Waiting for Godot "Prompt"

Some of you have been waiting (im)patiently for me to post the Waiting for Godot prompts. In a way, this actually mirrors the action of the play, or lack thereof: Will he post the prompts? Will everything be clearer when he does? What if he never posts prompts? Will that effect my grade? Can I have a carrot? Did they beat you? (Of course they beat me.) That's a turnip. Coat! Whip! Stool!

First of all, don't worry if you don't "get" the play as you are reading it. That's part of the experience of reading it or seeing it performed. Waiting for Godot can be called an anti-allegory, where everything appears to mean something but does not definitively point to anything. So my "hint" to help you read it is this: focus on the reading experience itself even more so than the meaning of the text. At what points do you feel most inside of the play? At what points do you feel most pushed out? Do you, at times, feel like you are beginning to understand, only to have the play undercut you? Do you feel frustrated with the play at some moments, wishing you could put it down, only to come across something funny or poignant that draws you back in? Pay attention to these ups and downs and you will be getting somewhere. In a sense, Gogo's lines on page 43 are true: "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!" But in another sense, the play means a lot: form, tone, concrete details, and colloquial speech all have meaning in and of themselves, and Beckett's use of them shows how much "meaning" is inherent in elements that do not clearly stand for something else. He shows how we are always looking for "the meaning" of a text when much of the meaning is the text itself.

If you choose to write about this play on the blog, give us your honest reaction to the reading experience. These reactions should go beyond "I don't get it" and "This is weird," but you should not feel any obligation to interpret the theme of the play or analyze its symbolism or come to a conclusion of what it's all about (though you may attempt this and are encouraged to do so if you if you would like). As long as you write something interesting, it will be fine.