Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot is an excellent example of avante-garde and modernist literature in the 1950s. The play follows two men, Vladimir and Estragon, as they wait, seemingly endlessly, for an undefined figure referred to as Godot. Throughout the course of the story, the audience is constantly waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever does. A boy is visiting and tell Vladimir and Estragon to keep waiting, that Godot is coming, but in the end, Godot never arrives.

The theme of nihilism was relatively new and radical for the time period—that is, the idea that humans inevitably look for answers from a higher power but ultimately in vain. Godot, as suggested by his name, is an allegory for God, and the characters spend the entirety of the play doing and saying little and waiting for this all-knowing being that does not appear to exist. Given that the play was written in the 1950 by an Irish author (Christianity was prevalent in Ireland), the ideas and themes of the play were especially radical.