Poem: Waiting for Godot; An Allegory

Is there anyone there, am I alone,
Is this heaven, hell, it’s all unknown,
Waiting for Godot, asks me why,
That after the world war, number II,
Did we lose faith, did we even try,
Did we believe in Salvation or Damnation?

Samuel Beckett’s text, an absurdist play,
Makes us think in our own special way,
That after the bomb, the cruelty, the madness,
We waited and waited, for soon it became sadness,
To witness simply, our own unknowingness,
Was God there? Were we doomed from the start?

In a cold war period people started to question,
The existence of greater life, even their own position,
For if there did exist a god, why did he let all this occur?
Why did he not intervene, or is death what he would prefer?

This religious uncertainty and waiting was beginning to deter,
Even the strongest of believers, but religion still persisted and people still waited

Vladamir says, when discussing “Our Saviour”,
“Everybody. It’s the only version they know”, and I wager,
That Beckett delves into why we believe,
It’s simply because it’s all we can conceive,
Our ignorance, our belief in only what we know is our reprieve,
From the pain and the suffering of post-war, the fear we cannot perceive,
Religion was our escape, it was the only explanation we knew.

Through use of an allusion, to the biblical story of Jesus on the cross,
“One is supposed to have been saved and the other...damned”, Beckett tries to put across,
That simply heaven and hell, was a 50/50 chance,
You either lived and survived or was given the Death Dance,
For death was universal and this fatalistic perception and stance,
Was an existential crisis, that followed the dropping of the bomb.

Beckett uses this idea of chance, through the characters and their duality,
We have Estragon, Vladamir, Pozzo and Lucky, each a description of our own morality,
“Theres an even chance” Estragon discovers,
We are either damned or saved, Beckett uncovers,
This biblical idea of sin and repentance, good and bad, my dear brothers,
Are the core ideals that Beckett believes were lost in the cold war

This loss of religion, of purpose; a lack of belief,
Can be further seen , through the play’s motif,
Of forgetfulness, a lack of memory of the past,
Of Godot, who has connotations of God, yet forgotten fast,
Beckett says we’ve already forgotten, It did not last,
There was a change in perception and ways of thinking.

But what is more prevalent, is the bible, as a consequence,
Of a post-war negativity, has caused our reluctance,
To believe that a higher being is real,
For even though we prayed and did kneel,
The atrocities that were seen post war did seal,
Our loss of faith, religion and its strictures became less and less relevant.

“Coloured they were, very pretty” Estragon seems to recall,
“of the maps of the holy lands”; Beckett says that for all,
With the world in a bleak uncertainty and fear,
Not knowing what is next, is death coming near?
For salvation seemed so far in a post-war year
This ambiguity is what defined religion and belief in the late 20^th century.

To not be able to find meaning, is what Beckett tries to portray,
Without religious reasoning, Vladamir and Estragon do say,
“Let’s Hang ourselves immediately!”, without a second thought,
From a willow tree, described as a “tree of life”, before the rope is caught,
They stop, they think, Valdamir says “Your my only hope”,  that is their thought,
To not die yet, for their existential crisis is not over.

A tree a symbol of hope, a willow a symbol of death and loss,
In a land of emptiness and nothingness, a message is put across,
Beckett through the oxymoron willow tree,
Makes out salvation and damnation, hope and death they may be,
To be not only tied together but uncertain, that is that we,
In a world of the cold war, where everything is tense, cannot be certain of salvation or damnation

If we go further biblically in regards to this tree,
Beckett knowingly makes us think and see,
That the tree that symbolises, the tree of knowledge,
A tree from the garden of eden, which we all acknowledge,
Was our original sin, we ate the apple, it gave us knowledge,
But we were damned, just like we were damned by the discovery of the atomic bomb

But a perpetual wait, is what we come back to,
“Waiting for godot” is in the name and thus we do,
Sit and wait, for a messiah, a saviour
To take us away from all this misbehaviour,
Yet the longer and longer we wait, the situation gets graver,
As the spheres of influence become more and more dangerous

Yet when given the chance to go, what do we do?
“Well? Shall we go? Yes, let’s go? [They do not move],” this is true,
For we fear what we do not know,
Without religion, without our faith, we do not go,
Forward or backwards, we stop and freeze and forego,
Our chance to end our suffering and confusion but we stick to reality and what we know of

Put it simply, the absurdist play as a whole,
Uses the confusion, the uncertainty, the lack of control,
As a religious allegory, Beckett has confirmed,
That the uncertainty in the cold war period has turned,
Into a fear of damnation and salvation and concern,
We do not know, so we do not progress.

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