He wasn’t even sure if the play is “a philosophic depth bomb or a theatrical dud.” When the director of the first American production asked Beckett what the mysterious Godot symbolized, the playwright replied: “If I knew what Godot was, I would have said so.” 3 Keywords
Harvey Breit of The New York Times Book Review said, “This is Hell, upper case-and lower case, too.” Then he added: “This is life.” In the same newspaper, drama critic Brooks Atkinson said: “It seems fairly certain that Godot stands for God.” Time’s reviewer wasn’t sure if Godot stands for God or man’s unconquerable hope. To the man sitting next to me in London, he was beauty. To one British critic, Kenneth Tynan, he is a “spiritual signpost.” To the director of the Miami production, Godot is the meaning of life. Who or what is the unseen Godot? To some he is death to others, life to a few, nothing. Alain Robbe-Grillet offers some of the initial reactions: “Godot is God … Or else Godot is death … Godot is silence … Godot is that inaccessible self Beckett pursues through his entire oeuvre.” 2 Alan Levy offers some others: The audience and critics maybe anticipated the arrival of Godot more than do Estragon and Vladimir because early criticism looked (and continues to look) for answers to who Godot might symbolize. But this nothingness and emptiness created fertile ground for meaning. As Jean Anouilh says in a very early review of the play’s 1953 Paris production, the play is best summarized by the following line from the play: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” 1 Some critics saw this as a brilliant move others saw the non-linear language in this play without an arc as an attempt at intellectual snobbery. Part of the immediate confusion (and, in some cases, vehement dislike) generated by the play was its lack of a conventional plot. There is also a boy who is supposed to be delivering messages from Godot to Estragon and Vladimir. Two characters, a master and a slave, grace the stage with their presence, only to withdraw and reappear again. While waiting, their conversations weave from Jesus to suicide, among many other things. Two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, spend the length of the play anticipating the arrival of a man named Godot, who never shows up. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is most famously known as the play where nothing happens.
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