The first few lines of the play usher a stage of uncertainty affiliated with illusions, where identity and reality are not only obscure but rather they look like a mirage, that existed only as unreal reality. The sense of exile looks comparative because it works on so many levels in tone with intellectual, spiritual and real reality, and so is that the absurd theatre which filters and creeps into the hidden part of Estragon and Vladimir, revealing their ability to be themselves. They are deprived possibly of logical order and, at the same moment, simulative enough to make them presume, logically, an adjective with a certain human view of tomorrow. This sense of exile rests on the fact that they have crossed the line of nature. Intellectually, they are unable to sustain and maintain a normal debate, fruitful enough to make readers and spectators alike deduce a lesson of life. The dialogue is incoherent and so is time, and so are ideas. That is why the two main characters feel that they have transcended the real time to the time of twilight zone where they belong to the both zones and, at the same time, belong to none. So, in short, they have exiled themselves from any commitment to any sort of normality. The mound and their waiting are nothing than waiting to return from exile that they have imprisoned themselves in, but, for Beckett such an exile could be the last reality that he needs to understand a world of illusion, and this is the bottom line of the Absurd Theater to which Harold Pinter’s Old Times belongs. Exile of unbreakable circle that they found themselves in offers no hope of salvation except in meaningless waiting. Beckett and Pinter believe in a view of human being in isolation in a man existed by himself and past into alien universe to conceive this universe as possessing no inherent reality, value or meaning and to represent human life in its fruitless nothingness, where it ends toward the nothingness.
Beckett presents the texture of characters immune to understand in the normal sense of the word. The question about the carrot is suggestive of an attempt and a counter attempt. Defining the nature of the carrot is derived from time, object and the need to know . answering the question is a fashionable manner like “carrot is a carrot” may look illogical in the classical terms, because carrot is a matter of time-wasting when this object is misused and a matter of presenting and illusory formula that sets man in meaningless motion and here lies the grasp of the matter because should this answer be logical, is Godot himself a real person, then it would have a meaning. So, they are waiting for an idea that does not have a conspicuous implication and proper interpretation, that’s why they are waiting for nothing, but it is everything, and the carrot is a carrot. But giving no answer to that question corresponds the nature of Godot; carrot is a carrot, and Godot is Godot. That is why “ a carrot is a carrot” releases them from presuming a logical answer and at the same time, it is an escape answer quit affiliated to that the nature of Godot; the carrot is a carrot and Godot is Godot, the great name they lived under his shadow, and they do not want to venture out of that shadow, last they scorched by the sun of reality. That is why “the carrot is a carrot”, and it must not have another answer.
Vladimir believes that he has come to the wrong place which means that waiting for Godot has brought them to the land of exile. The dialogue develops to show that both of them have nothing certain because yesterday means tomorrow as far as the logical sequence of time is concerned. Being unable to identify themselves with reality is suggestive of the breakup of the characters themselves and
Hence, characters are the product of the civilization that has gone beyond any logical limits, and in short, Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky and the boy are the victims of civilization that has failed to sustain spiritual and intellectual integrity of people. They cannot be coming out of their own developed value. They have inherited the value, and they are part of the fabric of the social norms and traditions. Being unable to answer or understand or make sense of their being is a clear indication that they are victims of a material civilization that has caused their exile and their alienation even from themselves.
In the play, the characters look lost, performing senseless actions, absurd and useless. Characters like Estragon and Vladimir look drowned in meaninglessness that develops to be grotesque, and their suffering that looks normal is in reality a tragic one. Estragon suggests that all his life he has been comparing himself to Jesus Christ.
The spiritual alienation nestling in the dungeon of their own estranged character has developed to create a sort of gap between them. As characters are waiting, as it appears, for that Godot who might be interpreted as God and the reality of spiritual hunger, they both live in the wilderness of faith. Arriving to that meaninglessness of reality suggests that they knew that they have become far away from sensibilities of that spirit; the way they look down from heaven. For them, heaven is a place where they can dream of redeeming themselves. Being estranged to his redemption leaves them wishful in their thinking. Heaven evokes a sense of spiritual reality, but they cannot comprehend that because they live in exile from the true sense of faith.
The inability to foster a return to normality makes them help and accept that meaninglessness of being. Estragon has been comparing himself to Jesus Christ throughout his life, but the next step of corroborating this comparison into an implemented practice remains an unfulfilled idea. Their exile has made them develop within a closed circle where everything, almost, looks repetitive; they can only look at all aspects of time as if they were of the same value; they have no future because they know nothing of their past, and thus their present is meaningless. In short, their exile has become the chosen home from which they cannot exile themselves from.
Beckett sounds like caricature when trying to turn inside out the psychology of the character. They say they are waiting for Godot, and Estragon says that he has been comparing himself to Jesus Christ; a development of a religious connotation, but by the end, they both suggest forgetting all about it. The spiritual disband they live in irremediable as it looks, but they cannot stop attempting any spiritual approach despite their full knowledge that they are not going to have it. Godot stands for far fetish idea acknowledged by resigning consciousness because of the inability to foster and get further spiritual integrity that could sealed off exile as a forced destination where they find themselves wasting not only their time but their being as well.
Absurd theatre shows how man has become a sort of human species, not human being because human dignity is an imperative issue that gives man the defined contour. Values have been reversed and absurd theatre does not look a waste of time to read. It shows, in depth, a tragic reality of some people who have transcended meaningfulness. Absurd theatre rings a long bell at human beings existence because it has lost all meaning. The implied massage could very much be a call to return to spiritual and moral values.