Comment insightfully and specifically about Waiting for Godot and about your peers' responses to the play. You may comment all at once or over the course of the week. The comment period will be closed whenever at midnight on Friday, April 4.
Consider writing about the style and form of the play. Consider the minimalist structure. Consider the language.
Consider the stage directions. Consider the label "tragicomedy". Consider the play's relationship to vaudeville comedy. Consider the play's relationship to Theatre of the Absurd.
Consider the play's allusions to Christianity and Christian figures (God-ot, Christ, the thieves, Adam, Cain, Abel, etc.) and to other literature (especially but not exclusively Hamlet).
Consider writing about themes: hope and hopelessness, repetition and variation, sense and senselessness, power and powerlessness, masters and slaves, fate and choice, isolation and connection, waiting and acting (as in action but also as in playing), staying and going, being and not being, and so on.
Consider Samuel Beckett's treatment of the themes in Godot in relation to other author's treatment of the themes in other works you have read and studied.
Consider versions of the scenes from the play in the video bar or explore YouTube on your own. There's a lot there. (Aside: in a professional production of the play that uses Beckett's own production notes, Godot is pronounced GAW-doh and not gud-OH, and Pozzo is pronounced POT-zo not PO-zo. Thought you might be curious.)
Consider your own reaction to the play and explore the reasons for this reaction by remembering our reading of it and by examining the text. Also, push yourself to go beyond your initial reaction.
The best responses will respond to issues we have already discussed and will open up new ground for discussion.
Your response (or responses) should be at least 300 words in length.
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18 comments:
This play seems to suggest that God never comes. They are constantly sad waiting for God to come. They believe that he will. The play says that he will not. They are caught in an endless struggle that seems to show that waiting for God is a desolate existence. It is only those that are not waiting for him or her, and seek to go to God that are rewarded.
Dan Aloisio
Throughout the play, I kept trying to figure out the aspect of society being evaluated or satirized. I came to the conclusion that there is no one aspect, but rather that the play comments on society as a whole. The play is very consistent in this goal. The minimalist structure makes the play, in a way, out of time, offering no real indication of historical setting. Also, there is much repetition, which seems to represent history’s repetition. The same events seem to happen, with slight variations, with the majority of the players involved having no recollection of previous events in which they—or someone much like them—participated. This might be a direct comment on World War II shortly following World War I, but it is more likely that it is a comment on humanity’s tendency to behave in predictable, time-tried (and sometimes time-failed) ways. The beating that Gogo gets every night is also ambiguous, suggesting a sort of timelessness in relevance. The Pozzo-Lucky interaction also may have been a direct comment on some instance of slavery, but in keeping consistent with the overall theme of broad societal comment, I take their interaction to be representative of humanity’s constant need to create hierarchies, to create classes and oppress some at the expense of others. Lucky’s logorrhea especially scared me, as it reminded me of an article I recently read on the vicious circle of poverty, how impoverished people do not attain education as a result of their learned helplessness, and then that lack of education keeps them poor. Lucky, it seems, has this sort of helplessness, and it shows in his paroxysm of nonsensical babbling. Religion, and the lack of understanding of it, also pervaded the play. More than once, Estragon mistook someone for Godot. The entire time, the characters were waiting for this mysterious figure. The boy, who roughly appears to symbolize organized religion, promised that Godot would definitely be there tomorrow, so just to wait a little longer.
Molly’s comment made me think about Pozzo. Pozzo was certainly not waiting for Godot, but more than that, Pozzo was unaware of even Godot’s existence and was not concerned at all about waiting for him. It is ironic that Pozzo is rewarded—at least in the sense that he is higher socially than Lucky and more mobile than the other characters—for not questioning anything, when the very play seems aimed at producing just that sort of inquiry.
Theatre of the Absurd is very confusing, but it brings about points in our society that often go unaddressed. While reading this, I thought that it showed extremely depressing aspects of society. Then, I realized it showed how people can be better. One must be ambitious in order to go anywhere in life. It is not on faith alone that people can get what they want. They must have the faith and confidence to be the best. Waiting for Godot is refusing to accept possibilities.
The confgusing language of the paly seems to convey the feeling of confusion among pepople. The two main characters, although they seem somewhat intelligent, are sidetracked by things like hats. This is reminiscent of what people want to do with their work. No one in this play quite knows the part they have in the play. It is only to show that theremay not be one that they know of, but hey will find it if they move. It is useless to be in the same place, the characters must go after what they want.
Dan, your comment on poverty seemed to fit the part of your character exactly.
One of the first things I personally thought about while reading “Waiting for Godot” was the old idiom, “actions speak louder than words”. So much of the stage play between the two characters revolves around physical relationships – those used to create differences between the characters and, in a few cases, between scenes. A lot of Act II mimics Act I and if it were encountered by unskillful directors and actors, would bore the audience. Luckily, Beckett provides an insight to all included in the production as to the changes that should be witnessed onstage (or…lack thereof).
I picked up on Beckett’s extreme attention to details, and concluded a possible theme – which would fit right into the absurdist school of thought; it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Of course, Beckett takes it one further, to the point of its not just what you say, it’s what you do. And what the characters of “Waiting for Godot” do is, well, a whole lot of nothing. For all the action that goes on in the play, nothing happens. They move, but they don’t really move. They speak, but they’re words are relatively empty. Didi and Gogo consider leaving through words and actions, but never make it far enough from that single tree. This theme is presented throughout the play most noticeably from Gogo’s incessant assertion, “I’m leaving”, after which he never actually leaves.
To me, I gather what I believe is the main theme of the play – along the lines of what we talked about in class; the action/inaction question. I like to think that this theme, which was first brought up long before “Godot” in Shakespeare’s times, was purposefully revisited by Beckett in order to create a modern take on it. I’ve always believed that words were more hollow than actual actions, but this play turns even that idea on its head, as action becomes busy work, an extension of unfinished promises. In that way I can see a relative connection to Dan’s idea that “Godot” is commenting on society – a place that is a constant contradiction. It mixes and confuses action and inaction, words with meaning, and time with repetition. So basically, “Godot” is as puzzling to me as modern society, both of which are filled to the brim with paradoxes and variables that ruin patterns (in some cases, by creating patterns…again another paradox!)
Despite having very comical moments, Waiting For Godot seemed to me more of a depressing commentary on the futility of existence. The title itself reveals the uselessness of the two main character’s situation – to people waiting for a person who never comes – but the play never really offers any insight as to how people should live their lives. Like Slaughterhouse Five, the play mostly made me sad, confused and a lot more aware of my own cluelessness about life.
Gogo and Didi both are seeking some validation in life, but it seems that everyday living always gets in the way of their great philosophic quest. They get distracted by hats, they get distracted by each other, they get distracted by everything – and the moments in the play where they really are given the time to contemplate things, they look to each other for meaningless conversation to eliminate their need for deeper thinking.
As Didi says, “When you seek you hear…And when you hear, that keeps you from finding …. That prevents you from thinking … that’s the idea, let’s contradict each other!”
The interaction between Pozzo and Lucky really confused me, because I was unsure of their significance. I think Dan’s explanation of Pozzo and Lucky being symbols of the social order humans create makes sense, but I feel like I missed something about Lucky’s character that had importance in the understanding of the play. Why did he say all of that ridiculous stuff? Was he really thinking or just spurting off words he’d heard from others around him? What’s the difference between thinking and being educated?
Waiting for Godot poses more questions than it answers.
I was extremely confused as to where the story was set. I believed at first that the story was opening in the western United States somewhere. Didi explains that he slept in a ditch; the imagery of the characters wearing suits in the film version of the play had me thinking that the story was occurring during the great depression/dust bowl, the two main characters Estragon and Vladimir were two men looking for work. The single twig tree scenery further deepen my idea that the characters where in the parched West. They are intelligent men; they speak elegantly, but have lost their luck.
Didi and Gogo reminded me immediately of George and Lenny from Of Mice and Me;, Estragon, with his comical display of trying to remove his shoe, being Lenny and Vladimir being George. Pozzo and Lucky were an example of the inhumane conditions people were faced with during the Great Depression; they are a metaphor for survival Pozzo tries desperately to maintain his authority through the torture of Lucky. Estragon and Vladimir do not question the cruelty; they are concentrating of their own survival and not on the humanity of the situation. Estragon asks Pozzo of ten Franks, this amount by Estragon is not considered to be a significant amount of money. I assumed that this meant that in a world view French currency was not worth very much. Didi and Gogo have nothing they would accept foreign currency, not many in American had much money.
The character Godo I believed to be an employer, or someone who had a scheme to make money. Didi and Gogo had no where else to turn, they were willing to wait. As it became more and more evident that the story was occurring in France I became extremely frustrated, all of the connections I made earlier to the Great Depression meant nothing, my view of the characters was extremely different: Who are these people and what are they doing?
I liked Mary Beth's comment on how the play seems to offer no suggestions on how life should be lived, the whole story seems to have no life lesson(s). Don't people learn something new every day? did Didi and Gogo learn anything from their pitiful experiences?
John Ryan
Waiting for Godot
April 4, 2008
In reading Waiting for Godot I couldn’t help but try to figure out why Gogo forgot the events of the entire first act. Dan’s idea that the play is symbolic of society and its predictability helped make sense of the play’s repetitiveness, but it left me wondering about Gogo’s amnesia. I then perused Mary-Beth’s comment that stated that the entire play symbolizes life’s futility. It reminded me of how on the grand scale of time, the majority of lives are meaningless and yet imperative, a seemingly paradoxical situation in which if one useless life disappears little changes, yet if one million useless lives disappear all of humanity is affected. This provided me with a glimmer of hope that both Didi and Gogo’s seemingly meaningless purpose in life (waiting for Godot) is part of a complex system of meaningless purposes that are crucial to the makeup of society thus, again, supporting Dan’s claim.
Again, I’m left trying to figure how Gogo’s damaged memory is related to society. I think that because this short story symbolizes life in society condensed to two short acts, time must also have been condensed. And if time is condensed than the evolution of our characters would also have to be condensed. Therefore I think that Gogo represents that people continue to change while their futile purpose remains, which is expressed in the seemingly identical stage props and story plot. This would explain why Gogo cannot remember the previous day. Gogo cannot not remember because the present Gogo was not there but instead one of the infinite past Gogo’s. This idea of time relative to the infinite length of the universe, I believe, is apparent here, along with the idea of man’s insignificance and significance.
However, not all is unchanged. Along with Gogo’s transformation overnight, we notice that the tree is changing as well (with the addiction of leaves). Perhaps this is supposed to give the audience a sense that perhaps the seemingly insignificant lives of Didi and Gogo are not as unchanging as we may have thought. The actions of people living out their boring lives will, in the long run, make a significant change to history.
After finishing both Waiting for Godot and Slaughterhouse Five, I realized parallels between the play and novel, particularly relating to the themes and motifs. Both pieces of writing focus heavily on time. Waiting for Godot suggests that time repeats itself endlessly. Slaughterhouse Five also hints that time will repeat itself. For example Vonnegut focuses not only on the bombing of Dresden, but also Hiroshima and the Vietnam War. He suggests that war will continue to occur in the world and that humans will always be attracted to it or fascinated by it.
Characters is both novels live mundane lifestyles. When Billy returned home from the war he seemed to lived in a generally simple and epected way until he began to imagine a life for himself that was beyond normalcy.
Both novels are constructed in ways that play with the effect of time on the reader. Slaughterhouse Five is broken into discontinuous moments, where as the constant and tedious repetition in Waiting for Godot makes time seem useless. Both pieces of writing create what can be interpreted as one moment and emphasize the present in comparison to past and future.
The play and novel also focus on the pain humans inflict upon one another. Lucky is abused with words and is demeaned by Pozzo's behavior. A major focus in Slaughterhouse Five is the violence, death and destruction humans cause. Dogs are a common motif that are in both writings and seem to relate to this theme. Both the play and novel also dealt with the idea of punishment and questions what is deserving of a punishment and what is not.
After reading Waiting for Godot, I was, like everyone else, very confused as to what went on. After reading everyone’s comments though, I have some ideas. It occurred to me that waiting for Godot is an exercise in futility. You know nothing about Didi and Gogo except that they are waiting for something. It seems so absurd, that two full-grown men would be aimlessly waiting for a man whom neither seems to really know. They give no indication as to their relationship with Godot and they rely on the word of a boy to know whether or not Godot is coming. Or is it two boys? I am thinking that the boy being a bearer of news means that children do play an important role in waiting for God. But still, that is just waiting. There is no action and the men are frustrated when the boy has trouble answering their questions. Children do not have all the answers, but the boy seems to be more closely associated with God(ot) than the two men who have made it their purpose in life to loaf around waiting for him. This seems to suggest the ridiculousness of just waiting for God. The laziness that comes with believing in God, relying on him to come to us is absurd in itself. Perhaps the play is suggesting that it is not completely to have faith, but the only way to attain enlightenment, or find God(ot) is to seek him out. One must be proactive to achieve their goal. The “theater of the absurd” element is multi layered in that everything appears to be absurd. The actions, the dialogue, the premise: all of these things are ridiculous in their futility.
Also, Dan’s comment about learned helplessness was interesting because I think all of the characters are helpless. They forget just about everything the next day. You cannot teach them anything. I guess, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
As my classmates read most of Waiting for Godot out loud it brought a much more modern tone to the play overall. However, when re-reading some of the scenes the play began to reveal itself as being very unpromising in the sense that this "waiting" period approaches everyone. Without prime comparisons to such stories and plays, they are often times tiresome to read through. While reading this particular play the lack of intricate scenery and plan helped in making a more relevant perspective. It was very humorous in the fact that this is indeed what a great deal of the people in this world do, wait inescapably to begin waiting again.
Godot may represent what could mean a "higher spirit" however, I found that in most instances in this play, Godot symbolized more of a constrast to god. Both Didi and gogo find themselves longing for this idea to arrive in hopes that it will be some form of salvation, yet whiel doing so they are utterly fixed to echoes of previous experience. This belief of continuously yearning for better, and only maintaining identical life styles reminds me of how insanity is frequently preceived. It is almost as if remaining where we are or in the past is considered to be representing the mind of a lunatic. It is strange how repeating the steps of tedious day repeatedly is viewed as absurd, however humans are constantly reciricling back to old ways and habits which are habitually analyzed as change. Gogo and Didi mentally advance everyday in the same ways, and be the next day begin their development from the start just as the beings on this Earth function as well. The only significant difference would be that there is a much longer time lapse within the evolution and the reverting of a human psyche.
In mention to dan's idea of people believing in something and at the same time not entirely understanding its sense, I also feel that this is true. The play is one example of religion acting as a tie and perplexity to one's soul.
I have no idea where to begin. I found parts of this play comical while listening to it in class. John, Dan, Ben, and Kathi really brought the characters to life and I enjoyed listening to them.
When talking about the title of the play and its meaning, I understood the connection with God. But the first thing that I thought about the title was how if I said Godot quickly and slurred the word I could get "to go" out of it. Waiting for Godot...Waiting to Go. This reminded me of what we brought up in class about how people are always waiting for the next thing, and how there is always something that will make a person happier.
Time is a major theme, both Gogo and Deedee’s inaction while waiting for Godot to and the repetition seems to show the emphasis on time. The time is passing and they cannot distinguish between the days or remember what they did the day before. This reminded me of Annie’s comments on insanity. Insanity sometimes is defined as, when life and time and memories are all jumbled together and difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. .
So maybe the play is showing that you shouldn’t wait around for God or for the next thing that will make you happier. You should live and enjoy what you have. Or you will go mad.
John Castellucci
Waiting for Godot was a very confusing at heart and I believe such was the purpose of it. It is titled a "tragicomedy" to indicate while at times it is funny; it also is a tragedy at heart. What we see the characters go through may seem funny, like the barking commands of Pozzo to Lucky or the odd stage directions, while they are funny to us; they end up in much pain because of these actions.
The stage directions are very important to the play as a whole. While some stage directions indicate action, some, like the ones at the ends of both acts, indicate a lack of motion, (the two saying that they will go, but the stage direction reads " they do not move") Also the stage directions indicate a sense of reoccurring actions, such as the event involving Pozzo and Lucky or the turnips and the hat. Finally the stage directions indicate violence, like with Pozzo and Lucky, which the two main characters end up sort of imitating.
All the reoccurring actions seem to be important at the heart of Beckett’s play. Both acts seem to almost mirror each other, with the events like meeting Pozzo and Lucky, the hat, the turnips, and the meeting of the boy. It is used to indicate the mirror image of the two days to symbolize that every day they wait for Godot, the same things will happen to them.
After reading and watching Godot I had no idea what to think of it. It seemed that the whole play was just two people talking about nothing. Once I re-read it I came across the idea of hope, or lack there of.
Didi and Gogo stay at the same place day and night waiting for someone who they don't know even exist. The only traces of hope they receive is a little boy who comes and tells them to wait another day. Didi doesn't even remember this little boy the next day. It is Gogo who reminds him of it.
The second trace of hope that the two receive is that of Pozzo and Lucky. The meaning less conversation that they engage in helps them to pass the time while endlessly waiting for Godot. When Lucky and Pozzo are gone they continue in this conversation avoiding talking about anything meaningful. It is keeping their minds busy that allows them to trick themselves into waiting a day longer each time.
The third trace of hope is that of death. The two often contemplate death but never follow through. The skinny leafless tree acts as a place where they could potentially end their hopelessness lives. Unfortunately they don't have rope so this idea does not work.
After reading Molly's & Kathi's comment on Pozzo and that he was rewarded, I started to think about Lucky. It was strange that his name was lucky since he was someone's slave but in the play itself it made sense. Didi and Gogo are waiting for someone to come they are following directions. Lucky was lucky that he had nothing to wait for he was controlled by Pozzo he didn't need to imagine what goes after this because he knew this was it. In the sense of the play he was lucky.
Waiting for Godot, as a whole, conveys the idea that words are not able to fully express one's inner self. However, it also conveys and presents the idea that language is inevitable- necessary for humans. However, these concepts are shown in an interesting way, and the end result is a near expression of words on the inabilty to express oneself through them.
The theme of presence and absence is threaded into the play, as well. This can be seen notably in the scene of Didi's outburst towards the young child:
"You’re sure you saw me, you won’t come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!"
DiDi wants to be assured of the presence of both of them at the same time. Therefore, when the boy is "absent," he will recall the presence he shared with Didi.
Is Godot present or absent? I found myself questioning this often, and commonly said "the presence of Godot...." But.. Godot is never there, never seen. So the idea of Godot is present, but the appearance of GOd is lacking. THey know of Godot, but they don't know Godot. The similarities between thsi and many religions are great. Many often preach that you have to have enough faith in God in order to be able to live without his actual presence. You must have enough faith that he is real so that he will be. Many often talk about building their relationships with God. They have enough faith to know that it is not a one way relationship, that God is somehow affecting their life without any means of direct communication. Again, much like the play.
I liked Dan’s talk about consistence, especially in the case of talking about society as a whole. His loose labeling was spot on as to what I was thinking. I had never formally identified the little boy as a representation of organized religion, but can now see how that is viable.
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