The tree is an important part of the stage decor of
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, all the more because there are so little stage-props in the
play or for that matter in any other Beckett-play.
It is
functional in many ways. It is a symbol of immobility and the static condition of human
existence as exemplified in the illusory movements of circularity in Pozzo, Lucky and
the two tramps who move only to reinforce their
immobility.
The tree, like the minerals in Watteau's
paintings, greatly admired by the young Beckett, mingles with the human condition
manifested through the play.
The appearance of the two
leaves in the leafless tree in the second act is a critique of temporal linearity and a
subtle dig at a symbolic cliche of optimistic rhetoric.
The
tree is also co-relative to the emptiness of the country road. It evokes a generic
landscape, which can be so many places, almost any place in the world. And that is what
de-spatializes the setting, in terms of specificity.
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