Waiting for Meaning: Myth, Absurdity, and the Lost Transcendence of Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Meaning: Myth, Absurdity, and the Lost Transcendence of Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a play haunted by mythology—not in the sense of grand, sweeping legends, but in the echoes of a mythic structure that has lost its potency. As Vladimir and Estragon wait for a saviour who never arrives, they enact a ritual drained of transcendence, a myth in which the mystical dimension has been hollowed out. This, perhaps, is its great tragicomic insight: what happens when a myth loses its power but the ritual remains?

The Mythic Structure and Its Collapse

Joseph Campbell spoke of mythology as a means of linking human experience to the eternal, a bridge between the mundane and the transcendent. Godot, however, presents a mythic framework that has been rendered absurd. Vladimir and Estragon are caught in a cycle of expectation and repetition, unable to progress or achieve catharsis. The structure of their waiting recalls the quest motif in mythology, but here the quest is static, leading nowhere.

Beckett’s humour is distinctly Beckettian—a kind of Waiting for meaning that never arrives. This is where absurdity takes on its full semiotic weight: the form of myth remains, but its function collapses. If myth traditionally serves the cosmological and mystical functions Campbell described, Waiting for Godot dramatises what happens when these functions fail. The play presents the scaffolding of meaning without the revelation that should accompany it.

Estragon and Vladimir: The Fractured Duality

Vladimir and Estragon’s dynamic can also be read mythologically. One interpretation suggests that Vladimir, whose name means “ruler” or “lord,” represents the rational, spiritual, or even divine dimension, while Estragon (possibly recalling “oestrogen”) is the physical, bodily, and instinctual side. Their interplay reflects a fractured duality—spirit and matter, mind and body—trapped in limbo. If mythology often seeks to unify such dualities, Beckett’s vision leaves them eternally disjointed.

Godot as the Absent Deity

Much has been made of the name Godot, with some interpreting it as a stand-in for “God.” A particularly striking interpretation is to read God-OT as “God of the Old Testament.” This positions Waiting for Godot as a play about waiting for a God who promised return and redemption but whose presence remains elusive. The characters enact the form of religious ritual, yet nothing happens, underscoring the existential dilemma of faith without confirmation, of longing for divine intervention in a world that offers only silence.

The Tree: A Mythic Remnant

One of the most explicitly mythic elements in the play is the solitary tree. In Campbell’s framework, trees are often symbols of the axis mundi—the sacred pillar linking heaven, earth, and the underworld. Whether it is Yggdrasil, the Bodhi tree, or the biblical Tree of Life, such symbols represent renewal, enlightenment, and the bridge between worlds.

Yet in Godot, the tree is stripped of vitality. In Act I, it is barren. In Act II, it sprouts a few leaves—but this small change offers no real transformation. It is a tree that remembers myth but no longer performs its mythic function. If the play is a ritual without transcendence, then the tree is its failed relic—a reminder of the sacred, now devoid of power.

There is also a dark Christological resonance. If the cross is another cosmic axis—uniting the human and the divine—then Godot’s tree stands in a state of perverse suspension. Vladimir and Estragon even entertain the idea of hanging themselves from it, turning what might be a symbol of salvation into yet another absurdity.

The Eternal Present: The Lost Mysticism of Now

One final insight emerges from Waiting for Godot: its commentary on time. The characters wait for a future event that never comes, while the present slips by unnoticed. If the great mystical traditions urge an awareness of the eternal now, Beckett’s characters are instead trapped in an imagined future that continually defers meaning. The play thus dramatises one of the central paradoxes of human existence: the tension between expectation and presence, between longing for meaning and inhabiting the moment.

Conclusion: The Myth That Remains

In Waiting for Godot, Beckett gives us a myth that lingers but no longer functions, a world where symbols persist but fail to reveal. The play is an absurdist ritual, a dark comedy of waiting for transcendence in a universe that remains mute. In this way, it is both a critique and an enactment of the human condition: bound to meaning-making, even in a landscape where meaning seems to have fled.

Beckett’s genius lies in showing us the bones of mythology, stripped of flesh yet still standing. Like Estragon and Vladimir, we too wait, not knowing if what we seek will ever arrive.