The setting of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is much like Jean-Paul Sartre's portrait of an existential hell in the play No Exit, in that in both, torture is not physical pain, but the monotony and meaninglessness of waiting for nothing. In Waiting For Godot, Vladimir and Estragon repeatedly make desperate attempts to entertain themselves while they wait for the mysterious and elusive Godot, who is their potential source of salvation from purgatory. Vladimir and Estragon occupy themselves with childish games in the hope that this will make time pass quickly, and that Godot will arrive to save them from monotony. Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot because he represents salvation from a meaningless existence in the same way that many people search for significance in their everyday lives. In Waiting For Godot, when Beckett creates a purgatory in which a god, Godot, that the characters perpetually wait for never arrives, he comments on the frustrating, and often futile, human quest for meaning. Waiting for Godot is a prolonged episode in purgatory, so the fact that time passes abnormally is crucial to the play. Most of the time it is dusk, and when night finally comes, it falls abruptly. This suggests that the world that V

This wait is futile because each dusk is the same. In the first act, Godot's messenger informs Vladmir that "Mr.Godot told [him] to tell [them] that he won't come this evening but surely to-morrow"(55). In the second act—the next evening—Godot does not come, and the boy tells them the same thing, that Godot will come the next evening. Nearer to the end of the play, Estragon and especially Vladimir begin to realize that Godot will never arrive. When Estragon comments that he cannot go on waiting for Godot forever, Vladimir comments, "that's what you think"(109). Vladimir realizes that the wait for Godot is useless, yet when they agree to leave at the end of the play, neither move. Likewise, many people feel like they will never discover meaning in their lives; however, most continue with their mundane, monotonous lives because it is what has been expected of their ancestors for thousands of years. Other than suicide, which is an extreme action that most people do not take, they realize that there is nothing more to do than to continue their lives and to wait for the slightest possibility of someday discovering a purpose or significance of life.

To Vladimir and Estragon, Godot represents their "personal God," as Lucky states in his speech, that can grant them reprieve from their tortuous lives and also from each other. He gives them something to believe in when all seems hopeless—the same occurrences repeat indefinitely. Their lives in purgatory have no meaning; their actions and words have no effect on anything other than each other. However, even this effect does not last long, for the next evening starts anew, and Vladimir and Estragon forget all that has occurred previously. Therefore, by choosing the setting of purgatory, Beckett comments on the purgatory that we all live in. We move through life each day, wondering why we are slaves to routine. All people are waiting for Godot in the sense that they are waiting for a meaning of life, a goal; they are longing for a reward for the monotony of life. People incessantly believe that this meaning will come despite all