I'm also reading this book currently. It's on my headboard and I read a bit of it every night before going to sleep. I'm not sure I should willingly admit this about a literary classic, but it does help me fall to asleep.
Critic Vivian Mercier said of the book "Nothing happens, twice."
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Okay, finished this book. I wonder if reading it chunk by chunk changed my expereince with it at all. It could be read in one sitting I'm sure, but I imagine that would be a trying experience.
After I finished it I tried to find a little more on it. It's one of those books that leaves you with a "that was it?" feeling. You want to know if there is more symbolism, if you missed something, if the author was trying to convey some deeper sentiment. Samuel Becket himself said "It means what it says."
He held on to this sentiment through years of questions. When ask if the absent character of Godot is meant to represent God he said "If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."
But what would the author know?
There are a wealth of good pieces written on Waiting for Godot, so I don't see any need to even attempt to write another one. Instead I'd like to contribute one of the most meaningless takes on the book to date.
Every sitcom has that one episode where nothing happens. I've heard these referred to as Elevator Episodes, since they often consist of the main characters being trapped in an elevator and reminiscining about their hijinks on previous episodes. But the one that really sticks in my head is the Seinfeld parking ramp episode. The main characters are stuck in their car, in a parking ramp, for the entire episode. Every time it looks like maybe they are going to get somewhere something happens and they don't go anywhere. At the end of the show they are right where they started, nothing had really happened, and they hadn't really moved. There is comedy, and flashbacks and people area mused. But nothing happens, nobody goes anywhere.
I hated that show. That episode in particular and all the related "elevator episodes". The sense of frustration, and uselessness. The lack of movement or change. The starvation of progress. Enter exhibit A. The distillation and perfection of that starvation of progress. Waiting for Godot is the ultimate Elevator Episode (see what I did there? I reduced a literary classic to a cheap sitcom ploy. My enlgish professors would be proud).
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