Rajesh Bharvad, Enakshi Chakraborty
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has created an existential crisis
among people. It has applied what Nietzsche once said, “to live is to suffer,
to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Many people are being
down and out all over the world. The lockdown period has increased the struggle
to find genuine meaning for existence. Why are we here? How can we make a
difference? How should we really live?
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a search for a way of
relief. The characters here reflect the meaninglessness of life. The acts of
Vladimir and Estragon resemble the boredom and monotony of lockdown. In act I,
Estragon says, “nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” Godot
is the unknown. Godot never turns up, but keeps on procrastinating his visit to
the end.
The paper is an effort to shed light on human emotions in
the wake of Covid – 19 and how it has thrown humans to confront with the basic
situation of their existence and undergo through dilemma of choices and
expectations.
Covid-19, meaninglessness, existentialism, and despair and hope
VOL.12, ISSUE No.2, March 2020