For Reasons Unknown

A Vision of Suicide in Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting For Godot'

Abstract

This paper explores the paradox of suicide and existence in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Act Without Words I, examining how Vladimir and Estragon oscillate between the impulses of eros and thanatos. Though suicide repeatedly surfaces as a possibility, its actual enactment remains perpetually deferred, revealing not only the absence of means but also a deeper ontological incapacity. The characters’ indecision reflects Albert Camus’s formulation of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, where the confrontation with a meaningless world forces one to choose between resignation and revolt. In Beckett’s plays, the absence of resolution results in endless waiting, where suicide becomes less a practical escape than a diversionary fantasy that affirms their fragile existence. Ultimately, the contemplation of death paradoxically sustains their will to live, binding them to one another and to the absurd rhythm of waiting. The paper argues that this unresolved tension constitutes the core of Beckett’s tragicomic vision, where survival itself is an act of defiance against despair.