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Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Beckett's writing style can be described as sparse. In Waiting for Godot, he crafts the setting, characters, and plot with a rigorous minimalism. However, this doesn't mean that his style lacks a unique flair. The play contains a large amount of irony, paradox, and wordplay, which come together to produce an absurd atmosphere—especially when combined with his stylistic starkness. Beckett's subtitle for the play is "a tragicomedy in two acts," and he consistently achieves a balance between despair and humor—both in Waiting for Godot and his other plays.
In addition to its minimalism and absurdism, the play also features several poetic moments. The stage directions occasionally read like poetry, such as at nightfall in the first act: "The light suddenly fails. In a moment it is night. The moon rises at back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale light on the scene." And his characters, who often articulate themselves in nonsensical or vulgar ways, at times deliver stirring, poetic lines.
Beckett's style is also characterized by his vast knowledge of literature. The play contains a number of subtle allusions to other works, which belong to a range of periods and traditions. Through these allusions, Beckett places his play in a rich literary heritage as well as in the real world—beyond his fictional setting. While it sometimes seems as though Vladimir and Estragon exist in a reality quite unlike ours, their references to the Bible, Shelley, Shakespeare, and folk songs remind the audience that they do in fact belong to our world.
Although the play follows many dramatic conventions—such as being divided into acts and being structured by dialogue and stage directions—Beckett also toys with these conventions in certain instances. Some of these unorthodox, postmodern choices include having the characters stand with their backs to the audience or leaving to go to the bathroom. When the men try to run away in the second act, Estragon runs towards the back, which makes Vladimir yell at him: "Imbecile! There's no way out there." If they were actually in an open landscape, the back of the stage would be just as much of a way out as the sides. In these moments, Beckett reminds the audience that they're watching a play. The stage directions tend to be clear and concrete, but at one point they indicate Estragon "[gesturing] towards the universe" and at another point they indicate Vladimir "[using] his intelligence." The vastness and vagueness of these stage directions show that Beckett isn't simply minimalistic; he also plays around with conventions and language. This playfulness reinforces the play's position within the movement known as the theater of the absurd.
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