Critically examine Godot’s disputed identity.
When Colin Duckworth asked the author point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, he replied: "No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true." Most of the early recipients took Godot for God, presented as a rather familiar figure by adding the suffix '-ot', just as Charlie Chaplin was mostly known as Charlot in France. In an interview in 1994, Beckett regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise. He told Ralph Richardson that if by Godot he had meant God, he would have written God and not Godot. This was little disappointing for Richardson, and also for a number of scholars who emphasized the Christian interpretation. We must keep in mind that the play was originally written in French as En attendant Godot; if Beckett wanted to relate it to religion he could have rather use 'dieu', the French word for God, or a close sounding one. The bilingual nature of Beckett's works should be kept in mind for a total comprehension of his worldview.
There was a French play called Attente de Dieu by Simone Weil. In Beckett's play Godot is not defined as God, which makes the text even more complex. In Balzac's Mercadet (1851), an off-stage character called Godeau results in the protagonist's misfortune right through. Roger Blin, the director of the first production in Théâtre de Babylone in 1953, once asked the writer who or what Godot stood for. Beckett's reply was as problematic as his text, that he had derived the term Godot from the slang for boot in French, 'godillot' or 'godasse', because feet had such an important function in the play. This was his explanation often in future, too. Jokingly though, he once remarked that one of Estragon's feet was saved, just as one thief was saved during Crucifixion and one boy was spared from beating by Godot. There are more than ten words in French that sound similar to Godot. Chinmoy Guha suggests that god is also the French slang for the dildo used by lesbian women. A shocking example of the Anglo-French cultural conflict, it certainly problematizes any simplistic interpretation of the Beckettian text.
