ESSAYS – Religious Belief, Manipulation of Time, and Searching for a Purpose in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and “Waiting for Godot” by Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic, Canadian anthropologist, writer and artist.
“Time is an inconceivable concept that does not follow rules.” – Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic, Canadian anthropologist, writer and artist, cultural program editor of the Urban Book Circle.
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Religious Belief, Manipulation of Time, and Searching for a Purpose
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Waiting for Godot
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A book’s merit should not be based simply on the number of awards received, or how well it sold. The sorting of a book as a classic deservedly relies on its contribution to the literary scene of its time and of the present. However, all of that can still mean that a book can fade away, if not for its lasting effect on people. Even centuries or mere decades later, characters and situations are given new life alongside modern-day issues. As such, the authors James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, should continue to be acknowledged for maintaining the balance between being reminiscent of the past and the present while predicting the future. In both A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man by James Joyce and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, the individual’s purpose in life is considered through the exploration of religious and blind faith, through the manipulation of narrative time, and through the final resolutions of the struggles faced by the characters.
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The connection between Joyce’s and Beckett’s depictions of religious belief and the search for purpose are clear in the reasons why the main character’s views on faith gradually change or by their inability to change their views. In the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the main character, Stephen Dedalus, is depicted in the midst of his search for purpose from early childhood to adolescence and young adulthood. As a child, Stephen justifies his lack of knowledge through the existence of God, the only one able to think of many exhaustive topics. Since Stephen is unhappy that he cannot think “big thoughts” like many of the philosophers and scientists he looks up to, he tries again to think that way but “found that he could only think of God” (Joyce 13). Upon contemplating on something as unfathomable as the whole universe, he relates that incomprehensibility to God because thinking about everything at once is something that only God could do. At the moment, this belief is enough for him to be able to move on and stop thinking of impossible subjects. His search for purpose is rationally explained away through the existence of God. However, this initial curiousity that leads to doubt is prevalent throughout his childhood. He always did what was expected of him as a Catholic, such as praying alongside his relative in a respectful way, even though he internally lacked the reverence for God that others had (64). These were situations in which he felt he could not properly examine his opinions, and therefore it was hard for him to find and analyse his purpose. As a child, Stephen was content to adhere to the rules set by Catholic Christianity and not search for any of his own. However, this gradually changes as he matures into a young adult. Similarly, the characters in Waiting for Godot, accept but do not fully understand their own beliefs.
In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon’s inability to unravel their sense of purpose from their religious belief causes stagnation. The characters find ways to indirectly blame God for their endless struggle. In act one, Lucky, who is essentially Pozzo’s slave, speaks for the first time and acknowledges God’s existence as someone who “loves [them] dearly” but with “some exceptions for reasons unknown” (Beckett 28). Those exceptions that Lucky mentions refer to less than perfect situations such as his own and those of the rest of the characters. The only purpose in life that reveals itself to them is the endless wait for Godot, who represents God and a higher purpose. In act one, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for a man named Godot, but they do not know what they asked from him, except that it was “a kind of prayer” (24). This reinforces the notion that Godot represents God, as prayer is so tightly linked with religion and hope. Despite their uncertainties, Vladimir and Estragon still wait in the hopes of a better future, even though nothing in their present seems to suggest the possibility of one. Every time one of them wants to leave, such as in act two, Vladimir is usually the one that says, “we’re waiting for Godot,” and they stay (44). Waiting for that higher purpose to come is linked to their lack of identity. They cannot find out who they will be as individuals if they are tied to this hope in such a way. Godot and an individual’s purpose are linked in that they are unattainable (Godot never comes) and irresistible in that Vladimir and Estragon stay in the hopes that Godot will show up and offer them reprieve. Through the concept of blind faith and using those beliefs to describe the indescribable, Waiting for Godot and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man have many similarities. They are also alike in that both works control narrative time in strange and inconceivable ways.
The manipulation of time is used by both authors to further the idea of searching for purpose: it pushes Stephen to search for meaning and it confuses Estragon and Vladimir to the point where finding meaning is impossible. Stephen’s connecting of time to religion is evident through the concept of eternity. Eternity is first used by the priest in his school to discuss the horrors of it for sinners. He uses the following metaphor of an enormous mountain of sand being slowly taken apart by a single bird: “How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended” (Joyce 143). Naturally, Stephen, an adolescent now, fears the idea of eternal suffering. This leads him to reconnect with his faith. However, as Stephen’s faithfulness fades with time, so do his conceptions of his own childhood. While sitting with his father, he reflects on the notion that “his childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simpler joys” (102). This fading childhood, as linked to fading religious belief, shows Stephen’s changing opinions. He is discarding the past in order to reconcile and shape his future. He realizes that this will take away a lot of his happiness, and he feels that the promise of the future is too great to give up. The past represents everything that holds him back. In Stephen’s journal entry near the end of the book, his final progression from boy to man is revealed. His childhood is vital to escape from in order for him to find his purpose, as seen in this passage: “The time is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future” (273). The only reason that time will exist for him is because he will allow it to reveal his future. Time also serves as an important tool in Vladimir and Estragon’s situation but because it disorients them, not because it helps them find their purpose.
In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon’s inability to unravel their sense of purpose from their religious belief causes stagnation. The characters find ways to indirectly blame God for their endless struggle. In act one, Lucky, who is essentially Pozzo’s slave, speaks for the first time and acknowledges God’s existence as someone who “loves [them] dearly” but with “some exceptions for reasons unknown” (Beckett 28). Those exceptions that Lucky mentions refer to less than perfect situations such as his own and those of the rest of the characters. The only purpose in life that reveals itself to them is the endless wait for Godot, who represents God and a higher purpose. In act one, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for a man named Godot, but they do not know what they asked from him, except that it was “a kind of prayer” (24). This reinforces the notion that Godot represents God, as prayer is so tightly linked with religion and hope. Despite their uncertainties, Vladimir and Estragon still wait in the hopes of a better future, even though nothing in their present seems to suggest the possibility of one. Every time one of them wants to leave, such as in act two, Vladimir is usually the one that says, “we’re waiting for Godot,” and they stay (44). Waiting for that higher purpose to come is linked to their lack of identity. They cannot find out who they will be as individuals if they are tied to this hope in such a way. Godot and an individual’s purpose are linked in that they are unattainable (Godot never comes) and irresistible in that Vladimir and Estragon stay in the hopes that Godot will show up and offer them reprieve. Through the concept of blind faith and using those beliefs to describe the indescribable, Waiting for Godot and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man have many similarities. They are also alike in that both works control narrative time in strange and inconceivable ways.
The manipulation of time is used by both authors to further the idea of searching for purpose: it pushes Stephen to search for meaning and it confuses Estragon and Vladimir to the point where finding meaning is impossible. Stephen’s connecting of time to religion is evident through the concept of eternity. Eternity is first used by the priest in his school to discuss the horrors of it for sinners. He uses the following metaphor of an enormous mountain of sand being slowly taken apart by a single bird: “How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended” (Joyce 143). Naturally, Stephen, an adolescent now, fears the idea of eternal suffering. This leads him to reconnect with his faith. However, as Stephen’s faithfulness fades with time, so do his conceptions of his own childhood. While sitting with his father, he reflects on the notion that “his childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simpler joys” (102). This fading childhood, as linked to fading religious belief, shows Stephen’s changing opinions. He is discarding the past in order to reconcile and shape his future. He realizes that this will take away a lot of his happiness, and he feels that the promise of the future is too great to give up. The past represents everything that holds him back. In Stephen’s journal entry near the end of the book, his final progression from boy to man is revealed. His childhood is vital to escape from in order for him to find his purpose, as seen in this passage: “The time is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future” (273). The only reason that time will exist for him is because he will allow it to reveal his future. Time also serves as an important tool in Vladimir and Estragon’s situation but because it disorients them, not because it helps them find their purpose.
The manipulation of the chronology of time confuses Vladimir and Estragon and keeps them from being able to control their own futures. Vladimir and Estragon try to take control by finding ways to keep busy. In the first act, they play childish games and talk nonsense with Pozzo and Lucky. It is not like they have anything else to do, and Vladimir occasionally says something vaguely optimistic. One such comment leads Estragon to pessimistically state that the “[time] would have passed in any case” (Beckett 31). What Estragon means is that there is no use trying to actively “pass the time” as time’s passage is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Trying to take control of their fates is hopeless because time is an inconceivable concept that does not follow rules, at least not those understood by them. Additionally, repetition of key events reinforces this notion of helplessness. Both acts in Waiting for Godot are the same in plot. The main difference is how the characters, particularly Vladimir, interpret the events in the final act. When Vladimir ponders the long hours that they are forced to endure, he says: “But has it not long been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths?” (51). He questions his own mind and purpose by wondering just how much time he has wasted by waiting in the unknown for the unattainable. This sense of unknowing and blindness is exposed through Pozzo’s comment that “the blind have no notion of time” (55). Although Pozzo himself is physically blind, this can also refer to Vladimir and Estragon because they do not know their true purpose due to their lack of control over their surroundings. They are blind from the truth. There is no reason to hope, and every day they forget what they went through the night before. As such, they are consistently forced to go through the same events again and again. By being kept unaware of the future and the past, they are blind from all the nuances of time, diminishing the possibility of them achieving a higher purpose in their lives. The end to their story is miserable in that there is no end; they are left to suffer for what seems like, or perhaps is, all eternity. Comparatively, Stephen from Joyce’s novel recognizes the importance of time and even makes the conscious decision to not let it affect him. This is an early indication of the differences in Stephen’s resolution to that of Beckett’s characters.
The resolutions and lack of resolutions to the stories of Stephen, Vladimir, Estragon, are the ultimate factors in determining whether or not they have found their individual purposes in life. In Joyce’s novel, Stephen seems to find his purpose, but only by escaping everything connected to his past. Much of the final chapter is devoted to Stephen’s conversations with different people at his university. They all reflect a common theme: his decision to leave Ireland in order to find himself. While speaking to his friend Cranly, Stephen states that he “will not serve that in which [he] no longer [believes]” (Joyce 268). That phrase “I will not serve” is a reference to Christianity and to one of the first and most deadly sins, pride. Specifically, this phrase is uttered by the fallen angel who was then cast down from heaven. The fact that Stephen deliberately chooses that phrasing when stating his future plans means that he is consciously trying to shed the hold that religion has had on him. He explicitly states that he no longer believes, and it can be assumed that that is why he alludes to religion in such a blasphemous way. Leaving it all behind is the only way he feels he will have a chance to express himself “in some mode of life or art as freely as [he] can and as wholly as [he] can” (269). Stephen has found his purpose and is willing to pay the price that comes with taking charge of his own destiny. Comparatively, the characters in Beckett’s play do not even come close to finding, let alone expressing, their true purposes in life.
In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon do consider the meaning of life, but are unable to get any further in their understanding of it as it applies to them. In the final act, Vladimir questions what he and Estragon are doing there, in an empty field, seemingly wasting time. That is the place in which they meet to continue waiting every night, but “what are we doing here” also refers to what they are doing on earth in general (Beckett 51). The men are able to think of their existence and acknowledge that something is missing, but they are unable to solve the issue of why they are there. Also, as always, Vladimir naively concludes that “in this immense confusion one thing is clear. [Estragon and I] are waiting for Godot” (51). This is naïve because Godot has never come, so there is no reason to believe he will suddenly fulfill his promise. Upon questioning the meaning of their existence, Vladimir attributes it to the fact that they are waiting for Godot and for the possibility of an end to this suffering. However, this issue is never resolved, as the play closes with them in the same situation as in the end of the first act. This suggests that they will wait there forever, and Godot will never come. In comparison, Stephen’s plan is to leave his faith behind, along with with the rest of his childhood in order to achieve true purpose. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ends in a place where the feasibility of Stephen’s plan is not in doubt. The closure of Stephen’s story and the lack of the closure for Vladimir and Estragon is representative of being able and unable to find purpose in life, respectively.
James Joyce and Samuel Beckett explore an individual’s purpose through the exploration of their characters’ conclusions, narrative time, and religious faith. Both of these authors deserve recognition for their ability to be utterly unique in their distinct time periods but also universally relatable, even up until the present day. The lasting quality of classic literature should be attributed to the harmonious combination of simultaneously being a window into the past and a door to the present and future. The best works are those in which people can see themselves reflected back, regardless of how different their stories might seem on the surface.
The resolutions and lack of resolutions to the stories of Stephen, Vladimir, Estragon, are the ultimate factors in determining whether or not they have found their individual purposes in life. In Joyce’s novel, Stephen seems to find his purpose, but only by escaping everything connected to his past. Much of the final chapter is devoted to Stephen’s conversations with different people at his university. They all reflect a common theme: his decision to leave Ireland in order to find himself. While speaking to his friend Cranly, Stephen states that he “will not serve that in which [he] no longer [believes]” (Joyce 268). That phrase “I will not serve” is a reference to Christianity and to one of the first and most deadly sins, pride. Specifically, this phrase is uttered by the fallen angel who was then cast down from heaven. The fact that Stephen deliberately chooses that phrasing when stating his future plans means that he is consciously trying to shed the hold that religion has had on him. He explicitly states that he no longer believes, and it can be assumed that that is why he alludes to religion in such a blasphemous way. Leaving it all behind is the only way he feels he will have a chance to express himself “in some mode of life or art as freely as [he] can and as wholly as [he] can” (269). Stephen has found his purpose and is willing to pay the price that comes with taking charge of his own destiny. Comparatively, the characters in Beckett’s play do not even come close to finding, let alone expressing, their true purposes in life.
In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon do consider the meaning of life, but are unable to get any further in their understanding of it as it applies to them. In the final act, Vladimir questions what he and Estragon are doing there, in an empty field, seemingly wasting time. That is the place in which they meet to continue waiting every night, but “what are we doing here” also refers to what they are doing on earth in general (Beckett 51). The men are able to think of their existence and acknowledge that something is missing, but they are unable to solve the issue of why they are there. Also, as always, Vladimir naively concludes that “in this immense confusion one thing is clear. [Estragon and I] are waiting for Godot” (51). This is naïve because Godot has never come, so there is no reason to believe he will suddenly fulfill his promise. Upon questioning the meaning of their existence, Vladimir attributes it to the fact that they are waiting for Godot and for the possibility of an end to this suffering. However, this issue is never resolved, as the play closes with them in the same situation as in the end of the first act. This suggests that they will wait there forever, and Godot will never come. In comparison, Stephen’s plan is to leave his faith behind, along with with the rest of his childhood in order to achieve true purpose. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ends in a place where the feasibility of Stephen’s plan is not in doubt. The closure of Stephen’s story and the lack of the closure for Vladimir and Estragon is representative of being able and unable to find purpose in life, respectively.
James Joyce and Samuel Beckett explore an individual’s purpose through the exploration of their characters’ conclusions, narrative time, and religious faith. Both of these authors deserve recognition for their ability to be utterly unique in their distinct time periods but also universally relatable, even up until the present day. The lasting quality of classic literature should be attributed to the harmonious combination of simultaneously being a window into the past and a door to the present and future. The best works are those in which people can see themselves reflected back, regardless of how different their stories might seem on the surface.
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Religious Belief, Manipulation of Time, and Searching for a Purpose
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Waiting for Godot
by Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Waiting for Godot
by Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic
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· Essay & Photographs: Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic / All rights reserved 2017. Copyright © Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic ·
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Last updated on October 30, 2017.
Published by Urban Book Circle on October 30, 2017 Urban Book Circle® (UBC) |
· Photo of Samuel Beckett’s bookshelf in the study of his apartment at the Boulevard St Jacques in Paris courtesy of John Minihan / All rights reserved 1985. Copyright © John Minihan ·
· Edited by Deidre McAuliffe, Danijela Kovacevic Mikic, Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic and Sarah Riordan ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Sarah Riordan and Deidre McAuliffe ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Sarah Riordan and Deidre McAuliffe ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
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