Scholars Mind

When the Layover Never Ends

To be in-between is to pass through a space where the normal rules of movement, time, and social interaction are suspended—but only briefly, on the way to elsewhere. But what happens if you’re stuck in such a place? As you explore the selections below, consider: how should we approach spending time in liminal spaces? Should we do more to seek them out?

A layover is bearable because it ends. These five ask the same question from inside: what do you do with in-between time when nobody is coming to let you out?

Key concepts

The Theatre of the Absurd
The postwar theatre Beckett belongs to, staging the claim that life supplies no built-in meaning. Its plays refuse the usual machinery — plot, arrival, explanation — on the grounds that supplying any of it would be a lie about the thing being shown.

Every work — at a glance

  • Waiting for Godot, Scene 2 — Samuel Beckett

    Beckett's 1953 play in which two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait beside a bare tree for a man named Godot, who sends word he will come tomorrow and does not. A famous early review said it was a play in which 'nothing happens, twice' — the second act repeats the first with tiny unbearable differences, a few leaves on the tree.

+ 17 more works explained inside

What to know

  1. 01
    How should we spend time we cannot leave? The set answers by contrast. Rostov, sentenced to the Metropol, builds friendships, a job and the raising of a child inside a building people are meant to pass through; Vladimir and Estragon build nothing beside their tree; Dutilleul is stopped inside the wall itself. What separates them is not how long the confinement lasts but whether the person is still able to act inside it.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle airport from 1988 until 2006. His papers were gone, so no country would admit him and none would

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

The in-between is usually somewhere you pass through; this asks what happens when you cannot. Is a permanent in-between a prison or a strange kind of freedom? Rostov builds a whole life inside his sentence. Vladimir and Estragon do not, and the difference between them is the useful part.

Practice — a sample

LITThe Luttringhausen production of Godot was translated and staged by an inmate. That MOST strongly supports —

  • A Waiting explains itself
  • B Censors allowed it
  • C Translation was simple
  • D Prisons funded theatre
  • E Beckett toured jails

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

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