VLADIMIR
Well? What do we do?
ESTRAGON
Don't let's do anything. It's safer. (1.194-195)
This is the fundamental problem in Waiting for Godot and—if we see the play as an allegory—the fundamental problem of life (which is highly more likely than the notion that the play is about little more than boots and hats). Fear and uncertainty result in inaction.
VLADIMIR
I get used to the muck as I go along.
[…]
VLADIMIR
Nothing you can do about it.
ESTRAGON
No use struggling.
VLADIMIR
One is what one is.
ESTRAGON
No use wriggling.
VLADIMIR
The essential doesn't change.
ESTRAGON
Nothing to be done. (1.281-290)
This is the second time we hear Estragon’s line "Nothing to be done," the phrase that opened the play. Here, both men have accepted the stagnancy of their situation and abandoned any hope of change or betterment. This becomes not only an excuse for passivity, but a prison of inaction, as neither man can bring himself to break the cycle of waiting for Godot.
VLADIMIR
At last! (Estragon gets up and goes towards Vladimir, a boot in each hand. He puts them down at edge of stage, straightens and contemplates the moon.) What are you doing?
ESTRAGON
Pale for weariness.
VLADIMIR
Eh?
ESTRAGON
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us.
VLADIMIR
Your boots, what are you doing with your boots? (1.819-23)
While Vladimir can focus only on the boots, Estragon makes one of the play’s most reflective and poetic comments: that the moon is pale with weariness from watching this tiring routine play out below. Though he comes across as the simpleton, Estragon in a way recognizes more than Vladimir the incessant banality of their existence.