Nate Lindell #303724
WSPF
P.O. Box 9900
Bosobel WI 53805-9900
17 July '16

[black-and-white drawing of a wren looking perched against an invisible frame and looking outwards towards contents. Caption: A bird I saw outside rec, on the fence.]

Reply I.D. jykf

Thoughts on Waiting for Godot

The folks at prisonersliteratureproject.com sent me a copy of Waiting for Godot, so now I can intelligently discuss it. Godot leaves me so much room for interpretation, like the Mona Lisa (is she smiling about a secret she knows or to hide the pain of menstrual cramps?) which makes it great art. People have to put serious thought into figuring out what Beckett's saying. If Godot represents God, the play is at least mocking religion, more so believers in religion than the God believers dreamed up. The characters Vlad and Estragon look ridiculous, pitiful, as the wait for Godot. We can't help but feel bad for them, as we'd feel bad for a hatchling fallen from its nest, and we'd dislike someone who walked past the chick without helping it (God).

A decent God wouldn't ignore Vlad and Estragon's clearly pathetic existences. Even a human, as sinful as religions declare we are, would throw them a bone.

But Godot, or God, doesn't even keep his appointment! "Ass!" is the aware audience's reflexive thought which Beckett probably intended.

Once we suspect Godot to mean God, we see everyday human tragedies that a decent God would fix yet which are not fixed, which logically leads to the thought that God's calloused, not very potent, or doesn't exist.

So in careful ways Godot is anti-religious. It's about Humanist, as the only sensible thing for the waiters to do is to forget about Godot and find something meaningful to do with their lives, and something better to eat!

Lucky too truly represents many pathetically devout believers I've met who relish the degradation their beliefs inflict on them and will attack you as evil if you try to pull God's penis outta their butts. They're sinners who want to suffer which would be fine if they didn't make us suffer too (e.g. takin' nipple shots off T.V. and, worse, impositions of their ethics on others).

Pozzo—the Pope?—he literally throws Estragon a bone, after chewing on it himself. That was a slick metaphorical pun, representing exactly what the clergy do. The rituals Pozzo puts Lucky through symbolize the Catholic liturgy's senselessness very well. Beckett had balls, living in Papist Paris and opening the play there while slickly lambasting the church.

Thanks for referring me to Waiting for Godot.