Abstract
Samuel Beckett's most famous play Waiting for Godot was first written in French in 1948 and translated in English in 1952, that is to say shortly after the end of World War II. At that time, the threat of the Cold War, the recent horror of the concentration camps and the invention of the atomic bomb started to cast doubts upon the usual idea that civilisation could move mankind forwards only in a positive way. Society was progressively losing faith in civilisation and progress and this disillusionment was notably expressed through the existentialist movement that emerged then and called into question the real meaning of human condition in the world. Beckett's work was highly influenced by the historical and philosophical context of his time and, according to Andrew Kennedy, his position regarding the concept of art became more radical: his 'fairly typical modernist'(14) concerns turned during the post-war period into a 'total skepticism about the value, and even the possibility, of artistic expression'(14).
