Act Without Words I
This play left me, the reader, thinking about hands. "He looks at his hands" is the last line. A line that Beckett certainly wants me to think about, since it breaks the pattern of "he does not move" being the character's response to literally anything.
Why is he thinking about hands? It's not one of those absurdist non-symbols for us to wonder about in vain. Hands are the primary tools with which we interact physically with the world. He just spent the entire play trying and failing to interact with the world, and then he gave up. And now he's looking at his hands and thinking "Why do I have these amazing tools if the power they give me is really all an illusion?"
That's really what Beckett is writing about here in Act Without Words I - the simultaneous power and powerlessness of the human condition, of the tools of hands and minds which we possess.
In order for Beckett's character to gain power in his environment, he has to rebel through inaction. This is engaging the power of the mind but not of the hands. Is Beckett elevati ng the mind above the hands in this way, by saying that while both tools are powerful and neither can break free of the powerlessness of the human condition, the mind can at least resist?
The resistance of inaction seems to us to be an undesirable type of resistance, although Beckett presents it as the only option. It's undesirable because it forfeits the ability to shape our surroundings and dictate our experiences - it rejects homeostasis and thus life. But in the world of the play, and perhaps in your world too, the human is completely restricted by the despotic rule of the exterior.
The assumption that the human must participate in the game of survival, of getting the water, is the assumption that causes the most suffering. Once the character forfeits the game, the assumption is still that human agency can dictate outcomes, as he contemplates suicide. But with the disappearance of the rope, this idea is quickly abandoned. It is only now that his failure comes to an end as he lies in the position in which he fell and refuses to move. He can move at any time, and he can certainly think (after all, he looks at his hands, indicating an active mind). But without the ability to achieve anything, he has little motivation to. His suffering is reduced - the goal is no longer achievement, but experience. Soon, I think, he may get up and begin to interact with the world again, but this time there will be no failure.
Act Without Words II
Though the last play ends with inaction as resistance to the world's tyranny, this one shows us how the world's tyranny compels meaningless action. The goad comes from the right wing and pushes our characters A and B out of their sleeping sacks across the stage. A is slow and awkward, B is fast and precise. They are antithetical approaches to life: the productive and the unproductive, the active and inactive. B is concerned with appearance and physical condition and takes action to achieve their goals, while A prefers to pray and brood, perhaps more content to let God decide their fate. Both characters, however, are compelled into action by the goad, which never ceases to extend its reach by adding wheels as it drives them further away.
Beckett's play illustrates that A and B are not as different as we think they are, for their lives move onward and they are forced to participate, neither one able to escape the goad for long. Their stylistic differences have no effect on outcomes; their days are equally long, and their movements are equally far.
A has many qualities which the reader might accosiate with Beckett's philosophy. Resistance to action, disgust with the world, and disinterest in the type of pointless busywork which B engages in are all the assumed consequences of a belief that we are powerless and life is meaningless. However, Beckett suggests that there is nothing about this approach which sets A apart from B in any important sense; they are both forced to travel across the stage, the physical prodding of the external world never allowing them a long period of inaction.
This leads to the perhaps already obvious conclusion that Beckett is not prescriptive. It really is quite immaterial whether you work hard or are lazy, whether you believe in a God or whether you stay fit. He does not condemn or call for action; instead, he calls our beliefs and assumptions into question.
Rockaby
In Waiting for Godot, Pozzo concludes his speech about time with the line "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more." Death is simply the conclusion necessitated by every birth, and it is a return to nothingness, the end of illusion. Rockaby, a play showing the death of a prematurely old woman, is naturally suffused with symbols of birth: there is a sense of infancy evoked by the old woman being rocked in her chair as if it were a cradle, calling out for more and slowly drifting asleep. She is being spoken to in a soft voice, and she is thinking of her mother.
The play has a strong sense of loneliness. Her recorded voice speaks to her about her life, describing her failed search for another person like herself. In the first section, the voice describes her "going to and fro" searching, but eventually giving up. In the second section, the voice tells how she looked through her window out on the world and saw other windows, but although she looked on "all sides / high and low" for "another living soul" like herself, she never found one. Finally, she looks out and sees "all blinds down / never one up / hers alone up" and concludes that she has no evidence of another living soul, so she closes her blind and descends a steep flight of stairs to the rocking chair where her mother died.
The loneliness and the searching for an "other," combined with references to the woman's mother and the way she dies in the same manner as her mother did, suggests that in some way she has spent her life searching for a return to her mother and ultimately to her birth. In this sense, her descent down the stairs to the rocking chair is the end of her quest, as she is following in her mother's footsteps and returning to birth through death. The old woman spent her life searching in vain, but finally found her ultimate destination which she had been missing all along, and is comforted in this discovery.
Wrapping Up
If one approaches life with the goal of having power over the outside world, finding a metaphysical purpose and meaning, or setting oneself apart from others, then these plays suggest that failure and suffering (or delusion and ignorance) are the inevitable result. But Beckett does not advocate gloom. Instead, he tries to dispel the illusions that allow us to become attached to meaningless goals and desires. Implicit in his work is an invitation to accept reality as it is. Death after a life of struggle is not a tragedy but merely an end. The sloth of A is no worse than the busywork of B. And as many times as we try to leave the stage, the forces of the world will through us back into the blinding light until the play is over.
Beckett plays don't portray life as a bad thing. Instead, they suggest that we give up false conceptions of its nature, and ride out our journeys to their inevitable end.