Human Archetypes in Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Introduction: Archetypes and the Absurd

There are many characters common to the stories of almost every culture, sharing personality traits and plot characteristics despite seemingly large cultural barriers and differences. Joseph Campbell, in his studies of mythology and literature, identified many of these archetypes and explained their placement and interactions within the grouping of other archetypes. Carl Jung began an examination of archetypes and a common collective unconscious — from which these figures sprang — even earlier than Campbell began his work. Figures such as the wise mentor, the gatekeeper, the hero, the healer, and many others play highly important roles in individual myths and works of art and literature, and are also central to world society and culture generally through the commonality and prevalence of their appearance.

Though these figures are generally presented in a familiar light, it is also possible for the very commonality of these archetypes — and the roles they play in the various stories and myths in which they feature prominently — to be warped and adjusted to make new and often very powerful statements. By creating figures that are at once recognizable as archetypes yet differ from those archetypes in the mode of their presentation, authors can produce startling new interpretations not only of the characters themselves but of humanity as a whole. This is precisely what much modern and post-modern literature has done.

Archetypes Gone Wrong

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, often considered the essential masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd genre, is largely built on just such a reimagining of many fairly standard archetypes. Each of the characters who appears in the play, however briefly, is recognizable as one of the human archetypes common to people of almost all cultures. At the same time, none of these characters fully or truly lives up to the stature of their respective archetype. The world that Beckett has created in Waiting for Godot is largely devoid of meaning, and as a result the ultimate significance associated with each archetype must also necessarily suffer and diminish. In this post-modern world, each archetype is shown to essentially fail at the basic tasks and roles traditionally expected of it — tasks toward which the characters nonetheless show some signs of striving throughout the play.

Vladimir: The Failed Father Figure

Beckett populates his play with characters who correspond to well-known archetypal roles — the father figure, the Innocent, the Seer, the Slave, the Herald, and the Savior — yet each is systematically denied the fulfillment that archetype would traditionally promise. This deliberate subversion is the engine of the play's existentialist commentary: by raising familiar expectations only to disappoint them, Beckett mirrors the experience of characters who wait endlessly for a salvation that never arrives.

Vladimir is a fairly clear father figure. He is by far the more active of the two primary characters, initiating most of the conversations and taking control of the situation — or at least of Estragon, as much as he is able — when Pozzo enters the scene. He attempts to be a strong and wise leader, but he is ultimately ineffectual and leads the pair of companions absolutely nowhere. He remembers more, pontificates more, and seems to offer more wisdom — all traditional elements of the father figure archetype in literature — but all of his "wisdom" is ultimately worthless. None of his proposed and, at times, apparently well-reasoned actions are ever put into practice, creating a static rather than a dynamic father figure.

Conclusion

Though far from the most optimistic piece of drama ever written, Beckett provides a thought-provoking, complex, and even humorous view of humanity in his masterpiece, Waiting for Godot. A large part of this effect comes from his warping of standard human archetypes into new forms that resonate more deeply and completely with the world he has created in the play. As both an exercise in existentialist philosophy and a compelling piece of drama, the use of these archetypes — and the transformations wrought upon them — make Waiting for Godot a work of strong tradition and bold innovation.