Waiting with the Void:

Baradian Temporality in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot questions the idea of time as a
straight line, much like quantum physics views time as something that
arises from connections, emerges through actions, and unfolds in real
ways. In the play, Beckett’s repeating scenes of waiting and emptiness
turn the void into a lively space where things take shape and change.
This study examines how the play’s repeating scenes, significant
silences, and connections between characters and objects – like the
tree, boots, and empty space – can be read through Karen Barad’s
ideas that differences emerge through interactions (diffraction), things
shape each other (intra-action), and time forms through relationships
(time-becoming). As the theater of the absurd, this play has an
idiosyncratic style of waiting that avoids neat endings. It portrays
time as repeating, endless, and deeply intertwined with nature’s web.
Here, the empty stage becomes a place of possibilities, where ruin and
rebirth coexist. It may not resolve the crises of the Anthropocene, but
it mirrors the challenges of our time. In the end, Beckett’s open setting
offers a connected way of seeing that rethinks time as intertwined,
encouraging fresh approaches to handle doubt, show care, and take
action in a wounded world.