The "Theatre of the Absurd" is a kind of drama that attempts to portray and analyse the essential question of the meaning of life in a period when religious explanations have ceased to be valid: as Nietzsche said, "God is dead" or, as Freud stated, life may be regarded as merely a "disease of matter". While a traditional play was judged by the skill, depth and realism of its characterisation and dialogue, the theatre of the absurd seemed to abandon any attempt at achieving either. This places man in the dilemma of being unable to find any essential purpose in his actions - the dilemma of existentialism, of being confronted with choices in day-to-day living and having to invent purposes and meanings for himself without any metaphysical or intrinsic principles to guide him. Naturally this also creates a problem for the dramatist: how can he create a drama, which presupposes action, when the presupposition on which existentialist drama is based is that all action is meaningless, pointless and insignificant? Beckett solves the dramatic problem by presenting characters who are obsessed by the meaninglessness of their own lives, and yet who are haunted by a memory of significance, a nostalgia for past meanings, coupled with the realisation that they are no longer valid. Out of this clash of longing and rejection he creates dramatic tension.
He also strips away the usual trappings of language and character to create drama that is extremely reductivist in its methods: the personages of his plays are stylized, without individual histories or social identities, stock theatrical figures. Language, too, is stylized or patterned, to the point where it no longer expresses all the richness and variety of significance we normally associate with language, but the inarticulate sense of a pure form, an abstraction - as in music rather than speech.

These qualities are all embodied in Waiting for Godot, built around the central theme of waiting - waiting for an event that never happens. The two main characters are variously presented on stage as either tramps or clowns.
One of the most important features of this drama is the minimalistic set: a stylized tree, no more than a stem with two or three leaves attached, by a country road.
The road suggests the homelessness of the characters (they sleep outdoors, one of them in a ditch) and emphasizes the fact that they are going nowhere, although just possibly someone might arrive. By the tree, the two main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, are waiting for 'Mr Godot'. Day and night pass; the other two named characters appear, the same dialogue patterns and themes are repeated, the same hopes that Godot will come, the same disappointments and frustrations constantly recur.
The main theme of the play is obviously that of waiting. Although it is not unusual in the theatre, Beckett stands apart for the nihilism, uselessness and absurdity of his "waiting," which involves not only the characters on the stage, but the audience as well, which is kept waiting for what's going to happen next, while nothing happens at all. On the other hand, the act of waiting itself may be seen as something positive, suggesting faith and hope.
There are, however, many more themes to the play than that: among them let us mention: the search for identity, underlined by the characters often being referred to by different names (Didi, Gogo, Albert);
the monotony of life, represented in the circular and repetitive structure of the play; action without progression, since "the only progress that interests Beckett is not upwards and outwards, but inwards and downwards";
the inability to act, a theme emphasized in Beckett's subsequent works, where the characters are progressively (and symbolically) deprived of any form of movement and even of their own limbs and voices;
a preoccupation with time: "time" is perhaps the word that is most frequently mentioned in the play; it lacks any connotation of quantity or quality; it either fails to pass at all, or it is too slow or too fast. There are virtually no children in Beckett's plays, and his characters deteriorate quite rapidly. Their preoccupation with how to pass time often leads them to nonsensical talk and gestures.

Vladimir:
Estragon: