’ represented by the
coldness of interstellar space, the featureless Beckettian
landscape, or simply darkness in Beckett’s later stage
works- human beings are, Sartre contends, “alone, with
no excuses” and “condemned to be free.”
• This situation leads to the third of his defining
characteristics, despair, which is widely if wrongly
alleged by Beckett’s detractors against his works as well.
For Sartre, the term “means that we shall confine
ourselves to reckoning with what depends on our will, or
on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action
• Possible.” For Beckett’s characters in Waiting for Godot,
however, it is precisely the probabilities that are
uncertain, the decisive action that is impossible (other
than waiting, which is, of course, itself an action, and the
“will” (including but not limited to their consideration of
suicide) that remains paralyzed. To Sartre, however,
existentialism “can not be taken for a philosophy of
quietism, since it defines man in terms of action, not for a
pessimistic determination of man, for … man’s destiny is
within himself.”
• An equally important Sartrean concept was set forth in
Part One of Sartre’s major work Being and Nothingness.
As Vladimir and Estragon base their lives on the arrival
(and indeed the existence) of Godot, the exemplify what
• Sartre defines as ‘bad faith’, it prevents them from being
‘sincere’ in Sartre’s sense, in that they cannot “be what
they are” because they are preoccupied with the
transcendent Other (Godot) that remains an absence
rather than a presence in their lives. Action, by which
existential man defines himself, is therefore precluded or
perhaps endlessly deferred, any suggestion that they
might actually do something (even depart or commit
suicide) is countered by yet another reiteration of the
core fact of their existence, that they must continue to
await Godot.
• If this motive is considered to be like one of the “drives”
that Sartre describges, this enterprise of waiting is itself
“realized only with their consent” Furthermore, it must be
• Realized that such drives “are not forces of nature” or
innate within mankind, instead, the tramps “lend the
drives the efficacy by making a perpetually renewed
decision concerning their value” Such is, in effect, the
plot of Waiting for Godot. Moreover, Sartre asserts that
“assuredly a man in bad faith who borders on the comic”
is one who “acknowledges all the facts which are
imputed to him (but still) he refuses to draw from them
the conclusion which they impose…the crushing view
that his mistakes constitute for him a destiny.
• The facts, in Beckett’s play, are to be found in Vladimir’s
admissions of multiple uncertainties- that they are in the
right place, that it is the right day and time, even that
they would recognize Godot if he came. Their crushing
• Conclusion is that their purpose is futile, that Godot will
never come, or that their lives have been in vain. Against
such despair, they continue, unreasonably and implicitly,
to hope, to wait, and idly pass the time- actions that do
indeed “border on the comic” in a play that its author
labeled a tragicomedy.
• Ultimately, however, as Sartre argues, “the true problem
of bad faith stems evidently from the fact that bad faith is
faith.” (Sartre’s emphasis). In other words, it bases one’s
existence on a sustained belief in and sustaining reliance
on someone or something external to the self. To a
Sartrean existentialist, such a being that transcends and
transforms lives is by definition nonexistent- and thus not
fundamentally unlike Santa Claus, the Easter bunny,
wish-granting genies, leprechauns, fairies, and all other
• Such fictions, however pleasant, popular, entertaining, or
consoling belief in them might be among the credulous.
Accordingly, those who consider Waiting for Godot an
existential play tend to assume (with often aggressive
and sometimes condescending certainty) that Godot
does not actually exist – that he will never come for the
simple reason that he can never come, that there is no
“he” to come, even if Vladimir and Estragon were to wait
for all eternity. In this view, the play’s many Christian
allusions are little more than shards of a culture,
signifiers of little or nothing, distractions or delusions that
merely help to pass the time.
• Notwithstanding the striking congruencies between
Sartre’s philosophy and Beckett’s play, to read Waiting
• For Godot as nothing more than a dramatic illustration of
a Sartrean thesis is no less reductive and simplistic than
to regard it as a modern-day version of Christian
allegory; the committed atheist and the religious zealot
have in common an unyielding ontological certainty,
despite their irreconciliably opposite beliefs. Theirs is,
however, a conviction that neither Beckett himself nor
any of his characters seem to share. When, in 1937,
Samuel Beckett was asked in a courtroom whether he
was a Christian, a Jew, or an atheist, he replied “None of
the three”, each presumably, was too certain about
• Everything for Beckett to affirm anything that they
believed. Beckett’s characters, “non-knowers and noncaners” as he himself described them, would be totally
daunted by the prospect of having to be constantly
commited (engage, in existential terms, continually selfdefining, and wholly responsible for both themselves and
the state of the world, as Sartre’s ideology contends that
they must be. Their concerns are far more mundane:
hurting feet, lapsing memories, the scarcity of carrots,
the protocols of hanging, their appointment with the
unknown Godot. Although existential issues are
• Unmistakeably present throughout Waiting
for Godot, they are no less the subject of
skepticism and humor than the precepts of
Christianity.