Purpose of Life, Modern Changes, and Human Isolation Essay

An especially confusing irony arising from Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot is that one of chronicles to a greater extent well-received and lauded processs is at the same time accorded so many diverse interpretations that apprehensiveness oftentimes seems elusive. The academic and critical literature clearly illustrates how the play has been debated.Exact thematic elements and even the playwrights precise motivations vex proven difficult to derive from the narratives textual structure. These interpretive nuances and proffered variations have been rendered even more suspect because Samuel Beckett offered evasive replies whenever he was queried about the intended make for of certain characters or his personal intentions regarding any grouchy passage.These realities be not offered to argue that particular thematic features are incompetent of determination, as familiar pillow slips of themes and thematic elements bunghole be fairly well-established to a certain extant, but p recisely to point out and to acknowledge as a theoretical point of departure that Waiting for Godot is a broadly conceived type of narrative that touches upon many themes rather than being narrowly constrained to a particular theme.An examination of certain alternate scholarly analyses unequivocally illustrates the breadth of academic interpretations arguing that Becketts play addresses themes such as the message of God, the quest for individual salvation, the resistance of the French people against Germanys argument during World War Two, how serviceman beings ought to live their lives in changing times, the fleeting nature of time, and the new plenty that human beings had to adapt to in a post-World War Two era emerging from the Industrial Revolution.To be sure, with so many polar interpretations supported by references to certain passages of the plays text and applicable historical factors, it might seem highly unlikely to persuasively support a dominant or fundamental them e. A critical and comprehensive review of the textual evidence, on the other hand, does eventually purpose that t here does exist a primary theme.This dominant theme in Waiting for Godot is that human beings can never truly understand the world in which they exist or how individuals are to be surpass integrated into a world with contradictory messages and imperfect information. Such a thesis can function to harmonize the different interpretations offered by secondary sources by showing how the main characters dialogue in different circumstances consistently illustrates and reinforces the human search for a definite purpose and a rational meaning in an external environment that persistently appears hopelessly incomprehensible.A Unifying Theme Transcending Particular Interpretations To begin, addressing secondary theories before turning to the plays actual text, it is necessary to demonstrate how academic and critical comment has created more confusion than understanding by concent rating too narrowly from a thematic point of view.This type of analytical framework is necessary because virtually all of these at times conflicting and contradictory interpretations are capable of harmonization to a large extant if the plays primary theme is posited as the individual human beings desire to better understand and comprehend the function of the human animal in an incomprehensible external environment. It is superficially agreed, for example, that Beckett frequently utilizes universal themes in the narrative in this respect, one secondary source argues that, Waiting for Godot, in many ways, simply extends those uncertainties Why are we here?Are we alone in an uncaring universe, or not? What are we to do while we are here? How can we know? And, ultimately, what does it matter? (Hutchings x). This focus on universal concerns in the key to understanding the play and identifying the fundamental theme indeed, these universal types of characterizations function in the larger picture to transcend more limited and narrow types of interpretations.