A shoe, a stone, a hand refused

On a country road where one tree stands, this reading begins, Estragon sits on a stone and tries to pull off a shoe. He tugs, loses strength, stops, and starts the same motion again. Then Vladimir appears and holds out a hand; Estragon refuses it.

Vladimir tells him that shoes have to come off every day, and flares up: does Estragon think he is the only one in the world who suffers? The two men, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for Godot.

A tragicomedy, and a wait of fifty years

Waiting for Godot, they write, is Beckett’s representative play of the absurd, and Beckett himself calls it a tragicomedy. The word “absurd,” as they take it, leads to a question about the meaning and meaninglessness of being human. Because such a play cannot offer a final answer, works of this kind appear as a strange mix of deep pessimism and grotesque humour.

The two tramps wait fifty years for a Godot who does not come. Through that, this reading says, Beckett treats human life as a simple waiting, and shows the absurdity of being human inside it. Godot never appears; only a boy messenger comes, to say he cannot come today and will surely come tomorrow.

A wartime hiding, and where this reading stops

The play, they add, is underpinned by Beckett’s experience of hiding during the Second World War: waiting for the war to end, turned into a more general waiting already present in a human life. What the work means, or what Godot means, has drawn many views.

This reading leaves the play there, before a later definition table. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. This reading, a student reading of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that stays with the shoe, the wait, and a boy messenger.

Last updated: 15 November 2026