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.