RE: ADSactly Literature: Benchmark Theater - Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot has always seemed to me, along with The bald singer of Ionesco, the best expressions of the theater of the absurd. And Beckett, both as a playwright and as a novelist, I appreciate him as one of the most acute and dense English-language writers of the twentieth century, ironically dealing with central issues of the human condition and modern being. The thesis that proposes the interpretation of Godot as God, beyond the fact that Beckett does not approve it, is very acceptable, because, in short, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for the meaning of their lives. And we know that God is one of the main ways in which meaning is expressed for human thought (on this is reflected, among others, by the critic George Steiner in his book Real Presences and Nostalgia for the Absolute). Even 60 and so many years after its publication, it is a work with complete validity and of great interest.
Thank you for your good post, @honeydue. Greetings.
Yes, Ionesco is definitely someone we will be addressing in this series, both with The bald soprano, as well as other plays of his. The two were veritable rivals for the title of 'father' to the theater of the absurd and both wrote fascinating, though very different plays.
I agree, Gogo and Didi are desperately looking for some meaning, which might as well be God. I don't know how much Beckett disagreed with that interpretation itself or with the idea that he intended it to seem religious (which obviously, he did not).
Thank you for the comment!:)