What is the identity of Godot?
The meaning of Waiting for Godot has defied analysis.
Critics have spilled ink and failed to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.
“Even those who agreed that Godot had a
'meaning’," says Alec Reid, "were deeply divided among themselves as
to what that meaning was”. Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting
to meet a men or a divine being known as Godot, who eventually does not turn
up. The identity of Godot has posed a question, yet to be answered. According
to Ruby Cohn, Godot has been variously identified as God, a diminutive God,
Love, Death, Silence, Hope, DeGaulle, a Balzac character, a bicycle racer, and
a Paris Street for call girls.
To Alan Schneider, who
anxiously asked him about the identity of Godot, Beckett replied: "If I
know, I would have said so in the play." He also remarked, and it is difficult
to ascertain if he was serious or flippant, that the spectacular success of
Waiting for Godor was due to the misunderstanding. The critics and public alike
were seeking to impose an allegorical or symbolic explanation of Godot.
And yet Godot remains an
enigma. Others abide our question, and Godot, like Mathew Arnold’s Shakespeare, smiles and smiles, and out tops our knowledge. Had Godot
appeared on the stage even for a moment, we could have sized him up. But he
does not come. We learn from a messenger boy that he will come on the following
day. But he fails to fulfil his appointment.
Furthermore
the name ‘Godot’ will entail many possible meanings if it is observed within
the context of French. According to Graver, there are some common French words and
phrases which begin with ‘god’. Godillot in French for ‘old shapeless boot’;
Godasses are ‘military boots’, Godailler is ‘to go pub‐crawling’. Goder means ‘to
pucker’. In addition, ‘Godo’ is spoken Irish for God. Thus, as a ‘signifier’, ‘Godot’
potentially will result in many debatable and fractured interpretations.
Is Godot God?
Right upto the end of the play Godot remains a
mysterious figure. If we regard Waiting for Godot as Christian play or a
Morality play, Godot may stand for God. Martin Esslin lends unqualifying
support to this view. He says that the play is concerned with the ultimate realities of the human
condition, for an Absurd Drama is concerned with the fundamental problems of
life and death. When man fails to answer the questions relating to ultimate
reality, he has to think of God and religion.
If so, Godot is as much the
God of the Old Testament as of the New. Jehovah and Godot may look alike,
particularly for his white beard. The similarity may also be noticed when we
consider that Godot does not love everybody. He has handsome rewards for the
boy who tends the goats, while he metes out punishment to the shepherd the
award appears arbitrary. That reminds us of Jehovah, who preferred Abel to
Cain. The reference to the goats and sheeps is to be found in the Gospel
according to St. Matthew : "And he [Christ] shall seat the sheep on his
right hand, but the goats on the left."
Godot may refer suffering
also. “The casual relationship between divine cruelty and human suffering is
perhaps most effectively dramatised in Beckett's portrayal of many of his
characters as emblematic Biblical sufferers". Suffering is divine
punishment. Christ himself is the worst sufferer in his mundane existence His
death on the Cross, says Hersh Zeifman, is the paradigm of divine rejection. It
is for this reason that Estragon says: "All my life I've compared myself
to Christ."
With absolutely no ambiguity
Beckett refers to salvation and damnation in his play. Vladimir mentions two
thieves crucified on either side of Christ, one of whom was saved and the other
damped. The two tramps are also thinking in terms of salvation or damnation
according to the sweet will of Godot. Much depends on their repentance, which
is the way to divine grace. On an inquiry from Vladimir if he has ever read the
Bible, Estragon replies: "I remember the maps of the Holy Land, Coloured
they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me
thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our
honeymoon."
If we accept this view, Godot may mean God. But Becket
has no anthropomorphic conception of God. The very fact that God does not come
means that he is disembodied. But just because he does not come, it does not
mean that he is non-existent As far as Vladimir is concerned, he very much
exists. The idea of salvation is all the while haunting his mind.
When asked by Pozzo to
think', Lucky gives a harangue on Godot. When the gaudy and inane phraseology
is left out, he says: "Given the existence of a personal God with a white
beard outside time who from the heights of divine apathia loves us dearly with
some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell."
Godot may be termed as “waiting”
what really matters. Waiting is charged with expectancy. Everybody waiting for
something expects that something better will turn up.
Eric Bentley does not set
store by the religious interpretation of Waiting for Godot. He maintains that
the name Godot is taken from a play entitled Mercader. Mercadet is a stock
Exchange speculator who all the while complains that his financial trouble are
largely due to Godeau, who defalcated the money and away.
But the religious interpretation has a greater appeal
himself quoted from St. Augustine: “Don’t despair ! One of the thieves was
saved. Donot presume. One of the thieves was damned.” It is this conviction
that makes Godot a loving figure and not a bugbear.
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