The Mythic Pattern in Waiting for Godot

THE MYTHIC PATTERN IN WAITING FOR GODOT THE OUT-OF-DOORS SETTING OF Waiting for Codot suggests that the tragicomedy falls into a seasonal mythic pattern. However diminished they may be, we are furnished with a sun, a moon, and a sky; there is also a tree, a bog and solid earth. The two tramps are, or have been, itinerant workers-grape harvesters. They have had a close contact with earth's life; they are "two tramps in mud time." The broad pattern which is central to Waiting for Codot is perhaps nowhere better expressed than at the very beginning of Frazer's Adonis, Attis, Osiris: The spectacle of the great changes which annually pass over the face of the earth has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages, and stirred them to meditate on the causes of transformations so vast and wonderful . . . In the course of time the slow advance of knowledge ... convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.1 Before we turn to examine more specifically how this germinal pattern is exploited in Waiting for Codot, we should look briefly at part of the critical machinery which has revealed the vital connections of myth and drama. If we take Frye's hint concerning the forms of drama, we should expect to see modern plays moving from the archetypal masque toward what Frye calls the "auto."2 That is, we should expect to see the plays which exist in "sinister limboes" outside of space and time (such as the subterranean crypts of Maeterlink ) moving toward plays in which the actors are believed to be dramatizing mythic figures. This movement, according to Frye, is part of a cycle of dramatic forms which originates in and returns to ritual drama. Thus, the strong feeling that Waiting for Codot is a religious play derives not only from the verbal playing with Christ and the two thieves, but also from the very form of the play itself, which comes close to ritual drama. A re-tracing of steps, reversals of cause and effect are also apparent in Waiting for Codot. These reversals of cause and effect are what i Sir James Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (London, 1914), I, 3. 2 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957), pp. 282-293. 292 1966 MYTHIC PATTERN IN Waiting for Godot 293 one would expect from a cyclic return to myth. In these terms, the conflict in Waiting for Godot can be seen as a war of winter and spring, with winter in the ascendency. Originally the changing seasons suggested, as Frazer has told us, mightier powers "at work behind the shifting scenes of nature." Now the powers are forgotten. There is only the physical pre-occupation with shivering and the cold. VLADIMIR. I'm cold. ESTRAGON. We came too soon. In the play, neither spring nor the god arrives. The same cause-effect reversal is suggested in the following exchange : VLADIMIR. . .. You're not going to compare yourself to Christ! ESTRAGON. All my life I've compared myself to him. VLADIMIR. But where he lived it was warm, it was dry! ESTRAGON. Yes. And they .crucified quick. That is, the warmth of the season is a cause of the crucifixion and resurrection, and not vice versa. The god must wait upon the vernal equinox; he has little to do with controlling the seasons. In Waiting for Godot, only the sensory present has undeniable reality: spring and the gods are merely talked about-especially by Estragon. He is the poet; he quotes Shelley, appreciates the beauty of the maps of the Holy Land, and dreams. The most significant element in the sensory present is, however, the persistence of physical cold. We are constantly reminded that it is cold, that there is very little life anywhere. The tree, perhaps a willow, is bare of leaves. Pozzo remarks that there is a "touch of autumn in the air." Vladimir complains persistently of the cold. A renewal...