Background Information about Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

In the 19th century, with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world went through a big change. The requirements for new basic materials and markets triggered World War I as a new type of colonization process. The destructive effect of this first war, which caused many changes in the way people saw and perceived the world around them as well as themselves, increased with the outbreak of the Second World War. People started to see the world as a disoriented and chaotic place and lost their faith in the importance of human life and mind. The change in the mentality and ideals of people, along with new practices that the wartime environment forced on Europeans, affected the art and literature of the time.

When World War II began in 1939, paper usage was rationed, and this affected the publication of newspapers and magazines, which resulted in "intellectual and creative exuberance," according to Britannica. In addition to this, because of the limited time that they had for reading, poems and short stories gained popularity, especially among soldiers, while novels and plays got less popular.

After the war, the economic hardships England faced during the war lasted for a while, causing unrest and despair among the people and adding to their negative perceptions of the war. Furthermore, many theatres were destroyed during the war, and it was difficult for plays to find funding because of the bad economic conditions. There was also a competition between live theatre and the mass media like cinema, television, and radio because these new forms of entertainment were able to offer what live theatre had. Therefore, the dramatists of the time searched for ways to offer different materials to the audience. These resulted in the rise of new types of drama, like "theatre of the absurd."

Samuel Beckett was one of these dramatists, and his plays were some of the most significant examples of absurd theater. He was born in Dublin in 1906. He lived most of his life in Paris after moving there as a lecturer. According to some sources, he hated teaching, but he kept doing it until he had to stop because of his increasing mental breakdowns. He depended on writing and translating, which he enjoyed, for a living from then on.

For a while, because of several reasons like the death of his father and financial issues, he traveled back and forth between Dublin and Paris, but he always preferred Paris over Dublin. Marjorie Perloff quotes his words as follows: "I preferred France in war to Ireland in peace" (80). He finally moved back to Paris in 1937. An incident that affected his writing later happened during this time. One night, while walking on the street, he was stabbed in the chest. Later, he visited the man who stabbed him in prison and asked him the reason. The answer he got was, "I don’t know." This answer, according to some scholars studying Beckett, had an impact on his ideas about the futility and meaninglessness of the human condition and experience (udel.edu).

Two years after the incident, World War II started, and like many other writers of the time, the environment it brought affected Beckett. Following the two world wars, he became concerned about popular ideas about self and identity in literature and art. Although he tried to stay neutral, Beckett joined a resistance group in Paris against Nazi Germany. To avoid being captured, he hid in a safer part of France for a while. After the war, he had the most productive years of his career, completing Waiting for Godot in four months. The play was originally written in French and was staged in Paris in 1953 for the first time.

Although it is considered one of the best works of post-war drama and absurd theatre today, it did not get the response that was expected from the sophisticated audience of the time because of its unconventional form and subject. However, when it was staged for a group of prisoners in the US in 1957, they managed to relate to the play and appreciate it, causing it to gain fame. According to what Martin Esslin suggests, the act of waiting and the meaninglessness of the play were what affected this audience since they were familiar with these concepts. This anecdote is an important detail in the play’s history to understand how the products of Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd in general require an insightful reading to see their significance.