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/lit/ - Literature

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1169572 No.1169572 [Reply] [Original]

explain waiting for godot and the stranger to me

i have no fucking clue what they meant

>> No.1169578

it's a metaphor for communism

>> No.1169580

nothing.

>> No.1169583

lol, "explain waiting for godot to me"

there is no one canonical meaning to texts in general, no one authorial truth; there are only various interpretations variously valid. this is particularly true of godot, where the author has strenuously refused to comment on it (and where one interpretation of the play reads it as a refutation of the possibility of meaning in art)

>> No.1169591

I actually remember the exact name of that character without looking at the image, and it's been about 7 years since I saw the show/

>> No.1169600

The point of The Stranger is even nice people kill Arabs, and if bad things happen afterward, feel sorry for them, 'cause all they did was kill an Arab.

>> No.1169609

>explain waiting for godot and the stranger to me

Waiting for Godot: Nothing happens, twice.

The Stranger: Life is meaningless. So is death.

>> No.1169616

>>1169600
This is what Bush got out of it when he read it.

>> No.1169622

>>1169600
but the french are Mediterranean; Therefore, they are Arabs themselves. So in the end, they are killing themselves.

>> No.1169626

>>1169622
that is fucken deep

>> No.1169644

I've always had this feeling that the characters in Waiting for Godot are all dead. I have no idea where it came from, but it's this feeling I can't get rid of.

Anyone else maybe see where I'm coming from?

>> No.1169646

waiting for Godot is (to me) about how life can seem incredibly pointless, how the suffering that lucky goes through in the end is retarded he's carrying bags of sand all the time and how Pozzo's change from pwoer figure to bumbling blind man shows the fragility of life, as V&E watch it all unfold.

then there's the question about whether it happened or not. in the first act it's mentioned that the place they are is a twilght zone kinda deal, and the setting (a country road, a tree) leaves everything to the imagination. it seems that this entire thing could be in someone's head. the confusion when the boy comes twice (or 3 times, i forget) and V (or E, i also forget), desperately asks him whether he's been there before or it's his brother shows how saddening it is that these two guys, who've been on all these great adventures together, are left now, waiting for Godot, a faceless being, indefinately.

also Godot is confirmed as not God, as Beckett said if he wanted it to be God he would have called him God.

the entire meaning of WFG is summed up for me in act two with the line (and i'm paraphrasing here)

"we are born over an open grave, there is a fleeting flash of light, then we die" it kinda says life is pointless, death is a source of comedy, and we should laugh at the unhappiness of the world.

(see his other plays, namely End Game, and Breath)

>> No.1169647

google absurdism.

>> No.1169653

>>1169644
>>1169644

i get you, it's the eerie setting and the general absurdist nature of the play i think.

also: found this online:

"When Roger Blin asked him who or what Godot stood for, Beckett replied that it suggested itself to him by the slang word for boot in French, godillot, godasse because feet play such a prominent role in the play. This is the explanation he has given most often."
"Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise. "I also told Ralph Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly"

there's also some theories about it being a metaphor for the cold war and shit, but i haven't really read about those.

>> No.1169809

the stranger was cool

especially where he got laid and killed saddam