readingWaiting for Godot through the lens of Christian existentialism【翻译】

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… ii
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………. 1
Chapter One: The Existential Dilemma ……………………………………………...16
Chapter Two: The Process of Becoming ……………………………………………. 37
Chapter Three: The Hope ……………………………………………………………. 60
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 92
Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………….. 100
ii
iii
ABSTRACT
Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot is commonly interpreted within the
context of the Theater of the Absurd, existentialist literature, or Christian allegory. This
thesis recognizes the validity of all such readings while attempting to merge these
seemingly contradictory perspectives. By reading the play within the context of Christian
Existentialism, new insights are uncovered as to what the play may be saying about the
existential dilemma.
Søren Kierkegaard, often called the Father of Existentialism, authored multiple
works that influenced modern existentialist writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert
Camus. Kierkegaard’s writings, however, were Christian in nature rather than atheistic.
By applying his philosophical theories to various aspects of Waiting for Godot, one can
see how several common readings of the play relate. This thesis focuses particularly on
the relationships of the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, the servant Lucky’s
speech, the figure of Godot, and the use of paradox.
Introduction
The concept of waiting and debating one’s decision to wait for an elusive hope
that may change one’s life appeals to audiences throughout time. In the post-WWII
world in which Beckett’s Waiting for Godot emerged, questions concerning the meaning
of human existence, the purpose of the suffering involved, and the value of striving for
transcendence of mere survival were prevalent. Despite the ambiguity involved in
Beckett’s play, audiences were naturally drawn to the provocative questions the play was
prone to evoke. Samuel Beckett wrote the original play, En Attendant Godot, between
1948 and 1949 and translated it into English himself in the mid-fifties, only then adding
the subtitle “a tragicomedy in two acts.” This very idea of the amalgamation of the tragic
and comic elements of life represents the paradox, the absurdity, and the resiliency of life
that emerges within Waiting for Godot.
Set in sparse surroundings of a country road and a tree, the play also makes use of
sparse language. Few details are given in the dialogue between the main characters
Vladimir and Estragon, two long-term companions who apparently return to this site
again and again. Vladimir refers to “all these years” that the two have been together (7).
However, their confused sense of time (such as Vladimir’s estimation of “a million years
ago, in the nineties”) makes it impossible to determine exactly how long they have
continued to encounter one another at this particular spot (7). The ambiguous use of
language also serves to make serious subjects understated, such as Estragon being beaten
or sleeping in a ditch, and to create comic moments and situations such as when the
words and actions of the men do not correspond or they talk past one another as if
1
engaged in two separate monologues. The actions of the men, however, are overly
dramatized and at times ridiculous, again adding to the comic effect as well as offering a
visual for the inner emotions the men must feel. This contradictory combination of
minimalism and exaggeration corresponds with the paradoxical concept of a
“tragicomedy” and sets the tone for the idea of paradox as a thematic element of the play.
The play begins with Estragon struggling with his boot, as he does quite often,
indicating his physical ailments centering around his feet. Vladimir has his own
condition related to the prostate as well as a fascination with the inside of his hat. The
two men have apparently been separated for some amount of time as indicated by
Vladimir welcoming Estragon back: “So there you are again… I thought you were gone
for ever” (7). Immediately the two launch into what appears to be familiar territory of
complaining about life, philosophizing about life, quibbling back and forth, and speaking
aloud their own private thoughts with or without a response from the other. After several
topics (such as their aches and pains, salvation, and the Bible) have been explored,
Estragon decides they should go, and Godot is mentioned for the first time. Vladimir
reminds him that they cannot leave this spot because “We’re waiting for Godot” (10). A
discussion of Godot ensues, leading to a debate over where they spent yesterday and the
day before, and revealing to the audience that the memories of the men are incredibly
faulty and time is a difficult and fluctuating concept. They are not even entirely sure that
they have returned to the same site and quibble over if they recognize the bog and
whether the tree is a “willow” or merely a “bush” or a “shrub,” facts that would
apparently reveal if they have gathered at the wrong location (10).
Their friendship is a situation in flux as well. On some occasions, Vladimir rejects
2
Estragon’s affection, while at other times the behaviors are reversed. In Act One
Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir’s shoulder while Vladimir stiffens, and when
Vladimir “softens” and embraces him, Estragon “recoils” and shouts, “You stink of
garlic!” (12). Their tenderness toward one another never lasts for long. Some sort of
intimacy is clear in their dialogue, however, as few topics seem to be off-limits. The two
men discuss salvation, suicide, their physical pain, their previous conversation with
Godot, the lives they once led, the meager rations of carrots and turnips they have left to
eat, and the attitude they should have toward life. These insights into life most often take
the form of cryptic maxims such as “One is what one is” and “The essential doesn’t
change” (14).
Their musings and arguments are interrupted by the arrival of Pozzo, a vicious
and arrogant master who loves to demonstrate the authority he has over his feeble slave,
ironically named Lucky, by cracking his whip at him, calling him “pig,” and
commanding him to perform ceaseless trivial movements (16). Vladimir and Estragon
are initially much more interested in Lucky and his condition of suffering. They “circle
about Lucky, inspecting him up and down,” question Pozzo about why he looks so tired
and why he will not put down his bags, and comment on the sores on his neck, his
slobber, and his “[g]oggling” eyes (17). However, after Lucky lashes out at Estragon as
he attempts to wipe the tears from Lucky’s eyes, the men pursue a conversation with the
officious Pozzo, who offers his own views on life. In the midst of sharing the travails of
his life with Lucky, Pozzo commands Lucky to dance for the men and then to think
aloud. Lucky breaks forth with a lengthy tirade about God and the suffering of mankind
intermingled with philosophical jargon, which sends the three men into convulsions until
3
they stop him. Shortly after Pozzo leaves, supposedly to sell Lucky at a market, a young
boy enters with a message from Godot that “he won’t come this evening but surely
tomorrow” (33). After further considerations of either leaving the site or committing
suicide, the first act ends with the men sitting motionless, still waiting.
The second act is quite similar to the first. As for the setting, the only difference is
that the tree has sprouted a few leaves, a change that the men notice midway through the
scene. Vladimir and Estragon both enter from offstage, indicating that they did both
decide to leave at some point between the end of Act One and the beginning of Act Two
and – like the appearance of the leaves – this makes the length of time that has spanned
still more indefinite. They enter into the same type of quarreling, expressions of mixed
emotion, and speaking in contradictions as they did in Act One. More discussions of
their suffering, Godot, their relationship with one another, and their past ensue. They try
yoga stretches and exercising and insult each other for the sheer amusement of using
words. Vladimir attempts to convince Estragon that they encountered Pozzo and Lucky
just the day before, pointing out Estragon’s wounded leg from Lucky’s kick and
reminding him of details of their conversation.
Once again, as Pozzo enters he is mistaken for Godot, but this time he is in need
of assistance. He has gone blind and Lucky has gone completely mute. The haziness of
time is made explicit in their conversations as they discuss what happened “yesterday,”
yet it is so distant in their memories they cannot agree on details, and Pozzo reveals his
exasperation at attempting to understand their “accursed time” (39, 57). The fixation on
suffering within their conversation is also prominent as they draw attention to their
various disorders. The two topics are linked in Pozzo’s commentary on the brevity of life
4
in which all are bound to suffer, eloquently summed up with: “They give birth astride of
a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more” (57). As before, once
Pozzo and Lucky have exited together the young messenger boy enters, claiming to have
come for the first time. After his exit, Vladimir and Estragon debate their same options
of leaving or suicide and once again opt for remaining simply by doing nothing else.
Estragon sums up their relationship well at one point when he says, “Yes, now I
remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That’s
been going on now for half a century” (42). Yet, for years, scholars have debated over
the meaning of this seemingly pointless blathering. Much of the debate surrounding
Beckett’s play is connected to discerning which philosophical stance the play most
closely represents, or if it can be said to contain any particular meaning at all. Without a
doubt, it is difficult to read Godot without sensing philosophical undertones, even if there
is debate about which philosophies they might be. It is not uncommon for commentaries
on the play to reference philosophical works that could shed light on the concepts
explored in the play, though many leave the specific connections to be made by the
reader. In the MLA’s compilation of strategies for teaching Godot, some of the many
sources recommended for study are Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd, Camus’s Myth
of Sisyphus, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Philosophy of Existentialism, and
various works by Descartes, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Tillich, Dante,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Mauthner, Wittgenstein, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, to
name just a few (4, 10). The “philosophical parable” Beckett has created apparently
echoes nearly every school of thought since Plato (Schlueter 55). If any theme can be said
to emerge within the works of this extensive list, it is possibly the relationship between
5
the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions within human existence along with the
question of what intrinsic purpose or meaning may be associated with this existence.
Many scholars immediately leap to an association with existentialism, a fitting
philosophy in its preoccupation with the meaning of existence as well as the leading
philosophy of the time when Godot was written. In Chapter Two I will discuss the
numerous interpretations that note the similarities between the existentialist works of
Camus and Sartre and Waiting for Godot. Martin Esslin, a key figure in the debates
surrounding the play, notes the “truly astonishing parallel between the existentialist
philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the creative intuition of Beckett,” focusing on such
facets as “nothingness, liberty, and the need of constantly creating ourselves in a
succession of choices” that are found in the work of both (Bloom 39). Richard Gilman
points out that “Beckett’s dramas have always been closer to Camus’s meaning in his
description of the absurd as ‘that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that
disappoints’” (70).
Along with the popular view of the play as a bleak existentialist diatribe on life,
reading the play as a biblical allegory has also been quite common in the past. Few
scholars are content in oversimplifying the text to a symbolic Christian story, however.
Many scholars have also made attempts to show where each of these interpretations has
fallen short and to offer a fusing of readings. Lawrence Harvey states that “the opposed
views of Godot that emerge from the two analyses [suggest] that some more
comprehensive approach may be needed to account for the complexity of Beckett’s
work” (146). Often in the process of determining how the seemingly contradictory
aspects of the play work together, critics come to argue that the uncertainty of the play
6
makes it impossible to prove any interpretation at all and makes it likely that it is devoid
of any real meaning at all. In the MLA’s guide to teaching the play, Williams suggests
that the play can be said to “dramatize elemental human experience, to embody
fundamental truths of the human condition,” yet he refrains from venturing a guess as to
what those truths may be (31). Even if they explore some of these same influences and
similarities in thought as mentioned above, ultimately the conclusion of many critics is
that this is simply an absurdist play that cannot offer a consistent perspective of the
world. Also in Bloom’s book, John Fletcher states, “Even the many Christian echoes in
the plays must now be seen to add up not to any coherent religious statement, but rather
to a meditation upon a world governed by no other divinity than some sort of malignant
fate; a world in which man waits and hopes for something to give value to his life and
distract him from the absurdity of his death” (21). Esslin offers a similar conclusion when
he says, “We must not go too far in trying to identify Beckett’s vision with any school of
philosophy. It is the peculiar richness of a play like Waiting for Godot that it opens vistas
on so many different perspectives. It is open to philosophical, religious, and
psychological interpretations, yet above all it is a poem on time, evanescence, and the
mysteriousness of existence, the paradox of change and stability, necessity and absurdity”
(30).
I would agree that the play contains philosophical, religious, and psychological
components that make it difficult to associate it with any one school of philosophy. The
strict views of the play as either existential or Christian both fall short in illuminating the
paradoxes and mysteriousness contained within the play. Yet within the philosophy of
the world known today as “Christian existentialism,” a unified representation of a
7
metaphysical theory of the world that unites all these conflicting characteristics can be
found. The comprehensive approach Harvey recommends, as well as the openness to the
richness of the play that Esslin asks for, is possible when reading the play through the
lens of Christian existentialism as originally proposed by Søren Kierkegaard. Many
critics have attempted to discern which system of beliefs Beckett would have logically
intended to propose. He read the philosophy of Schopenhauer, his work as a whole seems
to represent existentialism, the human relationships in this play resemble archetypes
describes in Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Mind, and so on (Cohn 41). Beckett may
never have touched a work of Kierkegaard’s, or he may have read every word written by
the philosopher, but either way the play itself has much in common with these works.
Furthermore, whether or not Beckett intended Godot as a symbol for God – perhaps the
second largest debate associated with the play – he works perfectly as one.
Martin Esslin comments on this idea of the author’s intention, suggesting that by
choosing to focus on such we can “see, if not the answers to his questions, at least what
the questions are that he is asking” (27). I would propose that it was certainly Beckett’s
intention to raise questions about the nature of man’s existence, and that we as readers
can also find answers within the text whether or not Beckett intended for them to emerge.
Beckett’s intention alone obviously does not provide adequate evidence for forming a
cohesive reading of the play. John Fletcher states that “[t]hose who are perplexed by the
play’s ‘meaning’ may draw at least some comfort from the author’s reassurance that it
means what it says, neither more or less…. Beckett is no didactic writer concerned to put
across a ‘message’ in dramatic form (Bloom 21).” Beckett’s intended meaning or lack of
meaning is irrelevant in our interpretation of the work, however.

原文地址：

http://www.hongfu951.info/file/resource-detail.do?id=084f57ff-2af7-4eb5-b280-4f1e5c801015