Waiting for Godot: A Synchronicity of Opposites

By Robert Lukehart

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A Treatment for the Performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

The dense metaphysical wilderness of Self created by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot suggests far more than the barren landscape can hold. It portends the full realization of a universal Self archetype as described in the lectures of Carl Jung. Central to this ontological perspective is human time perception and its relation to the self. Beckett’s skill for condensation of multidimensional social, spiritual and bodily symbols is on par with both Freudian and Jungian dream theory. In the metaphysical world created by the play, time functions on two levels simultaneously according to both absolute and relative perceptions of time. In this realm, the depiction of absolute time is quite the opposite of Newtonian absolute time. The human contrivance of categorical or linear time is yoked with its opposite in a synchronicity of opposites.

On the duplicity of time awareness in Beckett, I am not the first to write. Robert Brustein allies this double awareness of time and duration to Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett and all existentialist dramatists. The seminal influence on Beckett’s work may well have been Henri Bergson’s highly subjective theory of time and duration. In Bergson’s philosophy, categorical or linear time imposes a false sense of order on human behavior when, in theory, memory brings the past to the present and negates any attempt to bring objective order to a highly subjective time awareness.

In Beckett’s metaphysical realm, human memory fails and the embryonic crucifixion of his characters serve only to satirize any Romantic affectations lent to memory. The past is therefore void of significant social or personal utility and the future is equally bleak. What is left is the study and ceremony of being in the present, the object of doing itself. There is in fact “nothing to be done” in the context of human history. Yet in the context of the play, all that is done, the comings and goings, the rituals of meeting and discourse, are presented in a circular motif portending an absurd spiral of sameness from one act to the next and from one moment to the next. When all who are born are born astride the grave, time finds its absolute form in the cruel duality of a spiraling eternity captured and preserved in a static instant. In this duality time fulfills itself on the subjective plane of human awareness, where the only useful activity is the inactivity of finding sport to “keep the ball in play” while one waits.

Through the synchronicity of opposites, Beckett builds a heavily endowed, interior realm of symbols which function on many levels simultaneously and achieve an extraordinary personal energy for the viewer. Beckett is forever careful to balance all the symbols of the play in a mathematically symmetrical whole. Through the Jungian practice of amplification, these symbols can be exhaustively pursued for their rich and varied allusions. For the purpose of this paper, I can focus only on a few such symbols which relate to human time perception: the rope tied to Lucky’s neck, the sand in Pozzo’s bag, the action or nonaction of the characters themselves and the overall symmetry of the composition.

The central image of linear time perception is found in the rope tied to Lucky’s neck. In the related object of the whip, this draconian metaphor becomes a concrete image of Stanislavsky’s “through line” of action. The significance of this image is clear in the second act, when the rope becomes much shorter. The authoritarian nature of the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo represents many polarities between master and beast, God and his subject, master and his slave. It also represents the interior stage where darker and more primitive forces may be given the lead, albeit with severe restrictions, and will later become necessary for guidance and mere survival.

Pozzo’s linear control over Lucky is contrasted with Didi and Gogo’s circular existence. Though Pozzo’s vanity is extreme, his authority and preoccupation with linear time restraints makes him the most modern of characters in the first act. He is in essence the social equivalent to the modern industrial tycoon. By the second act, we see a dramatic change in Pozzo, where his travels have taken a great toll on him and Lucky. His blindness in Act II reflects his arrogance and vanity in Act I. In contrast, Didi and Gogo remain unchanged. The sands of time weight heavily in his personal baggage and represent the paltry reward for his exploitative use of time. Each grain of sand functions as an excellent depiction of the categorical time rationality where industrialized society has found the ultimate expression of time in terms of production. Being blind, Pozzo is now in the metaphysical position of intuitive submission and can fully express time’s absolute compression: “One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?”

In the embryonic world of Beckett, the line between Lucky and Pozzo functions as an umbilical cord of primal and social significance. It is a linear time arrangement which runs both ways. In this realm, mercy requires control and control cannot be merciful. Nourishment is provided on the conditional basis of severe enslavement. As Lucky and Pozzo become closer to each other, we see the inevitable marriage of opposites, the fusion of contrived control with its antithesis of blind instinct and intuition. In this regard, we see the synchronicity of industrialized categorical or linear time with that of Beckett’s own metaphysical perception of time. In essence we see the fusion of the past and the future in the overwhelming present.

With Ecclesiastical reverberations, there is truly nothing new under the sun and nothing to be done which is not done in vain. What is achieved by this awareness is the freedom to renounce the full plethora of social and intellectual contrivance which typifies the Romantic and political movements in the arts. Beckett reduces all such issues to their most fundamental form: the metaphysical realm of the Self. For Beckett, any journey beyond the Self cannot be fruitful without first attaining a full realization of being, where consciousness is seated and how time can be truly apprehended in relation to it.

In a classic Jungian context, the quaternary structure of the four primary characters achieves a balanced mandala image on the circular nature of the play. The parallel horizontal movements of the action between Act I and Act II suggests a deeply structured ceremony or ritual on the Self. The action of the play takes place in the center region of the set where Pozzo is actually seated and where Lucky actually thinks. In this region we see the futility of any linear progression and the repetition of various speculations on the nature of the human predicament. In essence, this region symbolizes the centered, crossroads region of the Self which is for Jungian theorists the most primal of archetypal images.

From this centered vantage point, we can view the central conflict of the play in terms of the central conflict of the creative Self. That is, in the metaphysical realm of Beckett, the Self must at all times confront the unknowable elusiveness of Time and its relentlessly destructive power over personal identity and achievement. Ironically for an artist such as Beckett, a clear image of the unknowable is necessary to sustain his creative energy. In this predicament which is fundamentally unresolvable, we see the creative energy of the Self---the final and ultimate creator---in its most fundamental and tortured form. In order to solve the ontological problem of personal identity through time and space, the synchronicity of opposites must occur as a birth astride the grave. In this ultimate condensation and work of pure alchemy, we have the artist at work.

The Subjective Imperative: Samuel Beckett