How can TOK help us engage with a non-traditional play such as "Waiting for Godot"?

“Waiting for Godot” By Samuel Beckett.

As in TOK Language plays a key role in understanding both communication and miscommunication. (See Optional Theme - Language and the Knower)

ESTRAGON:

(giving up again). Nothing to be done.

VLADIMIR:

(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.

Vladimir and Estragon seem to know each other well, they have a long history together but in Act 1 Scene 1 the play opens in a grim setting.

The set and the tone remind us that Beckett lived in a century dominated by World War 1 and World War 2. (The play was first performed in French in Paris on the

 5th January 1953.

The physical appearance of the set, the poverty of the characters

Themes: Dystopia (Post - war)

Abuse of power: Pozzo and Lucky but in Act 2 the roles are reversed

Violence - 

VLADIMIR:

And they didn't beat you?

ESTRAGON:

Beat me? Certainly they beat me.

VLADIMIR:

The same lot as usual?

ESTRAGON:

The same? I don't know.

What is Post Modernism? Modernism was an optimistic movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

What is Utopia and What is a Dystopia?

How can search for "human perfection" lead to a nightmare of exclusion and extermination?

What does the rope represent between Pozzo and Lucky - why does Pozzo call Lucky Pig?

Documentary on genocide by Nazis