Community in the Silence of the Universe

Colin Cutler
DL Western Literature II
Professor Mark Filiatreau
15 May 2007


Edith Kern ends her essay “Drama Stripped for Inaction” with the assertion that “Beckett’s characters in this play glorify rather the all-surpassing power of human tenderness which alone makes bearable man’s long and ultimately futile wait for a redeemer and which, in fact, turns out itself to be the redeemer of man in his forlornness” (Kern 1954, 7). While her earlier analysis of the characters’ “confusion” is correct, she is incorrect to imagine that their community is any sort of redemption, or that Beckett intended it to be.

First, Kern’s earlier statement intended to support her assertion is self-contradictory. She writes “neither can get along for any length of time without the other’s tenderness which is alone capable of breaching momentarily the gap of loneliness that separates man from man” (Kern 1954, 4). To understand the contradiction in this statement, one must understand the nature of the “gap” of which Kern speaks in postmodern literature, including Beckett. This gap is one of alienation. Man cannot understand another man, and he cannot even understand himself; this gap is by definition unbreachable. Thus, if man is truly separated by such a gap of loneliness from another man, then the other man cannot reach him. Conversely, if a man is able to reach another by any means, then they were actually not separated by any such a gap. In the system which Beckett portrays, there is no room for any true redemption by other men; the best that the characters could hope for by this means is an alleviation of their misery. This alleviation itself, however, must be based on the subjective reception of that tenderness rather than on the tenderness itself. Thus, any ameliorative quality cannot be based in community, but in what a single person makes of that community; in any case, it cannot most certainly not be a full redemption, which is by nature excluded from this system.

Further, Beckett does not portray community as a redeemer. At best, he portrays it as a necessary evil. In Act II, when Estragon returns, Vladimir offers the tenderness which Kern noted, but Estragon recoils with “Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!” (Beckett, 63) Estragon does not wish to be touched, but at the same time, he cannot bear to be alone. Further, Estragon is hurt that Vladimir could sing without Estragon’s presence. Vladimir says “I missed you…and at the same I was happy” (Beckett, 64). When Vladimir begins to wonder at this, he progresses from being “joyous” to being “gloomy” (64). The following lines are crucial to the argument (65):

Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I’m with you. I feel better alone, too.
Vladimir: (vexed) Then why do you always come crawling back?
Estragon: I don’t know.

They both feel a need for community and cannot get along without it, but at the same time it increases their pain. Beckett’s portrayal, then, is not one of redemption, but of a painful association which neither can live without.

Besides Beckett’s portrayal of the consequences of community, his portrayal of what community does not provide is also telling. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines redeem as “to set free; to rescue or ransom…To make up for.” In contrast to Kern’s assertion of a “redemption,” Beckett’s characters remain in despair and pointlessness. They are most emphatically not set free or rescued from their aimlessness by community, nor is their despair made up for by their association. Far from being redeemed by their community, they resolve in the final lines of the play to hang themselves on the morrow, with only one event that could possibly redeem them from such a fate (Beckett 1954, 109):
Estragon: If we parted? That might be better for us.
Vladimir: We’ll hang ourselves to-morrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.
Estragon: And if he comes?
Vladimir: We’ll be saved.

Beckett’s characters are trapped and waiting for someone to give them meaning; alone, they can only make stabs in the dark. Far from redeeming them from their dilemma, their association with each other only slightly alleviates this despair, while simultaneously accentuating it. Thus, Kern’s exaltation of community to the status of their “redeemer” is incorrect; the hope of Beckett’s characters lay not in each other, but in Godot.


Reference List
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. 1954. New York: Grove Press, Inc.

Kern, Edith. 1954. Drama Stripped for Inaction: Beckett's Godot. Yale French Studies 14,
M O T L E Y Today's French Theatre: 41-47. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00440078%281954%290%3A14%3C41%3ADSFIBG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X