Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Happy Beckett's birthday

In honor of Samuel Beckett's birth 99 years ago today, I pass along Waiting for Godot in various modes:
Christian:
Let us turn to the play, Waiting For Godot, which has an important message for us. Who is this Godot that these people are waiting for? Is it not clearly God? What this is play is showing us is that people who only wait for God, who do not welcome Him into their hearts, lead meaningless lives of quiet desperation.

Marxist:
Waiting For Godot is an essential parable of the class struggle. On one side we have the ultimate capitalist, Godot, remote, invisible, powerful, whose caprices dictate trivia in the lives of the working class. On the other hand we have representatives of the working class, alienated, leading meaningless lives at the behest and convenience of the Capitalist class. This play shows what happens when the working class does not unite.

Freudian:
Waiting For Godot is a rationalized dream scene which symbolically expresses the fundamental nature of separation anxiety. Off stage we have the absent parent, all powerful, loved and needed, but not present. On stage we have avatars of the essential child, neurotically cycling through different defense mechanisms.
. . .
I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.
–Malone Dies

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