Discuss the significance of repetition in 'Waiting for Godot'.

Waiting is often associated with repetition. The cyclical existence of protagonist, Vladimir and Estragon, is defined by the tyranny of an unknown force, which renders them prisoners of time. Such force is reflected in Vladimir's opening at the beginning of the play where he"resumed the struggle" of life. This allusion to Sisyphus elucidates the protagonists' existence; their state of stasis and inability to progress. Like Albert Camus' Sisyphus, they repeatedly submit to the same tasks. Days become indistinguishable, with the mere repetition of "we're waiting for Godot," to remind us of time's passing. Although such repetition could offer a sense of constancy in its proffering of "the same, the clear, the stable", the slight deviance from one repetition to the next undermines our previous experience. This "uneasy equilibrium" is manifest in the characters themselves. The symmetry of Estragon and Vladimir, and Pozzo and Lucky, reflected in the meter of each pairs' names, invites the audience to observe one partner echoing in the other, thus denoting a sense of duality. Vladimir and Estragon appear to subtly mirror the slave-master dynamic of Pozzo and Lucky, sustained by Vladimir's adoption of Pozzo's idiosyncrasies; he begins to call Estragon "hog!" even before the mimicking of Pozzo, who refers to Lucky as "pig!", begins. Ruby Cohn refers to this repetition of similar words as an 'ironical contrast'. She seems to acknowledge Beckett's disallowing of easy parallels between the pairs to be drawn.