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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