Samuel Beckett "Waiting for Godot"?

Question

OK I need to know what or who Godot symbolizes in the play "Waiting for Godot"...please and thank you!

Answer 1

Godot symbolizes waiting. The title gives it away. Basically, it is "Waiting for Waiting", or how people just randomly wait for random things to happen, for no good reason.

Answer 2

The audience never learns who Godot is or the nature of his business with Vladimir and Estragon. As a proper noun, the name "Godot" may derive from any number of French verbs, and Beckett stated it might be a derivative of godillot, which is French slang for "boot". The title, in this interpretation, could be seen as suggesting that the characters are "waiting for the boot".
Many readers of this play have understood the character "Godot" as a symbolic representation of God. They see Godot's persistent failure to appear and Vladimir and Estragon's aimless waiting as representations of the masses hoping for a being who will never appear. Beckett himself vehemently denied this interpretation saying "If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."

Answer 3

You can interpret it literally from the name " Godot ", that is they are waiting for " God " to tell them what to do about their lives. I think that Beckett wants you to think a little deeper than this. He wants us to question why we are always in the state of waiting or anticipating that something, hopefully good, is going to happen. Gogo and Didi keep returning to the same spot to wait even they we know that they go each day and live their lives. Bad things happen to them when they are away but yet they return. This is the eternal question, " Why ? "

Answer 4

The text shows that Vladimir (if not Estragon as well) comprehends “mad” not in the sense of “angry”, but in the sense of “insane”, "stupid", or more accurately “irrational”. Estragon's aphoristic reply is to Vladimir's “reasoning about reason”, that is : VLADIMIR: All I know is that the hours are long, under these conditions, and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which –how shall I say– which may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. You may say it is to prevent our reason from foundering. No doubt. But has it [our reason] not long been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths? That's what I sometimes wonder. You follow my reasoning? ESTRAGON: (aphoristic for once). We are all born mad. Some remain so. Pozzo's cries for help and offers of monetary reward then interrupt the conversation, and provide the occasion for yet another of the frequent misunderstandings of the two tramps. VLADIMIR: I wouldn't go so far as that. [In reference to Estragon's aphoristic reply.] ESTRAGON: You think it's enough? [In reference to Pozzo's offer of 100 francs for assistance.] VLADIMIR: No, I mean so far as to assert that I was weak in the head when I came into the world. But that is not the question. Vladimir takes Estragon's reply as "We are born stupid. Some stay stupid". What Estragon meant was more like “We are all born as creatures without the ability to reason, ruled by instinct and emotion. Some of us never develop beyond that original state.”