How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Line). Every time a character talks counts as one line, even if what they say turns into a long monologue. We used Donald M. Allen's translation.
Quote #1
Old Woman: "Come my darling, close the window. There's a bad smell from that stagnant water, and besides the mosquitoes are coming in." (2)
How significant is it that the water surrounding the house is stagnant? There are several places in the play where water is used as a metaphor for time. Could it be that the stagnant water suggests that time is frozen for the Old Man and his wife?
Quote #2
Old Woman: "Come, come my darling, come sit down. You shouldn't lean out, you might fall into the water." (4)
You could interpret this warning from the Old Woman as a comment on the cyclical nature of time. It seems significant that the Old Woman warns her husband about falling out the window. At the end of the play, both of them end up purposely throwing themselves into the water below. Might this happen every night and they simply forget about it? They might not necessarily die from the fall, and they do have terrible memories. Perhaps the Old Woman's warning comes from a dim recollection of the day before and shows that the elderly couple is trapped in a cyclical loop. Maybe they're stuck in an alternate reality in which they're doomed to repeat the same actions over and over.
Quote #3
Old Woman: "You know what happened to Francois I. You might be careful."
Old Man: Still more examples from history! Sweetheart, I'm tired of French history." (4-5)
The Old Woman follows up her warning about falling out of the window with a reference to French history. When the Old Man tells her he doesn't want to hear about history anymore, it makes us wonder if he's speaking about more than just the history of France. Could it be that he's referencing his and his wife's history as well? You could choose to interpret this line as an indication that some part of the Old Man is aware of the fact that he's stuck in a time loop. He could be somehow aware that he's been repeating the same actions over and over again and desperately wants to escape.
Quote #4
Old Man: "It's six o'clock in the evening...it is dark already. It wasn't like this before. Surely you remember, there was still daylight at nine o'clock in the evening, at ten o'clock, at midnight." (11)
The Old Man laments the fact that the days have gotten shorter. Is the earth rotating faster and faster? Is time speeding up? Or is the sun itself slowly dying? (Or is it just Daylight Saving Time?)
Quote #5
Old Man: "It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around, around..." (15)
This image of the earth revolving seems to strengthen the theme of the cyclical nature of time in the play. We're all trapped on this planet that keeps turning around and around. At the end of each twenty-four-hour period we end up in just about the same place we were before.
Quote #6
Old Woman: "Come on now, imitate the month of February." . . .
Old Man: "All right, here's the month of February."
Stage Directions: He scratches his head like Stan Laurel. (28-31)
This bit may suggest that humanity's idea of time is arbitrary. Somewhere along the line, the western world decided to divide up the year into twelve months. Why twelve? There are other calendars from other cultures that divide the year up into different months with different lengths. The fact that the Old Man's impression of February is an imitation of Stan Laurel, a famous comedian, perhaps shows the ultimate absurdity of our very notion of time.
Quote #7
Old Woman: "Tell me the story, you know the story: 'Then at last we arrived...'" (35)
Notice how the Old Woman's favorite story is both a beginning and an end. She wants her husband to recall a time when they first got somewhere (presumably Paris), showing that it was a beginning of sorts. However, the quote indicates that they arrived there at the end of a long journey. Here again we see a cyclical idea of time. The play never lets us forget that beginnings are always ends and ends are always beginnings.
Quote #8
Old Man: "We were soaked through, frozen to the bone, for hours, for days, for nights, for weeks..."
Old Woman: "For months..." (43-44)
The Old Man and Woman seem not to really know how long they were hanging out in the rain. The past seems like one big blur to them.
Quote #9
Old Woman: "All that's gone down the drain, alas...down the old black drain..." (56)
The image of dirty water going down a drain could be another hint that time is cyclical in the world of the play. There are several clues in the play that water represents time. Here it seems to represent the span of the Old Man's wasted life. When the water swirls around the drain before it disappears, it reminds us that events often occur in repetitive patterns.