Editor's Choice
What is the boy's function in Waiting for Godot?
Quick answer:
The Boy in Waiting for Godot symbolizes hope and anticipation. He provides Vladimir and Estragon with reassurance that Godot will come, serving as a messenger of faith and a vessel for their expectations. However, his vague and ambiguous messages also highlight the futility and false hope in their waiting, reflecting Beckett's existential themes and the cyclical nature of despair and anticipation.
In Beckett’s overall exploration of the meaning of existence, the Boy in WaitingforGodot and in Endgame are the same character type, and apparently each perform the same function: by entering the continuity—a Beckett-ian fake-out, his version of a deus ex machina, (as in) a late-in-the-game device to contrive plot resolution—and then injecting a faint note of hope into the doom-laden proceedings. The characters that occupy Beckett’s foreground positions—the limbo-lost—need a life-line.
The Boy character/symbol, therefore, can be taken as a representation of hope, certainly in relation to the general post-apocalyptic setting and action. Vladimir and Estragon are two of the many of Beckett’s humans in extremis. Their resilience (willing or forced, but always pitched to meet the unreasonable level of degradation or disability they’re coping with) is a reaction to the self-reinforcing loop of awfulness that is their lives.
These are characters in dire need of expectation management....
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
Another possible function of the Boy within the cast as a whole is as a minimalist, zen-like presence to counter-balance Lucky, the quintessential idiot savant, he of the “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
And yes, the Boy becomes Godot’s spokesperson, and so must carry the burden of the tramps’ expectations of Godot. He’s a vessel for their hope. But, it can also be argued, conversely—that since Beckett operates as a as a ‘glass half empty’ playwright (therefore, a comedian) and as a capital ‘E’ Existentialist—the horrors of the elder generation will be visited on the younger one, and that’s what the future looks like: it will exist, but will be just as dystopic.
What is the role of the boy in Waiting for Godot?
Let’s separate the functions of a character, any character, in a drama: to advance the plot, the conflict, the story, the “drama” is the first and obvious function; let’s call this the “operative” function. But there is also a symbolic function, a device for the playwright to “say” what he wants to say. The first set of functions of the boys (or “boy” if you prefer that interpretation) is not the “operative” one because, as has been made clear numerous times, Beckett is not writing an “imitation of an action in the form of action”, Aristotle’s division of Poetry into epic, dramatic, and lyric. Beckett is imitating inaction, as his view of human existence – without purpose or meaning. The boys, then, represent one aspect of inaction – the all-too-human illusion that there is some sort of messenger or code between Man and Purpose. That he brings on this messenger twice, with ambiguous messages, is part of the structure of Beckett’s worldview, both here and in his other writings – Gogo and Didi, Pozzo and Lucky, etc. Even the confusion in the identification of the boys is Beckettian, another example of non-certainty, of “differences that make no difference.” To my knowledge, there has never been a production in which the same boy actor did not play both roles. So the simple answer to your question is that the boys personify the mistaken (in Beckett’s view) notion that we receive messages of instruction from some imaginary place and Being, messages that determine whether we are “obeying” or “disobeying.”