Who do you think Godot is?

Question:In Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot"

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot"

Beckett always insisted that Godot was not God. But we must assume he knew what he was doing creating a character that is eagerly awaited for that never shows with a name like Godot. He must have know the audiences/readers first assumption would be God. Beckett has often talked about how unconscious impulses partly control his writing, like he was in a trance when writing. Even if this was unintentional , it is too coincidental to ignore.

I believe that the characters are waiting for not the who-meaning God- but the what-what is the meaning of life? We are all waiting for answers to the question "why are we here"? We look for that answer while we go through our day to day activities all the time.

I think Beckett presented an abstract question that no one can ever find the answer to and formed it in a way that would force humans to do what we do best and try to make it fit into something that makes sense to us.

That's brilliant stuff.

I guess the obvious choice would be God.
Its written so ambiguously though, it could really be anyone or anything...

The point is not who they are waiting for. The point is that they are waiting.

Hmmm... There are a lot of possibilities of who Godot can be. It's just the perspective you chose to look at the play with. I personally felt Godot represented a never ending wait, an un-reachable desire.
Was that sensible enough for you Vlad? ;p

NYC Director is right. It's not so much WHO or WHAT they are waiting for, it's the fact that they are waiting that is important.

If you've ever seen plot diagrammed, it looks like a triangle and I believe is called "Freytag's Pyramid." The shows rising action begins when there is an inciting incident, something that sparks all of the characters to act. When Waiting for Godot came out, the audience leeft the theatre mad as hell, probably because they felt like they'd not seen any rising action or climax or falling action to the play; there was no inciting incident. Beckett wants to challenge what we thnk about plot and character and, ultimately, why we come to see a play and what we get out of it.

There's nothing worse than a bad production of Waiting for Godot ... like the one performed at my grad school! You want to stand up at one point and yell "He's not coming!" and leave. It SHOULD be funny. The original cast featured Bert Lahr (The Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz movie) and a recent remake, or rumors thereof mentioned Robin Williams and Steve Martin in the roles.