Comparative Literature Research Project

The Act of Waiting in Beckett, Ionesco and Kafka:

What happens when we wait?

8,000 words

Contents:

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… 2

1. …………………………………………………………………………… 5

2. …………………………………………………………………………… 9

3. …………………………………………………………………………… 14

4. …………………………………………………………………………… 18

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 22

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 24

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Every day, we wait. It is a profoundly mundane activity. We wait in queues, crowds and
mobs; in short, intense periods of anticipation and in prolonged, undefined stretches of
time—for life, death, love and loss. We wait for buses, trains, lifts and meals; for the school
bell to ring or the pubs to open. Addicts wait for their next hit, sinners for forgiveness,
inmates for release, theists for God, artists for an idea, and so on. In a word, waiting is
ubiquitous. It is also enigmatic, and paradoxical. We may think we understand its
heterogeneous associated processes, its effects on mind and body. On the one hand, its effect
is simple: waiting begets impatience. When the train is late, or a lover does not call, we grow
irascible but make it through the day. The complexity of waiting lies in its extensive network
of possible causes and consequences. Speculation as to the impact of an eternal period of
waiting, or imagining a situation where the stakes are in the realm of the existential, in a way
confirms the simplicity of the act itself. The effects are heightened—the stasis amplified.
However, the ways in which the protagonists of Beckett, Ionesco and Kafka react in such
circumstances provoke further reflection. We are confronted with arcane simplicity.
Waiting’s contradictive nature beckons closer examination.
Every individual Wait is united in one fundamental way: to wait is to inhabit an
existential space characterised by absence. When we wait, we are without that which we
await. I call upon Sartre in chapter three to elucidate the intrinsic absence which characterises
both a) periods of waiting and b) the human (or absurd) condition. Aligning the act of waiting
with Sartre’s Not and examining waiting in modernist, postmodernist and Absurdist contexts
differentiates my exploration from others’. Through incisive conceptualisation, I unearth the
philosophical consequences of the act of waiting. By comparing examples of extreme waiting
conditions, I discover its effects – philosophical, psychological, political, linguistic or
otherwise. This study comprises four primary texts: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(1956) and Endgame (1958), Eugène Ionesco’s Les Chaises (1962) and Franz Kafka’s The
Trial (1999 reprint). Ubiquitous in nature, however, waiting demands a broad inquisitive
scope.
As an act, waiting has its place in sociology, theology and politics. Niall Ahern argues
that ‘for all of us there is resurrection but it is only found by our waiting’ (1992: 676), and
Lahad’s description of waiting as a ‘relational sociological phenomenon’ (2012) defines it
sociologically. Waiting prompts questions social and existential, pragmatic and theoretical.
However, my direction was always towards the root – the conceptual bud at the centre of a
network of semantics and significations. In order to reach this, I began with a more prosaic
understanding and worked towards the core by asking the following questions:

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 How do we pass unlimited time? What happens in perpetuity? What if the waited-
upon is a matter of life and death—what if our very existence is at stake? What happens to
our minds, to rationality, language, and our capacity for creating Logos, when we wait?
Martin Esslin posits ‘the act of waiting as an essential and characteristic aspect of the human
condition’ (2001: 50). But what if, subsumed by the act of waiting, we discover that that-
which-we-await is illusory? What if one’s subconscious recognises this whilst one’s Ego is
shrouded with myriad other thoughts, and one experiences a psycho-existential disjunction?
Informed by Sartre and Camus, I aim to demonstrate that waiting is ultimately detrimental to
one’s existential health (the shorthand being: it destroys the soul). It reduces one’s intrinsic
(or philosophic) worth and, typically, tends towards suicide—conscious-physical or
subconscious-philosophical, depending on various factors. The way to avoid this (apparently
inevitable) suicide is to alter one’s phenomenological, or self-perceptive, mode. Sisyphus
(Camus: 2000 reprint) exemplifies human’s triumph against the Absurd condition, which
analogises the interminable Wait. His example, unfortunately, goes unfollowed by our
protagonists, who crumble in bad faith.
In order to justify this conclusion, several concepts and connections need explication.
In chapter one, I explain that to wait requires a waited-upon. Waiting can only be waiting if it
is for something. However, the first stepping stone I will set in place is that, in a sense, the
nature of the waited-upon is immaterial. Be it distant or imminent, desired or feared; even
whether it actually exists or not, the effect is the same. It is the act itself which affects us.
The subsequent question is one of sovereignty: for whom, or what, do we wait? Who
dictates our experience of not-having or not-doing? I will illustrate that, in Beckett, Ionesco
and Kafka, the terms and conditions are set from within. In chapter three I turn to Sartre,
whose concept of the Not (English trans. 1956) supposedly lies at the centre of human
existence. An anodyne and more relevant alternative to Sartre’s contentious hypothesis would
be to affirm that the fundamental fact of waiting is that one does not have, or is not doing,
what one is waiting for. Waiting is, therefore, existentially speaking, a state of Notness. This
is an everyday tragedy. However, when the Wait is undermined, stripped of all possibility,
the breakdown begins. If, after an extended period of waiting, one is informed (whether by
self-discovery or an external informant) of the nonexistence (sudden disappearance or mere
illusoriness) of one’s waited-upon, what then? When one confronts this Not, one perceives
the meaninglessness of that period of ‘waiting’. How do we react when we discover that the
wait has been for nothing?

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 In chapter four I explain that, at this moment of disrobing, when the waited-upon is
undermined, there are two possible outcomes, depending on one’s philosophical adeptness:
suicide and acceptance. The former signifies defeat, the latter triumph. Sisyphus accepts: he
embraces his torture, modifies his mode of perception, and finds a way to view himself as
free. The others (of Beckett, Ionesco & Kafka) fail to do so, and so they stagnate; they submit
to the meaninglessness of existence. They acquiesce, consciously or subconsciously, and
commit suicide as a result – not necessarily physical suicide, but a surrender of life. This is
what happens when we amplify the concept of waiting, and follow it to its logical conclusion.
Thus runs the backbone of my argument: waiting, for the philosophically untrained, is
destructive. In an everyday context, the connotations of this are trivial. It is only when taken
to the extreme that its negative consequences are manifest.
The Stand der Forschung on waiting, as a concept comparatively studied, is
incomprehensive, especially regarding interdisciplinary study. Many critics have identified
Godot, Cavafy’s and Coetzee’s respective barbarians, God hirself, Gregor’s re-
transformation, Josef K.’s discharge, The Orator’s recital – and so on – as significant waited-
upons. None, to my knowledge, has conceptualised and cognised waiting in its abstract
entirety. Billy Ehn’s broad philosophical and practical discussion of the act of waiting (2010)
recognises and examines the ubiquity and mundaneness of waiting in the real world, and
discovers in real life what is amplified in my selected works. He finds ‘imaginative ingenuity
ritualiz[ing] and dramatiz[ing] daily life’ (4) under the duress of waiting, but restricts
academia to the notes. Esslin identifies the ‘open abandonment of rational devices and
discursive thought’ which characterise the Theatre of the Absurd, and correlates the
confrontation of the human condition with Sartre’s mauvaise foi, but fails to recognise the
depth of interrelation between Godot, bad faith and the death of Logos and autonomy. Whilst
Ehn remains comfortably prosaic and undemanding, I explore the more metaphysical depths
of the act of waiting, and make links between the hostile world of Kafka, the world-void of
Beckett, the existentialism of Camus and Sartre, and Ionesco’s Absurd.

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1.
To wait requires a waited-upon

As previously stated, this statement is grammatically self-fulfilling. However, juxtaposition

and classification of the respective Waits endured by our protagonists will bolster an
understanding of the various effects, and reasons for them, of those waiting periods. Various
labels pertain to periods of waiting: a waited-upon can be tangible or abstract, certain or
uncertain, distant or imminent, desired or feared, and so on. I will make clear that these
variables are, in a sense, irrelevant. However, contextualisation is important.
In Waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir wait for their friend. But who is he?
Cohn lists critics’ multifarious explanations of Godot – as ‘God, a diminutive god, Love,
Death, Silence, Hope, De Gaulle, Pozzo, a Balzac character, a bicycle racer, Time Future, a
Paris street for call girls, a distasteful image evoked by French words containing the root god’
(2008: 44). The diversity and idiosyncratic nature of such propositions demonstrates the
fluidity and ambiguity of the Godot figure. Godot is an emblem of post-structuralism,
proliferating meaning in his absence. For this reason, ‘Cohn had to abandon all definitions’
(Inoue 2000: 8), for Godot relentlessly evades them. Godot is ‘[c]haos, confusion, relativity,
the destroyable, the emptiness, the timelessness, the undefinable, the unnamable, or Non-
Existence’ (ibid.)—in short, Godot both is and is not; a hole in a void. However, the nature of
the Wait is partly dictated by the protagonists’ subjective experience. Consciously, Estragon
and Vladimir have faith in Godot—in his existence and impending arrival. They perceive
their waited-upon as real and imminent. They are in the last stage of waiting, constantly on
the cusp. However, Godot’s absence holds the two men prisoners, forever bound by their
(in)activity—their duty: to wait. Time is extricated and the pair are held captive in limbo. In
the event of Godot’s non-arrival, Vladimir’s solution is to ‘come back tomorrow’,

Estragon: And then the day after tomorrow.

Vladimir: Possibly.
Estragon: And so on.
[…]
Until he comes. (1965: 14)

Their faith is unyielding. Comparably, in Ionesco’s Les Chaises, the Old Couple faithfully
awaits the Old Man’s speech, to be delivered by the Orator. His oration is widely anticipated

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and planned for. Indeed, its occurrence is set for a specific date and time. The Old Man is
incredulous towards the notion of changing this: ‘How could we postpone it? […] I can’t, it’s
too late’ (1965: 137). The Old Couple, like Godot’s prisoners, are approaching their deadline,
their waited-upon, with confidence. In frantic preparation, they set out chairs for their
audience, a host of invisible guests with whom the Old Couple converse with cordiality.
When will their waiting cease? ‘When the time comes … you won’t have to wait long now
[…] In a few minutes’ (161), the Old Man assures a guest. His repeated assurances suggest a
jitteriness and lack of confidence, but the Orator’s arrival is not met with surprise. The Old
Woman exclaims: ‘Ah! … I can hear his voice!’ (162) and resumes her conversation. The
event, thus far, unfolds according to plan.
The fixedness of the Orator’s arrival contrasts with Godot’s vague and noncommittal
promises. He sends a boy to speak for him: ‘Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come
this evening but surely tomorrow’ (Beckett 1965: 50). However, ignoring this presage,
Vladimir dismisses the boy and the pair resolve to ‘wait on here’ (53). They are not deterred
by Godot’s continued absence. Act I concludes shortly thereafter, and we discover the men
the next day, ‘Same Time. Same Place’ (55). Nothing has changed. The stage directions
construct and perform the perpetual transience of the play’s action.
Godot, at any rate, is understood to be a person—a human being, with a white beard
(92), according to the Boy. He has goats, beats the Boy’s brother, and houses the two children
(51). Such descriptions flesh him out; his existence is bolstered and we, alongside Didi and
Gogo, believe in him. To an extent, we also believe he will come. Faith begets hope, and as
in Les Chaises, our experience (alongside the Old Couple’s) is validated as a period of
waiting for something.
In The Trial, that which Joseph K. awaits differs insofar as he self-professedly
anticipates it ambivalently, with confusion. Moreover, it is (ostensibly) affected, and effected,
by his actions. His bewildering, apparently endless trial is given the illusion of advancement
only at his perseverance. Kafka’s labyrinthine bureaucracy-universe renders K. senseless: he
is ‘thrown into...agitation’ and exclaims: ‘This is sheer nonsense!’ (1999: 19). Whilst he is
arguably ‘inevitably impotent’, and limited by his ‘passive acquiescen[ce]’ (Mellen 1970:
296), K. is his own primary agent. He acts in order to catalyse his fate, to expedite the arrival
of his waited-upon, during which time he must prove himself innocent. Oppressed by so
inscrutable a dictator – the court system, discussed in chapter two – his period of waiting is
characterised by ongoing confusion and conflict. He actively fights to bring about its end.
This contrasts with Godot’s prisoners, whose passivity shows little emotional investment in

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their deliverance. They wait prosaically, lackadaisically, without hope or fear; their
interactions indicate little conscious understanding of their existential position. The Old
Couple, by further contrast, approach their fate with jittery expectancy, with excited anxiety.
They wait as humans do, thereby dramatising and realising their world, governed by
recognisable emotional conventions. K.’s world is surreal. His emotional reactions expose his
floundering incompatibility with the absurd world. He oscillates between cynicism and hope:
at one point believing his Advocate to be intentionally ‘driv[ing] him to despair’ (Kafka
1999: 139), the next holding that ‘he could manage all this’ (141), and so on. Attempting to
fit an absurd reality into a ‘normal’ conception of the world renders him impotent, and his
Wait frustrating. Employing logic to realise the teleology of his case is his first mistake.
Juxtaposed with these three texts, Beckett’s Endgame provides a further contrast.
There is no stated teleology except that ‘Clov has been trying to leave Hamm ever since he
was born, or as he says, “Ever since I was whelped”’ (Esslin 2001: 63). With Beckett’s
characteristic ‘Bare interior’ and ‘Grey light’ (Beckett 1964: 11), the stage portends ‘the
feeling of the deadness and mechanical senselessness of half-unconscious lives […] which
Camus describes in The Myth of Sisyphus’ (Esslin 2001: 400). I will enrich this connection in
due course.
Endgame’s characters live in a state of perpetual nothingness: petty conflict, repeated
motions and miniature chronologies occupy the space. However, Hamm and Clov both allude
to the teleology of this eroded existence:

Hamm: Have you not had enough?

Clov: Yes! [Pause.] Of what?
Hamm: Of this . . . this . . . thing.
Clov: I always had. [Pause.] Not you?
Hamm: [Gloomily.] Then there’s no reason for it to change.
Clov: It may end. [Pause.] All life long the same questions, the same answers.
(Beckett 1964: 13)

Clov sees his ‘light dying’ (17), reveals the pair’s lack of sovereignty by stating ‘[s]omething
is taking its course’ (17), and regularly attempts to leave, saying he has ‘things to do’ (15, 16,
etc.). All this constructs a sense of deep-seated, existential impatience, the feeling that the
tether is running short. However, that either one of them is waiting for something is not
explicit, nor conscious. The waited-upon is abstract, elusive and allusive; it frustrates Clov:

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he cannot commit to leaving. Pearson’s equation of Clov’s departure with Ireland’s
emergence from British rule (2001: 215-39) identifies one possible referent of Endgame’s
metaphor. Whilst this projects Clov’s countless assertions of independence as emblematic of
a national political struggle, its psychological implications are more germane here. Held by
his blind captor, Clov can see directly the way out, but cannot execute an exit. Indeed, his
allusions to escape are frequent, though quashed by Hamm’s despotism: ‘Wait till you’re
spoken to!’ (25). Hamm diverts Clov’s attention.

Clov: Why this farce, day after day?

Hamm: Routine. One never knows. [Pause.] Last night I saw inside my breast. There
was a big sore.
Clov: Pah! You saw your heart. (Beckett 1964: 26)

Any glimpse of conviction is eliminated through distraction. He is, therefore, waiting to reach
a state of resolve to overcome Hamm’s diversions:

Clov: [Hastening towards door.] I’ll start straight away.

Hamm: Wait! [Clov halts.] Is it not yet time for my painkiller? (28)

If commonality is to be found among the protagonists of the four texts, it is that they wait for
liberation. Joseph K. waits to be freed from the grip of an inscrutable court; Clov’s conscious
self waits for his subconscious to rise up and assert its right to independence; the Old Couple
wait eagerly for the Old Man’s ‘great moment’, for ‘all mankind to reap the benefit’ (Ionesco
1965: 162); and Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, the only variable in a world devoid of
change or meaning. Godot emblemises the absence of Logos in this world. His not-being
begets a non-Logos world, the opposition of which is structured, meaningful, objective. Didi
and Gogo therefore wait for the arrival of meaning, and thus liberation from a world bereft
thereof. Who can grant them meaning? What kind of sovereign has constructed this site-
without-Logos?

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2.
In servitude we wait

On the face of it, the rubrics and characteristics of the Wait are typically set from without
oneself. By understanding what, or who, is in control, we can help ourselves wait. When it is
as inscrutable as Kafka’s court system, however, a shift in self-perception reveals the
responsibility, and therefore autonomy, we have over such periods. Therefore, by discovering
why we are waiting, we can help ourselves.
Kafka’s court system is beguiling, elusive and inscrutable. It opaquely asserts
sovereignty over Joseph K. Retorting with ‘[w]e are not authorized to tell you [the reason for
arrest]’ (1999: 9), K.’s arresting officers prevent the devolution of information. The hierarchy
is reinforced. One officer creates the illusion of knowledgeability by saying ‘I am exceeding
my instructions in speaking freely to you like this’ (9), but reveals no more. As time
progresses, the officers’ cluelessness becomes transparent. Curiously, they know no more
than K. does.
K.’s first entrance to the Interrogation Commission room is equally unsettling.
Described as a ‘meeting-hall’ filled with a ‘crowd of the most variegated people’ and
encircled by a gallery, ‘also quite packed, where the people were able to stand only in a bent
posture with their heads and backs knocking against the ceiling’ (45), the scene’s surrealism
lies in its proximity to reality. It obeys the laws of physics, even of society; thus, its
plausibility amplifies its impenetrability.
Approaching this monolith court system, K. ‘knows that it matters enormously what
he does now, without knowing what it ought to be’ (Auden 1946: 51). When denied a peruse
of the Examining Magistrate’s books, he recognises his own position: “these books are
probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be
condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance” (Kafka 1999: 59). He is perceiving
his world objectively, attempting to traverse it logically. Warren writes astutely that
‘[Kafka’s] are novels in which the self and the world are juxtaposed in opposition’ (1946:
62). K. is plunged into a ‘world of mystery and uncertainty and insecurity’—‘a world of
hierarchy’ (ibid.). Facing it logically, he can all but flounder; it is enigmatic and absurd.
However, this misses part of the point.
As Mellen explains, Kafka critics ‘return to deterministic interpretations, to the
theological […] or to the existential, in which the character has no positive guide for his
conduct because existence itself is inexplicable’ (1970: 296). Such explanations are

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supposedly ‘intuitively perceived, correct a priori’ (ibid.), self-fulfilling. Instead, based
solely on the details of the novel, Mellen discovers a distinction Kafka makes between ‘the
“law”—the rules and mores by which bourgeois society functions—and a higher absolute to
which he gives the status of natural law—a “Law” that all men ought to obey as a moral
imperative’ (297). His own deep-seated guilt is inexplicable, ‘because his very recognition of
the validity of the legal only further alienates him from a true moral imperative’ (297). His
true struggle is with himself: he must look inwards and reconcile the two value systems.
Beyond the simplistic notion that he waits merely for liberation from the court’s legislative
vice-grip, he awaits an introspective revelation – the recognition of his ‘divided mind’
mechanism (Mellen 1970: 297), and subsequent upheaval thereof.
The Trial’s court system is, in a sense, emblematic of a post-modernist phenomenon.
Dystopian microcosms often present an inscrutable, elusive antagonistic sovereign. Examples
include We’s benefactor (Zamyatin 1924), The Great Wall’s emperor (Kafka 1931), Brave
New World’s Our Ford (Huxley 1932) and 1984’s Big Brother (Orwell 1949). Such entities,
singular or politic, are abound in 20th century dys- or utopian allegories. Ostensibly
explicable as signifiers of political allegory, they may also reflect a moral disjunction or fear
within the protagonist(s). The same rationale can be applied to Godot.
From the prisoners’ ignorant perspective, Godot himself serves as the sovereign entity
to which they are subservient. They wait at his bidding. However, despite being lent
physicality by the Boy who speaks for him, Godot is as incomprehensible a figure as Kafka’s
court. He must make endless consultations,

Estragon: In the quiet of his home.

Vladimir: Consult his family.
Estragon: His friends.
Vladimir: His agents.
Estragon: His correspondents.
Vladimir: His books.
Estragon: His bank account.
Vladimir: Before taking a decision. (Beckett 1965: 18)

His illusoriness is concretised by the pair’s repetitious squabbling: they are unsure of his
name (21), his appearance (22: Estragon asks Pozzo if he is Godot), his position in relation to
them –

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 Pozzo: Who is he?
Vladimir: Oh, he’s a . . . he’s a kind of acquaintance. (23)

and so on. Furthermore, after witnessing this profound non-event – the waiting-for-Godot
event – occur twice consecutively, the spectator is granted the wisdom of experience (which
eludes the prisoners). As becomes clear, the only thing that is certain about Godot is that he
will never arrive. That is the point: nothing occurs, twice—an infinite amount of times.

Estragon: […] Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about
nothing in particular. That’s been going on now for half a century.
(66)

As long as they wait, he will never appear. As soon as they cease to wait, the Godot-concept
will immaterialise. They dictate their Wait themselves. They wait upon inner change.
The absurd world they inhabit must also be held partially accountable for their affliction:
typifying Beckett’s universe, it is devoid of stimuli. This world-without-Logos requires
meaning to be injected into it from a source. The human mind, embracing the absurdity of
existence, must create meaning. They are faced with the duty of recognising ‘that at the root
of our being there is nothingness’ (Esslin 2001: 61) – i.e. that Godot does not exist. Whilst
believing in Godot, Didi and Gogo live in bad faith. They cannot propagate signification.
They spiral in perpetuity, waiting as long as they continue to believe in the impossible.
Comparable to Godot’s psycho-existential antagonist is the force which drives the Old
Couple’s Wait. Rather than being presented with an enigmatic sovereign, they drive their
own fate. They have invited guests, and an Orator to speak for the Old Man. They ‘act as the
pivot for a pure construction’ (Bonnefoy 1971: 85), building a platform for Logos. For
Ionesco, the ‘chairs pouring in, faster and faster, constituted the central image [and
expressed] an ontological void, a sort of whirlwind of emptiness’ (83). They are ‘on the edge
of nothingness’ (ibid.), of which the chairs are building blocks. Whilst they have faith in ‘this
abstract whirlwind of chairs’ (85), in the non-Logos void they create, they live in the same
bad faith as Estragon and Vladimir.
Stage set, they await their Orator, who is a visual and oral manifestation of the void.
He performs the meaninglessness of their construction. The Old Couple, like Godot’s
prisoners, performatively undermine themselves by inventing a non-Logos world around

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them, in which they wait for something which can never come. They deny the impossibility
of its arrival. Like Didi and Gogo, alongside Joseph K., their absurd and passionate
imprisonment is a reflection of their own bad faith.
Under whose jurisdiction has Clov waited? As previously stated, his waited upon
itself is elusive, tangential, intimate. It is the extraction of himself from the repetitious and
nonsensical world created around him. Hamm, it seems, is the despotic sovereign here. Clov
follows his dictations and regulations, however mundane, whimsical or repetitive. For Cohn,
Hamm is both director and actor in this tragic farce; ‘[h]owever, rather than creation, he has
been engaged in destruction of the world outside his shelter’ (1962: 46). Clov is variously
designated as Hamm’s ‘dog, menial, creature, and son’ (ibid.). He is subservient and follows
orders. Hamm is thus contrived as the master of the game, the court of this world. However,
with a phenomenological shift towards autonomous characterisation, as is encouraged by the
absurd premise of the play, one might demarcate the shelter-universe with Clov’s perceptive
limits. Hamm and Clov are physically and emotionally interdependent, perhaps even part of
the same consciousness. If so, Clov, as the able and reasoning, is the primary perpetuator of
his own captivity – he maintains his own boundary, accepts it as the limitations of his
existence. He is the source.
His opening monologue alludes to how this world has been manufactured around him,
seemingly out of his control, and how it is becoming too much to bear:

Clov: [Fixed gaze, tonelessly.] Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be
nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly,
there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. [Pause.] I can’t be punished
any more. (Beckett 1964: 12)

He is approaching Telos, but cannot grasp it; his stasis in the final tableau signifies his failure
to conceive of a future outside of his enclosure. Clov’s antithesis, Hamm the dictator-director,
similarly perceives the magnitude of their combined stasis, and hacks away at the possibility
of closure. His soliloquy-response explicitly raises the ‘end’ issue:

Hamm: […] Enough, it's time it ended, in the refuge, too. [Pause.] And yet I hesitate,
I hesitate to… to end. Yes, there it is, it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to—
[he yawns.]—to end. [Yawns.] (12)

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Two halves of the same coin, similar to the shared consciousness of Ionesco’s Old Couple,
the pair halt each other’s progress. They are each other’s antagonist, oppositional forces. The
finishing tableau (53) illustrates the perpetuity and universality of the world which inhabits
Clov (as protagonist for the spectator)—not the other way round. His inability to abscond
symbolises his inability to believe in a world outside, as the antagonistic element of his
consciousness has precluded any faith therein. Hamm cannot explain to Clov why he ‘always
obey[s]’ him (48) because it would crush him: ‘Oh you won’t find it easy’ (ibid.).
So, it is under his own twisted sovereignty that Clov awaits his fate. He maintains his
own private universe, and himself lacks the conviction required to leave it. Despite living
within him, the sovereign-antagonist is no more comprehensible than that of The Trial’s
court, nor Godot, nor the Old Couple’s diabolical human nature. Whilst the Old Couple’s
self-inflicted Wait is perhaps the most explicable – directed as it is by vanity, ambition and
belief in a spiritual teleology – it is no less tragic. Whereas their plight is actively self-
created, however, Joseph K.’s is a reflection of ‘the inadequacies of his personality’ (Mellen
1970: 296), a subconscious projection of his fallibility. As, in a sense, is the prisoners’. Citing
Charles Neider, Mellen argues that ‘since the Courts are “irrational, unjust and deliberately
clandestine,” the only escape would be “belief in oneself, in one’s integrity, one’s senses and
one’s logic”’ (1970: 296). The illogicality of the court renders K.’s mission an intimately
introspective one: it is the demon within himself that he must fight. Language has failed to
equip him with understanding, as it failed to realise the Old Couple’s guests, as it kept Godot
from arriving. We are to grow ‘more and more sceptical toward the language [we are]
exposed to’ (Esslin 2001: 408).
As shown, the protagonists of Beckett, Ionesco and Kafka await a personal revelation.
They must address their own fallibility to quash the antagonistic sovereign at the heart of
their respective plights. The absence of observable chronology in all the depicted worlds
supports this: they are situated in non-places, in non-temporalities, often without a definitive
geography. They lack absolute meaning, remaining untouched by a stringent Logos. It is the
duty of the protagonists to inject Logos into their worlds. Until they are able to do so, they
will inhabit worlds indissolubly, invariably characterised by Sartre’s Not.

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3.
To wait is to Not

The simple act of waiting is invariably characterised by not doing, or not having, what one
waits upon. That much is undeniable. As long as something exists on the horizon, one is
engaged in the act of waiting. Our protagonists, however, are not waiting as such. Estragon
and Vladimir are without Godot, who does not exist; Joseph K. waits for acquittal, which
cannot come without a phenomenological shift; Clov, too, waits for freedom, which he
cannot obtain; the Old Couple looks towards the Orator’s speech, which simply is not. They
are all without meaning. The integral, stringent point of absence which connects them all is
that of Logos.
The Old Couple construct a non-Logos world out of empty chairs. There is no action
to speak of, only their reactions to the invisible guests. Their half-sentences pertain to nothing
because they are in response to non-existent questions.

Old Woman [to the Photographer]: Oh! Really, Sir! …

Old Man: [to the Colonel]: I quite agree with you there.
Old Woman [to the Photographer]: Oh, really, Sir, really! …
(Ionesco 1965: 146)

Moreover, each knows everything the other knows; their communications are redundant,
inconsequential. They ‘have lived together for so long that they share the same
consciousness’ (Schechner 1962: 67-8). This interdependence or ‘total “love” is indeed very
touching’ (Schechner 1962: 70), even legitimate, but it is forged in ignorance, in a space-
without-Logos. Any genesis of meaning must therefore come from without, but there is
literally no space for Logos to be inserted; they have filled the space with empty language. As
Ionesco reflects,

The chairs remain empty because there’s no one there. […] The world doesn’t really
exist. The subject of the play was nothingness, not failure. It was total absence: chairs
without people. (Bonnefoy 1971: 72; my emphasis)

Richard Coe posits that by having the Old Couple conjure ‘some two-and-thirty creatures of
flesh and blood and unmistakeable materiality’, the play demonstrates that ‘language can

14
create existence’ (1961: 43). True, their guests are theatrically present; however, they
demonstrate the ‘yawning gulf’ that ‘has opened between language and reality’ (Esslin 2001:
409). They cannot subsist without constant inflation; they dissolve upon the Couple’s exit,
and ‘we who remain apprehend the emptiness of [the Couple’s] consciousness, further
underlined by the retinue of chairs’ (Schechner 1962: 70). They are speech without writing:
they lack Logos and therefore prove the Old Couple’s failure to create meaning.
Likewise, Clov’s world is defined by its lack of Logos. Hamm engages him in
repetitious, meaningless micro-narratives in order to keep him occupied, to prevent his
recognition of his existence-without-Logos. In that bare, grey room there is no change: no
development, no advancement, no meaning. This state of amplified stasis is championed by
Hamm, its primary exponent:

Hamm: Gone from me you’d be dead.

Clov: And vice versa.
Hamm: Outside of here it’s death! (Beckett 1964: 45)

He is part of the parasitic non-Logos world which surrounds Clov, assuring him that to exit
means to die; he is pure opposition, the epitome of non-Logos, a force for the eradication of
meaning. Pearson (2001: 217) takes Lyons’ assertion that Beckett ‘is here portraying Clov as
“a victim of the language of the oppressor”’, and proffers that ‘these lines constitute a direct
reference to the imperialist resonances of The Tempest’. Political invocations aside, Clov is a
victim inasmuch as Hamm’s dialectic is contra-Logos. Hamm’s attempts to distract Clov
emblematise his vendetta against the invention of signification.
Estragon and Vladimir are also without Logos. Their landscape is ‘indescribable. It’s
like nothing. There’s nothing’ (Beckett 1965: 87). Until they recognise its meaninglessness, it
will remain empty. Glimpses of recognition come in half-connected speech: Vladimir
stumbles over the words ‘waiting for Godot, waiting for . . . waiting’ (77), and Estragon’s
frequent confusion over Godot’s identity belies belief in a concrete figure.

Vladimir: But it’s not Godot.

Estragon: It’s not Godot?
Vladimir: It’s not Godot.
Estragon: Then who is it? (78, upon Pozzo’s entrance)

15
They slog in ignorance, repeating motions. Considering suicide (93), they inadvertently
consolidate the futility of their enterprise. However, it is impossible – ostensibly because of a
lack of provisions:

Estragon: Why don’t we hang ourselves?

Vladimir: With what?
Estragon: You haven’t got a bit of rope?
Vladimir: No.
Estragon: Then we can’t.
Silence. (93)

Actually, their inability to graft Logos manifests itself in this way. Escape must come from
within; they must create Logos, rather than extricate themselves and absolve responsibility.
Pozzo, ambassador for this non-Logos world, assures them, ‘don’t count on me to enlighten
you’ (88). Likewise Joseph K. must stop trying to logically comprehend his world. Without
recognising this, and the subsequently reconciling of the two distinct types of Law (Mellen
1970: 296-7), he will continue to flounder in this world-without-Logos—the result of his own
existential disjunction. As Ionesco articulates, Kafka’s characters ‘suffer from not being, they
suffer from their lack’ (Bonnefoy 1971: 156). Joseph K., alongside Didi and Gogo, the Old
Couple and Clov, is ‘seeking [his] own deep reality’ (ibid.).
Pertinent to the discussion here is Sartre’s concept of the Not (to which I have
previously alluded), in which form consciousness must ‘arise in the world’ (1956: 47).
Schechner argues that

At the very heart of consciousness there is a Not; in fact our consciousness defines the
world by the negative act of exclusion rather than by the positive of act of inclusion.
(1962: 67)

Indeed, Ionesco’s Old Woman ‘never tells [the Old Man] what he is, but only what he could
have been; that is to say, what he is not’ (68). He ‘could have been a General Editor, a
Director-General, a General Physician, Majesty, or a Generalissimo’ (Ionesco 1965: 167) or
any other nondescript title, but he is not. Thus, she frames his existence in terms of exclusion.
Schechner continues:

16
 In an attempt to flee from the anguish which results from a confrontation with the Not
within ourselves we are often ensnared in what Sartre calls mauvaise foi (bad faith).’
(1962: 67)

Confronting the Not is dangerous but required. Attempting to escape the resulting anguish, in
hope or despair (suicide), embroils one in bad faith: ‘[t]he hope of salvation may be merely
an evasion of the suffering and anguish that spring from facing the reality of the human
condition’ (Esslin 2001: 61). When Estragon and Vladimir resolve to hang themselves, they
expose their mauvaise foi. The Old Couple’s fate is similar, though determinately sealed by
their simultaneous diegetic death.
Clov supposedly knows ‘you must learn to suffer better than that if you want them to
weary of punishing you’ (Beckett 1964: 51), and fleetingly foretells his departure.

Clov: [Pause.] Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don’t understand, it
dies, or it’s me, I don’t understand that either. […] I open the door of the cell
and go. (51)

He identifies his powerlessness, prefigures his exodus, but fails to understand or achieve it.
Didi and Gogo remain, haplessly faithful; K. and the Old Couple die. The latter’s suicide is
the ‘ultimate nihilation’: it ‘is the only “real” act which the old couple performs, and it is
literally an absurdity: a meaningless act’ (Schechner 1962: 68). The same can be said for K.,
whose death, I argue, is a suicidal act. Subsumed in bad faith, K., the Old Couple and Didi
and Gogo ‘try to fill in the whole’ at the centre of their being and ‘convince themselves that
[they] are what [they] are not’. In bad faith,

our very existence is qualified by the fact that we believe our actions to be true (the
Wait to be qualified). It is only at rare moments that we become aware of our own bad
faith. The pressure of circumstances, our situation, makes us glimpse our own
nothingness. During these evanescent moments of perception of the Not we
experience anguish. (Schechner 1962: 67; my parentheses).

17
4.
The worst of all states – stagnancy

Solely waiting denotes lack of progress. If Being-value is to be quantified as worthy-acts over

time-lived, it diminishes every moment one solely waits. If the waited-upon arrives and lives
up to expectations, it qualifies the Wait; it justifies it as a period of waiting. If the Wait is
disrobed (if the waited-upon does not satisfy), one experiences philosophical stagnancy.
Ones Being-value diminishes, eludes replenishment, as the waiting-time becomes wasted-
time. A dissatisfactory waited-upon results merely in a reduced Being-value. One experiences
absolute stagnancy when the existential pressure exerted at the moment of disrobing
outweighs ones philosophic potency. Without Sisyphus’ philosophical adeptness, one
flounders, expires, and seeks immediate escape.
The moment of disrobing is the temporal singularity at which the illusion breaks – the
façade of the waited-upon is cracked. We (the Implied Reader (Makaryk 1993: 562),
alongside the protagonists) perceive the destruction, or loss, of Being-value as a result of the
elimination of the waited-upon. During the Wait, Being-value loses opacity but retains its
potential. It requires the arrival of the waited-upon for validation—re-existence. Quivering in
the face of this loss, minds not philosophically tempered resort to acquiescence.
I call upon Sisyphus, the ‘absurd hero’ (Camus 2000: 108), as one who triumphs over
this nothingness—the monotony of his existence. Condemned by the gods to ‘ceaselessly
rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight’
(Camus 2000: 107), Sisyphus’s plight is the absurd condition manifest. Conceived as
punishment, this impossible task emblematises the enforced non-Logos existence of our
protagonists; none can complete their task. Sisyphus confronts his Not: he ‘knows the whole
extent of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent’ (109). However,
rather than depress, this invigorates: [t]he lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the
same time crowns his victory’ (109). He is forced to confront a momentous Not, and
surmounts it – ‘His fate belongs to him’ (110). Simultaneously, hope and scorn undermine his
punishment. He does not deny his captivity, nor yearn for release. He recognises his
condition and adjusts his phenomenological mode to view himself as free. Therein lies his
transcendence. Instead of waiting for change to come externally, he embraces his existence-
without-Logos.
An ostensible alternative is suicide. However, this is ‘a “repudiation”, an
acquiescence to the absurd’ (Foley 2008: 10). It is not transcendence, nor ‘the ultimate act of

18
freedom, but the renunciation of human freedom' (ibid.). Unfortunately for Ionesco’s Old
Couple, Joseph K., and in a sense for Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, this is the only possible route.
Clov, too, inadvertently resolves to commit suicide. After being told repeatedly that ‘outside
of here it’s death’, his conviction to leave mounts. ‘Very tired’ (48) of Hamm’s ‘goings on’,
and driven ‘mad’ (49), he exclaims, ‘[l]et’s stop playing!’ (49), thus sealing his fate: he
cannot keep carrying on, so resolves to leave. His failure in this is tangential, like to Godot’s
prisoners’ failure to mark an end.
Suicide can take two forms: active, conscious, physical suicide or subconscious,
philosophical suicide. The Old Couple actively leap to their deaths. But why? Firstly, the
Orator is the ‘contradiction of what an Orator should be: he is deaf and mute’ (Schechner
1962: 71). Their plan loses momentum. Before he is even given the chance to orate, the
Couple subconsciously recognise the futility of their enterprise. They perceive the ‘black hole
of [an] unrealized future’ at the moment when ‘the Old Man feels that he may not be able to
deliver his great message’ (Schechner 1962: 68). The Old Man regresses, ‘retreats to infancy’
(ibid.), and finally, ‘[f]ar from facing the truth, he radically escapes from it’ (ibid.). To
explain: the Couple’s combined subconscious pre-empts the moment of disrobing and the
stagnation that will ensue, envisages the weight of nothingness which will envelop them, and
actively avoids it. Professing to ‘die in our moment of glory … so that our names become
legendary’ (Ionesco 1965: 174), the Old Woman proves their mauvaise foi—their denial.
Vladimir and Estragon ruminate on suicide, and their lacklustre, noncommittal
attempt reveals a sort of acquiescence. More significantly, it belies a concrete coming-to-
terms with their existential plight. Their philosophical suicide (and K.’s) is more subtle,
nuanced and ambiguous. Whilst not physically committing suicide – at least, not within the
diegesis – they do not achieve Sisyphean transcendence. They simply wait in perpetuity.
Inoue (2000) highlights that ‘[t]hey notice unconsciously that they can transcend endless time
without suffering, if they continue to do something’ (10).

Vladimir: That passed the time.

Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly. (Beckett 1965: 48)

This reflection aligns them somewhat with Sisyphus, inasmuch as they find a way to pass the
time. However, their conversations run dry: ‘they constantly have trouble finding new topics’
(Inoue 2000: 11). Two of Vladimir’s speeches in particular demonstrate the pair’s pseudo-

19
recognition of their time-passing, vacuous micronarratives. Amid Pozzo’s exclamations, he
muses,

All I know is that the hours are long […] and constrain us to beguile them with
proceedings which […] may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit.
You may say it is to prevent our reason from foundering. No doubt. But has it not
long been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths?
(Beckett 1965: 80)

Admitting the habitude of their actions, Vladimir reveals a glimpse of acknowledgement, as

if recollecting a prior grasp of their situation. Later, he concludes,

But it is not for nothing I have lived through this long day and I can assure you it is
very near the end of its repertory. (86)

Such insights notwithstanding, they do not effect change in the pair’s existential mode. They
continue to wait—and wait forever. Their resolve to ‘hang ourselves tomorrow’ (94) and
stasis at the curtain-fall performs their non-transcendence. Their closing statements are
equivalent to Sisyphus saying, ‘I’ll kill myself tomorrow’ (which is impossible: his
punishment is eternal), ‘unless I’m freed’ (which is antithetical to Sisyphus).
Clov’s conclusion is equivalent. Convinced that death lies outside, Clov fails to
execute even this. Preceding Hamm’s final soliloquy, Clov concedes, ‘it’s I am obliged to
you’ (Beckett 1964: 51). He recognises Hamm as non-Logos incarnate. Hamm is his
antithesis: he is stasis; he cannot stand, whereas Clov cannot sit; he is boisterous and
despotic, whereas Clov is meek and masochistic. In his closing speech, Hamm alludes to
cyclicality and teleology, speaks of ‘reckoning closed and story ended’ (52): the antagonistic
element of Clov’s subconscious projection yields. His ‘last million last moments’ denote
finitude. However, rather than pursue this conclusion, Clov evades conflict. He listens. He
recognises the utter meaninglessness of their interactions, but cannot leave. He perceives the
futility of his existence, and having already failed to embrace and transcend his Sisyphean
situation, he then fails to escape it as well.
K.’s death may seem unclear. The officials’ arrival in the final scene is, I argue, a
manifestation of his subconscious will. He perceives the non-teleology of his interminable
Wait, and acquiesces. As previously explained (informed by Mellen (1970)), the omnipotent,

20
labyrinthine court is a projection of his own internal conflict, resulting from a psycho-
existential disjunction—guilt at having disobeyed an intrinsic, transcendental Law combined
with an Ego-based belief in his innocence. He fails to reconcile these. Therefore, he brings
about his own end, relinquishing his existential position in favour of the instant gratification
of escape. There are several clues in support of this.
Firstly, when they arrive, K. is dressed for the occasion, ‘slowly pulling on a pair of
new gloves that fitted tightly over the fingers, looking as if he were expecting guests’ (Kafka
1999: 245, my emphasis). Next, he says to himself ‘[t]hey’re not prepared to answer
questions’ (246), skipping any resistive interrogation and catalysing his execution. The
‘unity’ with which they wrest him is ‘such as can be formed almost by lifeless elements
alone’ (246), denoting the inflexibility of inanimate objects—the officers cannot be swayed
because they lack autonomy themselves. K. surrenders that ‘not even a whole year’s
struggling with [his] case has taught [him] anything’ (247). His surrender is manifest in the
officers’ silence: they offer his conscious Self nothing to contradict; they stop when K. stops
(247), run when he runs (249). They are a limb of the court, an element of his projection.
Thus, upon recognising the futility of his endeavour, he abandons his search for meaning, and
succumbs to death.
Such is the crisis of zhe whose waited-upon is monumentally disrobed.

21
5.
Conclusion

As a metaphor for the human (or absurd) condition, the act of waiting presents sincere
difficulties. Metaphysical waiting conditions translate the consequences of embedded waiting
– impatience, yearning – into their amplified, existential equivalents. Cognitive lucidity
wanes during a period of extended waiting. The magnified stasis our protagonists are dragged
through by their authors (or worlds) provokes a diminishment of rationality. This manifests
itself in the breakdown of meaning—of language and reason, and ultimately Logos.
The protagonists’ waiting generates a non-Logos world around them, which they must
confront. This confrontation is modelled on Sisyphus’s confrontation with the Not at the
centre of his existence. Sisyphus accepts and embraces his fate, and re-packages it to suit
him. He does not deny, rather he acknowledges his non-Logos captivity. Our protagonists’
mistake, having confronted the Not, is ‘evading what one cannot evade, in evading what one
is’ (Esslin 2001: 61); this ensnares them in bad faith.
None waits for anything tangible or concrete: theirs is a personal, intimate and
abstract mission. Within their various narratives, the ‘things’ upon which they wait are
entirely unreal. Their own personal liberation-reconciliation is analogised as Godot, a speech,
acquittal and escape. The abstract bud of ‘embracing-the-absurd’ is marginalised by the
rational, logical and formal part of their minds. They experience the waiting state as a
consciousness discord—a conflict between conscious and subconscious.
In The Trial, K. fails to reconcile his law-Law ethical disjunction and the consequent
void impels him to suicide. For Ionesco’s Old Couple, too, suicide is a compulsion. It is their
only chance of escape, a sure-fire way to establish their denial. The risk of non-arrival or
dissatisfaction is too great. K. and the Couple thereby performatively acquiesce, compelled to
eliminate the possibility of downfall—by escaping the reality of a non-Logos world before it
engulfs them.
Vladimir and Estragon also fail to exit the cyclicality of their world-without-Logos.
They revolve in perpetuity, believing Godot to be always on the horzion. They will not take
responsibility for the creation of Logos. Likewise, Endgame’s hapless underdog Clov fails to
assert his rights both to live and to die. He resolves to extract himself from his world-without-
Logos, dominated by a subconscious parasite, yet fails to enact his fate. As Esslin states, ‘[i]f
Clov can muster the will power to leave, he will not only kill Hamm but commit suicide. He
will thus succeed in where Estragon and Vladimir have failed so often’ (2001: 63). However,

22
he remains. Ultimately, his stasis exemplifies the ultimate failure, matching that of Estragon
and Vladimir, the Old Couple and Joseph K.
Invalidated waiting periods invariably damage ones Being-value—without a
satisfactory result, waiting is existentially damaging. First, it widens the gulf between
language and reality. Then it hacks away at the soul until the only escape is death. Only
Sisyphus, with hope and scorn, triumphs over his fate; the phenomenological trick: to
recognise and embrace the hand dealt, and to write and live by one’s own terms.

23
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