The Solution as Problem: Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Abstract

WAITING FOR GODOT (written in 1948, first published in 1952) is Beckett's most popular work. Most popular not only among the wider audience of theatergoers but also among professional critics — as the amount of scholarly attention shows. Besides sociological, Marxist, existentialist, and even biographical interpretations, there are, above all, religious readings where the famous Mr. Godot who never shows up in the play is understood to be a deus absconditus. Taking this line of interpretation as a starting point, the following is an analysis of the structure of Waiting for Godot in light of concepts developed by Bertrand Russell, Alfred Tarski, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the distinction of logical levels) which were recently applied by a group of psychiatrists at Palo Alto to explain certain anomalies and paradoxes in schizophrenic as well as everyday communication. Furthermore, I shall refer to Beckett's other works as they help us to better understand the problems which arise in Godot.