Aside from Vladimir, the characters in Waiting for Godot have thoroughly defective memories, forgetting even things that just recently occurred. Names, faces, and even previous lives are forgotten. Simple questions have to be repeated with dogged persistence before they elicit a direct answer. Vladimir and Estragon repeatedly doubt if they are at the right time and place for meeting Godot. And this trouble with memory is a big part of what lends the air of uncertainty to the play.

By extension, the characters’ nonfunctioning memory also breaks their capacity for recognition. Recognition is vital because it is what allows a person to place an object within a certain context and understand one’s particular relationship with it. It is also a condition for assigning a thing its value. This prevents Vladimir and Estragon’s encounters from accumulating any history, context, and value. This failure may even be the very thing that prevents Godot from arriving, as near the end of act 2, Vladimir threatens the boy when he fears that the boy will continue to forget him. There is a suggestion that the cyclical nature of the play and their suffering could be broken by the sustained application of remembering and recognition.