Waiting for Godot Character Comparison

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot depicts two vagabonds, Vladimir and Estragon, as its central characters: to the extent that the play's structure accommodates a traditional protagonist, one of them -- or both considered as a unit -- must be that protagonist. Yet I think Beckett is careful to give us reason both to understand Vladimir and Estragon (within their own interactions) as being more distinct characters, while at the same time we can see them as the same character with the same name. I'd like to look at the evidence of a few crucial moments in Beckett's text, in which the distinctions between Vladimir and Estragon are either heightened or elided, in order ultimately to argue as to why I think we must understand the two characters as a unit, and to some degree as the same character with the same name.

At the play's...
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