In the plays Hamlet and Waiting for Godot, the protagonists are each given a task to complete by an authority figure: Vladimir and Estragon must wait for Godot day after day, and Hamlet must find it in himself to revenge his father’s murder by taking his uncle’s life. Though these tasks differ greatly in nature, they share a certain near-impossible quality, which may lead one to question why one task (Vladimir and Estragon’s) is achieved while the other (Hamlet’s) is left undone. The main reason for this is habit: specifically, that the former task can be completed without sacrificing habit, while the latter can not. To reach the point where we can definitively say this, however, we must step back and examine the tasks of these plays more closely, as well as the nature of the conflicts that arise from them.
In Waiting for Godot, action is virtually nonexistent, and the whole of the play centers around the conflict of interest Vladimir and Estragon face because of this. They are called to stay and wait for Godot, to refrain from action and remain dutifully at attention, ready for the moment when Godot finally comes. They do so in the hope that Godot will provide them with a better life. Godot is said to own a large estate and keep many servants, and the two vagabonds believe they may find a place there. Though reduced to pitiful circumstances, they do not leave and search for another potential master, but return day after day to wait for Godot to come.
By contrast, Hamlet’s conflict stems from a command to act. In this situation, the ghost of Hamlet’s father plays the same role to Hamlet that Godot plays to Vladimir and Estragon. The spirit is the only authority Hamlet seems to feel any obligation to, and Hamlet is tied to him with the same life-altering strength that ties Vladimir and Estragon to Godot. Just as the latter two center their every day around Godot’s request that they wait, so too Hamlet centers his every day around his dead father’s wishes. Unlike Vladimir and Estragon, however, Hamlet finds himself unable to do as his Godot-figure commands. This leads us to the question of why - of what is so different in these two situations.
The obvious answer to this question is that Godot has asked Vladimir and Estragon to do something easy and Hamlet Sr. has asked Hamlet to do something hard. It can hardly be argued that coming to a particular place and waiting for someone else to show up is more difficult than taking the life of another human being. This answer, however, is flawed in that it underestimates the significance of Godot’s request to Vladimir and Estragon. I will not speculate as to which of the two tasks are more difficult, but I will argue that neither is easily done. The heart of the difficulty of Vladimir and Estragon’s task lies in the fact that it never ends. Godot is never going to come. And yet they must continue, for the rest of their lives, to come to the same place each day and wait for something that will never come to pass. Their lives become an eternal, meaningless cycle, and though they may become dissatisfied with this situation (as they express throughout the play), they have no escape from it other than death. While of a very different nature than Hamlet’s mission, this is undeniably a significant commitment.
Having established that Hamlet Sr.’s call to action and Godot’s call to inaction are both incredibly difficult commands, we may readdress the question of why Godot’s instruction is possible for Vladimir and Estragon to carry out, while that of Hamlet Sr. is not possible for Hamlet to carry out. To do this, we can look at the characters’ own reasoning for their actions.
The main forces driving Vladimir and Estragon seem to be hope, habit, and fear. Vladimir mentions all these motivations at different points of the play, beginning with hope in the play’s first scene, demonstrated by his lines “What’s the good of losing heart now, that’s what I say” and “One of the thieves was saved. It’s a reasonable percentage” (Beckett, Act I). He keeps this optimism for an impressively long time, as far as the end of Act I, where he says, “Tomorrow everything will be better” (Beckett, Act I). He eventually loses this hope and falls back on habit in the second act, stating that “habit is a great deadener” and continuing with his usual interactions with Estragon and Godot’s daily messenger (who, as usual, instructs the men to come back tomorrow) with resignation (Beckett, Act II). Finally, he ends with fear in the last scene, replying to Estragon’s question of what would happen if they stopped waiting on Godot with the statement “he’d punish us” (Beckett, Act II). This combination of motivators leaves them literally unable to act against Godot. In the final line of the play they resolve to leave – and the curtain falls as they stand immobile (Beckett, Act II).
However, if these reasons are enough to force obedience, surely Hamlet would have been able to obey his own father’s order. There is no lack of motivation on his part to do so: he certainly has fear, stating that his dead father’s appearance “horridly shake[s his] disposition” (Shakespeare, Act I, Scene IV), and he has a kind of hope that his father’s spirit will rest easier after Claudius is dead, as there is no other reason for the ghost to make the request. What should be even more motivating is the obvious love he had, and still has, for his father, as evidenced in his description of his father in the closet scene as having “a grace…seated on [his] brow…a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man” (Shakespeare, Act III, Scene IV). Yet somehow, despite these many and powerful driving forces, Hamlet is unable to carry out his father’s orders. Something about his situation is different from that of Vladimir and Estragon, who are unable to do anything but follow their order.
A notable difference that may shed some light on this is that unlike Vladimir and Estragon, Hamlet does not have habit on his side. To carry out his father’s orders, Hamlet must break the pattern of his life in a dramatic way, and considering his life up to this point, it is hardly surprising he finds this impossible to do. Hamlet is young, a prince, and used to a comfortable lifestyle. He is a scholar, not a warrior like his father, and is even referred to as such by Ophelia in the nunnery scene (Shakespeare, Act III, Scene I). Committing murder will inevitably end this lifestyle, and no matter how strongly he wishes for justice, he cannot bring himself to give this, his habit, up. While his performance of madness certainly challenges this thought, considering the way it changes his relationships with those around him, Hamlet’s life remains far more stable this way than were he to kill the king of Denmark.
Furthermore, Hamlet can not build up a habit in the way his counterparts do. For Vladimir and Estragon, Godot’s command was likely a small sacrifice initially, simply waiting for one day. When the second day of waiting came, it is easy to see how they would convince themselves he would come, this time. This pattern could then continue with the subsequent days falling slowly into a pattern until waiting seamlessly became habit. Hamlet has no such transition available to him: he must make a decisive move that will drastically change his life. If Vladimir and Estragon are unable to act against their authority figure, Hamlet is unable to act in accordance with his. Habit, then, would seem to be the true determining factor behind the characters’ ability (or inability) to fulfill the tasks given to them.
Even more telling is the characters’ desire to act out of habit. Vladimir and Estragon often fantasize about what their lives were like prior to the day they began waiting for Godot, as well as what it would be like to cease waiting for him. As previously mentioned, they even resolve to go away. Hamlet, meanwhile, is tormented immensely by his desire to bring justice to Claudius. He talks frequently of his desire to act, and of his disgust with himself for delaying. Yet in both cases, it is not the characters’ desires that win the battle, nor even their fear of punishment from the one who has commanded them. Instead, it is habit.
The importance of habit raises many questions about both of these plays. Had Hamlet been more in the habit of killing – for instance, had he been a soldier fresh from battle at the play’s beginning – would he have been able to avenge his father’s death? If Hamlet were already a criminal, and not used to a comfortable or easy lifestyle, would he have been able to kill Claudius? If Godot were to finally appear to Vladimir and Estragon, would they welcome or fear him, given the great disruption this would bring to their daily habit? While such speculation is beyond the scope of this paper, these questions are worth mentioning. Habit is not often emphasized in discussions of Hamlet in particular, and so opens up a slew of fascinating questions for discussion.
In Waiting for Godot, action is virtually nonexistent, and the whole of the play centers around the conflict of interest Vladimir and Estragon face because of this. They are called to stay and wait for Godot, to refrain from action and remain dutifully at attention, ready for the moment when Godot finally comes. They do so in the hope that Godot will provide them with a better life. Godot is said to own a large estate and keep many servants, and the two vagabonds believe they may find a place there. Though reduced to pitiful circumstances, they do not leave and search for another potential master, but return day after day to wait for Godot to come.
By contrast, Hamlet’s conflict stems from a command to act. In this situation, the ghost of Hamlet’s father plays the same role to Hamlet that Godot plays to Vladimir and Estragon. The spirit is the only authority Hamlet seems to feel any obligation to, and Hamlet is tied to him with the same life-altering strength that ties Vladimir and Estragon to Godot. Just as the latter two center their every day around Godot’s request that they wait, so too Hamlet centers his every day around his dead father’s wishes. Unlike Vladimir and Estragon, however, Hamlet finds himself unable to do as his Godot-figure commands. This leads us to the question of why - of what is so different in these two situations.
The obvious answer to this question is that Godot has asked Vladimir and Estragon to do something easy and Hamlet Sr. has asked Hamlet to do something hard. It can hardly be argued that coming to a particular place and waiting for someone else to show up is more difficult than taking the life of another human being. This answer, however, is flawed in that it underestimates the significance of Godot’s request to Vladimir and Estragon. I will not speculate as to which of the two tasks are more difficult, but I will argue that neither is easily done. The heart of the difficulty of Vladimir and Estragon’s task lies in the fact that it never ends. Godot is never going to come. And yet they must continue, for the rest of their lives, to come to the same place each day and wait for something that will never come to pass. Their lives become an eternal, meaningless cycle, and though they may become dissatisfied with this situation (as they express throughout the play), they have no escape from it other than death. While of a very different nature than Hamlet’s mission, this is undeniably a significant commitment.
Having established that Hamlet Sr.’s call to action and Godot’s call to inaction are both incredibly difficult commands, we may readdress the question of why Godot’s instruction is possible for Vladimir and Estragon to carry out, while that of Hamlet Sr. is not possible for Hamlet to carry out. To do this, we can look at the characters’ own reasoning for their actions.
The main forces driving Vladimir and Estragon seem to be hope, habit, and fear. Vladimir mentions all these motivations at different points of the play, beginning with hope in the play’s first scene, demonstrated by his lines “What’s the good of losing heart now, that’s what I say” and “One of the thieves was saved. It’s a reasonable percentage” (Beckett, Act I). He keeps this optimism for an impressively long time, as far as the end of Act I, where he says, “Tomorrow everything will be better” (Beckett, Act I). He eventually loses this hope and falls back on habit in the second act, stating that “habit is a great deadener” and continuing with his usual interactions with Estragon and Godot’s daily messenger (who, as usual, instructs the men to come back tomorrow) with resignation (Beckett, Act II). Finally, he ends with fear in the last scene, replying to Estragon’s question of what would happen if they stopped waiting on Godot with the statement “he’d punish us” (Beckett, Act II). This combination of motivators leaves them literally unable to act against Godot. In the final line of the play they resolve to leave – and the curtain falls as they stand immobile (Beckett, Act II).
However, if these reasons are enough to force obedience, surely Hamlet would have been able to obey his own father’s order. There is no lack of motivation on his part to do so: he certainly has fear, stating that his dead father’s appearance “horridly shake[s his] disposition” (Shakespeare, Act I, Scene IV), and he has a kind of hope that his father’s spirit will rest easier after Claudius is dead, as there is no other reason for the ghost to make the request. What should be even more motivating is the obvious love he had, and still has, for his father, as evidenced in his description of his father in the closet scene as having “a grace…seated on [his] brow…a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man” (Shakespeare, Act III, Scene IV). Yet somehow, despite these many and powerful driving forces, Hamlet is unable to carry out his father’s orders. Something about his situation is different from that of Vladimir and Estragon, who are unable to do anything but follow their order.
A notable difference that may shed some light on this is that unlike Vladimir and Estragon, Hamlet does not have habit on his side. To carry out his father’s orders, Hamlet must break the pattern of his life in a dramatic way, and considering his life up to this point, it is hardly surprising he finds this impossible to do. Hamlet is young, a prince, and used to a comfortable lifestyle. He is a scholar, not a warrior like his father, and is even referred to as such by Ophelia in the nunnery scene (Shakespeare, Act III, Scene I). Committing murder will inevitably end this lifestyle, and no matter how strongly he wishes for justice, he cannot bring himself to give this, his habit, up. While his performance of madness certainly challenges this thought, considering the way it changes his relationships with those around him, Hamlet’s life remains far more stable this way than were he to kill the king of Denmark.
Furthermore, Hamlet can not build up a habit in the way his counterparts do. For Vladimir and Estragon, Godot’s command was likely a small sacrifice initially, simply waiting for one day. When the second day of waiting came, it is easy to see how they would convince themselves he would come, this time. This pattern could then continue with the subsequent days falling slowly into a pattern until waiting seamlessly became habit. Hamlet has no such transition available to him: he must make a decisive move that will drastically change his life. If Vladimir and Estragon are unable to act against their authority figure, Hamlet is unable to act in accordance with his. Habit, then, would seem to be the true determining factor behind the characters’ ability (or inability) to fulfill the tasks given to them.
Even more telling is the characters’ desire to act out of habit. Vladimir and Estragon often fantasize about what their lives were like prior to the day they began waiting for Godot, as well as what it would be like to cease waiting for him. As previously mentioned, they even resolve to go away. Hamlet, meanwhile, is tormented immensely by his desire to bring justice to Claudius. He talks frequently of his desire to act, and of his disgust with himself for delaying. Yet in both cases, it is not the characters’ desires that win the battle, nor even their fear of punishment from the one who has commanded them. Instead, it is habit.
The importance of habit raises many questions about both of these plays. Had Hamlet been more in the habit of killing – for instance, had he been a soldier fresh from battle at the play’s beginning – would he have been able to avenge his father’s death? If Hamlet were already a criminal, and not used to a comfortable or easy lifestyle, would he have been able to kill Claudius? If Godot were to finally appear to Vladimir and Estragon, would they welcome or fear him, given the great disruption this would bring to their daily habit? While such speculation is beyond the scope of this paper, these questions are worth mentioning. Habit is not often emphasized in discussions of Hamlet in particular, and so opens up a slew of fascinating questions for discussion.
