Question

Estragon's forgetfulness in "Waiting for Godot" extends to his encounter with whom from the previous day

• A. The boy
• B. Godot
• C. Pozzo and Lucky
• D. His own brother

Answer 1

Answer:

C. Pozzo and Lucky

Waiting for Godot and Estragon's Forgetfulness

• Waiting for Godot is a seminal work by the Irish playwright, novelist, and poet Samuel Beckett, first performed in 1953 (originally written in French as En attendant Godot).
• It is a quintessential play of the Theatre of the Absurd, characterized by its minimalist setting, lack of a conventional plot, and exploration of the human condition in a seemingly meaningless existence.
• The play features two tramps, Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi), who wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of a mysterious figure named Godot.

Estragon's Characteristic Amnesia

• Estragon's forgetfulness is a pervasive and defining characteristic throughout the play. He frequently struggles with his memory, often forgetting events that have just happened or even his own previous actions and conversations.
• This amnesia contributes significantly to the play's themes of memory's unreliability, the subjective and cyclical nature of time, and the characters' existential predicament.
• A primary example of this forgetfulness is his inability to recall the characters Pozzo and Lucky from their encounter on what appears to be the *previous day* (or the equivalent of a previous day in the play's ambiguous timeline).

The Significance of Pozzo and Lucky

• Pozzo is portrayed as an arrogant and cruel master, while Lucky is his enslaved, intellectually capable, yet physically tormented servant, led by a rope. Their appearance breaks the monotony of Estragon and Vladimir's waiting.
• In Act I, Pozzo and Lucky appear, engage with Vladimir and Estragon, and then depart. When they reappear in Act II (with Pozzo now blind and Lucky mute), Estragon does not recognize them.
• This lack of recognition by Estragon, despite Vladimir's attempts to remind him, underscores the play's themes of disintegration of memory, the repetitive cycle of events, and the characters' inability to learn or progress.
• For competitive exams, note that the interaction with Pozzo and Lucky provides a temporary distraction for the tramps but ultimately reinforces their sense of entrapment and the futility of their waiting.

Key Facts about Samuel Beckett and the Play:

• Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 for his writing, which "in new forms for the novel and drama, has extracted the destitution of modern man from his exaltation."
• Waiting for Godot is structured in two acts, with each act largely mirroring the other, emphasizing the cyclical and unchanging nature of the tramps' existence.
• The play's open-ended and ambiguous nature, particularly regarding Godot's identity and the tramps' purpose, is a hallmark of Absurdist drama.