Abstract

Analyses of Waiting for Godot usually hinge on the idea that language is, at best, an unreliable medium of communication and, at worst, a means of filling the existential void by keeping silence at bay. Using the copy of Godot annotated by Northrop Frye and held by the University of Toronto, this paper shows that the play’s protagonists are trapped in an ironic and absurd hell through the failure of their imaginations. Drawing on a range of Frye’s writings, the paper argues that Godot, though an absurdist “nightmare life in death,” constantly addresses the possibility of redemption, and is itself, like all fictions, potentially redemptive.