Traces of Greek Mythology in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

This study addresses Samuel Beckett’s most celebrated play, Waiting for Godot, in an effort to analyze its characters from a novel perspective. Since Greek mythology has been undisputedly influential on Western culture and literature, the researcher attempts to investigate a connection between Greek mythology and the play. This study aims to reveal that even after more than fifty seven years of writing criticisms, analyses, interpretations, and reviews on Beckett’s  Waiting for Godot there are still some new points in this masterpiece that have not been found. Godot can be interpreted as Zeus, Pozzo as the disguised Zeus, Lucky and the Boy as Atlas and Hermes, and finally Vladimir and Estragon as the human beings living in the last years of the Golden Age. Although Beckett has not directly pronounced to be influenced by Greek Mythology, traces of mythological characters, as the researcher examines, are seen in Waiting for Godot.

Keywords:

Greek Mythology , Samuel Beckett , Waiting for Godot , Hubris , Golden Age , Apollonian and Dionysian