WAITING FOR GODOT AND SUFISM: THE SEARCH, THE WAIT … AND THE FAILURE

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s use of religion can be conceived as the dominant trend in Beckett Scholarship as the upshot of this tendency is witnessing an ever-increasing scholarship evolving around Beckett and religion. However, it has been noted that very little has been discussed about Beckett’s experience or familiarity with Islam and the Islamic world. But what is even more important, we find no word or a clue that may direct us to create any link between Beckett and Sufism. Thus, this gap allows us to introduce Sufism as a new lens for reading Beckett. This article, therefore, selects Waiting for Godot as a matrix of examination to be analyzed through the
prism of Sufism. The rationale behind the selection of Waiting for Godot is simple, this is the only text of Beckett, which is taught at various universities in Pakistan. Secondly, Baldwin’s close reading of Beckett’s works focusing mainly on the pervasiveness of Christian allegorical instances offers another attraction to contribute to Beckett scholarship through an innovative lens that is Sufism. This paper explores how Vladimir and Estragon can be framed as Sufis; nonetheless, it is observed that they follow only those rules of Sufism that they feel comfortable with or that agree with their own desires. Thus, they exhibit certain qualities that can be examined through the
conventions of Sufism and many of them hardly fall into the sphere of mysticism. As a result, it is very challenging to domesticate them in Sufi terminology. However, their selection of activities lead us to claim they are but ‘failed’ Sufis and it is challenging to domesticate Beckett as a Sufi writer. Just as nothing is ever certain in Beckett’s world, however, the mixture of match and mismatch between Beckett and the Sufi tradition allows for interpretive pathways as well as dead ends, or occasionally both at the same time.