The Tincture of Time by Elizabeth L. Silver

Author:Elizabeth L. Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-06T11:59:11+00:00

Waiting for Godot

In January 1953 in Paris, the French playwright Samuel Beckett debuted his play Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy in two acts. Although critics have dissected its theme through the lenses of Freudian and Jungian psychology, post–World War II politics, Christianity, and existential philosophy, the play has always been, to my mind, most profound in its treatment of uncertainty. The two central characters, Vladimir and Estragon, of unknown age and background, foolish in many ways, sit around a tree on an empty stage waiting for someone by the name of Godot to arrive.

American scholars make much of the title and its religious undertones. Are Vladimir and Estragon waiting for a God that will never come? Beckett has stated that Godot does not mean “God”; in fact, he wrote the play in French, where “Godot” translates as “boot,” and “God” as “Dieu.” Translations aside, it seems unlikely that he wouldn’t have anticipated such interpretations, particularly since he translated his own work into English.

Beckett scholar Lois Gordon wrote in her book Reading Godot that “his poetry may have been unspeakably beautiful, but it stood as a testimony of human industry in the face of terror.” Indeed, uncertainty may exist in “the face of terror” because so much of it is often confused with the unknown. Though they do overlap, they are not always the same. Uncertainty is a fork in a river, while the unknown is the open sea. Uncertainty is a sliver of knowledge, while the unknown may be blissful ignorance. Knowing a hint of information can cause the terror of uncertainty to swell. Like the drop of blood in a Hitchcock film, the hint of gore is much more terrifying than a bucket of red paint (or no paint at all). It is the possibilities that creep into one’s subconscious, the glances of injury and illness that make us fear it. The “face of terror” is the reminder that we have seen just a little bit, but not everything. It is a plane crashing over the Indian Ocean without an explanation. It is the arbitrary selection of inherited disease. Of cancer. And unlike a heart attack—which, while horrifying, may be predicated by hardened arteries, heart disease, poor nutrition, or genetic predisposition—a brain hemorrhage on a healthy six-week-old has almost no clear etiology. It is this unknown source that leads to uncertainty and fear. Fear keeps us stoic in our countenance as if our feet are caught hardened in cement where the incident took place, immobilizing us.

By the end of the play, Vladimir realizes that movement is essential to destroy monotony and fear. “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth,” he says. “Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.”

While waiting for answers, particularly answers that may never come or may come outside of our control, I have one foot in the grave and one in infancy,

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