The Passage of Time
Unlike all the other characters, Vladimir has a sense of the passage of time (only he says he remembers the events of Act I, although it is possible Lucky might recall them: see Lucky and Vladimir). However, he considers his memory unreliable because it can never be corroborated, due to Estragon's memory issues. At the end of the play, it is he who realizes the futile cycle that all of them have fallen into (see second quote). However, he rejects this realization when he finds that it is almost unbearable to live with ("I can't go on!"), and forces himself to dismiss it ("What have I said?"). He resolves to go on waiting for Godot.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir (Waiting For Godot)
Famous quotes containing the words passage and/or time:
“Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage up to bed.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)