Quote 28
VLADIMIR
Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? […] At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) […] What have I said?
He goes feverishly to and fro, halts finally at extreme left, broods. (2.795)
Vladimir can’t even be certain of his own consciousness by the end of the play.
Quote 29
VLADIMIR
Tell him . . . (he hesitates) . . . tell him you saw me and that . . . (he hesitates) . . . that you saw me. (Pause. Vladimir advances, the Boy recoils. Vladimir halts, the Boy halts. With sudden violence.) You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!
Silence. Vladimir makes a sudden spring forward, the Boy avoids him and exits running. (2.829)
This is interesting; at the end of the play, Vladimir is at his most lucid. He knows he saw the Boy yesterday (and, we can extrapolate, many other days in the past) and he knows he will see him tomorrow. His moment of clarity, however, leads only to fruitless anger. What good is certainty, anyway, in a world full only of unreliability and doubt?
VLADIMIR
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (1.40)
Vladimir starts to do what the audience is perhaps doing as well: derive meaning from the smallest of actions. We search for symbols and metaphors in the absurd objects of Waiting for Godot just as we search for meaning in the dull daily actions of our lives.