Interpreting Waiting for Godot from a Schopenhauerian View

Abstract

This article is an analytical review of Samuel Beckett's supreme representation of the absurd, Waiting for Godot, which aims mainly at stressing Schopenhauer’s presence in this work from two aspects: the aesthetic idea and pessimism. In Schopenhauerian aesthetics, one way to recognize thing-in-itself is to get rid of time, space, and causality, which is a noticeable characteristic in Waiting for Godot, and the suffering of life, the core of Schopenhauer's pessimism, is also an essential element in this play. This paper will attempt to interpret Waiting for Godot from these two perspectives, which might help to illuminate how Schopenhauer's ideas have influenced Samuel Beckett in his early works.