The destructive nature of time and man's inability to transcend it has preoccupied many writers whether they be philosophers, literary artists or mathematicians since the Greeks. Providing different definitions and representations of time as an hourglass or in nowadays a watch, time remains an obstacle which bewilders man. Shakespeare in his sonnets, mainly in the first part of his sonnets dedicated to The Fair Youth, challenges the devastating nature of time through the immortality of his verse. [1] This tense relationship is still persistent in modern literature. Human struggling against the supremacy of time is portrayed through attempts to vanquish it whether through verse or memory. Yet, these kinds of attempts are absurd since they are pointless and most of the time doomed to failure. The protagonists of The Glass Menagerie and Waiting for Godot exhibit their resistance through memory, and the shape of time becomes bewildering. Adding to its bewilderment is the excessive repetition that makes monotony persistent. If the Aristotelian unity of time is limited to twenty-four hours, the plays and mainly in Waiting for Godot are not bound by time as this latter is undetermined. [2]
Collision between Past, Present and Future:
Time is generally referred to by drawing what is called a 'timeline'. A timeline is "a horizontal line that is used to represent time, with the past towards the left and the future towards the right". [3] In this horizontal line, past, present and future are clearly separated. Past is prior to present which is followed by the future. In The Glass Menagerie and Waiting for Godot, time is no longer represented by a line once present, past and future collide. In both plays, the form time takes is not a line but a circle since the three temporal references occur simultaneously. Past, present and future are no longer distinguishable for the characters combine present with past, past with future and so on.
Using the Past to Resist the Present:
The past takes place in the present through memory. Yet, memory and mainly the past are more underlined in The Glass Menagerie than Waiting for Godot. Vladimir and Estragon talk regretfully about their past adventures. Didi recalls the time when he and Estragon were "[h]and in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first" (10). Estragon remembers how Vladimir "fished [him] out" of the Rhône (53).
Amanda makes time ambiguous. In her present, the past is dominant. Her outfit is old-fashioned as "[h]er hat is five or six years old, one of those dreadful cloche hats that were worn in the late twenties" and her " very old bathrobe much too large for her slight figure" (20; 29). She is always telling her children about her "seventeen gentlemen callers" and Blue Mountain so much that Tom foretells her story. Amanda seeks her youth in her memories "by retreating into a past refashioned to offer consolation" and to compensate the unpleasant present. [4] Through her outfit, she vanquishes time as "[s]he wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash [and] [s]he carries a bunch of jonquils [so much so that] the legend of her youth is nearly revived." (55) Due to that, she claims that "[t]onight I'm rejuvenated!" (87). Moreover, the circular shape of time is marked by the fact that Amanda uses the past to welcome the future. She says to Jim, "I ran to the trunk an' pulled out this light dress - Terribly old! Historical almost! But feels so good" (63). She wears an old dress to greet the future: the gentleman caller. She also serves lemonade in "an old-fashioned cut-glass Pitcher" (87). Furthermore, they "have to spend the remainder of the evening in the nineteenth century, before Mr. Edison made the Mazda lamp!" as Amanda claims (69). Hence, past, present and future are joined together in the memory world of The Glass Menagerie. The unsatisfactory present pushes the characters to react as such. As Bigsby affirms in his "Entering The Glass Menagerie", the characters "desire to live with comforting fiction, rather than confront brutal truths" (35). The past functions as a refuge from the present that deceives and the future that frightens.
The Madeleine Episode and the Magic of Memory:
But though "it's too late", as Vladimir claims, memory is the sole and only relief that makes the malaise of waiting lighter even if this does not last enough (10). This relief comes from the pleasure that past events have on the characters or what Vladimir calls, in Latin, "Memoria praeteritorum bonorum", meaning that remembering one's past is pleasant. [5] This echoes Proust's perception of time and memory in the first volume of A La Recherche du temps perdu. [6]
Through memory, Proust defeats the power of time since "time does not only carry man towards the end of his life[,] [i]t destroys him in every instant, hence the sense of human life as a slow and fragmentary death" ("Memory: Redemption or Loss?" 8). It is through the "madeleine episode" that the power of "spontaneous memory" overcomes time. [7] The episode describes how a tea-soaked piece of madeleine evokes several pleasant images of the past changing his state from being "weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow" to a surprisingly happy man. [8] The tea turns into a magical "potion". "Involuntary memory" does not last long but its strength lies in its triggering of several physical sensations such as smell and taste and even reviving lost ones such as the narrator's Aunt Léonie (Swann's Way 39). Hence, we discover that "[t]he whole of Proust's world comes out of a teacup" as Samuel Beckett observes. [9]
If Proust's narrator undergoes a magical, beyond-logic event thanks to "involuntary memory", this is not Amanda's and the other characters' case. Amanda's past memories are not 'epiphanies' but rather voluntary memories to escape her deceiving reality. She expresses delight in telling her life in Blue Mountain like Pozzo when regretting his "wonderful sight". Vladimir, though he is the one who said the Memoria phrase, remarks that "thinking of the days when [one] was happy [...] must be unpleasant" (86). Vladimir points to the fact that the sharp contrast between the former state and the present state causes grief. [10] Still, Didi and Gogo find refuge in past memories though they do not seem to be as pleasant as Amanda's, for Estragon tried to commit suicide throwing himself into the Rhône (53).
Resisting Oblivion:
If memory can be both voluntary and involuntary, oblivion is most of the time considered as involuntary since it is the failure to remember. But even oblivion, the manifestation of mental inabilities, becomes ambiguous mainly in Waiting for Godot.
Estragon is said to be more oblivious and amnesiac compared to Vladimir. He even forgets about the most striking 'event' in the play: waiting. He does not express any interest in waiting and urges Vladimir to leave. Yet, what matters is not this difference between Estragon's "poor memory" or Vladimir's better one. What matters is the fact that memory becomes temporal and uncertain. For although Vladimir has a better memory, he still fears oblivion as he urges Estragon saying, "let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget." He shows his struggle to remember trying to recapitulate what happened, "[w]ait . . . we embraced . . . we were happy . . . happy . . . what do we do now that we're happy . . . go on waiting . . .waiting . . . let me think . . . it's coming . . . go on waiting . . . now that we're happy . . . let me see . . . ah! The tree!" (65). Even Pozzo forgets and no one is safe from oblivion. He admits that his "memory is defective" (38). He wonders what he has done with his pipe, his spray, and even his dear watch, a present from his "granpa" (34; 40; 46). He asks to be forgiven after complaining about Lucky saying, "Gentlemen, I don't know what came over me. Forgive me. Forget all I said. (More and more his old self.) I don't remember exactly what it was." (34). Oblivion is linked to time in that it is because time passes that one forgets. Jim and Vladimir remark the fallibility of man's memory and the tricks it plays on him (The Glass Menagerie 72) (Waiting for Godot 50).
Forgetting is also linguistic in Waiting for Godot as the characters express a difficulty to remember words. They look for the contrary of "saved", for example (12). This recalls Krapp's oblivion and his looking up words he used to know when he was younger such as "viduity". [11] A more serious matter is that Gogo forgets the name of the person who is supposed to 'save' them, around whom and because of whom everything happens:
ESTRAGON. (undertone). Is that him?
VLADIMIR. Who?
ESTRAGON. (trying to remember the name). Er . . .
VLADIMIR. Godot?
ESTRAGON. Yes. (22)
Estragon forgets not only Godot's name but also about "yesterday" and only flashes are left in his memory. He remembers the bone and the kick but neither Pozzo nor Lucky and "[a]ll that remains is a blur and a pain" ("Action and Theatricality in 'Waiting for Godot'" 21). All that Estragon remembers affects him directly. [12] The characters in Waiting for Godot try to resist oblivion and so does Tom in The Glass Menagerie, but his purpose differs.
Oblivion: The Sought Bliss:
Tom's success in escaping is not considered as such because of the memory of his sister as everything is a reminder of her. Wherever Tom goes, his sister's image haunts him. "The window [...] filled with pieces of coloured glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colours, like bits of a shattered rainbow" reminds him of Laura and he does everything to "blow [her] candles out" (92). He cannot forget about Laura. Because of his failure, he changes the world around him into a memory for his sister's sake. Hence, Laura becomes the artist's inspiration to create this world of memory as "the play is memory" (14). The play is a manifestation of Tom admitting his guilt towards his family. It is the proof of his failure to forget but his success to vanquish time. Like "Shakespeare", his memory of Laura will be unaffected by the power of time.
Memory and oblivion become linked. Though both are subjective, the protagonists cannot really control them as they wish. They want to forget what they consider as a painful memory and they want to remember what they see as a happy one. But, each time they fail. It is because they fail that they try even harder and in an excessive way. Whether it is to remember or to forget, the characters are bewildered by time. Their relationship with it is like that of Pozzo and Lucky: time is the master and the protagonists are the slave. They are dependent on time since it is a landmark that determines whether they improve or not since "time will [always] tell". Yet, they do not give up as they attempt to escape their monotony where no clear distinction between the days of the week is possible.
The Circular Shape of Time: Repetition:
Repetition makes time even more ambiguous. Repetition is not only used as a theme but also a leitmotif, because the recurrent events make both plays plotless where "nothing happens" and "nothing [is] to be done" (9; 11; 21). Furthermore, repetition is linked to time in that it marks its circular shape. A circle does not have a start or an end as "[t]he round has neither a beginning nor an ending". [13] Repetition characterises the absurdity of life. Camus deals with this point remarking the anguish monotony has on man, "Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm" (The Myth of Sisyphus 12). Life becomes a mechanism that kills creativity and pushes the characters to try hard to escape it aimlessly. The Wingfields sink into routine and only Tom seeks to escape through adventure. Repetition is also manifested through the excessive use of the religious overtone in Williams' play. In Waiting for Godot, the inability to distinguish between "yesterday" and "today" echoes Camus's depiction of monotony.
Repetition is mainly used in poetry to create rhyme and musicality. It might be defined as,
An essential unifying element in nearly all poetry and much prose. It may consist of sounds, particular syllables and words, phrases, stanzas, metrical patterns, ideas, allusions and shapes Thus refrain, assonance, rhyme, internal rhyme, alliteration and onomatopoeia (qq.v.) are frequent in repetition. [14]
Yet, this definition is different in the plays since repetition is used as a leitmotif to stress the monotony of life. It is no longer a technique to create rhythm but rather this rhythm is so often repeated that it becomes dull, no longer joyful but sad. Jacquart seems to give an adequate definition of this kind of repetition,
Comme le retour d'un thème musical, le leitmotiv consiste […] à réitérer de loin en loin une phrase-clef chargée d'échos en flash-back et en flash-forward. […] [L]a répétition proprement dite affecte le dynamisme du dialogue. Elle peut donner l'impression de le ralentir, ou même de l'interrompre puisque répéter est par définition ne pas progresser.[…] [L]a répétition n'apporte rien, apparemment cela est juste. En fait, elle renforce [...] le contact entre l'acteur et le spectateur, ou mieux, elle rend le message opérant. Nous avons donc affaire à ce que Jakobson appelle la fonction conative, qui est centrée sur le « destinateur ». (Le Théâtre de Dérision 200-202)
Thus, repetition slows the events making time awkward and the message behind the play more obvious. With repetition, that message is clear. The Boy's message brings nothing new. The characters' existence is meaningless. They live and yet, nothing different characterizes the several days of their daily life. Estragon' remark describes this burden as, "nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful" (41). Sisyphus' condition is also similar since it is characterised by repetition. His punishment is to roll the rock up to the top of hill of that same rock to roll back down. Sisyphus repeats the same act endlessly unable to escape it. What makes that kind of repetition and monotony tragic is the fact that the one who lives it is conscious of its burden. One is stuck in it as in a whirlpool. Life is dull but still the protagonists, like Sisyphus, carry on their task. They are aware of the monotony they live in and some of them struggle to defy it.
A Christian Monotonous Life:
Repetition in The Glass Menagerie is depicted through the routine the Wingfield family lives in and through the repetitive religious discourses Amanda and Tom use differently.
The Urgent Need for a Change:
Tom revolts against his monotonous everyday-life and seeks adventure in movies. Adventure is characterised by the ever-changing series of events where each day is different from the other. This is what the world of the play needs and what its narrator longs for in order not to lose his creativity. But, as Tom remarks, "people go to movies instead of moving" (61). They "live adventure through movies and Hollywood characters [who] are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them" (61). It is only when the war breaks out that adventure "becomes available to the masses" and not only to the 1930s-Hollywood star Clark Gable, "the King of Hollywood" (61). [15] Moreover, the movies are also an inspiration for Tom to create his identity as "Killer Wingfield" and "El Diablo". His rebellious and creative character is translated not only through his readings of D. H. Lawrence but also through the mafia persona that he describes to Amanda leaving her "gasping" from horror (29; 31).
These two imaginary characters lead a life different from Tom's monotonous every-day existence in the warehouse. They deceive through disguise with "a patch over one eye and a false moustache, sometimes [...] green whiskers [on]" (31). They belong to the world of crime and "the underworld" (31). Each night is a new adventure since Tom changes his outfit and his name with an ever-changing existence, as he claims. Also, through these imaginary personas, Tom shows his repulsion of his mother's past-memories using a violent discourse ï€almost wishing for her deathï€ calling her an "ugly - babbling old - witch" go[ing] through a series of violent, clumsy movements" (31).
From the beginning, the tension between mother and son is manifested through Amanda's repetitive critical remarks directed to Tom. Tom expresses his disgust from his mother's predictable memories that turned into a ritual/habit along with her "rise and shine". This expression is religiously loaded. The conflict between mother and son lies also in their different use of religion, highly present in their discourse. Actually, the religious overtone is repetitive in The Glass Menagerie. A miracle as a helpful response from the deities is doomed to failure in a world where money and "business" rule.
"Christianity" as a Form of Repetition:
Christian imagery "stained by modern materialism" is recurrent in The Glass Menagerie as religion is mainly used for business interest, magic tricks, making conversation, joking and even for swearing. [16] This demonstrates the degradation of religion along with other 'moral values' in the post-Great Depression, the post-World War I, and the pre-World War II world where religion becomes a discourse instead of preserving its 'true' holy meaning.
Amanda's discourse is mainly religious unlike Tom's where "Christian terms appear only as imprecations" ("The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence" 41). Amanda's use of religious terms may be seen as another refuge from the present reality that deceives her where religion is absent. Nevertheless, her use becomes sarcastic as she contributes in its degradation. She describes her customers as "Christian martyrs" using this business language to sell her magazine (28; 42). She makes conversation talking about her clothes being resurrected and the "old candelabrum that used to be on the altar at the church of the Heavenly Rest" which burned down (69). She jokes about where Moses was when the lights went off answering that he was in the dark (67). She also draws a religious imagery when she spills the lemonade saying that she is baptizing herself (87). Stein underlines Amanda's excessive recourse to the Christian imagery in the following manner:
Amanda, who condemns instinct and urges Tom to think in terms of the mind and spirit, as "Christian adults" do, is often characterised in Christian terms. Her music [...] is "Ave Maria." As a girl she could only cook angel food cake. She urges Laura, "Possess your soul in patience". ("The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence" 40)
Tom's use of religion is even more consciously ironic, for either he swears using religious terms or is blind to any religious symbolism. "He denies the world of belief and [...] calls himself 'El Diablo'" ("The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence" 40). He associates himself with the underworld, crime and arouses to be a Machiavellian and an anti-Christ in his speech with his mother (31). Christ's and God's names are only present as execration as in "[w]hat in Christ's name" "God damn 'Rise and Shine'" (28; 31). [17] He is impressed by Malvolio the Magician whose name implies "bad will". This magician stands for the fake modern Christ since, like Christ, he turns water into wine and ironically turns the wine into beer and later on into whiskey ("The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence" 41). [18] The magician waves a scarf over a bowl of gold-fish and "they fly away canaries" and vice-versa (34). This associates him once more to Christ since fish is Christ's symbol:
Christ is often compared with a fisherman, and Christians are represented as fish because they have received revelation and redemption by water at their baptism. The ideogram of the fish (Greek iktus) was the emblem of the early Church, its [...] five letters being the initials of the five Greek words describing the Saviour Iesus Khristos Theou Uios Soter (Jesus the Anointed, Son of God, Redeemer). When Jesus reappeared to the apostles after the Resurrection, 'he said unto them. Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb' (Luke 24, xli-xlii). Like honey, signifying the revealed Word, fish was the appropriate first food for the resurrected Christ: it rises from the depths as he had risen again from the next world. Fish became one of the symbols of the Eucharistic meal, and features in many iconographies. [19]
Malvolio, the magician, presents his emblem as a gold-fish. Once more, religion is stained by modern materialism since the fish is no longer natural but gold. The second tale about Christ asking for meat and having fish as his first food after the resurrection is directly more related to Malvolio's show and him as a modern fake Christ. Malvolio "got out of the coffin without removing one nail". This image refers to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection though Tom is blind to it and sees its significance "in personal terms only" rather than religious ones (34) ("The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence" 41).
Repetition is then present in The Glass Menagerie through the routine that the characters live in and try to escape with movies or memories and the religious discourse and images that they use each according to his/her personality. Repetition is more stressed in Waiting for Godot because the acts are almost the same and the play could go on forever to become "ad infinitum, [b]ut the economy of the two-act structure does its work well enough" ("Action and Theatricality in 'Waiting for Godot'" 24). Moreover, this form makes "nothing happens" - twice, and thus might be "nothing happens" three times if the play had three acts, and so on. [20]
"Time Has Stopped":
Repetition not only changes the shape of time but it also "dramatises the ultimate problem of waiting". This burden is stressed in the second act of Waiting for Godot through the title and "verbal routine", and apparent sameness in the setting and the characters ("Action and Theatricality in 'Waiting for Godot'" 20). The title demonstrates the long process of waiting and repetition. According to Calderwood, the title "suggests the ongoingness of a verbal action, as in 'We are Waiting for Godot'" ("Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot'" 32). It is as ambiguous as the play itself since it is neither gerund nor a present participle and thus its grammatical category cannot be defined with certainty. Moreover, whether the title precedes the play or the opposite, or whether it is conclusive of the play or it is its start point, it forms a circle with the text ("Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot'" 34). Hence, it is both the beginning and the end of the play as it begins with waiting and ends with that same "non-action". The title echoes also the notion of repetition in "the verbal routine" and in events gestures and pauses signified by Vladimir's song. [21]
Didi's Song: A Manifestation of Repetition:
Repetition becomes a theme rather than a technique since everything in the play represents it. In both acts, the setting is the same, the characters appearing are also the same, or so it seems, and mainly "nothing happens". In both acts, there are five characters, Didi, Gogo, Pozzo, Lucky and the Boy, coming, staying or leaving the country road where there is a tree during the evening. They talk, play games, curse each other, make up, greet each other, philosophise about life and religion, act, ask questions, dream, are in pain and try to commit suicide but still Godot does not come and thus "nothing happens". Pozzo and Lucky only appear as "reinforcement" "[to] pass the time" and the Boy, who is supposed to be the messenger, has no message but that Godot is not coming, and all of this changes nothing in the play (77; 12). Sometimes the protagonists even treat trivial matters too seriously and important ones trivially or lengthen their conversations exchanging repeatedly the same line like in this episode:
POZZO. And thank you.
VLADIMIR. Thank you.
POZZO. Not at all.
ESTRAGON. Yes yes.
POZZO. No no.
VLADIMIR. Yes yes.
ESTRAGON. No no. Silence. (47)
Moreover, repetition is marked in Waiting for Godot by the excess of silences and pauses and gestures with long stage directions of exchanging hats and wearing boots (71-72). Silence and pause translate moments of doubt, hesitation or "nothing" to say to fill up the time of waiting. But it is through these stage directions along with the different games played inspired from Marx Brothers' Duck Soup that nothingness is staged repeatedly. [22]
The second act is introduced with an endless song about a dog "killed by a cook and the arrival of another pack of dogs who write upon another tombstone a song about a dog killed by a cook ... and so on" ("Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot'" 31). This song also forms a circle since the song is endless with a Petrushka-like [23] shape. The tombstone is an element in the dog-story and is at the same time the bearer of the story. Moreover, a tombstone preserves the past in the present. It is the witness of a past-event in the present. Hence, the tombstone is a crossroad between the past and the present, no longer distinguishable. [24] Yet, even though the story told in the tombstone is the same, the dog's status changes from alive to dead. This slight change echoes the characters' condition. Pozzo's blindness, Lucky's dumbness and the tree flowering are sudden in a series of recurrent events. They are as sudden as the dog's 'murder' by the cook. These changes do not happen gradually but in a night-time giving time an even more ambiguous shape. Nevertheless, "yesterday" and "today" remain alike if not undistinguishable, though Vladimir insists they are different.
When "Yesterday" and "Today" Are the Same:
Just like the tombstone, where past and present are the same, the days in Waiting for Godot have no distinction whatsoever. Time stops, as Vladimir remarks, because yesterday and today are hard to tell apart since the same events occur and "nothing happens" (36; 38). Even the days of the week are hardly distinguishable as Pozzo wonders, "But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?" (15). Nevertheless, Vladimir struggles to prove the opposite, i.e. that they are living in world where each day is different from the other. This struggling turns into an obsession with time. Pozzo's first appearance denotes his former excessive preoccupation with time through his watch and excessive checking of the exact hour or year while observing his schedule. But, once he loses his sight, he seems to be a different character in Act 2: blind and with no notion of time. Vladimir's obsession with time may lead to the same result. He asks about the time, wonders "will night never come" twice, harasses Pozzo with "when" and is the only one who notices that the 'same events' are recurrent exclaiming, "Off we go again" twice (33; 36; 49; 91). Didi also retells the 'events' of the play exactly as they 'happen' adopting what Roland Barthes calls "mise en abîme",
Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? (Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (90)
Even Vladimir doubts the certainty of the events that happened. Nevertheless, he tries to create a distinction between the days, though none seems to exist, by distinguishing between them using "tomorrow," "yesterday" and "today" and the appropriate verb forms and tenses. He looks for any sign of change in the world around him. He notices the flowering of the tree, Didi's boots and Pozzo and Lucky not being the same just to have the impression that he and Gogo exist and that life goes on and is not static (66; 67; 48). He also remarks when Estragon claims that night does not fall that "[i]t'll fall all of a sudden, like yesterday" (71).
Because of repetition and sameness, Vladimir asks about time in an excessive way that irritates the other characters and mainly Pozzo. Vladimir annoys Pozzo with "since when" or "when" asking about the exact date since "yesterday" both Pozzo and Lucky were neither blind nor dumb. However, Pozzo's furious reaction shows his irritation since he really cannot answer precisely though he tries to avoid the question or simply replies "I don't know" (85; 86; 89). It is during the episode of Didi's "when[s]" that a new definition of time is given:
VLADIMIR. Dumb! Since when?
POZZO. (suddenly furious.) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
One day is the sole answer. He "woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune" and one day Lucky became dumb (86). With no specific date does Pozzo answer, for what matters is not when exactly but the apparent change that he and his servant underwent. Repetition and routine crash the meaning of time creating a new definition. Time is erased because of it, meanwhile, "there is a dreadful excess of time" since it exists in a "timeless play" ("Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot'" 35). This notion seems hard to accept by Didi. Yet, time does not matter, according to Pozzo's definition, what matters is the effect it has on the subjects. Life and death are not opposites but two sides of the same coin just like "yesterday" and "today".
Time is marked by awkwardness and uncertainty. It is no longer universal or objective but rather subjective. Its linear shape is shattered by the dominance of memory since no clear distinction between past, present and future is possible anymore. Moreover, repetition changes the shape of time. It also stresses the absurd condition in which the protagonists of both plays are entrapped. In The Glass Menagerie, repetition manifests itself through the monotonous life that Tom seeks to escape and that causes the tension between him and his mother. Religion is another recurrent theme that emphasizes their disagreement. They use it differently in their discourse but it is stained in both. Repetition in Waiting for Godot dominates the play. No distinction between the days is possible though Didi tries to find one. Repetition stresses also the fact that the waited for are absent since they are the bringers of a better change. Their appearance would break the spell of routine and monotony and thus the absurdity of a static life. Godot and Jim are the saviours most waited for, whose arrival, if ever they come, would make existence bearable.
