"Was I Sleep, While the others Suffered?"

[Winter]

"Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow when I wake, or a think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night I waited for Godot? That Posso passed with his carrier and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot.

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. Their air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking... Of me too someone is saying... 'He is sleeping... he knows nothing, let him sleep on.'

I can't go on.

What have I said?

Off we go again."

I didn't just quote from Waiting for Godot just the Hell of it but rather to talk about what I feel is the single most important moment of the play. Up until this point the play has just been repeating itself over and over again yet only Vladimir seems to remember the day before and in that time Posso went blind and Lucky went dumb despite being clearly able to speak the day before.

Waiting for Gadot is one of the most interesting surreal plays ever made as like any good surreal story you can't tell if what you're seeing is real, magical or if all the characters are just insane. But this moment always stuck with me because it completely changes what the play is about or at least how I saw it. It wasn't about Godot coming or not it was about how repetition can drive one to despair. How we all do things over and over again not out of insanity because we know what the result will be but because it's what we're use to. Habit is a great deadener.

Vladimir realizes he's trapped yet cannot bring himself to leave no matter how much he may want to, why? "We're waiting for Godot." Yet Godot will never come and the reason for that is hidden in the unseen man's name. Godot means forever. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for forever and only Vladimir realizes that in this moment and dreads what that means.

It's just something that's been on my mind.