Can someone help me understand the meaning of this play? I still dont understand the point of the story but thats probably cause i havent studied existentialism which would supposedly explin everything. I know when i ‘get it’, i will love the play but im still mystified.
Love the play. Don’t get it. But then I like David Lynch as well, so it’s probably my problem. 
I’ll deal with it.
No, if I remember correctly from one of the many literature courses I’ve taken, most of Beckett’s plays (including this one) focus on human disability to communicate: instead of having meaningful conversations, we stay stuck in superficial nonsense and what’s known as “phatic” conversation (talking for the sake of making noise). By that account, Godot prolonged absense is just an excuse to have the two characters trying to kill time.
Another, more outrageous, claim is that “Godot” actually means “small God” (Beckett was French-speaking in origin, and the play was originally written in French, so it seems unlikely that Beckett chose and English word as the basis of this wordplay, but still). In this view, the play can be seen as a commentary on the failing of most westerns religions (far fetched, ain’t it?).
And you might consider the whole “master and slave” bit as a commentary on capitalism or something of the sort. It can mean anything you want it to mean, basically, and that’s probably what Beckett wanted anyway.
Like leaves.
Like ashes.
Like leaves.
(sorry, I just had to do that).
Actually, Godot is just plain “God”. With that in mind, I think more things will click in place. Regarding Godot, being small god in French… the French word for God is Dieu, so that doesn’t seem plausible.
Fascinating play, Waiting for Godot is. I like it and would love to perform it.
The general consensus from my literature class after we read it was that, among other things, it’s a commentary on the futility of existence. They’re just waiting for something to happen that never will. Even when Vladimir realizes that, he can’t (or won’t) do anything to change his situation.
Of course, there are a thousand other possible interpretations and multiple themes in the play, some more likely than others…I don’t think, like one person in my class, that it’s a call to arms of sorts for Christians.
I was much more fascinated by the usage of time in the play, actually, than anything. How interesting, to effectually suspend time and accelerate it simultaneously.
That’s what I said. I should have been clearer.
Well, Beckett himself always refused to comment on his plays, and when people asked him “What is ‘Waiting for Godot’ about,” he’d simply answer “It’s about 4 characters who are like that.”
But the allegory intended is pretty obvious, if you assume that Godot is God.
Why are Vladimir and Estragon in the wilderness? They don’t know. (Why are we humans on this Earth? We don’t know.)
They’re hoping someone named Godot will come along. WHen he does, they’re hoping HE’LL help them make sense of it. (We’re hoping there’s a God who’ll give meaning to our lives.)
They wait a long, long time, but Godot never shows up. (The faithful have been waiting for God to show up for a long time… so far, no apparent luck.)
Every time they’re about to give up hope that Godot will ever come, a child comes and assures them that, if they’ll just keep waiting, Godot will surely be along soon. (Institutionalized religion keeps telling the faithful, "Don’t worry, Jesus will surely return soon, just have faith and be patient).
It starts to llok as if it’s stupid and pointless to wait for a man who’s never going to show up. (Maybe the faithful are deluded idiots, waiting for a God who’s NEVER going to come.)
Or HAS Godot shown up? Maybe Pozzo WAS Godot! Maybe Godot HAS come and gone, and they just missed him because he wasn’t what they were expecting! (Just as, PERHAPS, the Jews missed the coming of God, in the form of Jesus, because he didn’t come in the form they expected.)
So, Vladimir and Estragon are left with the same dilemma we all face. Why are we here? Can God(ot) help us make sense of it? If so, where is God(ot)? Why doesn’t he ever show himself? Is it worth waiting at all?
Vladimir was the Soviet Union and Estragon was the United States.
If you make that assumption, yes. Of course, it’s a very major assumption - not that it’s false, just a big one.
It’s been many years since I’ve read it, but I do agree that the assumption that “Godot” is “God” is too explicit. It needn’t be that direct, nor do I expect that Beckett was trying to be that particular with the character of Godot. That said, when I first read it, thinking of Godot as God helped me understand the play better… I mean, it was the first assumption that leapt to my mind reading it.
The idea that “Godot” might stand for “little God” isn’t at all that wild. After all, Beckett was Irish, and there’s no rule against interlingual punnery.
For me, the character of “Godot” is much more vague than “God.” It could represent a goal, purpose, meaning in life, anything of the sort. When I read it, I just interpreted it as an absurdist reduction of human existence.
All that Beckett ever said about Waiting for Godot is that Pozzo is a weak character, with a need to overcompensate. That makes Pozzo the character that Beckett said the most about.
By the way, Beckett’s plays are much better when performed. There’s an old version with Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel, although that might be tough to find. Steve Martin and Robin Williams (well, I’m sure about Steve Martin) also put on a version, but I don’t think that was recorded.
Wasn’t Beckett Irish in origin? I was under the impression that he wrote in French because he had moved to Paris as an adult, and had basically adopted French culture wholesale. He would have learned English while going to school in Ireland–so it’s not too far-fetched that he was playing on the similarity of “God” and “Godot.”
[now i see that pulykamell already answered this–never mind]
I agree that the play–which i love–is about the futility of human existence, a recurring theme in Beckett’s writings, as well as about the impossibility of ever truly communicating with other people. Those two themes seem to be very much related.
Beckett’s novels are also very good.
I feel compelled to point out that Beckett, when asked if Godot was God, replied “if I had wanted to say ‘God,’ I would have said ‘God!’” [paraphrase; don’t have source w/ me]
My own private theory was that the four named characters (excluding Godot) were references to (1) the four “humours” from medieval medicine and (2) the four corners of Europe. Pozzo is Italian for “hole” or something like that. You know, I can’t remember what crap I wrote in undergrad so why do I even bother trying to post? This is just pathetic. Will stop SDMBing while drunk. Bad monkey.
“Should we hang ourselves?”
Somewhere around 10 or 15 years ago there was a wonderful run of “Doonesbury” strips – “Waiting for Mario.” Fun stuff.
Just reading it isn’t enough. You must see what happens when it’s performed. Just as ultrafilter said. There’s an awful lot of unwritten business going on onstage. The work is vague enough that actors have to work hard to bring some life into it.
Eugene Ionesco might be more accessible, if you are interested in learning more about absurdism. “Rhinoceros” is a great starting point.
I did my Master’s thesis on Beckett; I can’t really sum up here, but I’ll ramble a bit and hope I can clear some things up. (Disclaimer: I’ve had a few drinks tonight.)
First off: Beckett was Irish. In fact he attended the same school as Oscar Wilde in his early years (the name escapes me; Portora?). English was his first language, but he wrote the plays in French and then translated them himself into English to help him strip down the language. The effect is astonishing, as anyone can see from reading them.
What’s the play about? Having spent a LOT of time on it, here’s my take:
The play is, as the title suggests, about waiting. We could be waiting for anything: an e-mail, our parents to die, a solar eclipse. The point is not what we’re waiting for. The point is that we’re waiting, and THAT universal human experience is the focus of the play.
In about 1955 (don’t have source materials on hand), the play was performed for the inmates in San Quentin prison. It had only been out for a year or so, and critical reaction was still mixed; apparently it was chosen for the all-male prison mainly because it has no female characters.
And the prisoners loved it. The educated, high-falutin’ critics were haggling over semiotics, but the inmates thought it was the greatest thing they’d ever seen. Why? My guess is that prisoners understand waiting.
Is the play about God? Well, Beckett said, “If I knew who Godot was, I’d have put that in the play.” Nonetheless, it’s hard to ignore the fact that 60% of the title character’s name is “G-O-D.” Personally, I feel that to make the play about God actually limits it; the play is about the subtle, but astonshingly pervasive, sense that change is coming. It’s a tough feeling to nail down in language, but once one learns to recognize it, it seems to be the underlying reason for many decisions people make. It’s about the human experience of waiting, of hope; the feeling, whether rooted in reality or not, that the future will be different and, one hopes, better. Read the final paragraph of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog” for a devastating example.
(Sorry for all the italics; I’m trying to limit myself, but this is a topic I get fired up about.)
One can bring up many, many ideas as to what’s going on in the play, and it obviously sparks thoughts on many other topics. But at heart it’s a simple story about two men waiting for something and the things they do and the activities that they come up with to pass the time while they’re waiting.
There’s one thing we’re all waiting for. It’s the only thing that happens to all of us. And one could argue that *everything we do *is an attempt either to pass the time while we wait or to ignore the fact that we’re waiting for it. That’s the heart of the play, and of all Beckett’s work.
Sweet dreams!
- jackelope
LOL, the topic directly under this was “Waiting for Harry Potter” and I had a bizzarre image of two depressed men waiting for a spotty boy on a broomstick 
Great post Jackelope.
I was going to give my own ideas, but you said it better than I could.