Waiting for Godot

It's important to note that December 22 marked the ten year anniversary of the death of the great playwright Samuel Beckett.

Beckett's most enduring and well-known play is Waiting for Godot, a 'tragi-comedy' (as Beckett called it) following the inextricably linked characters Vladimir and Estragon as they wait on a bare country road for another character, Godot, to arrive.

While the play is known for being complex and perplexing, it is also a perennial favorite among students for many reasons: it is filled with witty jokes, its characters are believable and identifiable, its messages and questions are compelling, and its strangeness in general leads to mass interest and appeal. Overall, its themes are profound and thought-provoking, while its characters and lines are unforgettable.

My Theatre class will begin reading Waiting for Godot when we return from winter break, and while I am sure many students will approach the reading of the play with apprehension, I guarantee by its conclusion many more will be captivated by the plot, will feel pity for the protagonists, and will gain confidence in their abilities to decode and analyze complex literature. We will follow up reading Godot with viewing a stage version of the play, enabling students to better understand the physical movement of the characters and the metaphorical appearance of the landscape and setting.

And on a humorous sidenote, I'd like to pass on a bit of quirky trivia regarding Samuel Beckett: After Beckett moved to rural France, to write without distraction, his neighbors encountered a problem--their son was unable to fit into the small car that served as the schoolbus, and as a result the boy was unable to attend school. Beckett volunteered to drive this boy an hour and a half each way to and from school so that the boy could receive an education. The boy promised Beckett he would become famous one day, even more famous than Beckett. That boy had the disease hypothyroidism which caused him to grow to more than seven feet tall and more than 500 pounds before his premature death. That boy grew up to be Andre the Giant, arguably one of the most popular wrestlers (after Hulk Hogan) in WWE history.