aagd-munich

The more I read it, the more I see it performed, the more I love it. Beckett, I hear, was famous for refusing to comment on his work. About Godot, all he would say was, "It means what it says." It's not nihilist. It's not existentialist. It just is. And, when physically performed on stage by good actors, it's pretty funny, too. That, however, doesn't stop me from drawing a few conclusions. I believe the play's most important accheivement is its multi-layered commentary on the relationship between reality and communication. In the uncertainty of the characters and their activity on the stage, we see that it is not reality, but our means of communicating reality, that holds greater significance in human existence; yet even our methods of communication are flawed and misleading. For instance, several critics have done a very interesting job of disecting Lucky's speech, but the speech itself, in its basic nonsensicality, is what matters: he's performing the motions of communication but nothing he says is (at least for the audience) accessibly coherent. But the fact that we can't communicate perfectly is not meant to be depressing. We can attempt to communicate; we can make efforts; we can pass the time. Gogo and Didi's exixtence isn't meaningless just because Godot never shows up. They are waiting, and that means that they are doing something, and that means that their lives are meaningful (or at least as meaningful as life can be, whatever that means).

2022-11-14 18:32