Purpose of Life, Modern Changes, and Human Isolation Essay

An especially confusing irony arising from Samuel Becketts waiting for Godot is that ane of historys more well-received and lauded plays is at the same season accorded so many diverse interpretations that pull ining frequently seems elusive. The academic and fine lit seasonture clearly illustrates how the play has been debated.Exact thematic elements and even the dramatists precise motivations have proven difficult to derive from the annalss textual structure. These interpretive nuances and proffered variations have been rendered even more peculiar because Samuel Beckett offered evasive replies whenever he was queried about the intended ladder of legitimate characters or his personal intentions regarding any circumstance passage.These realities are not offered to argue that particular thematic features are incapable of determination, as familiar types of themes and thematic elements grass be fairly well-established to a certain extant, but simply to organise out and to ack nowledge as a theoretical headland of divagation that Waiting for Godot is a broadly conceived type of narrative that touches upon many themes sort of than being narrowly constrained to a particular theme.An examination of certain secondary scholarly analyses unequivocally illustrates the breadth of academic interpretations arguing that Becketts play addresses themes such as the meaning of God, the quest for individual salvation, the ohmic resistance of the French people against Germanys occupation during World War Two, how tender-hearted being beings ought to live their lives in changing times, the fleeting nature of time, and the new deal 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 different interpretations support by references to certain passages of the plays text and relevant historical factors, it might seem highly unlikely to persuasively support a dominant or fundamental theme. A criti cal and comprehensive reexamination of the textual evidence, on the other hand, does eventually suggest that there does last a primary theme.This dominant theme in Waiting for Godot is that human beings jakes never truly understand the being in which they pull through or how individuals are to be best 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 briny characters dialogue in different circumstances consistently illustrates and reinforces the human bet for a definite purpose and a rational meaning in an international environment that persistently appears hopelessly incomprehensible.A Unifying case Transcending Particular Interpretations To begin, addressing secondary theories before turning to the plays veridical text, it is necessary to demonstrate how academic and critical commentary has created more discombobulation than u nderstanding by concentrating 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 break to understanding the play and identifying the fundamental theme indeed, these universal types of characterizati ons function in the larger picture to transcend more limited and narrow types of interpretations.