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3.RATIONALE
FOR TEACHING THE TEXT IN A
CHRISTIAN INSTITUTION
Besides being anti-Christian, WAITING FOR GODOT is undoubtedly
one of the most complex texts in world literature. Thus the
basis on which Andrew Kennedy says that the play has "become
a set book in secondary schools" (1) is questionable.
From my experience of teaching the text to college freshmen
and sophomores, the teaching of it in high schools would only
serve to confuse students.
However, notwithstanding
the text's complexity and anti-Christian stance, it is an
important piece of literature in that it expresses a "zeitgeist"
— a spirit of an age which is a pervasive skepticism of
all traditional values — in short, a loss of faith. And
as one Christian critic has pointed out in regard to the play,
"many of us lately have found ourselves returning again
and again to meditate upon its profound testimony about the
condition of man in our time" (Nathan S. Scott, Jr. 84).
Teaching WAITING
FOR GODOT from a Christian perspective in higher institutions
of learning is therefore not only desirable but also indispensable
for two main reasons. First, it will make students understand
that in contemporary literature, the importance of a large
body of texts is not based on their intrinsic value (their
form and moral content), but on the ideologies and world views
that are current and that inform those texts. Second, as future
professionals and parents who would soon be charged with the
responsibility to nurture young minds, the teaching of GODOT
from a Christian perspective would warn them to be reasonably
suspicious of the concept of "greatness" of works
which, since the institutionalization of literature (mainly
academic criticism) is becoming more and more an ideological
construct. Indeed, a close and analytical reading of GODOT
would reinforce the students critical sense in discerning
ideologies, philosophies and world views in literature that
are signs of the times and that are counter to their Christian
faith
OUTLINE
OF STRATEGIES FOR
A CHRISTIAN TEACHING OF "GODOT"
In teaching an anti-Christian text, it is important that
one guard himself/herself against being didactic, that
is, telling students before they have even read the text
that it is anti-Christian. The teacher's role, rather, should
be to make students arrive at that conclusion through some
strategies.
Being an abstract
play, one that violates almost all the conventions of playwriting
and perhaps the first of the kind students would be reading,
it would be helpful to first assign the reading of the first
act and to ask students to come to the next class meeting
prepared to discuss their emotional responses to the text.
Using this strategy would enable the teacher to introduce
a relatively recent theory of reading literature, reader-response
criticism, which has brought much vitality to Christian poetics.
The approach, which is avowedly subjective, places the reader's
(student's) identity at the center of the reading; in other
words, the student as a moral being (and not just a passive
recipient of the author's values, especially if they are counter
to his/her own), is empowered to assert his/her values and
beliefs during the process of the reading. As Patricia Ward
observes, "the ethics of reading involves... an awareness
of values of standards for action; as we read, our values
are brought in contact with those of the implied author and
of the fictional world of the text" (187). Also borrowing
the concept of "interpretive community" from Stanely
Fish, one of the first theorists of reader-response criticism
in the United States, Leland Ryken redefines the term and
shows how it can be applied in Christian criticism (and by
implication in Christian teaching). "An interpretive
community," he writes,
is simply a group of
scholars who share a common set of interests, beliefs,
and who read and discuss literature in terms of that agenda.
Every literary critic belongs to one or more interpretive
communities. Christian literary critics are such an interpretive
community."(23)
Reader-response criticism, therefore, allows the teacher to encourage
students to react emotionally in their reading and to note how
their values and sensibilities are being confronted by the totality
of the text. By reading aloud some excerpts from one or two
books that address the question of the identity of the reader
(his/her background, values and beliefs), the teacher would
reassure the students that indeed the activity is a legitimate
one. The discussion, however, must not be done in an unorganized
way. Acting as a moderator (but certainly one with an agenda),
the teacher can ask questions that lead to establish that the
students belong to a reading community whose unifying force
is the Christian world view.
Having thus defined
the world view from which to approach GODOT, the teacher may
proceed to ask students to comment on the text with regards
to the conventional categories of literary analysis, namely
setting, plot, characters, language and themes. Since GODOT
is a kind of allegory whose meaning the reader has to dig deep
to bring to the surface, the above categories' characters
should receive the most attention since they are the author's
device of expressing his philosophy or ideology. Finally, the
discussion of the text can end with the teacher telling the
students about the little that is known of Beckett's life
and the philosophy that informs the text.
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