What is so funny about waiting two days and Godot not showing?

                          
       (Image of Playwrite, found on Google Image Search of Samuel Beckett)

There are a lot of thing that are funny about waiting two days for Godot (whoever he is) and having him not come. I am not sure it this script is just funnier to me than Pinter’s The Homecoming or that after my experience going to see the The Homecoming, I have become much more sensitive to absurd/sardonic humor. Or maybe I’m just a sick person who found Sameul Beckett’s Waiting for Godot probably the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile.

There are a lot of instances in this play that are just plain hilarious:

-        The opening of the play has Estragon trying to pull of his boots which turns into this big struggle in which Vladimir has to help him. During all of this they are having a fairly serious conversation.

-        Estragon and Vladimir’s constant speech one after anouther. They follow up after the other very quickly like:
Estragon: What it is?

Vladimir: I don’t know. A willow.

Estragon: Where are the leaves?

Vladimir: It must be dead.

Estragon: No more weeping.

Vladimir: Or perhaps it’s not the season.

Estragon: Looks to me more like a bush.

Vladimir: A shrub.

Estragon: A bush.
(Beckett pg 852)
This bantering back and forth produces some quite comical instances in the play.

-        The turnip/radish/carrot nonsense.

-        Their attempted hanging on the dead tree/willow/shrub/bush. They don’t seem to be sad, they seem to just want to do it for something to do. In the process of planning their ‘suicide’ they discuss the erection and mandrakes they will create. Which just makes Estragon want to do it all the faster.

  (Image of the Play with the famed tree, found in Google Image Search of Waiting for Godot)

More comedy is added outside of Vladimir and Estragon’s nonsense with Pozzo and Lucky

            - Lucky drops the luggage he is carrying and his fumbling are quite funny.

-        Then when Lucky is finally allowed to speak, he makes the most intelligent babble that I’ve heard, since of course Lenny from The Homecoming.

-         Pozzo's fumbling in Act 2.

-         Pozzo's treatment of Lucky, though mean, is somewhat humorous.

This is of course mostly in Act I of the play. Interestingly, much of the same action in Act 1 of Waiting for Godot repeats itself in Act 2. Act 2, almost seems like a dream like state, especially the second Pozzo and Lucky scene. This repetition doesn’t make it any less funny, in fact I’m sure with Pozzo being blind the second time, it would add more interesting stage directions to add to the humor.

  (Intresting Image of the four major characters, found in Google Image Search of the Play)

Waiting for Godot’s humor is different that The Homecoming (or again maybe I’ve just gotten better at seeing it), because the actions and the stage directions are more evident and funny in this play. In The Homecoming much of the humor was sarcasm, which doesn’t always come across the page as easily. Waiting For Godot’s humor is in its stage directions, their nonsensical conversations (much like the cheese roll scene in The Homecoming), and one’s own imagination.

Though this play makes relatively no sense in the long term plot, it’s a hilarious read, and if following the tradition of The Homecoming I’m sure it is all the more funny on stage. Or maybe I’m just like the rest of the audience in Stratford, laughing at odd parts.

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Beckett, Samuel. “Waiting for Godot”. The Norton Anthology of Drama Volume Two: The    Nineteenth Century to the Present. Ed. J. Ellen Gainor, Stanton B. Garner Jr., Martin      Punchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. 849-905. Print.