Contents
Preface On Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett Biography from the European Graduate School Quotes History of 'Waiting For Godot' from the Rick on Theater blog Literary Analysis Who is Godot? Waiting An Excerpt on Balance and Repetition from Ruby Cohn's Waiting Other Things to Note Discussion Questions Places for Further Reading Bibliography
Samuel Beckett 16
Preface
Whether you have already seen Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or you are about to see it for the first time, I implore you to keep an open mind. This play is a tragicomedy, a modernist piece, and Theatre of the Absurd quite an intriguing, albeit imposing, combination for critical analysis. It cannot be judged by the same standards that we may use for plays with more common story structure, themes, and language use. This is not to say Waiting for Godot has less to offer than other plays. It just might take a bit more thought to reach the deep fountain of insight Beckett has contained in just two acts. Due to the unique nature of Waiting for Godot, literary analysis on it is convoluted, lacking consensus. In this study guide, I will present some of the more popular interpretations of the play, and invite you to reach you own conclusions on what Waiting for Godot means to you.
Resigning from his position at Trinity College, he traveled through Europe and Britain, stopping in London to publish Proust, a critical study of Marcel Prousts work and Becketts only published, longform work of criticism. During his travels, Beckett met many vagabonds and wanderers, which he would use as the bases for several of his most memorable characters. Throughout his European wanderings, Samuel Beckett also became interested in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and decided to devote himself entirely to writing, beginning to work on his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women, which he subsequently abandoned after little interest from publishers. William Beckett, Samuel Becketts father, to whom he was very close, died in 1933. Samuel was devastated by the loss of his father and sought treatment at Tavistock Clinic in London where he was treated by and studied under influential British psychoanalyst Dr. Wilfred Brion. While at the Tavistock Clinic, Beckett witnessed a lecture given by Dr. Carl Jung on the never properly born which affected much of his subsequent work including Watt, Waiting for Godot and All that Fall which ends with an almost word for word recitation of the end of Jungs lecture. Beginning what would become his first published novel, Murphy, in 1935, Samuel Beckett traveled once again to Europe, this time to Germany where he documented with distaste the rise of the Nazi party. Returning to Ireland in 1937 to oversee the publication of Murphy, he had a major falling-out with his mother, which contributed to his desire to leave Ireland and settle permanently in Paris. At the outset of 1938, Beckett had installed himself on the Left Bank of Paris where he renewed his friendship with James Joyce and became friends with artists like Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp. January of that year brought tragedy, he was accosted and stabbed in the chest by a pimp who went by the name Prudent. When asked by Samuel Beckett why he did this, Prudent replied, I dont know, sir. Im sorry. The dawn of World War II found Samuel Beckett aiding the French Resistance as a courier. In August 1942 his unit was found out and he was forced to move with his lifelong companion, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, to the town of Rousillon. There he continued to aid the Resistance while working on his novel Watt. As the war drew to a close, Samuel Beckett returned to Ireland where he had a critical epiphany. Fearing he would forever toil in the shadow of James Joyce, a new path showed itself to him. I realized that James Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of ones material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding, he wrote. He also began writing in French instead of his native English because he found it easier to write, without style. His first novel in French was entitled Mercier et Camier which was written in 1946 but not published until 1970. Immediately after Mercier et Camier, he wrote what many believe to be his best prose in the trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Following this new path to full fruition, Samuel Beckett released his most famous work in 1953, the minimalist play, Waiting for Godot. Godot was very successful albeit controversial in the theaters of Paris but was not as well received in London and in the US. As time progressed, however, Godot garnered critical acclaim, which ultimately saw Samuel Beckett awarded the International Publisher Formentor Prize in 1961. During this period Samuel Beckett also wrote the plays Endgame, Krapps Last Tape, Endgame and Play.
This period also saw changes in Samuel Becketts personal life. His mother, with whom he had many difficulties, died in 1950 and his brother, Frank, died in 1954, both of these deaths affected Becketts later meditations on life and death in his work. He also married Suzanne in a private ceremony in England in 1961. The success of his plays not only offered him the ability to experiment with his writing but also enabled him to begin a career as a theater director as well as to branch out into other mediums. In 1956 he was commissioned by the BBC to write the radio play All that Fall and continued to expand his scope into television and cinema. Suzanne, Samuel Becketts wife, received the news while they were on holiday in Tunis in 1969, that Samuel Beckett had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, an event she described as a catastrophe for her intensely private husband. Despite the accolades and fame, however, Samuel Beckett remained a private man whose literary works continued to explore the outer reaches of minimalism and experimentalism. His later work, which focused on themes of entrapment and frequently featured characters who were literally trapped from the neck down, went through many phases, culminating in three closed space stories in which he interrogates the nature of memory and its effect on the confined and observed self. His final work, written in 1988, was a poem entitled Comment Dire (What is the Word), which dealt with the inability to find the words to express oneself. Samuel Beckett died on the 22nd of December, 1989, just five months after his wife, Suzanne. They are interred together at the Cimitire de Montparnasse in Paris in a tomb of simple granite, following Samuel Becketts instruction that it should be, any colour, so long as its gray.
Quotes
It is a widely held belief that an author's comments on his own work hold more weight than the interpretations of readers. Beckett, not a proponent of this view, has purposely been very closed-mouth about his work. Here are some things he has said: I feel the only line is to refuse to be involved in exegesis of any kind . . . . We have no elucidations to offer of mysteries that are all of their own making. 10 -Beckett I began to write Godot as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at that time. 6
(43)
-Beckett to Colin Duckworth That's the value of theater to me. You can place on stage a little world with its own laws. 6 (43) -Beckett to Michael Haerdter I just felt like it. It was a different experience from writing in English. you could help writing poetry in English 7 (68) -Beckett on writing in French instead of English
If I had known who Godot is, I would have said 7 (74) -Beckett and besides, there is a rue Godot, a cycling racer named Godot, so you see, the possibilities are rather endless 11 (7) -Beckett
"I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe in them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine. I wish I could remember the Latin. It is even finer in Latin than in English. `Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.' That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters." 8 (79) -Beckett You must be tired. 9 -Beckett's reply to a fan who said he had been reading Beckett's work for years
There is no escape from the hours and the days, neither from tomorrow nor from yesterday, because yesterday has deformed us or has been deformed by us...Yesterday is not a milestone that has passed but a daystone on the beaten track of the years and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday. 5 (31) -Beckett in Proust Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits, since the individual is a succession of individuals....Habit then is the generic term for the countless treaties concluded between the countless subjects that constitute the individual and their countless correlative objects. The periods of transition that separate consecutive adaptations ...represent the perilous zones in the life of the individual, dangerous, precarious, painful, mysterious and fertile, when for a moment the boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of being. 5 (38) -Beckett in Proust I suppose he is Lucky to have no more expectations 15 (144) -Beckett when asked if Lucky was named so because he does not have to wait for Godot like Vladimir and Estragon do, but that he has his own Godot in Pozzo
over the footlights, and the mass exodus . . . started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting. Harold Hobson concluded his review in the London Times by saying: Go and see Waiting for Godot. At the worst you will discover a curiosity, a four-leaved clover, a black tulip; at the best something that will surely lodge in a corner of your mind for as long as you live. In The Observer, Kenneth Tynan, Hobsons fellow doyen of London criticism, asserted, It is vividly new, and hence I declare myself, as the Spanish would say, Godotista. But the American critic Marya Mannes wrote acidly in New Yorks The Reporter about the same London production: The play concerns two tramps who inform each other and the audience at the outset that they smell. It takes place in what appears to be the town dump, with a blasted tree rising out of a welter of rusting junk including plumbing parts. They talk gibberish to each other and to two symbolic maniacs for several hours, their dialogue punctuated every few minutes by such remarks as What are we waiting for? Nothing is happening, and Lets hang ourselves. The last was a good suggestion, unhappily discarded. And surveying the London theater in 1957 for The Sewanee Review, Bonamy Dobre said flatly about Godot: . . . it is time to affirm that anything that can be called art must ultimately be in praise of life, or must at least promote acceptance of life, thus indicating some values. Dobre thus epitomized the widely-accepted view of the time that Becketts work, because of its nihilism, could not be called art. In Miami, a large segment of the audience left in disgust before the curtain rose for act two. As director Alan Schneider put it in the Chelsea Review two years after the production closed: Doing Godot in Miami was, as Bert Lahr [the original Gogo] himself said, like doing Giselle in Roseland. Even though Bert and Tommy [Ewell, who played Didi in Miami] each contributed brilliantly comic and extremely touching performances, . . . it was--in the words of the trade--a spectacular flop. The opening night audience in Miami, at best not too sophisticated or attuned to this type of material and at worst totally misled by advertising billing the play as the laugh sensation of two continents, walked out in droves. And the so-called reviewers not only could not make heads or tails of the play but accused us of pulling some sort of hoax on them. The New York production of 1956 garnered a mixture of critical response. In the Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr wrote, . . . Mr. Lahr has . . . been in touch with what goes on in the minds and hearts of the folk out front. I wish that Mr. Beckett were as intimately in touch with the texture of things. In the New Republic, Eric Bentley dubbed Godot like all modern plays . . . undramatic but highly theatrical. He declared that what has brought the play before audiences in so many countries--aside from snobberies and phony publicity--is its theatricality. (Eleven years later, Bentley revised his estimation upwards.) On the other hand, for The New Yorker, Kenneth Tynan, already on record in London as praising the play, described the audience reaction: And when the curtain fell, the house stood up to cheer a man [Bert Lahr] who had never before appeared in a legitimate play . . . . Without him, the Broadway production . . . would be admirable; with him, it is transfigured. And the dean of New York critics, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times, calling the play a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrote:
Although Waiting for Godot is a puzzlement, as the King of Siam would express it, Mr. Beckett is no charlatan. He has strong feelings about the denigration of mankind, and he has given vent to them copiously. Waiting for Godot is all feeling. Perhaps that is why it is puzzling and convincing at the same time. Theatregoers can rail at it, but they cannot ignore it. For Mr. Beckett is a valid writer. At San Quentin Prison, on 19 November 1957, the inmates gathered in the converted gallows room responded as never before to a theatrical piece. The anonymous reviewer for the San Quentin News described this scene: The trio of muscle-men, biceps overflowing . . . parked all 642 lbs. on the aisle and waited for the girls and funny stuff. When this didnt appear they audibly fumed and audibly decided to wait until the house lights dimmed before escaping. They made one error. They listened and looked two minutes too long--and stayed. Left at the end. All shook . . . . This presentation marked a link in the chain of productions of Becketts plays in prisons, something in which the writer took special interest. A few years earlier, a prisoner in Lttringhausen Prison in Germany had staged a translation he had made from the original French edition. After the 1953 performances, the prisoner wrote Beckett: You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps. The Irish premire at the Pike Theatre in Becketts native Dublin, directed by Alan Simpson, was on 28 October 1955. The BBC having aired the play on radio in 1960, NET (the precursor to PBS) broadcast a TV version in 1961 directed by Alan Schneider from his Miami production script. The stars of the telecast, also shown in the U.K., were Zero Mostel as Gogo and Burgess Meredith as Didi with Kasznar and Epstein repeating their stage roles. Becket pronounced himself displeased with the television staging, principally because of the confinement of the small screen. In more recent years, the play, still controversial, has continued to be produced all over the world. In 1984, Israeli director Ilan Ronen and the Haifa Municipal Theatre presented a bi-lingual production of Godot in Hebrew and Arabic (with Arab actors as Didi and Gogo and Jewish actors as Lucky and Pozzo). Mike Nichols directed a much-publicized staging of the play in New York at Lincoln Center in 1988; it starred Robin Williams as Gogo, Steve Martin as Didi, F. Murray Abraham as Pozzo and Bill Irwin, in what I believe was his first dramatic stage role, as Lucky. In 2001, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg made a film version--despite Becketts own admonition in 1967 that he did not want any film of Godot. An adaptation would destroy it, the playwright insisted. British director Sean Mathias is directing Ian McKellen as Gogo and Patrick Stewart as Didi as his first production as artistic director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company. Dubbed the X-Men Godot (because both stars appeared in that film), it is touring Britain prior to opening in London on 30 April 2009. Just as Sylvain Zegel predicted over half a century ago, Godot is still being spoken of. Regardless of the direction of the response--for or against--no one seems to be able to leave it alone. It stirs something in all audiences--be it anger or praise, but it stirs. Somehow that seems appropriately Beckettian--and, as the French say, godotesque.
Who is Godot?
This is probably the first question audience members will have upon seeing Waiting for Godot. It is the question Beckett refused to answer. Decades of literary analysis by scores of critics has not resulted in any consensus. There are, however, a few views that seem to have wide support. Do not make the mistake of immediately dissecting the word Godot to produce God, thereby narrowing your vision to see everything in the play as a biblical reference. Note that the original title of the play was En attendant Godot and the French word for god, dieu, bears no resemblance to Godot. 14 Keep an open mind throughout the play, and only afterward take the side of the many critics who believe Godot to be a deity. The biblical story of the two thieves is a central to the play. Ruby Cohn writes, 6 (43-44) Even the fifth character, the nameless boy, has a brother, and he says that Godot beats the one but not the other. Godot is as arbitrary as the God of Matthew 25:32-33: 'And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand but the goats on the left.' Sheep and goat become saved thief and damned thief of St. Augustine's symmetry. Godot may be seen as a divine being because of his absence. Eric Gans writes, the action takes place 'en attendant'. Now this is precisely the role of the sacred in Judeo-Christian society: God never makes himself present, but belief in his presence offstage allows for worldly activity to go on while waiting for his return. 12 (99) Dissection of Lucky's speech also unveils possible religious overtones: given the existence...of a personal God...with a white beard...outside time...who from the heights of divine...aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown...and suffers those who...are plunged in torment...it is established beyond all doubt...that man...fades away. Edith Kern writes that a number of critics more or less agree on such a reading. 13 (117) In act II, Vladimir and Estragon mistake Pozzo and Lucky for Cain and Abel. There are multiple other instances in which religious subjects, such as prayer, are suddenly brought up to be dropped just as quickly. The possibility of salvation or damnation and the absence of God in the mundane lives of humans is a common theme in literature. The god in this play would be more unique in that he is an uncertain, seemingly uncaring, and maybe even cruel god. Godot as a god is a fair conjecture, though Beckett himself said to Ralph Richardson that if by Godot he had meant God, he would have written God and not Godot. 14 Another possible identity for Godot is actually Pozzo, though Beckett has stated, "No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true." 14 Estragon and Vladimir both mistake Pozzo's arrival as that of Godot. During my research for this study guide, I have read about Godot as: God, Pozzo, a bicycle racer, communism, the slang word for boot in French, liberation, a goal, death, hope, recognition of Beckett's work, among other things. My conclusion and advice to you is that it's better to not label Godot. To do so effectively limits the scope of the play and possibly leads to far-fetched interpretations. It is Godot's anonymity which makes this play timeless, universal. The identity of Godot is inconsequential to the play compared to his absence. Godot, who or what ever he may be, is a vehicle for the real subject matter of this play waiting.
Waiting
The day after Waiting for Godot was successfully performed at San Quentin penitentiary in 1957 the prison newspaper released this article: It was an expression, symbolic in order to avoid all personal error, by an author who expected each member of his audience to draw his own conclusions, make his own errors. It asked nothing in point, it forced no dramatized moral on the viewer, it held out no specific hope... We're still waiting for Godot, and shall continue to wait. When the scenery gets too drab and the action too slow, we'll call each other names and swear to part forever - but then, there's no place to go! 5 (23 -24) Who would know better what it feels like to be trapped in a monotonous cycle just waiting for release, or excitement, or even death better than a prison inmate? Waiting for Godot paints a picture of the human condition as incomplete or unfulfilled in some way. It is sad to think human lives, habits, and hopes may be as trite and asinine as the antics of Estragon and Vladimir. Estrogen and Vladimir find their wait to be so unbearable that they contemplate suicide as an escape. Richard Gilman writes: the validation the tramps seek for their lives is never forthcoming; there is no transcendent being or realm from which human justification proceeds, or rather...we cannot be sure whether there is not not. In this space this doubt create, Didi and Gogo exist...held there by an unbearable tension which it is their task...to make bearable. 7 (70) It is a dreary state, in which habit and boredom seem to overcome all else. One aspect of waiting which everyone has experienced, whether it be at the bus stop or in the doctor's office, in the slowing of time. Estragon and Vladimir experience this on a daily basis, trying to pass the time with jokes and inane conversation until the moon swiftly rises at the end of each act. The following passages by Theater of the Absurd expert Martin Esslin skillfully describe the interaction of time, waiting, and surprisingly hope: Waiting is to experience the action of time, which is constant change. And yet, as nothing real ever happens, that change is in itself an illusion. The ceaseless activity of time is self-defeating, purposeless, and therefore null and void. The more things change, the more they are the same. That is the terrible stability of the world. 'The tears of the world are are a constant quantity. For each one who began to weep, somewhere else another stops.' One day is like another, and when we die, we might never have existed.... Still Vladimir and Estragon live in hope: they wait for Godot, whose coming will bring the flow of time to a stop. 'Tonight perphaps we shall sleep in his place, in warmth, dry, our bellies full, on the straw. It is worth waiting for that, is it not?' This passage, omitted in the English version, clearly suggests the peace, the rest form waiting, the sense of having arrived in haven, that Godot represents to the two tramps. They are hoping to be saved from the evanescence and instability of the illusion of time, and to find peace and permanence outside it. 5 (32-33)
feet, and in act 2 they do the same for Pozzo. Repetition is theme and technique of Didi's round-song which reduces man's like to a dog's life and cruel death. In the printed text of En attendant Godot the most frequent repetitions are the two scenic directions: Silence and Pause. In the theater repeated stillness can reach a point of no return, but Beckett avoids this danger by adroit deployment of his pauses and silences. They act like theatrical punctuation, a pause often marking hesitation or qualification, whereas silence is a brush with despair before making a fresh start. The play never quite negates the fresh start after stillness claims the stage in sudden night. All stage action has to be wrested from the background stillness, the ever-threatening void. Gogo realizes: There's no lack of void. And he recalls talking about nothing in particular. (The italics are mine; Beckett changes the French boots to nothing in the English version.) Each of the two acts end with the stillness after the same lines: Well? Shall we go? asks on of the friends, and the other replies: Yes, let's go. In neither act do they move as the curtain falls. The opening Nothing to be done is repeated three times. What distinguishes drama from fiction is that the Nothing has to be done, acted, preformed. The body of Beckett's play therefore contains much doing, constantly threatened by Nothing. To open each act, Gogo and Didi enter separately, each in turn first on stage. At least one of them eats, excretes, sleeps, dreams, remembers, plans, refers to sex or suicide. In both acts they comment on their reunion, they complain of their misery, they seek escape into games, they are frightened by offstage menace, they try to remember a past, they stammer a hope for a future, they utter doubts about time, place, and language, they wait for Godot. Beckett's scenic directions show the range of their emotions: irritably, coldly, admiringly, decisively, gloomily, cheerfully, feebly, angrily, musingly, despairingly, very insidiously, looking wilding about, wheedling, voluptuously, gently, highly excited, grotesquely rigid, violently, meditatively, vacuously, timidly, conciliating, hastily, grudgingly, stutteringly, resolute, vehemently, forcibly, tenderly, blankly, indignantly, attentively, sadly, shocked, joyous, indifferent, vexed, suddenly furious, exasperated, sententious, in anguish, sure of himself, controlling himself, triumphantly, stupefied, softly, recoiling, alarmed, laughing noisily, sagging, painfully, feverishly with violently and despairingly most frequent. In each act the two friends are diverted by an interlude the play within the play of Pozzo and Lucky, who enter and exit tied together. Reciting rhetorically and loaded with props, Pozzo and Lucky are cut down to size when they are done by Gogo and Didi in act 2. Alone again in each act, the friends are greeted by Godot's messenger, they hear the monotonous message, and the moon rises swiftly. Refrains, repetitions, and pauses camouflage how much is happening on stage. Only in retrospect, after viewing it all, do we realize how much is at stake in these hapless happenings.
Discussion Questions
On the play itself: 1. Do you agree with Vivian Mercer's infamous quote Beckett has written a play in which nothing happens, twice? 2. Who do think thing Godot is? 3. What role do Pozzo and Lucky play? How does their relationship compare to that of Vladimir and Estragon? 4. Have you ever experienced the sort of stasis Estragon and Vladimir are in, just waiting? 5. How would this play be more or less effective if it was only one act? 6. What does this play say about humanity? 7. Is this play timeless? If so, what factors keep it from becoming outdated? 8. How does the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon compare with the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky? 9. Do Vladimir and Estragon develop as characters over the course of the play? 10. This play has been met with wide range of reactions, as described in the production history in this study guide. Why do you think people react so differently? On this production: 1. What did you feel while watching the play? Did you feel any differently during each act? 2. What did you make of Lucky's speech? The other characters were greatly disturbed by it; were you? 3. Did you ever feel that the actors/characters were conscious of the audience? 4. Beckett had on multiple occasions stopped or denounced productions of Waiting for Godot with female cast members.3 (93) In what ways does having an almost all female cast change the dynamics of the play? Does it at all? 5. Waiting for Godot has a very particular type of comedy, which can only be portrayed with great skill from the actors. The dialogue is constantly wavering between hilarity, absurdity, and seriousness. How did the actors use body language, voice inflection, and silence to make this production funny? 6. How did the set and lighting contribute to this production? 7. If given the chance, would you see Waiting for Godot again?
Looking for more Theater of the Absurd? Check out: Want to know more about Beckett and Waiting for Godot? Look for: Eugene Ionesco Samuel Beckett: A Biography by Deirdre The Chairs Bair Rhinoceros Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Albert Camus Beckett by James Knowlson The Stranger The Letters of Samuel Beckett Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: The Fall Waiting for Godot edited by Harold Bloom Jean Genet The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel The Maids Beckett: Waiting for Godot The Balcony The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A The Blacks Reader's Guide to His Works, Life, and Martin Esslin Thought by C. J. Ackerly and S. E. Gontarski The Theatre of the Absurd (nonfiction)
http://www.samuel-beckett.net/
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