Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot - God Isnt Coming Essays -- Waitin

Waiting for Godot - God Isnt Coming Waiting for Godot, Samuel Becketts existential masterpiece, for many odd reason has captured the minds of millions of readers, artists, and critics worldwide, joining them all in an attempt to interpret the play. Beckett has told them non to read anything into his work, yet he does not stop them. Perhaps he recognizes the human quality of bringing personal experiences and such to the piece of art, and interpreting it through such colored lenses. Hundreds of theories are expounded, all of them right and none of them wrong. A play is only what you bring to it, in a subconscious connection between you and the playwright. One popular interpretation of Waiting for Godot relates it to the Second Coming of messiah Christ, as related in the New Testiment. There are significant clues and evidence to make this connection, and as the main tenant of the Existentialist movement, which grew out and of WWII experiences of not only Beckett, but all the other great Existentialists, Camus, Sartre, and Ianesco. It also developed using the writings of Hegal, Schopenhaur, and Nitchze. The main philosophy of Existentialism can be summed up in one statement - How can one reconcile ones existence with a world devoid of order, norms, or divine guidance. Thus, there is an implied aspect of morality and the questioning there of in any Existential piece, as this is a facet of human society that helps us deal with the Existential Dilemma. First and initiatory is the title itself. Waiting for Godot. Who IS Godot? VLADIMIR (Softly) Has he a beard, Mr. Godot? BOY Yes Sir. VLADIMIR Fair or... (he hesitates)...or black? BOY I think its white, Sir. (p. 59 A) Look at any portr... ...that deliberate in the divinity of the self, and I believe Beckett, by this statement and others in other plays, feels that way as well. Godot will never show up. Estragon and Vladimir must(prenominal) find him for themselves, rather than letting him come to them. Th ey must take action and make the world around them exist, a world with more than a unawares or dying tree. This is the Existential solution. To exist in a world devoid of reason, one must create that reason, else be doomed to endless age of tolerateing for enlightenment to come, which it never will, appearing only on the horizon of tomorrows forever. Beckett is telling us to get up off our butts and exist. God isnt coming, and if you want to wait forever for him be our guest, but the rest of us are going to be human BE-ings. Work CitedBeckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London Faber and Faber, 1990.