Hope and Anxiety in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
Nouh Ibrahim Alguzo, Ph.D.

Abstract
This paper examines the two ideas of hope and anxiety in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. The hopeless and anxious characters in the play feel that their existence has not been acknowledged by society and decide to pass time through idle gossip waiting for an external power to save them from their current condition. The absence of Godot in the two acts of the play implies that he will never arrive and this leads the two tramps to contemplate suicide because they are completely dependent upon Godot. Beckett suggests throughout the play that people should overcome their existential worries through solving the problems of life rather than belief in illusions that leads to nothing but despair and loneliness.

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