Why Live Today When You May Die Tomorrow? Anonymous

To existentialist writers, the universe is a foreign and indifferent place. Every aspect of creation, including the universe itself, is pitted against the individual. Existence is meaningless and oblivion both before birth and after death-save for the fact that great suffering and anguish mark the plight in between these ends. Samuel Beckett, an individual born in an era of such beliefs explores the ever-excoriating question: In a world such as this, what is the point in living?

History of the Play and the School of Thought

En Attendant Godot, translated to Waiting for Godot, is widely considered a critical work of Absurdist literature and one of Beckett's more famous pieces. Originally penned in French during the late 1940s, Beckett himself later translated the play into English. Met with widespread controversy because of its seemingly illogical and irrational themes, it later gained popularity by word of mouth.

The Absurd is a term applied to the theory that human beings live in meaningless isolation in an indifferent universe. Many of its characteristics stem from the philosophical base known as existentialism, which views humans as moving from the nothingness from whence they came to the nothingness in which they will end...