Caspar David Friedrich’s “Two Men Contemplating the Moon”

This painting by Caspar David Friedrich called _Two Men Contemplating the Moon( (1819-20) was an inspiration for playwrite Samuel Beckett’s _Waiting for Godot_, often cited as a top contender for the most important play from the 20th century. Although it was written in French in 1948/9, Beckett himself translated the play into English, where it debuted London in 1955. _Waiting for Godot_ has two acts, and four characters only– five, if you count Godot, but he never comes. And that is exactly the point.

Over the course of two days, the action of the play entails two men who talk to each other while waiting for the mysterious Godot. They pass the time musing, lamenting, recalling, dialoguing, etc . . . But Godot doesn’t show up.

What made this play such a powerful metaphor for so many audiences? Beckett liked the fact that viewers could read different meanings out of his work — was it suggesting something about the meaning of life? God? Politics? Was it Freudian or Jungian?

By the mid 20th-century the world had endured two global conflicts of unprecedented scale, the Holocaust, and the human-caused famines of Stalin. The philosophy of the time challenged ideas about the meaning of human existence. Although Beckett denied naming Godot after “God,” he acknowledged that the word played a role in his subconscious.

When Beckett himself directed _Waiting for Godot_ in 1975, he explained some of his thoughts that resonated with me quite a lot: “It is a game, everything is a game . . . It is a game in order to survive”.

Christians, Atheists, Freudians, Jungians . . . These are just some of the lenses that people have used to interpret the play. _Waiting for Godot_ has been itself the inspiration for other artistic expressions. I like _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_. Do you have any favorite ways of interpreting Beckett’s work?