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Waiting for Godot can be understood as a play about the tension between two views of reality, embodied in the Copenhagen and Many Worlds Interpretations of quantum mechanics. To Didi and the audience, the second act seems to be an echo of the first, but an echo implies an original and a copy. In fact, the two acts are on an equal footing, representing parallel versions of the selfsame day. Ultimately, Waiting for Godot emerges as an exploration of the existential conflict that arises when an adherent of the Copenhagen Interpretation is confronted with a Many Worlds universe.
1. Introduction
What is the status of Act I and Act II of Waiting for Godot with respect to each other? This question turns out to lie at the very heart of the play. Strikingly, the conflict between the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics provides a framework for understanding this question.
The performance of the play seems to suggest a specific temporal relationship between the two acts, with Act I preceding Act ?, with Act ? appearing as a kind of echo of Act I. However, the content of the play points toward a very different relationship: Act I and Act ? are not in a temporal relationship to each other at all, but are rather two parallel renditions of the same day. The tension between these two possibilities is the source of the Vladimir's existential struggle.
These competing scenarios - that the acts represent either two different days in the same universe or the same day in two different universes - correspond to the conflicting understandings of the nature of reality implied by the two main competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWT) and Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). While it is not necessary to make reference to these interpretations to understand the issues at play in Waiting for Godot (indeed, Beckett's work predates the MWI), these interpretations provide a useful framework for addressing the distinct understandings of the universe that are contested in this play (and in turn, the play illuminates a debate sitting at the core of quantum mechanics).
In short then, the analysis that I offer here is this: that Waiting for Godot is a play...