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WHO IS
GODOT?
While there has been much debate among critics
as to who Godot is, it is perhaps in his identity that Beckett
is most explicit. In the process of identifying the character,
students should be informed that although Beckett's mother
tongue was English, he wrote the play in France and in French,
thus making it difficult for his French readers to immediately
recognize the word play in "Godot." When later he
himself translated the play into English, the word play was
readily recognized. Godot, as many critics maintain, is a
diminutive of God. He is a supremely powerful being, for it
is he who holds in his hand the future of mankind ---- Vladmir
and Estragon.
Indeed, it is during
the discussion of Godot that students can reflect on the contemporary
institution of literature and its standards for greatness."
Beckett's Godot (God) is a capricious being: he promises but
never fulfills; he beats the boy who takes care of his sheep
for no reason whatsoever and treats well the boy who takes
care of his goats. The biblical symbolism of sheep and goats
is only too obvious. For Beckett, God is arbitrary in his
dealings with man, and the biblical image of a just and loving
father is a false one.
That GODOT then
is "a great work of literature" should make students
realize that contemporary standards of greatness are no longer
based on the old dictum that good literature is that which
delights and enlightens, but rather that which subverts these
old values.
The discussion
of Beckett's concept of God and Vladmir's questioning of the
Christian theology of salvation should lead to other anti--Christian
themes in the text, for example the theme of waiting idly
and in doubt (as opposed to the Christian theme of waiting
and watching), the theme of chance (as opposed to the Christian
theme of design and purpose), and the theme of the anguish
and emptiness of existence (as opposed to the Christian theme
of purposeful living).
Finally, after
the discussion of the text has been exhausted, the teacher
may select aspects of Beckett's life and philosophy that inform
his work. Having lived in Paris from 1936 until his death
in 1989, he could hardly have escaped the influence of the
existentialism of Albert Camus and Jean--Paul Sartre. The
teacher may here explain the tenets of the philosophy and
its implications for Christianity.
LIFE AND
THOUGHT OF S. BECKETT
Born in 1906 in Dublin, Ireland,
of a middle--class protestant family, Beckett studied French
and Italian at Trinity College from 1923 to 1927. Francis Doherty
(14) suggests that it is during this period that Beckett lost
his Christian faith. In one of his rare interviews Beckett told
Tom F. Driver:
I have no religious feeling.
Once I had a religious emotion.... No more. My mother was
deeply religious. So was my brother.... The family was Protestant,
but for me it was irksome and I let it go. My brother and
mother got no value from their religion when they died.
At the moment of crisis it had no more depth than an old
school tie. (qtd. in Doherty 15)
After graduating from Trinity College, Beckett taught English
at the famous Ecole Normale Superieure (from which existentialist
philosopher Jean--Paul Sartre had just graduated). In 1930, Beckett
returned to his old college in Ireland to do graduate studies.
He read and was influenced by Rene Descartes, the French philosopher
who is said to be the father of Enlightenment. Writes Doherty:
"He used his interest in the life of Descartes to complete
a poem for a competition for a poem ["Whoroscope"] on
Time" (13). Even more remarkable in Beckett's work is Descartes~
dialectic, which has been dubbed "the method of doubt."
"For Descartes," writes Robert C. Solomon, "certainty
is the criterion, that is, the test, according to which our beliefs
are to be evaluated. But do we ever find that certainty? It seems
that we do at least in one discipline Descartes suggests ----
in mathematics" (12), hence the mathematical logic by which
Beckett seeks to disprove the Christian theology of salvation.
Another philosophical
thought that was later to influence Beckett was the atheistic
existentialism of Jean--Paul Sartre, a French writer who, like
Beckett, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and also declined
to receive it.
"Atheistic existentialism
which I represent," Sartre wrote, "states that if God
does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence
precedes essence.. .and that this being is man" (qtd. in
Solomon 278). Thus for this brand of existentialism, God and religion
are human inventions. Hulga, a character in Flannery O'Connor's
short story "Good Country People" who has a doctorate
in philosophy, sums up atheistic existentialism and the philosophy
of nihilism to which she subscribes. Since there is no God, she
reasons, "we are all damned, but some of us have taken off
our blindfolds and see that there is nothing to see. It's a kind
of salvation" (328).
In 1938, Beckett settled
permanently in Paris and devoted his life wholly to writing. Besides
being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1961 he shared
with Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer, the International
Publishers Prize. Among his famous works, in addition to GODOT,
are a trilogy: MOLLOY (1951), MALONE DIES (1951) and THE UNNAMABLE
(1953), which are also existentialist reflections on the absurdity
of life.
Godot (God) is a capricious
being: he promises but never fulfills; he beats the boy who takes
care of his sheep for no reason whatsoever and treats well the
boy who takes care of his goats. The biblical symbolism of sheep
and goats is only too obvious. For Beckett, God is arbitrary in
his dealings with man, and the biblical image of a just and loving
father is a false one.
That GODOT then is
"a great work of literature" should make students realize
that contemporary standards of greatness are no longer based on
the old dictum that good literature is that which delights and
enlightens, but rather that which subverts these old values.
The discussion of Beckett's
concept of God and Vladmir's questioning of the Christian theology
of salvation should lead to other anti--Christian themes in the
text, for example the theme of waiting idly and in doubt (as opposed
to the Christian theme of waiting and watching), the theme of
chance (as opposed to the Christian theme of design and purpose),
and the theme of the anguish and emptiness of existence (as opposed
to the Christian theme of purposeful living).
Finally, after the
discussion of the text has been exhausted, the teacher may select
aspects of Beckett's life and philosophy that inform his work.
Having lived in Paris from 1936 until his death in 1989, he could
hardly have escaped the influence of the existentialism of Albert
Camus and Jean--Paul Sartre. The teacher may here explain the
tenets of the philosophy and its implications for Christianity.
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