Exploring Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

• Exploring "Waiting for Godot" using TSLTT as one possible approach 
• TITLE - why 'waiting' -what does it say about the human condition and who is 'Godot' and what does he symbolise? The idea of 'god' or any external saviour who will solve our problems? Something else? What do you think?
• STRUCTURE - The play is divided into two acts but does the structure help us clarify the passage of time or is the sense of time and memory blurred in the play? If the latter then what is Beckett observing about the nature of human endeavours - check the quote on 'habit',,,,,
• Language - how important is the opening line? Plays rely on dialogue to reveal character but in Lucky's speech, Beckett seems to suggest that language is not reliable as a source of truth and meaning. We might consider the Nazis use of language to dehumanise the Jewish people and 'brainwash' the German people into believing that life is based on a 'master race' and sub-human race struggle (untermensch) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch
• While Beckett does not specifically mention the Nazis, Pozzo and Lucky represent the power structures of different societies and classes taken to an extreme - Lucky is a slave and Pozzo is taking him to be sold at a fair.
• Lucky's speech - critics cannot agree on what it means or even represents - what do you think?
• Beckett's friend James Joyce, once described Dublin as the centre of paralysis, lost in the certainty of nationalism and religion. Beckett may be suggesting paralysis - moral, emotional, physical ("they do not move") as a THEME in the play.
• Beckett's novel "The Unnameable"  closes with the phrase "You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on," which was later used as the title of an anthology of Beckett works. It may suggest that there is no alternative to life, we must go on no matter how bleak life is - just like the characters in "Godot".
• TONE -comic? tragic? tragicomedic?